Dangerous Delusion

Is it possible that the Taiwanese leadership is so deluded that they think they can avoid the responsibility for defending themselves in the belief that we will defend them on our own? Strategypage notes:

The Taiwanese, however, have come to believe that, no matter what they do with their own military, the Americans will rescue them. Taiwanese believe that their economy, especially the production of electronic components, is too critical to the American economy, for the Americans to risk allowing a Chinese invasion to succeed.

Let's assume the Taiwanese are right that we would not want China to control Taiwan's electronic industries. Let's assume that a desire to support a fellow democracy is not what motivates us in their case. This still does not mean Taiwan can avoid defending themselves. Even if we are determined to intervene, we need weeks to make the decision to go and to get decisive force into the battle. And if Taiwan can't buy us that time, our intervention will be too little and too late.

So if the Taiwanes assumption is right that we cannot afford to let communist China conquer Taiwan's industrial might, logically we would destroy Taiwan rather than let those economic assets fall into Chinese hands. I mean, if you are working on the Taiwan logic that Strategypage says exists, this is the only American response that makes sense.

But in reality, other suppliers of electronics would replace Taiwan and we aren't about to fight for Taiwan without active and determined Taiwanese participation. Nor will we destroy Taiwan to keep its economy out of China's hands. We're actually a lot more idealistic about when and where we commit Americans to fight and die in battle.

If Taiwan does not defend itself, no American cavalry will appear out of nowhere to protect them.

Short Punch. Long Reach.

It seems like a common reaction to expressing worries about China that the China-threat skeptics will say it will take a long time for China to become a global power. Strategypage notes the rather sad Russian-Chinese maneuvers and concludes:

What this all shows is that the Chinese have a way to go before they possess a world class military. The hyped up headlines in the media (and Pentagon budget requests) represent a future threat that is not here yet, and may take a long, long time in arriving.

I don't disagree with one word of that conclusion, really. And I've been vocal in saying I'd never want to trade places with China. But China can be a threat to us long before they are a superpower with global reach. China is a threat if they can project decisive power 500 miles from their borders, as the simmering crisis between China and Japan over oil deposits in disputed waters shows. The Chinese are drilling and deploying military forces to protect them. Japan is not amused:

Negotiations have gone nowhere, and now Japan has been holding talks with the U.S. over military options. Japan is apparently ready to use force, for they have given a Japanese company a license to drill for oil in the same area the Chinese are operating. Japan would provide armed escorts for the Japanese drilling and construction teams.

In World War II, neither Japan nor Germany (and certainly not Italy) were global powers. Yet they were threatening enough, were they not? Get over the idea that a threat is only a threat if it can reach St. Louis. And really, if the Chinese get their way within 500 miles of China against our allies, the impact will reach St. Louis.

So What's Left?

The Iraqis passed the proposed constitution despite Sunni objections:

The charter is considered a major step in Iraq's democratic reforms, clearing the way for the election of a new, full-term Iraqi parliament on Dec. 15. Such steps are important in any decision about the future withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Iraq.

You'd think this is good news but that would disqualify you for our press corps:

However, some fear the victory, which came despite a large turnout by Sunni Arabs in an effort to defeat it, could enrage many members of the minority and fuel their support for the insurgency.

If the Shias and Kurds had simply taken power and treated the Sunnis the way the Sunnis treated (and by "treated" I mean slaughter, torture, and exploit) the Shias and Kurds during the long rule by the Sunnis, the anti-war side would have recoiled in horror. And rightly so, I suppose. I imagine that if the Sunnis had been disenfranchised, the anti-war side would have been outraged.

Yet "some" fear that the approval of the constitution with Sunni participation will fuel the insurgency.

So what is it? Let the Sunnis vote and participate in a new democratic Iraq, or exclude them? Damned if you do, damned if you're Bush, I guess.

So what's left? Shall we simply exterminate the Sunnis? Kill them all and let Allah sort them out? I mean, anything seems to set a good amount of them off.

Oh wait, this is the anti-war side we're talking about so there is another alternative--surrender.

I bet the press wouldn't find a down side to that option.

Progress in Iraq

Opponents of the war in Iraq like to cite our casualties as proof we are not winning. As we reach 2000 dead in Iraq, many will note that casualties continue to mount and are not declining over time. Therefore, they claim, we are not making progress to end the insurgency. How can we claim we are winning, they say, if we can't seem to make progress?

