Lending a Hand

Let me start off with something I recently wrote about the people who like to claim Vietnam shows us how we will lose in Iraq:

So to those who want to paint Iraq as a guaranteed defeat just as Vietnam was, spare me. You haven't a clue about what happened in Vietnam or what is happening in Iraq, so your comparison of two events about which you know nothing is less than useless.

Cue the clueless:

Perhaps it's a measure of just how badly things are going in Iraq that the strategists are looking to Vietnam for models of success. But it's interesting that the Iraq team, like its predecessors in Vietnam 35 years ago, is getting serious about counterinsurgency doctrine after making costly initial mistakes.

So what is the amazing thing our military is doing in a war going badly that reminds Ignatius of Vietnam (other than the fact that upright bipeds are shooting at us)?

We are training Iraqis to fight so we can withdraw. You know, just like we worked to get the Vietnamese to take over the fighting nearly forty years ago.

The fact that this is pretty much what you need to do to help any foreign government fight an enemy does not occur to Ignatius. No, since it is what we did in Vietnam, it must mean Iraq is a quagmire. Since we trained Vietnamese and Hanoi conquered South Vietnam, this means the strategy will fail in Iraq. Never mind that Vietnam was won until Congress cut of our support to Saigon. But no, Ignatius discounts one author's contention that we lost Vietnam in Congress:

By Sorley's account, it was politics back in America that turned victory into defeat, by blocking U.S. support for the Saigon government after North Vietnamese troops invaded the South en masse in 1974 and '75. That seems to me a considerable stretch -- many other analysts argue that the South Vietnamese army was never strong enough to prevail against Hanoi. A Vietnamization that required continuous American life support wasn't much of a victory.

It is hardly a stretch to argue that the South Vietnamese lacked certain capabilities and so when we cut off those capabilities (like supplies and air power) the South Vietnamese could not stop the NVA. But according to Ignatius, needing American support means you can't win. And since we can't train the Iraqis to fight without our logistics, planning, and firepower support, Iraq too will fall when we turn over primary combat duties to the Iraqis, even after we train Iraqi units to fight.

By this reasoning, Korea was a failure because the South Korean military needed continuous American life support.

The Soviet war against Germany wasn't much of a victory for them because they needed continuous American support to supply them.

Heck, NATO wasn't really an alliance since a lot of the smaller NATO countries would have needed continuous American support after about 36 hours to sustain them in combat.

The British in the Falklands War needed US shipments of air-to-air missiles (if I remember my history), so sorry guys--didn't count. Call them the Malvinas Islands.

And the Israelis needed resupply from America in the October War--so the IDF is clearly inadequate.

To be bold (on the Marine Corps birthday), since the United States Marines needed a good-sized contingent of United States Army support units to support them in an unprecedented drive inland in 2003, the Marines didn't have much of a victory either.

And to really show how ridiculous this standard is, we have to cancel North Vietnam's victory in 1975 on a technicality since the Soviets poured supplies into Hanoi to propel them south to capture Saigon. An invasion that required continuous Soviet support wasn't much of an invasion, apparently.

Further, who says the support of South Vietnam had to be continuous and never-ending? South Korea surely does not need American help now should North Korea attack them. NATO certainly doesn't need us to repel invaders. Why does the fact that South Vietnam needed help in 1974-75 mean that Saigon would have always required the same amount of support?

This Vietnam comparison talk is silly. The reason we are doing some things the same in Vietnam and Iraq is that it is what anybody would need to fight insurgents anywhere. Crawl, walk, run is a standard progression. And the very idea that an ally that needs help isn't actually fighting is purely absurd.

So, um, yeah. Thanks for the advice, Mr. Ignatius. At least Ignatius doesn't just clutch is skull and scream "Halliburton!!!"

Owens describes far better the progress of the war since we recaptured Fallujah last year:

When the Marines took Fallujah at the end of last year, they began the strategically important process of interdicting the "ratlines," the insurgents' infiltration routes from the Syrian border into the heart of Iraq. One ratline follows the Euphrates River corridor — running from Syria to Husayba on the Syrian border and then through Qaim, Rawa, Haditha, Asad, Hit, and Fallujah to Baghdad. The other follows the course of the Tigris — from the north through Mosul-Tel Afar to Tikrit and on to Baghdad.

Operations followed throughout the spring and summer of 2005. While the earlier operations succeeded in keeping the pressure on the insurgents in Al Anbar province they could not prevent the insurgents from abandoning one town and moving to another not threatened by allied forces.

That has begun to change lately and one of the reasons is very good news indeed: Coalition forces are able to apply simultaneous force against the insurgent strongholds and, more important, to stay in the area because many Iraqi units are now able conduct combat operations with minimal U.S. support. In a Pentagon press briefing on Sept. 30, Gen. George Casey, the U.S. ground-forces commander in Iraq, pointed out that the number of U.S.-Iraqi or independent Iraqi operations of company-size or greater had increased from about 160 in May to over 1,300 in September, and that US-Iraqi or independent Iraqi operations now constituted some 80 percent of all military operations in Iraq.

The increasing number of capable Iraqi units means that the Iraqi government can begin to extend the writ of the Iraqi government to Al Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Triangle. For instance, the recently completed Operation River Gate has established a substantial Iraqi government presence in Haditha, Haqlaniyah, and Barwana, three former insurgent strongholds along the Euphrates River.

It may seem counterintuitive, but from a strategic standpoint, it is possible to argue that the spike in U.S. casualties actually reflects military success, not failure. Of course we mourn the loss of all service members fighting in this war. But the recent up-tick in casualties indicates not so much that the enemy is becoming more aggressive, but that we are. Casualties always increase when one side goes on the offensive. That we are applying force simultaneously means that the enemy has no place to run and must stand and fight. As in Fallujah, this means more Coalition casualties, but it also means that the insurgents are being killed and captured away from Baghdad. This buys more time for the Iraqis.

We're buying time for the Iraqis to assume more and more responsibilities and these are significant even as we retain a role well into the future.

We're winning out there. Don't be so jumpy. Only by mindlessly chanting Vietnam can we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory--just like in Vietnam.

Grand Strategery

So you're the big shot strategic thinking guy in the Great Jihad of the Double Noughts. You need a target.

So you think, I want to target the Arab state with the fewest people who think Islamist extremism threatens them (10%) and the most people who don't think Islamist extremism is a threat to them (87%).

And that country really rises to the top when you consider that it would be good to target a country whose people believe more now than in 2002 that attacking civilian targets is justified (57% now versus 43% on 2002). Conversely, the percentage of this country's people who think such attacks on civilian are never justified has dropped to 11% from 26%.

Yep, according to the July 2005 Pew poll, Jordan is your ideal target.

So when you carry out your attack on the perfect target whose people are bound to understand why jihadis had to attack civilian targets in your country, this reaction (via Instapundit) has got to be a surprise:

Hundreds of angry Jordanians rallied Thursday outside one of three U.S.-based hotels attacked by suicide bombers, shouting, “Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!” — a reference to the leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, the terrorist group tied to the blasts that killed at least 56 people.

The new jihadi motto?

Al Qaeda: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot to Bring on the Caliphate. Because We All Know the Big Toe is a Zionist Plot.

I really wonder if Mullah Omar is raging against bin Laden for his lies that got the jihadis into war with America: "Oh, yeah, one hard blow and the Americans will wilt like flowers! They'll flee the Middle East! Now we are in a quagmire in the Middle East and the Arab street is rising against us!"

These guys are inept clowns. Murderous clowns, to be sure, who need to be hunted down and killed. But inept clowns nonetheless.

UPDATE: Strategypage examines the status of al Qaeda since they foolishly escalated their war in 2001 and provoked us to fight back hard:

The successful referendum underscores just how impotent al Qaeda has become since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Four years ago, al Qaeda was able to launch a coordinated attack that killed 3,000 people in the United States. Now, al Qaeda has proven unable to oppose the United States after American troops have liberated two countries in al Qaeda’s backyard. These singular failures belie the claims of a quagmire coming from the mainstream media and critics of the Administration. Al Qaeda has been rejected by the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But it isn't as if al Qaeda has no hope of eventually winning. They have one ace in the hole:

The media’s tendency to accentuate the negative has given al Qaeda a bit of a lifeline – their only hope for victory is that the anti-war movement, fuelled by the mainstream media, will wear down the political will of the United States.

