OK, I keep hearing these reports about Al Qaeda types claiming that they will treat western prisoners like their “Iraqi brothers” in Abu Ghraib.
So, what are they going to do? Make them j3rk off while wearing womens’ underthings on their heads? Somehow, it doesn’t seem like them…
The Israelis appear to finally have a video confirming what they’ve long accused the Red Cross of–sheltering terrorists in ambulances. Confronted with the evidence, they apparently admitted that there were terrorists in the ambulance, but claimed that it had been hijacked. But as Fox pointed out, the driver never complained. Not, that is, until the video was released.
How much longer are we going to grant moral authority to the increasingly-obviously-corrupt UN, and the ICRC?
Wretchard has (as usual) some very good points in this piece.
Offering up the objective of more United Nations legitimacy or adopting an “exit strategy” in Iraq, as the Democrats have done, does not amount to a strategy. But neither does the open-ended formula of bringing freedom to the Middle East constitute an actionable agenda. It may be a guide to action, but what is needed is a set of intermediate goalposts against which progress can be measured. Some of these might be:
1. The desired end state in Saudi Arabia: whether or not this includes the survival of the House of Saud or its total overthrow;
2. The fate of the regime in Damascus;
3. Whether or not the United States is committed to overthrowing the Mullahs in Iran and the question of what is to replace them;
4. How far America will tolerate inaction by Iraq security forces before acting unilaterally;
5. The future of the America’s alliance with France and Germany;
6. The American commitment to the United Nations.Each of these hard questions must be weighed according to its contribution to the final goal of breaking the back of international terrorism. Somewhere in that maze, if it exists, is a ladder to victory. Leading the horse to drink presumes that we know what purpose watering them serves; what paths we will travel. Answering these questions will be a heuristic process, one that moves towards progressively better solutions. Finding ourselves in the place we first began is equivalent to defeat. Whether we are further along in Saudi Arabia in May 2004 than on November 2003 is one of the indicators of whether we are winning or losing. But someone has to keep score.
This would also make it easier to sell to the American people, because it would show that we have a plan, and that we are making progress in it. The problem, of course, is that it’s a plan of which much of the world (particularly the dictatorphilic part of it, including some of our “allies” in Europe) won’t approve.
The Journal points out that the press hasn’t told people about this:
First in Arabic and then in English, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address to the Iraqi people last Tuesday that “I would like to record our profound gratitude and appreciation to the U.S.-led international coalition, which has made great sacrifices for the liberation of Iraq.” In his own remarks, President Ghazi al-Yawer said: “Before I end my speech, I would like us to remember our martyrs who fell in defense of freedom and honor, as well as our friends who fell in the battle for the liberation of Iraq.”
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the U.N. Security Council much the same thing last Thursday: “We Iraqis are grateful to the coalition who helped liberate us from the persecution of Saddam Hussein’s regime. We thank President Bush and Prime Minister Blair for their dedication and commitment.”
[Update]
Morton Kondracke has more.
In comments to the previous post, Duncan Young writes:
The big difference is that in WWII the shape of victory was pretty damn clear – specific land was occupied, papers were publically signed, POW’s turned over etc etc.
I’ve never heard a non-handwaving description of what ‘winning’ looks like in the War on Terror. Which is a bit of a problem with applying the whole ‘war’ paradigm to this case.
That’s one of the problems with calling it a “War on Terror.”
If we call it by its right name, a war on radical Islamic fundamentalism, then the victory conditions become more clear, if not entirely politically correct.
It means a Middle East (and other places) in which governments don’t actively fund (or look the other way at) terrorist activities, in which imams in the mosques don’t preach hate and death to the Jews and other infidels every Friday evening, with either active government support or acquiescence, in which madrassas, if they exist at all, teach a modern and reformed version of Islam. It may also include a prosperous and free Arab world, though unfortunately it need not if those other conditions can occur without it.
That’s what victory looks like. How to achieve it is unclear, and worthy of debate, but many opponents of the war and the administration don’t even seem to see that as a legitimate goal, let alone one to debate the means of getting there. The politically incorrect part is that it means committing “culturicide,” which is something that remains an anathema to the multi-culti cultists, to whom all is relative. And while it doesn’t require genocide, it may indeed require killing many more people than we might desire, because there are some minds that won’t be changed.
Certainly policies followed in the eighties and nineties (to which it sounds like Senator Kerry wants us to return) won’t get us there. Whether or not the current policy will remains to be seen, but it’s got a lot better prospects than prosecutions and diplomacy alone. There will be many more regime changes, by various means, before this war is over.
Go read VDH today:
We do have a grave problem in this country, but it is not the plan for Iraq, the neoconservatives, or targeting Saddam. Face it: This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.
Over at Winds of Change my favorite member of the WoC crew has decided to drop the pseudonym and let us know that Armed Liberal is Marc Danziger. He’s the new C.O.O. of Spirit of America, a charity that’s working to make life better for Iraqis and in doing so portray America in a more favorable light. I’ve said before that the current conflict is all about perceptions. Spirit of America is on track to make us all safer by making it harder for the enemy to recruit. I believe that efforts like this will have a greater effect in the long run than any purely military operation (which is not to suggest that military operations are unneccessary in the short term). Check out the site and see if you can help out.
Andrew Sullivan points out that Susan Sontag is vying for one of his Susan Sontag awards:
…the cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is a Susan Sontag essay. Yes, she’s going to write about Abu Ghraib. And – yes! – the headline is: “The Photographs Are Us.”
Fine, Susan. I’ll consider the possibility that “the photographs are us” when you and other people in the intelligentsia and media will admit that people like this are you.
At least for those who, for partisan political purposes, are hoping for bad news in Iraq. It’s a roundup of all of the good things that are happening there, that aren’t being prominently reported.