But we are making progress. Our casualties go up and down monthly yet remain largely constant, it is true; but this would indicate military stalemate only if we were continuing to fight on the same battlefield. And even if there was a miltary stalemate, as long as political and economic progress is made behind that shield, we are in fact winning. But our troops are not fighting on the same battlefield as last year. From battles in the Baghdad region we have turned over the routine policing duties and combat against lower level insurgents to expanded and trained Iraqi security forces. This has allowed us to move US troops into the far west of al Anbar province and the regions west of Mosul near Syria:

October 23, 2005: As Iraqi police and soldiers take over more security duties, more American troops are available for offensive operations, and they are making more patrols and raids inside Sunni Arab areas. The Syrian border is particularly hot. Over the weekend, intelligence efforts discovered five terrorist safe houses, which resulted in attacks by smart bombs and ground troops. At least twenty terrorists were killed, and large quantities of weapons, bomb making materials and documents were captured. The documents, and interrogations of captured suspects leads to more information on where the terrorists have there safe houses, weapons caches, and travel routes across the Syrian border (the main source of suicide bombers, who are almost all foreigners, and cash.) The increased American offensives has led to increased casualties, with the rate up to the August level (close to three American deaths a day).

So remember that while casualties continue, we are on new battlefields. As we atomize the enemy out west and move in Iraqi security forces able to pacify the region against weakened enemy forces, we will finally be able to begin to pull back into a reserve role and to guard against conventional Syrian or Iranian threats. Then our casualties will decline even as Iraqis fight and die to preserve their new democracy.

We will have other tasks to do to help the Iraqis stand on their feet completely before we can pull out of Iraq. The faux press crisis over what it means to be able to fight unaided and the completely ignorant uproar over one or three Iraqi battalions able to fight without any American help at all have nothing to do with when we can begin to draw down combat forces engaged in offensive operations. The day will arrive sooner than such uproars would lead you to believe.

Until then, we are winning. Blathering charges of incompetence to the contrary. How will those charging incompetence explain our victory when even they cannot ignore the reality on the ground?

This Time, No Payment Was Required

Kofi Annan's corrupt United Nations bureaucracy took money to aid Saddam in remaining in power. Had we not destroyed Saddam's regime, this corruption of the guardian of the vaunted international community and the power to bestow or withold legimacy upon any endeavor would have remained unknown to us.

More recently, I noted how Annan did not wish the UN Hariri probe to fan any flames of anger. I quoted Annan from a cited article:

"I know there has been lots of political commentary and lots of discussions about it but from where I sit, I'm determined to make it as technical as possible and not allow a politicization of the process," Annan said.

It was not out of bounds to question whether Annan was running interference for yet another Baathist dictator. Now we know what making the report "as technical as possible" means (via Strategypage). That Annan was "determined" is quite the understatement:

THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.

The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut. The murder of Mr Hariri touched off an international outcry and hastened Syria’s departure from Lebanon in April after a 29-year pervasive military presence.

I wonder if anybody will be looking into direct Annan interference to avoid fanning flames or the exertion of undue pressure based on public statements or indirect contacts. Somebody removed the most damningly specific information to keep the report "as technical as possible." Could the reputation of the UN be tarnished by this episode?

Don't be silly. If Kofi Annan--the keeper of the hallowed legitimacy of the vaunted international community--says that doctoring a report to keep the full truth from coming out is not political and perfectly acceptable, who are we mere mortals to say otherwise? All hail Annan.

The UN has been dragged to condemn Syria and the UN's sloppiness has helped us get the details of Syria's complicity in trying to extend their illegal and immoral occupation of Lebanon. And while the UN has not seemed to care about other Syrian efforts to wage war on others, we now have more than enough reasons to put real pressure on Damascus to stop inciting and enabling terrorism. And we've finally got a reason that even Europeans can be upset about:

Now that the U.N. has implicated Syria in Hariri's death and appears to be on the way to establishing a case against Shawkat -- the chief U.N. investigator, Detlev Mehlis, has been given two more months to complete his work -- the Security Council must do everything in its power to bring political and economic sanctions to bear against Syria. Syria has been able to avoid any sort of U.N. censure for funding and providing missiles to the Hezbollah to attack Israel and for supporting our enemies in Iraq -- two issues that generally don't stir up a lot of outrage among the U.N. nabobs.

The corruption of the UN is complete. Barring evidence that the Syrian regime paid off Kofi to go easy on him, we now know that Annan's UN will protect thug regimes for free now. So what if that thug regime has conquered and run for thirty years a sovereign member of the international community? In time, regime change at Turtle Bay must be our objective, too.