I still don't know why these nutballs are called the "anti-war" movement. The war was fought before we got into it, and if we lose and retreat, the war will follow us home. Anti-war only means anti-America fighting back. Funny how that works.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Strategypage has another post entitled "Find Foot, Take Aim, Fire," which highlights the amazing ability of ruthless killers to do so stupidly:

One explanation for this counter-productive behavior can be found in the quality of al Qaeda personnel. It is low, with most members having few skills and little training. While the media concentrates on the few successes al Qaeda has, the majority of the terror groups operations are sloppy, ineffective and counterproductive. One should be thankful for incompetent terrorists, although in this case that's only natural. Al Qaeda's goals and methods are based on fantasy and self-delusion. Many of those who join al Qaeda have bought into the delusions, and are not terribly rational themselves. Thus al Qaeda's strategy is, currently, to kill at every opportunity, without paying attention to who the victims, or consequences, are. Al Qaeda gunmen are not noted for their accuracy, except when the target is their own foot. Let's hope they never change.

The self-evident truth of this analysis makes it amazing to me that some anti-war people still earnestly insist that we are falling into al Qaeda's trap by waging a war just as bin Laden intended us to do. How anti-war people can spin events into a brilliant Islamist strategy when it is indeed utter failure and defeat for the Islamists is beyond me. But then I never held the analytical, historical, or military skills and knowledge of the anti-war side very high in the first place.

Ceasefire

This is only a foreign affair topic in my dreams, but in the interest of improving French-American relations, I must post.

With my everlasting thanks to The Corner for this link, I hereby resolve to say nothing bad about France for, oh, the next 15 or 20 minutes.

No wonder the Germans invaded so often. Wow.

Blowback

From the Corner we have a link to this definitive piece in Commentary addressing the charge that the administration lied us into a war.

I stand with this setup for the piece:

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Truly, it is frustrating that the press passes along the lies of the anti-war side. And I don't know what to call them other than lies. The very same people had views 180 degrees away from their current views prior to 2003. What changed? The facts? No. Just the politics. And this change while our troops fight for what these opponents called for achieving just three short years ago is shameful.

And because of these reasons, I relish this possibility:

And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq—the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy—have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

Bring on the investigation into who is lying about Iraq, WMD, and al Qaeda. We've failed miserably in hoping the press will accurately portray the facts. Perhaps the doubling down of the anti-war Left on this successful strategy of peddling the big lie will explode in their faces.

Go on the offensive over this shameful distortion of the record, Mr. President. You owe it to our soldiers and Marines who are fighting for the reasons that both sides of the aisle agreed were valid only three short years ago. Call those senators and representative out by name and ask them what changed! Quote them and ask them what has changed! Don't let them get away with this charade. Being polite to them has earned you no credit. Passing their legislation and standing with them at the signing ceremony has earned you no credit in their eyes. Force them to face the contradictions of 1998 and 2002 compared with today. Grind their noses in this shameful switch and don't let up until they are beaten. If you don't, you risk the abandonment of our troops who loyally fight an honorable war.

Don't leave our troops hanging out there. Defend the people who are bleeding and dying to keep us safe according to the oath they swore to uphold so we will win a just and noble war.

Saddam's Willing Accomplices

Once again we see that no tale about evil American military personnel will be questioned by segments of our population all too eager to believe these stories. Sadly for our war effort, our press is too willing to pass along these stories.

Via Real Clear Politics, the story of a Marine veteran who lied about committing and witnessing war crimes in Operation Iraqi Freedom:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

The story explains how none of this can be verified by reporters or other Marines present at these alleged crimes; and explains Massey's changing stories about what he did and saw. It boggles my mind that a Marine could betray the Corps, his country, and the Iraqi people who would suffer if his lies lead us to abandon Iraq.

But as hard as it is for me to grasp how one man could betray all that he swore to defend, what I really cannot grasp is the ability of thousands of reporters to assume his charges are real and for millions of the Left to embrace the charges and give Massey undeserved credibility:

The response of Harris's colleagues who were duped by Massey? Mostly, a collective shrug. I e-mailed a reporter from The Washington Post asking if he would follow up. No response. A USA Today reporter told me he had no plans to do so. And I spoke with David Holwerk, editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee, which ran a lengthy freelance interview of Massey by an anti-war activist. "I don't know what we're planning to do," Holwerk said.

Harris noted in a television interview that Massey continues to sell books and DVDs that smear our troops. "[I]t's been profitable for Jimmy Massey to keep telling this lie," he said.

Apparently, despite the newspaper industry's plunging circulation figures and credibility, Massey's media enablers believe the same thing.

The willingness of our Left to believe the worst about America and their abandonment of concern for foreigners who needed and still need our help to escape the legacy of a brutal dictatorship is just astounding. The Left may--when pressed--admit Saddam was bad. But they reserve their true hatred for the man who led a Coalition to remove Saddam.

As the Left cries foul about pre-war intelligence and so-called lies that led us to war, perhaps the Left can explain how they rely on such faulty sources of information as Massey to support their preconceived ideas of what happened in Iraq.

But don't dare call them unpatriotic.

Le Xington and Concorde?

In France, did we watch at Clichy-sous-Bois the "cars burned 'round the world," much as our first stand at Lexington Green was the "shot heard round the world?"

Is this jihadi inspired or grievance inspired? Since the France riots by young Moslems erupted and have spread, I have wondered which explanation is true. I've leaned to the grievance inspired side even as I've looked for evidence that jihadis are calling the shots.

Strategypage comes down squarely on the grievance side:

There are some Islamic radicals running around in all this, but they are a minority. The Moslem kids like to talk about respect and payback, but very few see this as a religious war. It’s become a sport, with various groups competing to cause the most destruction. Text messaging, Internet bulletin boards and email made it possible for the rioters to stay in touch and compare notes. The media coverage also encouraged the violence, giving the kids some positive (for them) feedback.

But now, nearly two weeks of street violence have thoroughly embarrassed the government so much that curfews and more arrests have taken some of the joy out of these Autumn antics. But it’s not jihad, and never has been.

This all sounds reasonable. This year's rioting is based on lack of opportunity and is not jihad coming to Europe this year.

But this begs the question of what happens next time? First of all, I obviously assume there will be a next time. I assume this because I don't think the French are capable of opening their economy, government, or society enough to bring these suburban aliens into French life. So hopes raised by increased government attention to their plight will be dashed in a few years by pitiful results that leave France's Moslems in pretty much the exact same spot as September 2005. A few dozen more Social Cohesion mime academies won't count as progress.

My fear is that the jihadis in France will increasingly lead the alien and alienated Moslems of France. Remember our own Revolution. When colonists first confronted British soldiers with arms in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, and then lay siege to the British in Boston, we did not seek political separation. Our forebears only wanted their rights as Englishmen recognized. It was not until July 1776, more than a year later, that we made independence from the British our official goal.

This is not jihad and it never has been, says Strategypage. But this says nothing of the future. Will it become jihad? A cry for rights can become a cry for separation in remarkably short time. Will we look back at the events at Clichy-sous-Bois as the first clash leading to a declaration of independence by France's Moslems?

What Isn't Burning

As we try to decide whether France is burning over discrimination or jihadi hatred, it would be good to remember that we've had a defensive success in Australia:

Two Islamic terrorist cells were competing to become the first to stage a major bombing in Australia, a prosecutor said Tuesday after police arrested 17 suspects in a series of coordinated pre-dawn raids in two cities.

I draw no satisfaction from weepy "we're all [insert latest jihadi victims of mass casualty attack here] now" sentiment after the enemy manages to kill several score or thousand victims.

Australia remains on the offensive as part of the Western team and has scored a big defensive success as well. Contrast this to France where they refuse to join the offensive in an effort to suck up to the jihadis and get mass Moslem riots for their troubles.

Way to go, Aussies.