Saddam may want to request a refund from Annan before then.

It Takes a Village to Twist a Child

Don't ever forget that our enemies are evil. The Sunnis of Iraq have too many people that are filled with jihadi hate for infidels. While not all Sunnis are part of this sick society, enough are twisted enough to infect their children with the sickness.

When a convoy got lost north of Baghdad, Sunnis attacked with small arms and RPGs. Four employees of an American company were killed in the attack. Two were killed after being dragged from their damaged vehicle:

The Telegraph reported that two of the contractors not killed in the initial attack were dragged alive from their vehicle, which had been badly shot up. They were forced to kneel in the road before being killed.

"Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight," the paper reported.

"Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames."

The crowd then "dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-U.S. slogans," the report said.

What kind of society raises its children to yelp with delight while feeding the flames of a wounded man burning? The Iraqi Sunnis are so used to abusing their victims on a grand scale when they ruled Iraq, but now they must content themselves with the occasional furtive atrocity in the gaps of our security efforts.

I may be willing to work with Sunnis to end the fighting, but I never get confused that our enemy is despicable. We need to pay a little more attention to Duluiyah, it seems. And the Sunnis who aren't part of this sick Sunni sub-society that pines for the days when its abusive behavior was the law of the land must be encouraged to join with the government and Coalition in stamping out the killers who live among the Sunni community and kill in their name.

If our covert operations guys are worth their salt, we will build lists of those who have committed such atrocities and go after them in the future if the Iraqi government cannot get them due to political considerations.

The Two Thousand

By the time I hit post on this, we might have endured our two thousandth death in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion in March 2003. Don't worry about paying attention. The media will rub our faces in it.

I'm not about to go on about this number directly. Yes, every death is tragic. And yes, the casualties are relatively low for what we have accomplished. I want to discuss our military's morale in this struggle. People opposed to the war often say that our military's morale is low. But it remains high:

As U.S forces approach a dark milestone of 2,000 American dead since the war began in March 2003, many say morale has remained high, bolstered by the need to protect each other, by concentrating on their daily assigned tasks — and by amenities provided by the military to keep life in a war zone as normal as possible.

If our casualties were crippling, surely our military would show the signs of it. Not just in re-enlistments which run high. And don't talk to me about recruiting. That is not a sign of military morale. And even as a sign of civilian morale it is imperfect. Combat arms recruiting is fine and even overall recruiting is only failing to meet requirements for far more recruits than we've inducted in the recent past. It's kind of like those budget "cuts" that in fact are a reduction in the rate of growth.

I would never say our people wouldn't prefer to be home. Home with friends and family and far from the possibility of violent death is almost always preferable to war. But that is a banal observation that applies to all wars.

But I want to address morale in the sense of battlefield success. Over the last 2-1/2 years, I've braced myself for the occasional catastrophic defeat where an entire platoon is wiped out. In any war, the enemy will score successes and I did not think we'd be immune to this in Iraq. In Afghanistan and Chechnya, Russian columns would regularly be cut off from help and wiped out. Platoons and companies would die this way in Grozny or remote mountain roads.

We've yet to lose a platoon-sized encounter with the enemy.

If our military was truly demoralized by the fighting in Iraq, we'd have seen a number of such catastrophes over the last couple years. But we've never lost even a squad at once in battle as far as I can tell (other than an IED or a helicopter downing, which have been rare events). Certainly no platoons have been lost in battle.

So however much our ground forces are strained by the deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea that our troops are demoralized is truly and thoroughly wrong. We fight and win on the ground and we shall win this war. Keep that in mind when the press celebrates our 2,000th death in Iraq any day now.

Look Forward

Russia continues its decline:

Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people this year, dipping to 143 million, the federal statistics agency said Friday.

Russia's population — the largest in Europe — has been declining steadily since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, with increased poverty, alcoholism, emigration and degradation of the health care system blamed for reducing birth rates and life expectancy.

Since the beginning of the year, the population went down by 506,400, the agency said on its Web site.

Why is Russia's population declining? Increased poverty? Well, Soviets were pretty poor and Russia's economy has been growing so I'd want to see stats on this claim. Alcoholism? Again, hardly a new thing compared to Soviet times. Emigration? Ok, that holds true since the state no longer holds the people hostage. Degradation of health care? You have to pretend that Soviet care was good but I'll concede that universal access to crappy care is gone so even that has made the situation worse. HIV may be a bigger factor here.