Still A Threat

Once again, Strategypage notes the problems that China has with its military:

China's ever increasing spending on modern weapons and military equipment gives the illusion of growing military power. It is very much an illusion. The 2.3 million troops in the Chinese armed forces are poorly trained and led. China has a long history of corruption and rot in the military during long periods of peace. The last time the Chinese military has been in action was 1979 (when they attacked Vietnam, and got beaten up pretty bad). You could count the encounter, in the Spring of 2001, where a Chinese fighter buzzed an American navy patrol aircraft, and managed to collide with the U.S. plane, and crash (the U.S. aircraft landed, despite its damage.)

American sailors are constantly exposed to examples of the poor training and leadership in the Chinese navy, whenever they encounter Chinese warships at sea. Foreigners living in China, and speaking Chinese, can pick up lots of anecdotes about the ineptitude and corruption found in the military. It's all rather taken for granted. But in wartime, this sort of thing would mean enormous problems for the troops, when they attempted to fight.

Once again, I have to say that I don't disagree with a word of this analysis. Our military is far superior to China's and China's problems with training would lead to a lopsided clash if it comes to war with America in the near future. I have always enthusiastically endorsed continuous and realistic training. A well trained military with adequate weapons will win wars. a poorly trained military with advanced weapons will leave lots of its own burning and expensive equipment on the battlefield or slagged to the bottom of the sea. China's weakness in skill combined with an overall deficit in advanced weapons does not bode well for them in a shoot out with American units.

I will go further. China's strategic situation is really bad. I would never trade our position with China's. We have Cuba and Venezuela to our south as irritants on our home front. China has South Korea, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, and India as potential enemies all around their perimeter. So China must deploy land, sea, and air forces to face more potential threats.

But despite all this, China is still a threat to us. The reason is that if China grabs Taiwan, it sends a powerful signal to the region that China is a rising power and America and our allies are too weak to stop China. China will gain a power projection base to extend their reach further out to sea. Now, if China had to fight America and/or Japan to take Taiwan, the training and technology deficit of China would shatter their military. But China, if it can win quickly enough, only has to beat Taiwan--not America or Japan--to achieve a signal victory that shows China will dominate the western Pacific and not America and our allies.

Does anybody think the Taiwanese are really an Asian version of the Israelis? Amazingly, lots do. Taiwan spends little on defense and has a military that does not train hard. They have poor infrastructure (such as lack of aircraft shelters) and little ammunition for what they have.

This is why I hammer on the idea that Taiwan must build up its defenses. If the Taiwanese can hold off the Chinese long enough to let America or Japan intervene, China will lose based on the factors that Strategypage highlights. Right now it appears that the likely casualties that China would endure deters the Chinese from attacking. The problem is that internal Chinese developments could change that number overnight. Right now, 21,000 dead is too much for Peking to accept to take Taiwan. What if internal unrest develops and the Chinese decide a foreign adventure is needed to retain control? When losing power is the alternative, losing 21,000 dead to achieve a long-held objective that could prove the regime is in control might be a bargain in their view.

The Taiwanese hold their future in their own hands. We can't save them if they won't seriously fight to defend themselves.

We Should Not Torture

The President says we do not torture. I believe him.

I don't think we should torture prisoners out of a desire to hold true to our ideals and because torture does not work.

Nor do I think we should render prisoners to other states in a way that subcontracts torture to those governments. Not that we shouldn't extradite prisoners to other countries whose presidents cannot say they don't torture. Go down that road and you have European countries who won't extradite terrorists to America because we have the death penalty.

I don't buy the idea that we must leave an option to torture in case we need to find out where the ticking nuke is. First, that exact situation won't happen. Will we ever really have a guy that we know for sure knows where a nuke is about to explode? If not, we are on a slippery slope. Torture me and I'll name all the people involved in building a nuclear bomb. People will say anything to stop the pain.

Second, if it does happen that way and we do know for sure that one stubborn guy knows where the nuke is, does anybody doubt a president won't authorize torture and think that somebody will raise a stink if he does? Even if torture is illegal?

I also don't buy the idea that we need to keep terrorists guessing about what we'll do. They think the worst of us and if we pass a law banning torture, the jihadis and their sick fans will still think we torture and wrap Moslem prisoners in bacon before burning their bodies and giving the residue to Sharon to mix in with matzah dough. After all, our president says we don't torture and our public manuals show just what is allowable, yet some of our own illustrious senators think we torture.

So with these statements, you'd assume I support the McCain amendment to ban torture.

Despite what I said above, I do not support the McCain amendment because it does not, in fact, ban torture. If it did just ban torture, I'd support it despite my belief that our current laws and regulations are sufficient to ban torture today. This is part of what the amendment proposes:

No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Further:

CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT DEFINED.--In this section, the term ''cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

I'm sorry, but degrading treatment such as putting panties on somebody's head is not the same as torture. And depending on who is doing the putting, we might be talking about a really good frat party. Even hitting somebody is not torture. Otherwise we would not have the crime of battery in our statutes.

And given that some of our people think the humiliations inflicted by a few at Abu Ghraib were torture, some senators and human rights people think Gitmo is a gulag, and when NPR mentions that five Rangers were arrested for abusing prisoners who were just captured in the same breath as the reporter mentions the torture amendment (implying the need for the latter to stop the former), I have no confidence that "torture" as McCain and other American POWs endured for years at the hands of the North Vietnamese won't be defined down to panties on heads and a little rough treatment.

I'm going to look for the relevant 1984 document, but right now I have little confidence that it will allay my worries that amendment proponents are trying to make being mean to terrorists illegal.

UPDATE: Let me clarify my statement that torture does not work. Thus states Strategypage:

Basically torture is interrogation carried to extremes. The ultimate extreme is killing the subject, which is usually avoided, at least until you get the information. Advocates for the abolition of torture believe that torture doesn’t work. Obviously, it does work. Just check out the history of espionage during World War II, or any other major conflict. Torture was accepted, if not much talked about. Information was regularly extracted from unwilling captives, and much damage done as a result. Everyone used torture, even if there were regulations against it. To this day, spies and soldiers are trained to deal with torture. It is acknowledged, in the espionage world, that if one of your people is caught by someone who has torture experts, your guy is likely to talk eventually. Thus there are often provisions for suicide pills.

OK, I was being lazy. If you read my statements about the nuke guy and the hypothetical torture of myself, I think you get the idea that while torture works against people who know something you need to know, if applied to people who know nothing, they will confess to anything at all to stop the pain. Too easily, I believe, torture could be used routinely against people swept up in a dragnet. Some may know something. The vast majority will not. And most would confess to crimes that obscure the true extracted facts with lots of extracted noise.

I should have been clear on this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I found the 1984 UN convention on "torture." I'm not reassured.

The definition of "torture" in Article 1 seems fine:

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

But go down to Article 16 for the rest:

Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture or references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

There. This convention bans actions "which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1."

I cannot possibly back the McCain amendment. It does not, in fact, just ban torture.

One question: how is it possible to degrade somebody who slaughters civilians and thinks his God is smiling about it?

UPDATE: Ok, part of my analysis regarding the 1984 treaty is based on sheer ignorance. Read this for a good discussion of why the McCain amendment is bad.

Have a Nice Day

Twelve days into the riots, the French government has declared a state of emergency:

President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency Tuesday, paving the way for curfews to be imposed on riot-hit cities and towns in an extraordinary measure to halt France's worst civil unrest in decades after 12 nights of violence.

The worst civil unrest in decades--indeed, no riots have been carried out simultaneously in more cities in all French history--but it took 12 days to find that an emergency exists. I have to ask, at what points in the last 12 days were the actions of the "youths" acceptable?

But the emergency isn't being confronted, as the 12-day delay clearly implies. Check out what a state of emergency allows the French government to do:

Under the emergency decree, local government officials will be able to put people under house arrest and demand that weapons be handed over. Public spaces where gangs gather can be closed. Disobedience could lead to up to two months in prison, Villepin said.

Wow. After 12 days, the police can finally tell rioters to stay home and turn over their weapons. And the government can close public places! Well, duh! No wonder the police couldn't control the riots! Being armed and outside your home in public places are pretty basic ingredients for a riot.