And when you consider Russia's population decline you must remember that the Moslem portions are increasing so the extent of the Russian decline is masked by the fast producing Moslem population. And since all the factors the article lists affect the Moslem population just like the Russians, how can they be the cause of the decline?

The UN has the predictable solution:

United Nations experts have urged Russian authorities to boost social spending to improve health care and prevent the population decline.

I don't think this is the key. I think the ethnic Russians are just demoralized. Once the rulers of a superpower empire, now they are virually a petro state like Saudi Arabia that happens to have the legacy of a superpower's weapons programs whose momentum is still giving Russia some military power. They pine for past glory and Putin does not do them any good by forging a foreign policy that reflexively tries to relive the glory days when all they can do is associate with the scum of the earth and only remind themselves that the Hot Line is getting a little dusty. Russia is an annoyance and not a threat.

Russia's leaders need to stop trying to hang on to a past they cannot reclaim and look forward to a future within their grasp. As part of the West they can achieve much and regain a vision of prosperity and influence.

If the Russian leaders continue to pretend they are a superpower, what can they look forward to?

In a United Nations Development Program report released this week, demographers predicted that Russia's population will fall to 100 million by 2050, and could even drop to 80 million.

If Iran, due to Russia's support, is still a mullahcracy in 2050, Tehran will have the nukes and numbers to invade the Caucasus and take over Russia's Moslem regions between the Caspian and Black Seas. Only Turkey will stand in Iran's way.

We Are the World--Really

Lileks quietly blasts the latest drivel from the international community:

Another day, another international conference, another meaningless display of unity. But with lovely gift bags, we’re sure. The latest example: a UNESCO compact, sanctified in October at a Tunisia conference, supporting the rights of nations to control the import of entertainment from other countries, all in the name of “cultural diversity.” Otherwise Bugs Bunny cartoons would pose a mortal threat to the state-controlled monoculture of most nations. The United States opposes the compact, because we’re mean and hate everyone, if you read the press.

Well good for those Third Worlders, you might say, holding off the latest American Rambo movie! Well not quite:

The original sponsors were France and its stepchild Canada; figures. No country is more prickly about preserving its own culture than France; they regularly have le panique attaq whenever small fragments of other tongues infect their pristine lingo. Their cinema is heavily subsidized, producing endless movies about older-yet-unquestionably-masculine men who pensively smoke while contemplating a girl’s knee observed on a beach in 1972. Canada also mandates local content, because there’s so much difference between someone who grew up in southern Manitoba and someone who grew up in upper North Dakota. The North Dakotan grows up without a sense of what it’s like to be annoyed by bilingual candy-bar wrappers, for example. Might as well be from different planets.

This talk of cultural contamination or whatever the French call it is ridiculous given how much America borrows and imports from other cultures:

American culture is eventually world culture, and vice versa. Brittle cultures don’t handle it well. Adaptive cultures absorb and adapt–the point of multiculturalism, no?

The New York Times is not amused:

But some will see the US position as more American mulishness. The New York Times put it thus: “As with the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty and the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, (The US) will likely remain a critical - and perhaps obstructionist - outsider.”

Maybe we should insist that Canadian singers keep out of America. But we handled it just fine. Alanis Morissette climbs our charts and now she's become an American. Instant American content. I imagine it won't be long before Avril Lavigne takes the oath, too.

Lileks thinks, as do I, that we should not be ashamed about standing outside and obstructing another misguided European fashion:

Imagine that! The killjoy nation. Monarchy, Communism, Fascism, Socialism, now Tribalism – the US never quite joins in the fun. Everyone else jumps off the bridge, and we hang back, taking notes. Like we’re special or something.

So when you have such a French-inspired proposal before the vaunted international community's delegates, do you have any doubts about the outcome?

In a vote cast as a battle of global conformity vs. cultural diversity, delegates to a U.N. agency turned aside strong U.S. objections Thursday and overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty designed to protect movies, music and other cultural treasures from foreign competition.

The 148 to 2 vote at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization emerged as a referendum on the world's love-hate relationship with Hollywood, Big Macs and Coca-Cola.

Who voted with us? Israel. Thank you for that. Four unnamed countries abstained. I suppose thanks is in order for that, too.

Honestly, how long does it take for Bolton to sign that contract for a wrecking ball?

Sing it with me now! We are the world ...