But wait, a late and barely confrontational response isn't the extent of France's surrender. Dominique de Villepin (who, as Scrappleface has noted, is a man) has attempted to surrender to the rioters:

Villepin also reached out to the heavily immigrant suburbs, acknowledging that racial discrimination there is as a "daily and repeated" fact of life. He said job seekers with foreign-sounding names are sometimes not given equal consideration as those with French names, adding that fighting such prejudice "must become a priority."

If the jihadis aren't dominating these riots, the weak French response will propel the jihadis to the top by giving them prestige in defeating the French government. The French government will keep trying to understand their Moslem minority, while the Moslem minority will understand that the government will always back down when confronted with angry young Islamists. Moderates in the Moslem community will be silenced and more will support the jihadis. Everyone can see who the strong horse in this fight is.

Sadly, Mark Steyn may be right:

Some of us believe this is an early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war. If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.

As to where Britain falls in this grim scenario, I noticed a few months ago that Telegraph readers had started closing their gloomier missives to me with the words, "Fortunately I won't live to see it" - a sign-off now so routine in my mailbag I assumed it was the British version of "Have a nice day". But that's a false consolation. As France this past fortnight reminds us, the changes in Europe are happening far faster than most people thought. That's the problem: unless you're planning on croaking imminently, you will live to see it.

If these riots aren't jihadi-inspired, the weak French response guarantees the next one will be.

We'll all live to see it because the Euros are surrendering far faster than expected.

Lesson in Gratitude

Via Instapundit, this Hugh Hewitt interview with Victor Davis Hanson.

Hanson says that the French are stunned that Moslems don't appreciate the pro-Moslem stance of Paris enough to avoid rioting:

I was reading a lot of French papers, you know, when I was in Europe the last three weeks, and I think I would...I guess I would sum it up as just absolute bafflement. It's almost as if don't these people know that in the abstract, we help Hamas? Don't we know that we appease the Arab world? And why in the world since we are so pro-Arab, would they care whether they have a job in Paris or not? We are beyond criticism, because we're against the United States, and here they are attacking us, of all people.

So let me get this straight. The French are shocked that a people could be ungrateful to another people who helped them out?

I can only imagine the sense of betrayal they must feel.

Good luck guys. I wish you well. Really. But you're on your own this time.

The Price of Victory

It may sometimes seem to the Taiwanese that it is futile to try and defend their island of democracy against the 1.2 billion Chinese who would snuff out their freedom and absorb them into the dictatorship the Peking regime wants to maintain. If the Chinese are that determined to win, can fewer than 25 million Taiwanese prevent that?

One thing should encourage the Taiwanese to bolster their defenses. Even when the Taiwanese cannot spend enough to repel an invasion, the Taiwanese may be able to build a military strong enough to make the price of victory for China too high for the Chinese to pay.

The question is what is too high a price to win? I've assumed that the Chinese could capture Taiwan if they are willing to pay the price. My latest Naval Institute Proceedings has an interesting bit (not online, I think):

Some months ago it was reported that the Chinese high command regularly provides the leadership with its predictions for an attack against Taiwan. Apparently in 2004 it emerged under questioning that about 21,000 deaths were expected in such an attack. Contrary to Western views that China has unlimited manpower and that human life is cheap, the leadership found this figure unacceptable. It may have feared that casualties on such a scale would have brought its own competence into question. From a Taiwanese point of view, what is interesting (if the report is true) is that Taiwanese forces really do have a deterrent effect on the Chinese Communist leadership.

The Taiwanese need to remember that they can survive an attack. If they can resist long enough, they not only buy time for America and Japan to intervene, but they increase the cost to China for winning, which may deter an attack in the first place.

As an aside, since a war over Taiwan would likely be over in a month one way or the other, in what way is 21,000 dead in one month not viewing human life as cheap? Even with four times America's population to consider, would we think 5,000 dead in one month was an acceptable price for any objective?

Fear is the Beginning of Wisdom

Fight until we win and never let up in hunting down the enemy until we win.

As American and Iraqi forces continue to advance against terrorist and insurgent strongholds in western al Anbar province, some Sunnis are whining about the attacks:

In Baghdad, a leading Sunni Arab politician, Adnan al-Dulaimi, called for a halt to U.S. and Iraqi military operations against cities in order to encourage disaffected Sunnis to join the political process and vote in national elections next month.

Never, ever, let up on the enemy until they actually capitulate. If Sunnis haven't come over yet, holding back will only give them the option of weighing options and continuing to fight. The prospect at dying at the hands of soldiers, Marines, and Iraqi security forces should be encouragement enough to stop fighting us. This American officer has the right idea:

"We are meeting quite a bit of resistance here in Husaybah but the offensive is going well," Capt. Conlon Carabine told the network. "Our strategy is basically to kill the insurgents when we come across them."

Carabine said U.S. and Iraqi forces plan to establish a long-term presence in the town once the insurgents are routed. "Once we clear this town, we're going to stay in this town," he said. "We're not going to leave this population."

Davis said the militants were putting up a tough fight because "this area is near and dear to the insurgents, particularly the foreign fighters" because it is so close to the Syrian border.

"This has been the first stop for foreign fighters, and this is strategic ground for them," he said.

The enemy can stop fighting whenever they are smart enough to realize that a decision to keep fighting means their death and ruin. Respite from that threat will never lead to the right decision. It only allows the enemy another option--retreat and regroup--until we again make them choose between life and a future or death and ruin.

Our Sunni enemy has had two years to think about joining the new Iraq. They did not take the chance. At this point we basically need to kill the enemy where we come across them, and if they can throw their hands up fast enough, accept their surrender. Time is a weapon and we should not give it to the enemy.

Remember--don't ever let up on the enemy. If they had us on the run, would they ever halt to give us a chance to think it over and surrender? Or would they press on, kill us, slaughter the survivors, and then eagerly look for new victims to murder?

Fear is the beginning of wisdom. Lead them to wisdom.

They Hate These Cars. Stay Away From the Cars!

Unrest continues in France and is spreading:

Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.

As urban unrest was reported in neighboring Belgium and Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm. One riot-hit town in suburban Paris said it was preparing to enforce a curfew.

I still don't know what is going on. Is this the jihad coming to France or basically frustration at lack of equality? Still, it seems hard to ignore the fact that radical Islam has at least a supporting role. I did note four months ago that when the Europeans decide to deal with their Moslem problem, I think they will be ruthless. Seven months ago, I wrote of the hatred young French radical Moslems have for the French "little whites" who are in their view cowards. And ten months ago, I noted jihadis returning to France. In all of these posts, I remained certain that the ability of Europeans to inflict violence may have atrophied but will return if the threat becomes great enough and direct enough.

So the main question is what will trigger the European instinct to fight? Is this latest violence a planned insurrection, as Captain's Quarters suggests in this interesting post, and so the trigger for the fight reflex?

The riots in France have little connection to the Islamist terrorist offensive against the West, if the American media coverage gives any indication. However, alert CQ reader Mr. Michael points out that both American and French media sources warned of coordinated Islamist action against France in the weeks before the riot. Agence France Presse even had a quote from the maligned Nicolas Sarkozy noting the imminent nature of the threat.

Of course, the first story gives the appeasers some hope that there is nothing ominous about the spreading violence. It's all about economic and social conditions and French failures to grant happiness to the Moslem minority. Hate has nothing to do with it. If it did, why is the violence so focused on automobiles?

On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started last month, national police chief Michel Gaudin told a news conference.

Odd, no? All those burning cars. Perhaps this isn't even social unrest after all let alone Islamism. Perhaps those who refuse to see radical Islam anywhere will seize on the vehicle arson to argue the Moslems just hate cars. Maybe the Apologistas will build an explanation that springs from the wisdom of Navin R. Johnson:

He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!

Of course, he was just a jerk.

But just in case, stay away from the cars.