Ease Them In

While I have great sympathy for the view that we may risk coddling the Iraqi Sunnis too much, a little giving to get them to give up the guns and join the political process is not unreasonable. While no one wants to reward violence, we do want to end it.

So when Frum writes that nobody worried about giving South African whites special favors after Apartheid was dismantled, I have to disagree. Frum writes:

After the end of apartheid in South Africa, nobody dared suggest that the country's new constitution institutionalize special protections for the white minority. The South African constitution did not attempt to mollify whites by declaring South Africa part of a "global community of white nations." Nor did anyone say that the new post-apartheid regime would be legitimate only if whites accepted it. The constitution protected property rights, civil rights, freedom of speech and religion--but did so equally for everybody.

Recall that white South Africans did indeed get special protections for a short time to reconcile them to the new South Africa and to give them some assurances during the transition. For five years, any party getting more than a set percentage of votes for parliament would get seats in the cabinet. This made sure whites would be in the government for five years:

These agreements on the transitional government represented important compromises by both the government and the ANC, and they helped to set new precedents for future negotiations. The NP won agreement on its refusal to give the new state president broad and extensive powers during the transition period. (Under the previous system, the president could override the views of minority parties.) At the same time, de Klerk compromised on his demand for a permanent consensus-style arrangement to be enshrined in any new constitution by agreeing to a five-year transitional government. The arrangement satisfied the NP demand for legally binding checks and balances to protect the country's white minority. The ANC, for its part, compromised on its earlier insistence on full and immediate majority rule, by agreeing to participate in a powersharing arrangement for at least five years. At the same time, many ANC leaders hoped that their party, as the dominant party in the transitional government, would win a suffic iently large majority to enable it to enact most of its policies, even without the consent of other parties.

I repeat, by that 5% provision, white South Africans guaranteed that they would be in the cabinet for five years. Clearly, the country's Black population would dominate but it could not exclude whites from the government. And the reassurance worked both ways. By working in the government the former exploiters could build confidence among the Black majority that the whites would work for the future and not try to reclaim the past.

So relax that the Sunnis are getting extra coaxing for now. So are the Kurds. In time, the special protections should be removed and all should be treated the same. To end the Baathist part of the insurgency, temporary concessions to ease minority concerns may be just fine.

Bucking for a Promotion

I've often mocked Hugo Chavez as being part of an Axis of El Vil (the vile one) along with Castro. I judged he is a thug and annoying, but we have bigger worries than Venezuela, such as Iran and North Korea.

Well, Iran has apparently decided that being the next up in the Axis of Evil to be destroyed is no fun. And so the mullahs have decided to troll for regime change with Hugo, joining forces with his regime. Dangle a threat closer to America and we will leave Iran alone for a while, seems to be the line of reasoning in Tehran.

Sadly, Hugo is willing to be the sacrificial poodle to buy time for the mullahs to go nuclear:

While cooperation in the nuclear and economic spheres has been loudly trumpeted by the two nations, the greatest potential threat this alliance poses will most likely remain a less heralded one.

It is no secret that a large portion of the international terror network calls Tehran its master. Hezbollah and similar organizations are either controlled or receive assistance from Tehran. And let us not forget that the mullahs have been, at the very least, willing to shelter many of al Qaeda's most wanted.

Chávez, like his mentor Fidel Castro, is no stranger to terrorism. Venezuela has been a safe haven for Marxist narco-terrorist groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN). A growing body of evidence indicates that support for these groups is the official policy of Chávez's regime. According to the State Department's 2003 Global Patterns of Terrorism, "weapons and ammunition--some from official Venezuelan stocks and facilities--continued flowing from Venezuelan suppliers into the hands of" these organizations.

As we are able to ramp back our force presence in Iraq when Iraqi forces step up, I think we will need to pull back and reconstitute our Marines first, just in case. Army troops can scale back direct operations while going into large bases to deter Iran from invading Iraq and providing only emergency troop reinforcements; while embedded soldiers advise the Iraqis and special forces assist in offensive operations. But the Atlantic Marines should be made ready and kept free for action.

A vile annoyance may be trying to become a real evil threat on par with the Iranians. Hugo Chavez hasn't made it past the post yet, but we must be concerned about how hard he is trying.

No wonder Chavez worries about an American invasion--he knows he deserves one.