It Takes a Village to Raise an Idiot

Given that major players on both sides of the aisle believed Saddam had WMD and argued this for many years before 9/11, it is a gross distortion and, yes, a lie, to try and claim that this administration faked evidence to trick the nation into war with Saddam's regime. The Plame pseudo-crisis is not a smoking gun for the lying and dying crowd no matter how much the Left wants to believe it is so.

I've already wondered why the District Idiot, Wilson, was sent on an important WMD-related mission to Niger.

I also wondered whether the CIA was incompetent or trying to destabilize our government.

Toensing (vis Instapundit) relates the events around Affaire de Plame and asks:

The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.

As I said before, bring on the investigation. Somebody is lying and all those who are disappointed about the weak Fitzwah that failed to nail their desired victim will be shown to be backing liars themselves.

Saddam's Army

One of the debates on mistakes in our conduct of the Iraq War goes back to our decision to "disband" the Iraqi army. This decision put people out of work who then went to work for the Baathist insurgency instead of employing them for security duties, this argument goes.

First, as I've said, the decision was purely formal since the army self-disbanded. I had hoped our efforts to get Iraqi units to defect intact would work to provide a core for a new security force. Strategypage notes that Iraq is now asking officers up to the rank of major to return to duty. This is the rank I figured we should keep as a rule except where there is demonstrable question of loyalty. Ranks above major should be excluded except for proven loyalty to the new Iraq. But the army went home so this wasn't possible anyway.

Second, some advocates of keeping the army intact even if we could, note (as Strategypage states) that we kept German and Japanese forces intact until we could gain control so why shouldn't we have done the same with Iraqis? My response is that the Germans and Japanese formally surrendered and so their officers obeyed their leaders' orders to cooperate. By contrast there was not only no formal Baathist surrender but a Baathist plan to launch an insurgency after the major combat operations were lost. So employing existing units (if we could have recalled them from their capitulation and flight to their homes) would have put people in our pay and who would have probably worked for the insurgency.

Third, once it was clear that the Shias were grateful but suspicioius of us, anything short of thorough de-Baathification would sow too many doubts and hinder the goal of getting Shias to back us enthusiastically. The Shias are with us so it is safer to bring in former regime officers. The "major" threshold is probably still wise.

Strategypage summarizes the dilemma:

Nearly all the key officers in the Iraqi armed forces were Sunni Arabs, and selected mainly for their loyalty to Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party. Thus Bremer and his staff had to make a quick decision. Do they allow several hundred thousand organized troops, led by minority, and much hated, Sunni Arabs, remain in their jobs, and risk having these troops becoming the basis for warlord forces, led by men who had long supported dictatorship? Or do you disband the army, and start over? Either way, there are risks. What would you have done?

At least they acknowledge a debatable point. Disbanding the army was not a clear mistake.

What would I have done? I would have disbanded the Iraqi army and started over, with the "major" rule in force. In hindsight, I would have focused on light infantry instead of a conventional army as we did in the first year when we assumed no major insurgency. I couldn't know that, however, so I probably would have focused on a conventional force just as we did.

So don't call disbanding the Iraqi army a mistake. We are winning after this so-called "bad" decision, and advocates of the mistake argument can't demonstrate that the bad things that could have happened from their preferred course wouldn't have happened.

Worst of Both Worlds

The clashes in France continue:

Ten nights of urban unrest that brought thousands of arson attacks on cars, nursery schools and other targets from the Mediterranean to the German border reached Paris where at least 28 cars were burned overnight in the French capital, government officials said Sunday.

While I still don't know if this is rioting or an attempt at an uprising, this shows at least some think of this as an uprising:

Police found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a southern suburb of the city, with more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters' faces, a senior Justice Ministry official said Sunday.

One has to ask how these Franco-jihadis think they can win this at 8-10% of the population. This is serious delusion time.

A disturbing fact is that the riots are spreading across France:

The unrest has taken on unprecedented scope and intensity, reaching far-flung corners of France on Saturday, from Rouen in Normandy to Bordeaux in the southwest to Strasbourg near the German border.

The article notes that the worst is still around Paris but what happens if the unrest spreads to Germany? It is already happening a bit in Denmark, but if it goes to the heart of the Axis of Weasels and perhaps Mini Moi, Belgium, does this become a European Union problem?

So then we will have the instructive lesson of the value of the EU. It is supposed to eliminate nation-states in favor of a Euro superstate. With open borders, Euro-jihadis will be able to travel at will anywhere in Europe. But in a classic counter-insurgency campaign (if this is what develops), you need to control the borders. But the border does not exist between European states anymore. Will the EU allow the Germans to seal their legally non-existent border with France to keep out Franco-jihadis?

And will the EU direct other countries to send troops or police to help France? In America, troops are deployed--even state National Guard troops--across the country as needed.

My best guess is that the EU will give the worst of both worlds. The EU won't send troops to help endangered areas and won't let the countries of the EU control their national borders to isolate the local problem.

Were I God of the EU, I wouldn't try to hold any referenda on the EU for a while after that.

Riot or Uprising?

Clashes between Moslems and government forces in France are spreading:

The violence — originally concentrated in neighborhoods northeast of Paris with large immigrant populations — has spread across France, extending west to the rolling fields of Normandy and south to resort cities on the Mediterranean. Attacks were reported in Cannes and Nice.

So is this an explosion of unrest over social injustice or an uprising of people who do not and never will consider themselves part of France?

This is an important question since police restraint to contain the violence, political talks to ease tensions, and the promise of more money will help quell riots of frustration and despair. But if this is an uprising, concessions will only convince the people rebelling that France is weak and worthy of only defeat.

But if this is violence that springs from hatred and Islamist desires to create a liberated zone in France, then the French need to send in the army and defeat the attackers who want only victory and not justice. Yet if the military attacks people who are really rioters, they risk permanently alienating people who would otherwise be willing to consider themselves French.

I have no idea what the problem is. Does the French government know?

Expiration Date on War Support

Strategypage notes the Three-Year Rule that holds that Americans tire of war after three years:

In all of America's wars, popular support for the war effort sharply declined after three years. Even though the government said, from late September, 2001 on, that the war on terror would be a long one, this has not changed the impact of the Three Year War. If you can't get it over with within three years, you are going to face more and more voter opposition to the war effort.

The opposition party in the United States has been edging from complaining about the war to downright opposition, gradually taking the position of their party's extreme wacko Left:

Outnumbered on Capitol Hill, Democrats are embracing the little power they have in the GOP-controlled House and Senate by using procedural techniques to highlight Iraq troubles and issue blistering critiques of Bush's war policies.

At the same time, increasing numbers of Democrats are calling for the president to start withdrawing U.S. troops by year's end and are laying out their own timetables for pulling out of the war-battered country.

This change is despite the fact that they voted to wage war and they agreed with the reasons for war--including WMD--before and during the war. Suddenly they think the war is bad, the reasons were lies, and it's time to abandon friends to the tender mercies of our enemies. Before long they won't even be able to say they support the troops. Already they run "gulags" and "torture" so can "baby killer" be far behind? Way to go, guys. I know elements of the extreme right are anti-war, too, so it may seem unfair to say the Left alone is anti-war. But the right has no friends in the media so they are marginalized. The Left gets their views amplified and supported by the media.

Which raises an interesting question. Our leaders have been keen on getting the support of the American people for war. The military especially has been gun shy after Vietnam unless the American people clearly support the decision to wage war. The resulting Abrams Doctrine of relying on our reserves to ensure public debate prior to going to war surely worked for the Iraq War. There was mobilization, debate, and a Congressional authorization for war that reflected public polling in support of war. Pretty much the Gold standard, wouldn't you say?

But now elements of our population and political parties are abandoning their earlier pledge of support while the war is not yet won. We are winning but the war is not yet won.

So the question is, when giving consent to wage war, don't those who give that consent have an obligation to maintain that consent until victory? Was there a clause in the Congressional declaration that said it sunsets in 2006 or is there a subsection that allows for a reversal at the 2,000th casualty? And the American people whose support for winning is dropping, the same criticism holds. If our enemies ever believe our people have a particular threshold where we retreat, we guarantee resistance to reach that threshold.