Honor the Picket Line

A while ago, I wondered why we should even care if jihadi detainees in Gitmo are on a hunger strike:

I know this gives me away as a knuckle-dragger, but why on earth should I care if those gentlemen in Guantanamo Bay die? I mean, it is their choice. Heck, they want to die while killing us, as they never tire of droning on about. So just having them die without taking any innocents with them is real progress in my opinion.

Well now we find that making those poor lost souls take in nourishment is tantamount to torture:

The repeated removal and insertion of the tubes has caused striking prisoners to vomit blood and to experience intense pain that they have equated with torture, the lawyers reported to a federal judge after visiting their clients at the U.S. base in eastern Cuba.

Damned if we do and damned if we don't, I guess.

Well I say we don't want to be accused of anything like torture, now would we? So let's honor their picket line and end the forced feedings.

Let the scum die. I just don't care, and I don't care what their lawyers say. I mean, outside of Gitmo we are actively trying to kill them (the jihadis, that is).

As long as the International Red Cross will document that we put water and culturally appropriate food in their cells each day, why on Earth should we care whether they choose to die?

As If

Many partisans on the other side of the aisle from President Bush like to bandy about the charge of "incompetence" over the conduct of the war in Iraq.

RealClearPolitics has some words on the silliness of this charge.

This war has had its share of errors but on the whole it has been a remarkably effective and well fought campaign. The Iraq War was by all definitions a cake walk and we set the land speed record in the Middle East. The insurgency of the Baathists took us by surprise but we have adapted well and adapted quickly. None of the charges of mistakes are better than debatable charges and some, I believe, are 180 degrees off the mark and the so-called mistakes are in fact quite good decisions.

And one last thing. Are these people who are charging incompetence actually claiming they would have done better? Or have better ideas? As if.

Come and Get Them

A Spanish judge has issued arrest warrants for three of our soldiers for an incident in the Iraq War that we investigated and deemed justified under the circumstances:

A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman, a court official said Wednesday.

And some want us to submit to the tender mercies of the International Criminal Court? I hope our State Department has a stack of "Bite Me" form letters to send off to Madrid.

I'd chalk it up to an activist judge, but he's using Spanish law and after the big Iraq bug out by Spain after 11 M, I find it hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Spain should just withdraw from NATO and good luck defending the Reconquista against the jihadis on their own.

I'm sure the Belgians will be a great help when the next crisis erupts at Melilla or Parsley Island.

By Whatever Means Necessary

I think we need to end state sponsorship of terrorism and terrorists. Our push for democracy in the Moslem world is justified to achieve this end. The old methods clearly failed and 9-11 was our wake up call that the status quo is unacceptable. I'm still enough of an old-fashioned realist, however, to accept tactical success such as Libya's turning (as I called for well before the actual event). Justice for the crimes of Khadaffi can wait if we take an enemy piece off the board.

So when I read that Syria is being offered a chance to survive if it behaves (I think via Real Clear Politics), I don't feel we are betraying our war effort:

The Bush Administration has offered Syria’s beleaguered President a “Gaddafi deal” to end his regime’s isolation if Damascus agrees to a long list of painful concessions, a senior American official told The Times.

According to the report, the U.S. will present four demands from Syria: Syria would have to fully cooperate with the U.N. team investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Secondly, if members of the Syrian regime are named as suspects they would have to be questioned and could stand trial under foreign jurisdiction.

The Syrians would also have to stop any interference in Lebanon, where they have been blamed for a series of bomb attacks against their critics, most recently May Chidiac, a television presenter who was badly injured last month when a device exploded under her car.

Washington also wants Syria to halt the recruiting, funding and training of volunteers for the Iraqi insurgency, which they claim are openly operating in Syria with the connivance of the regime.

Yes, I'd be happier to have justice but we have lots of threats and sometimes we have to hold our noses, accept that a state can stop supporting terror and survive (for now) and focus on the objective: ending Islamo-fascist terrorism.

So let Syria in from the cold. Such a deal will not save the regime. If this helps us in our efforts to stabilize and democratize the Middle East, this will only put off the day when Syria's regime will crumble.

But by all means, insist they abide by all of our terms. Syria is guilty of killing American soldiers and Marines.

And keep in mind that a final reckoning should eventually be made with this beastly regime.

Let's Play "What Did They Leave Out?"

The UN notes that war and violence have gone down in the world in the last decade and have issued a report lauding their role:

The first Human Security Report documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. Published by Oxford University Press, the Report argues that the single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism, spearheaded by the UN, which took place in the wake of the Cold War.