And if your doubt that there is political purpose to the complaints, read this:

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts called for a "reasonable time frame" for pulling back troops, and said 20,000 should start returning home in December if the elections go well.

This is sheer politics. Our baseline troop strength in Iraq is 138,000. We have held some troops over and accelerated some deployments to overlap units that are rotating in order to have 160,000 troops in Iraq for the elections of October and December. Once these elections are over, we will go back to having nearly 140,000 troops in Iraq. What a coincidence.

I'm just wondering something. Because our troops went into battle on the assumption that the people back home would back them until victory. The troops are holding up their end of the battle by fighting, dying, and winning. All we have to do is stop forgetting what we all agreed on and agreed to do.

There is no substitute for victory. We gave our word.

Advancing

With American casualties up in October, the media assumes it is yet another sign of quagmire. In Progress in Iraq I noted that this is because we are moving in force into Anbar province. Strategypage explains (again) this quite well:

The fighting in Iraq is changing, as the Sunni Arab homeland (central and western Iraq) are more aggressively patrolled by American and Iraqi forces, ... who are taking more casualties this year as they attack into the Sunni Arab areas, and shut down the previously "safe zones" where terrorists could recruit, train and build bombs.

This is not a sign of quagmire. It is a sign of advancing into enemy areas.

And we are still on the offensive in the west to try and keep the enemy rocked back on their heels in order to secure the December elections:

The offensive of about 2,500 Marines, soldiers and sailors in the town of Husaybah will remove insurgents from the western province of Anbar ahead of Iraq's parliamentary election on Dec. 15, the military said. An unspecified number of Iraqi forces were taking part.

The offensive is part of a larger ongoing U.S. military operation designed to deny al-Qaida in Iraq the ability to operate in the Euphrates River valley, which stretches through Anbar province, and to establish a joint permanent security presence along the Syrian border.

The article says multiple-battalion sized Iraqi units are involved. Pulling Iraqis in our wake to control what we take is key out there. As more Iraqis are organized, equipped, and trained, we are able to move Iraqi security forces out of the highlly populated areas and insert them into the enemy strongholds out west.

We continue to advance. This is what progress looks like.

The Long-Term Fight

America will be in Iraq a long time to ensure success. But as new missions become primary, our presence will evolve in numbers and nature. These changes in missions will overlap and many will go on at the same time, though with evolving priorities.

In March 2003, the mission was to destroy Saddam's regime. This required two corps of forces led by heavy armor and with abundant air support, with the United States Army, the Marine Corps, and the British providing the bulk of forces, to blitz to Baghdad in a conventional offensive.

When the insurgency picked up speed, we needed to put boots on the ground to patrol and conduct a counter-insurgency as we started to train, equip, and organize Iraqis to do that job. We have advisers and trainers with these units to help with fire support, planning, and logistics. Despite a wrong start that assumed no insurgency, we are well on the way to having an effective and large Iraqi military able to carry on the counter-insurgency.

As the Iraqis pick up the burden of fighting the terrorists and insurgents, our conventional forces can pull back and act as a reserve for Iraqi troops and rely on our special forces and air power as our part of the offensive against the insurgents. Advisers and trainers will work with the Iraqi units.

Even as the Iraqis win this counter-insurgency fight and we pull out our special forces, there will still be a role for a corps of 75,000 Americans in Iraq. We will need to provide a heavy deterrent force to prevent an Iranian or Syrian invasion as the light infantry of Iraqi's counter-insurgency army transitions into a conventional army able to sustain a campaign against another conventional military, supported by a new Iraqi air force and navy. We will need to keep advisers/trainers with these troops in this phase as well.

Even as the Iraqi army transitions to a conventional force able to fight off invaders and we draw down our conventional forces, we will need to stay in Iraq to nurture rule of law and democracy.

Strategypage highlights what will be a long-term struggle in Iraq long after our troops are confined to mega-bases deterring foreign attack. Fighting corruption:

October 14, 2005: Another unheralded victory in the war on terror is unfolding in Iraq. Arrest warrants have been issued for a former Iraqi defense minister and 27 other officials who served in the transitional government that left office when the current elected government last April. Seems that the former officials stole about a billion dollars in funds earmarked for building the new army. All of the suspects are believed to have left the country, along with the money. While nailing bureaucrats for stealing money may be common in the United States, it is very, very rare in the Middle East. And that’s one of the main reasons al Qaeda came to be. This Islamic terrorist organization first tried to clean up it’s own back yard. Failing at that, they decided to blame it on the West and go after this new enemy. But now, al Qaeda fans (the few that are left after so many Arab civilians have been killed by suicide bombers) are faced with the fact that the Americans have also brought with them the concept of honest government, and accountability for those who run the government. A really radical development this is, at least for the Middle East. Now it’s a long way from arrest warrants to serving time in prison. But it’s a start, and it’s a victory.

By the time military security is achieved, our main presence may be FBI teams and accountants able to find and ferret out corruption while teaching Iraqis the tools of the trade to do so on their own.

Right now we are in between fighting the counter-insurgency and turning over the fight to Iraqis. So we have a way to go. We will indeed be in Iraq for decades. But the nature won't remain static.

Pressure From the Outside

Frederick Kagan has a good piece on the history of our efforts to win in Iraq.

He notes that the key is, and always has been, defeating the Sunnis:

The problem is within Iraq and specifically within the Sunni community. The coalition and the Iraqis are creating the political preconditions for success and have largely confined the military problems to the Zarqawi network and the Sunni Triangle (where that network is, for the most part, based). But until we, working with our Iraqi partners, have persuaded the Sunni community that violence is counterproductive and cannot improve its political position, the insurgency will continue. That persuasion will require political incentives and military pressure. If we and the Iraqi government apply both in judicious measure over the course of the next few years, there is no reason we cannot win.

No doubt this is true today. The Sunnis must give up. I think we are trying to persuade them through political incentives and military pressure as Kagan says we must do. Carrot or stick, where and when appropriate. But a bigger factor than our carrots and sticks will ultimately defeat the Sunnis: their fear of something worse than living in a democratic Iraq.

One thing that will help them reconcile themselves to living in Iraq as a minority, as I've noted since summer 2004, is that the foreign jihadi campaign in Iraq will help forge a more united Iraq. Sometimes people note that the Nazis after 1945 did not fight and resist as the Baathist versions of these fascists do today. Well, remember, that when we conquered western Germany, the Germans had a bigger threat to worry about. The Russians were heading west and many Germans hoped that we might ally with them and turn on the hated Russian communist invaders to force the Red tide back east.

The foreign jihadi invasion of Iraq is giving Iraqis the foreign threat that can drain the Sunnis of their zeal to resist defeat by the Coalition and the new majority rule of Shias. A foreign enemy at the gates can focus the mind on what is really important.

The Kurds were with us from the start. Kurds still seem content to be a minority with civil rights rather than provoke Turkey by being independent. And the thought of a jihadi-run Iraq as a neighbor is additional incentive to stay in and make Iraq work. Had this key development failed, a northern war involving Turkey and probably Iran would have erased a quiet example of peace and reconstruction inside Iraq.

The Shias were brought around despite the mistrust caused by our abandonment of their revolt in 1991, by the vicuous and bloody jihadi campaign waged against civilians. Until then, the Shias were suspicious of America despite their gratitude for our removal of Saddam. Most seemed to just be watching and waiting to see if we'd win. Had this key of gaining the active support of 60% of Iraq's people failed, no amount of US trooops could have maintained order.

The Sunnis, I think, are being persuaded to join Iraq rather than be associated with al Qaeda sickos (and pay the price for that association). Defeating the Sunnis is just the latest key to victory to come to the fore that we (Iraq and the Coalition) must turn to finally open the door to a free and democratic Iraq.

So various keys are being turned to win in Iraq. Each of which, in their time, could have derailed victory. As horrible as the jihadi and Baathist terrorism has been, this pressure driven by an outside enemy is pushing Iraqis together rather than driving them to civil war. Slowly, all Iraqis are rallying against a common invading enemy.

Other keys to success will become apparent when this key is turned, I'm sure.

Root Cause

In all sincerity, I do not take any pleasure at all in the spreading and continuing riots in France.

France is part of Western civilization and though I sometimes despair of them acting like it instead of just trying to jam sticks in our spokes, I retain hope they will act like an ally one day. I want them to control these rioters and hopefully build a better society in the aftermath.

What I do take some guilty delight in is the clear refutation that such riots provide to the charge that America has caused the West's problems with Moslems due to Iraq or the current President.

The cited article has several points that I want to highlight.

First, amazingly enough, France's problems were neither caused by the election of George Bush in 2000 nor has France's policy to suck up to dictators in Moslem-majority countries immunized them from Islamic anger:

Right-wing French lawmaker Philippe de Villiers, who has said he wants to "stop the Islamization of France," told RTL radio that the problem stemmed from the "failure of a policy of massive and uncontrolled immigration."

Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react "firmly" but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.

"We cannot hide the truth: that for 30 years we have not done enough," he told France-2 television.

The French right thinks Islam is trying to absorb France while the government believes that three decades of domestic policies have failed to integrate France's Moslem population. That would apply whether this is a religious or economic and social issue. But the key is a timeframe that reaches back to the mid-1970s, so you'd have to blame American Presidentss from Jimmy Carter on up if you don't want to accept that the French screwed this up.

Second, if this is radical Islam rising in France, the radical Moslems picked a poor first target. Sweden might back down. Britain might appease. The Belgians would just convert en masse and be done with the surrender. But the French--say whatever else you want to about them--are ruthless when they perceive their national interests at stake. The French will do what it takes:

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a string of emergency meetings with Cabinet ministers throughout the day. He told the Senate the government "will not give in" to violence in the troubled suburbs.

"Order and justice will be the final word in our country," Villepin said. "The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priority — our absolute priority."

Finally, are they serious with a Minister of Social Cohesion? Do they have departments in this Ministry for accents, mimes, and Jerry Lewis appreciation? I'd say he failed miserably. Just calling them "Le Muslims" or making them wear berets have not made them feel part of France. Really, it appears that the French have policies that annoy Moslems by trying to make them look and act French while denying them any opportunity to join French society to actually be French. I'd love to see the master plan on how that combination promotes cohesion.

As an aside, while I feel we have done a much better job here of assimilating Moslem immigrants, I don't think we are immune to problems. It only takes a few fanatics to sow fear and suspicion of Moslems here, and I don't want that to happen. I just hope we can quietly target radicals without disturbing the wider Moslem community here by appearing to pick on their religion.

France shows how you can alienate an entire minority community. Don't do that here. No matter how sophisticated they claim their policies are.

As an afterthought that goes with this post, let me just repeat that I wish France the best in this situation. I really don't hate the French, though I delight in Al Bundy's anti-French attitude. And certainly, the government of France continually annoys me to no end. I've always believed that my real beef is with the Paris-centered government, media, and revolving society. I don't even really think little of the French military, which is actually a potent and well-rounded power projection force.

So I was delighted to read this following three anecdotes about pro-US people in France(via Instpaundit):

Three examples do not necessarily tell the whole story, but the fact that all three of these things happened spontaneously and most unexpectedly, when combined with my total experience in France, tell me that the notorious French anti-Americanism is centered in the incestuous mindset of the bureaucrats who all came out of the same school and in the media, who here, just as in the U.S., have a symbiotic relationship with the political left.

So when I let off a "cheese-eating surrender monkey" type comment--and knowing France, I will--I'm not really blasting all of France. I'm talking of the government and media elites that portray and project "France's opinion" to America. I've assumed there were elements of French society that like us. This gives me some hope that it may be greater than I'd hoped.

Ok, I better stop now. I'm getting dizzy with this lovefest.

UPDATE: Via Mad Minerva, this piece on the failure of the well-educated French elite to use their world-weary sophistication to bring Moslems into French society:

The French used to flatter themselves for the success of their policy of assimilation, which was supposed to turn immigrants from any background into "proper Frenchmen" within a generation at most.

How is this possible, when I assume the annual reports of the Social Cohesion Minister reported glowing success?

And this:

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

When any little thing can set the radicals off, why on Earth would the French think they could buy any good will by siding with Saddam? So they pissed us off by double dealing and all they got were riots in their own country. Wow. Hard to screw up better than that.

Sophistication? I don't think that word means what they think it does.

We Are Not Amused

We're fighting Islamo-fascist extremism and some just want to snipe at us.

How many times have you heard some Euro-sophisticate sniff at our ways of dealing with extremist Moslems? We are lacking in our appreciation of the nuance of the Islamic world, they say. Europeans, based on their role as colonial masters of Moslems, know how to talk to the wogs in a way they understand.

Prince Charles of Britain is the most recent, saying that we are too "confrontational" with Islam:

The prince is expected to use his face time with Dubya to preach tolerance of Islam. London newspapers report that Charles has privately voiced serious concerns about the supposedly confrontational way the United States has approached Muslim countries since 9/11.

Slamming three planes into our military and economic centers with a fourth intended for our government on 9/11 isn't confrontational at all, I suppose. Yet our near constant refrain that Islam is a religion of peace as we take extreme pains not to taint an entire religion for the crimes of jihadis is confrontational. I guess you need blue blood and plenty of free time to think of that.

If only we'd listen to the Euros, we'd do much better.

Like, oh, for example, the French:

The French government was reeling after nearly a week of suburban rioting outside Paris spread to other areas around the capital, laying bare what observers said was the country's failure to address deep problems of poverty and immigration.

Gangs of stone-throwing youths clashed with police and torched 180 cars overnight in several towns north and west of Paris in an escalation of dusk-to-dawn violence that has raged since last Thursday following the death of two teenagers in the northeast suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

Yep, being the colonial master of Moslems gives the French deeper insights into governing and understanding Moslems. And don't forget the credit France surely earned for sucking up to Saddam and running interference for him in the UN right up until V Corps and I MEF converged on Baghdad in April 2003.

Interestingly enough, the Agence France-Presse article mentions "Moslems" only twice. Once in the 12th paragraph to note the riots are in a Moslem suburb (but who knows who is actually rioting there); and then later down to explain that Moslem immigrants are upset over a whole host of French government failures. You have to assume that since Moslem immigrants have justifiable grievances, they are the ones rioting and not just agnostic immigrant "youths" torching cars.

I guess the press of a sophisticated state sees no reason to mention their religion.

Let's see if the French can subdue this resistance faster than we evicted the jihadis from Fallujah last November.

I wish them luck. Really.

Doubling Up

When I posted recently on the replacement of the Japan-based USS Kittyhawk with a nuclear-powered carrier, I didn't really take note of the date.

Replacement will take place in 2008.

Given that I think China could very well be planning to strike Taiwan in early 2008 on the eve of the Peking Summer Olympics, will this carrier replacement include a period where both carriers are operational in the Western Pacific in about the first half of the year?

If so, that would complicate Chinese planning to invade immensely. If they would do such a thing, of course.

Former Regime Elements Fight to Death

Our reasons for invading Iraq and overthrowing the Saddam regime were numerous and just. No lying was involved--just the resolve to do what both parties claimed was needed for at least five years before the Iraq War.

But the Left is good at avoiding the need to act on hopes. They can put "Free Tibet" bumper stickers on their cars to show their moral superiority, but ask them to confront China in a concrete way to achieve that wish and suddenly you'd get silence. No blood for Dalai Lamas, don't you know?

But I digress.

The Left continues the never-ending debate over whether we should invade Iraq to overthrow the Saddam regime. That we did that in March and April 2003, and that we have shepherded Iraqis to a new constitition and elections while building a democratic Iraq with a security force to defend it is apparently no hindrance to a rousing debate complete with accusations of conspiracies and lying:

The anti-war fundraising base of the Democrats -- as exemplified by organizations like MoveOn.org -- is powerful enough to require Democratic politicians like Harry Reid to pretend that all the WMD stuff began with President Bush. That is, not to put too fine a point on it, a gross and partisan lie.

Bongos , hand puppets, and inane rhyming chants won't make the case more compelling.