"In the wake of the Cold War." Yep, nothing more to be said about that. The Cold War just kind of vaguely ended. Nobody won and nobody lost. I mean, if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War and not the American-led (dragged?) West, the following years would have been just the same. International activism surging and UN spearheading. Ah, thank goodness for the UN.

Isn't the UN leaving out a trifling detail? Like the fact that America defeated the Soviet Union in 1989 and so Soviet meddling in the world took a 95% reduction? Let me just add for absolute clarity that had the Soviets won the Cold War, the "wake of the Cold War" would have been an actual wake for the massive amounts of the dead we would mourn from poverty, mass murder, and gulags running 24/7. Just maybe--I mean, I don't want to be hasty here when the UN insists it should get the credit--but just maybe the fact that America became the dominant power after defeating the Soviet Union had something to do with the fact that genocide, war, and civil unrest have all declined since the Cold War was won.

So let's remember the real source of "ending" the Cold War.

As I often think when the UN tries to take credit for tsunami relief, or Iraqi elections, or world peace, the UN can kiss my butt. Just when is Bolton going to lop off those top ten floors anyway?

Now The NYT Notices

The NYT is all over the possibility of voting problems in Iraq. From The Corner:

Is that the stuff of Page One? In the past, the Times has seemed remarkably unconcerned about voter fraud when it appeared to play a likely decisive role in the victory of Venezuela’s leftist strongman Hugo Chavez, or of Clinton-fave Aristide in Haiti. It also treats Ahmadinejad in Iran as if he were the legitimately elected president of Iran, notwithstanding that the mullahs barred opposition candidates from even contesting. Why is it suddenly a major story in Iraq that a result expected, in places, to be one-sided turned out to be really one-sided?

And note that the NYT only knows about the suspected fraud because the Iraqi election officials announced they were looking into suspicious results. And remember the media's strange acceptance of Saddam's 99.9% reelection prior to the Iraq War with 100% voter turnout without even a peep from the MSM about the validity of the vote.

I look forward to the NYT reporting on the confusing butterfly ballot in Ramadi that led thousands of elderly Sunnis to vote for Pat Buchanan.

This will be resolved under Iraqi law. I celebrate that fact even as I am concerned that violations might have happened in the first place.

Saddam on Trial

Saddam will go on trial tomorrow and the bleatings of the human rights lobby and Saddam apologists (or am I being redundant?) wonder whether the trial will be "fair." Jonah notes:

I listened to a long report on NPR last night about Saddam's upcoming trial. The gist of the story is that Human Rights lawyers are worried that Saddam can't get a fair trial and that without one, there can be no justice.

He goes on to rightly note that executing Saddam right now would provide justice for Saddam but that a trial must be done for the sake of Iraq's future, extablishing that even an obviously guilty mass murderer as Saddam must have their day (or months) in court prior to dispensing justice.

This also gets to a major annoyance on my part. The complaints regarding Saddam obviously mistake a "fair" trial with one that gives Saddam a 50-50 chance of getting off scot free. That is bull. A trial that without a doubt will find Saddam guilty of multiple crimes against individuals, peoples, and all humanity will be quite fair.

We all know that at the end of the day, Saddam will be shot for his crimes. All I ask is that the gavel falls before the hammer falls. That's quite fair. And far fairer than Saddam ever gave.

UPDATE: Applebaum writes of a wider value of the trial of Saddam:

In the end, it is by the quality of that evidence, and the clarity with which it is conveyed, that this trial should be judged. The result is irrelevant: Quite frankly, it doesn't matter whether Saddam Hussein is drawn and quartered, exiled to Pyongyang, or left to rot in a Baghdad prison. No punishment could make up for the thousands he killed, or for the terror he inflicted on his country.

But if his Sunni countrymen learn what he did to Shiites and Kurds, if the Shiites and Kurds learn what he did to Sunnis, if Iraqis come to realize that his system of totalitarian terror damaged them all, and if others in the Middle East learn that dictatorships can be overthrown, then the trial will have served its purpose. That, and not an arbitrary standard of international law, is how the success of this unusual tribunal should be measured.

Let the international human rights lobby rail against this process of justice. Who really cares what they think? Saddam's execution is a done deal and nobody should cry over that (other than to regret he has but one life to give for his multitude of crimes). The real value of Saddam's trial and execution is what it teaches Iraqis about life in a rule-of-law democracy and what it shows people in other countries who suffer their own tyrant, believing they are unable to throw off the boot stomping on a face forever.

Who Threatens the Children?