And as we consider whether democracy for Iraq was a bait-and-switch tactic of President Bush that was based on a gross and partisan lie, recall the opening of President Clinton's statement on signing the Iraq Liberation Act:

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998." This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.

Somewhat further down, near the end, in terms that suggest universal agreement on the statement:

There are, of course, other important elements of U.S. policy. These include the maintenance of U.N. Security Council support efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons and missile programs and economic sanctions that continue to deny the regime the means to reconstitute those threats to international peace and security. United States support for the Iraqi opposition will be carried out consistent with those policy objectives as well.

I can only assume that the Left will want to haul in truckloads of their compatriots to explain why they promoted the idea that Saddam should be overthrown to protect our safety, the security of Iraq's neighbors, and the freedom of the Iraqi people. They can line the streets with the above-mentioned bongo players, hand puppets, and inane chants.

As Max Boot notes (via Real Clear politics):

Pretty much all of the claims that the administration doctored evidence about Iraq have been euthanized, not only by the Senate committee but also by the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission. The latest proof that intelligence was not "politicized" comes from an unlikely source — Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has been denouncing the hawkish "cabal" supposedly leading us toward "disaster." Yet, in between bouts of trashing the administration, Wilkerson said on Oct. 19 that "the consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming" that Hussein was building illicit weapons. This view was endorsed by "the French, the Germans, the Brits." The French, of all people, even offered "proof positive" that Hussein was buying aluminum tubes "for centrifuges." Wilkerson also recalled seeing satellite photos "that would lead me to believe that Saddam Hussein, at least on occasion, was … giving us disinformation."

So much for the lies that led to war. What we're left with is the lies that led to the antiwar movement. Good thing for Wilson and his pals that deceiving the press and the public isn't a crime.

Bring on the investigation over who is lying about Iraq. The Former Regime Elements, pushed and bolstered by the MoveOn.org jihadis (who are enraged that the Fitzwah that they hoped to use to decapitate the White House only passed judgment on Libby), have much to answer for in this debate.

We did the right thing leading our allies to liberate Iraq and we are building a better Iraq and a more secure world because of our sacrifices and the sacrifices of our allies and the Iraqi people.

Connecting Dots

I don't get worked up over judicial nominations, though I know it is important. And even if it was important to me, I don't like to intrude on domestic politics except when there is a very specific foreign policy reason to do so. There is here, so bear with me.

Listening to comments by Leftists on Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court just astound me. Implicitly and sometimes even explicitly, they see a causal chain of events that starts with Alito taking his seat on the high court and ends with the reimposition of legal Segregation and the eviction of women from the workforce, public society, and politics.

Yet these same Leftists cannot see a causal chain of events that starts with Saddam's proven possession and use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles (along with programs for nukes and bio weapons that at times were surprisingly advanced) and ends with Saddam having, brandishing, and using nukes, bugs, and chemical weapons after Saddam escaped the crumbling sanctions regime.

Instead, these same Leftists pretend that Saddam's threat was invented in January 2001 by a cabal of Neo-Cons rather than reflecting the consensus view going back to the 1990s.

Yep, Alito leads inevitably to 1955 America or worse; but there was no way to predict what Saddam might have done if left unfettered and in power.

Reality-based community, indeed.

A Bloody Giveaway

Iran is upset that a minor storm over their most recent "death to the Jews" remarks erupted. I can understand their shock. It must be quite shocking that what they say every day is suddenly getting some press.

And while part of this temporary outrage is a question over Iran's nuclear ambitions to carry out that threat against Jews, the Iranian response (via the Weekly Standard blog) should tell us a lot:

Iran is unfazed by the threat of war or sanctions over its disputed nuclear program and mounting international pressure has only hardened its resolve, a senior official said Monday. "They must understand that such an attitude will only persuade us more to have nuclear technology," said top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, responding to widespread condemnation of comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Let's recap, shall we?

Iran's regime is murderous and nuts.

We think they are building nukes but the Iranians say they are just pursuing nuclear energy options.

When the West objects to Iran's stated desire to annihilate the Jews and questions the nuclear program in this light, Iran says they will redouble their nuclear efforts to fend off threats of war or sanctions.

Because, you know, when foreign countries threaten you, the threat of building nuclear power reactors will scare them right off.

We'll Need Bucky Balls for This Violin

With yet another story about the sad plight of the jihadi SOBs imprisoned in Gitmo, I remain unmoved by their plight:

Dossari's suicide attempt two weeks ago is believed to be the first such event witnessed by an outsider at the prison, and one of several signs that lawyers and human rights advocates contend point to growing desperation among the more than 500 detainees there. Lawyers believe Dossari, who has been in solitary confinement for nearly two years, timed his suicide attempt so that someone other than his guards would witness it, a cry for help meant to reach beyond the base's walls.

As if so-called human rights activists aren't working 24/7 to protect jihadi murderers already.

Let them get desperate and lose hope. Shoot, I don't know why we force feed them.

Look, I don't support torture. Never have. But holding stone cold murderers for as long as we choose when we are within our rights to shoot them on the battlefield rather than send them to Club Med does not offend me one bit.

Let them die. At least they won't take anybody with them.

And when they die, we can play the world's smallest violin for them. And with nanotechnology we can get those suckers pretty tiny.

They chose to purchase the all-day ticket to Jihadworld. We'll give them quite a ride for their investment.

The Gates of Hell

I've been convinced that the President is serious about ending the threat that Iran's mullahs pose to us and the world and that we must be preparing for action.

But lately, as inaction continues and I run out of reasons why we have not yet acted yet, I have begun to worry that we really don't have a plan to destroy the mullah regime. We really are going to try to live with Iran, it seems, unless our plans for dealing with Iran are so certain that our government sees no reason to telegraph our actions by giving any public indication that action is coming. This remains quite possible. Or I hope so, anyway.

Read on about the face of an evil regime that rules Iran that some want us to accomodate and talk to. It is breathtaking in its horror, really. Read about the state murder of Ateqeh Rajabi . Read about the terror ties and the nuclear advances. Read about the utter defeat of those inside Iran who want reform, and the death of hope of the people of Iran who oppose the mullahs and counted on the reformers to do something.

And when you think of an Iran in the future that has tools to threaten Europe from terrorism (and what would the fighting in France look like if Tehran sent trained killers and weapons to these European Fallujistans?) to nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach every capital of Europe, do you think of a Europe that stands up to Tehran or one that meekly seeks a deal to give Europeans another generation of pretend peace? When Moslems are engaged in street battles with French police even though Paris defended Saddam rather than send troops to remove him, just how much would Europeans have to crawl to buy even temporary safety from jihadi fanatics?

I sincerely hope that this is only an appearance of inaction because we realize that half measures against the mullahs cannot work. We cannot teach them a lesson with measured application of force. Strike their nuclear facilities and the Iranians will lash out with what they have and rebuild their nukes even deeper, while stoking their hatred of the West so that when we finally fail to destroy their nukes after the Iranians learn enough to avoid our precision firepower, they will bring them out and use them against us.

I hope we are applying the maxim of never doing your enemy a small harm and are instead following through with the advice, "If you strike a king, kill him." For the regime in Iran is truly evil and horrifying, and I see no way to live with the unlivable. We must destroy that regime.

Opponents of destroying the Iranian regime say any military action against the mullahs will only rally the people to the side of the mullahs.

Why do we accept this belief? Has our Left rallied to President Bush in the face of 9-11? Why must people in Iran automatically support a theocratic regime that kills children for holding hands when some Americans can't support a President who they think is a fascist theocrat in their wild rantings?

Given that opponents of military action to support the overthrow of the mullah regime in Iran oppose any military action anywhere under this president, why should we accept as a given their assertion that Iranians will rally against a foreign threat? The goal of the Left is to stop military action so their analysis is hardly objective. Indeed, it is hardly uncommon for dissidents in one state to look to foreign allies that are enemies of the government to win at home.

And besides, as I've said, I'll draw little comfort from knowing that the people of Iran really hate it when their regime explodes a nuke in Charleston harbor.

Iran is going nuclear. We must stop them.

The Gates of Hell are opening, people. Can any of us believe we can live with that? I sure hope not.