When I first heard of the Smurf genocide flick that UNICEF cranked out, I was kind of amused. Smurfs finally getting what they deserved, I thought. And knowing this was a Belgian creation added to the humor.

But then when you think of the air strikes that devastated the happy kite-flying paradise of the Smurf, you see who the UN thinks threaten the children: somebody with a powerful air force. As Mark Steyn notes:

Why would Unicef show such an implausible form of Smurficide ? Well, whether intentionally or not, they are evoking the war that most of their audience - in Belgium and beyond - is opposed to: the Iraq war, where the invader did indeed have an air force. That's how the average Western "progressive" still conceives of warfare, as something the big bullying Pentagon does to weak victims.

But this week is a week to remember that there are worse things than war that "affect the lives of children". If I were Papa Smurf, I wouldn't want Baby Smurf to grow up in Saddam's Iraq. I don't mean just because we'd be the beleaguered minority of Smurfistan, to be gassed and shovelled into mass graves.

Even if we were part of Saddam's own approved class living in the Smurfi Triangle, it's still a life permanently fixed between terror and resignation, in which all a parent's hopes for his children are subordinate to the whims of a psycho state.

Yep, if you really wanted to show the actual threats to the Smurfs, you'd show Smurfs being raped, or hacked with machetes, or gassed as they slept, or fed into plastic shredders, or run over by tanks, or shot down by Kalashnikovs in a UN-designated Smurf safety zone, or necklaced with burning tires, or rousted from their homes as government thugs clean out their slums, or blown up as they ate at Smurf pizza parlors, or starved to death by militias while the UN researched its ninth report on the situation. Or perhaps even sexually abused by the UN peacekeepers themselves to cut out the middle thug. But no, air power is the tool that UNICEF envisions for Smurf devastation and sorrow. And we all know that when you think bombing, think United States Air Force.

And even in their twisted view of who poses a threat to children, UNICEF gets it wrong. If America was doing the bombing, a couple of JDAMs--possibly with an inert concrete warhead--would have taken out the threats to the Smurfs or the top evil Smurf and left the vast majority of the Smurfs alive and well to go on living their happy Smurfy lives.

Air power is the last thing the innocent Smurfs of the world need to fear.

Honored to be Their Victim

The President may have spoken the name of our jihadi enemies but our press continues to mumble and look away when confronted with murderous enemies who by an amazing coincidence happen to be Moslem. Mark Steyn confesses that he underestimated our Western willingness to confront uncomfortable facts:

I underestimated multiculturalism. After 9/11, I assumed the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain: that a cult of "tolerance" would in the end founder against a demographic so cheerfully upfront in their intolerance. Instead, Islamic "militants" have become the highest repository of multicultural pieties. So you're nice about gays and Native Americans? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti-masochists. And so Islamists who murder non-Muslims in pursuit of explicitly Islamic goals are airbrushed into vague, generic "rebel forces." You can't tell the players without a scorecard, and that's just the way the Western media intend to keep it.

Indeed. We are at war with nondescript militants and rebels. According to the press. Nor are these ill-defined angry people our enemy:

I'm aware the very concept of "the enemy" is alien to the non-judgment multicultural mind: There are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated. But the media's sensitivity police apparently want this to be the first war we lose without even knowing who it is we've lost to.

Yes, when you are advanced enough to look beyond mere labels you can see that the jihadis and the West are really the same. The modern multi-culturalist sees only equivlance between the West and our freedoms and the jihadis with their burquas and scimitars. Except where the jihadis are superior to us, of course. Normally, when one settles into an equivalence interpetation, one must either decide that neither side is really bad or that both sides are equally bad.

Our multi-cultis manage to hold both excuses as true. The multi-cultis "understand" the rage that leads to beheading Westerners and other infidels. Not so bad in context, don't you see? And the multi-cultis understand that we are just as bad. The "militants" may actually behead Christians and infidels but McDonalds and Britney Spears are cultural beheadings just as bad. Can't you see that? All the same, so why not just let them win. What's the dif?

Of course, the whole exercise in moral relativism collapses if you notice that one side is actually superior to the other and that one side is murdering infidels as fast as they can and are only sad they can't speed up the process.

But don't worry. Our multi-cultis are capable of excusing any offense by our enemies and magnifying any flaw on our side to excuse beheadings and honor killings and whatever else our jihadi enemies decide we deserve. When some on our side decide to be nonjudgmental, the sky's the limit for our enemies.