The Nudnik File

First Casualty

2006-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

It seems that the Lebanon War has taken its first political casualty.

Adam informed Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz on Tuesday that he wished to retire as soon as possible. According to an IDF spokesman, Halutz accepted Adam's request.

The Maariv daily reported Wednesday that Adam decided to retire "when the last soldier returns from Lebanon," which is expected next week.

Undoubtedly Gen. Adam commanded incompetently during the war. However, he was far from the only one or the most important one. The main fault lies with the political leadership, specifically Olmert and Peretz. At this point it looks like Peretz will be the next one to be pushed out, in Olmert's attempts to avoid responsibility.

More Reassessment

2006-09-05T22:49:00.000-04:00

Since the end of the Israel-Hizbullah war, more and more analysts and pundits have been reassessing the conventional wisdom that Israel lost and Hizbullah won. Today, Emanuele Ottolenghi weighs in, with his opinion. In essence his point is that while it may seem that Israel lost because it did not achieve its stated war aims - freeing the 2 captured soldiers, and destroying Hizbullah - Hizbullah did not win either because it did not achieve its stated and unstated war aims. Yet, the myth that has been created is that by being able to survive, Hizbullah achieved victory. Ottelenghi tries to refute this growing myth.

The myth about Hezbollah's victory is therefore just that: a myth. This means that Israel did not lose. Israel certainly did not win either. But one should not dismiss Israel's military achievements and their potential effectiveness in thwarting at least some of Hezbollah's objectives.

Hezbollah's fighting force was drastically downgraded. With over 500 fighters killed (depending on estimates, anything between 10 and 40 percent of its fighting force), it will take years for Hezbollah to return to where it was. Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah's Katyusha arsenal, but it dealt a crushing blow to its strategic arsenal of long-range missiles. Few noticed that at some point in the war, Nasrallah stopped threatening to hit Tel Aviv if Israel continued to hit Beirut, mentioning Haifa instead. That is because he could not hit Tel Aviv anymore. With Hezbollah's arsenal so depleted, its ability to seriously mount a new challenge is for now correspondingly damaged. Iran and Syria are no doubt already rearming it. But this exercise will take time and it will not be ignored by the international community as it was in the past.

Yes, in many ways Israel did a lot better than what it is being given credit for. But there was one major factor in this war that will be critical going forward. In all its previous wars, Israel fought knowing that the "international community" will come in and stop them before they had a chance to fully achieve victory. The doctrine was, therefore, to achieve as many objectives as quickly as possible. And in every single war it was the Arabs or their Great Power patron - the USSR - who demanded a ceasefire to halt Israel's advances. In this last war, it was Israel who wanted the ceasefire. It seemed that almost from the beginning, they were not fighting to achieve their stated objectives, but for a ceasefire to be imposed. In a reversal of all its previous wars, Israel ran to the "international community" to halt the war. In the medieval world of the Middle East, this shows weakness. And in showing weakness, Israel weakened its detterent capability vis-a-vis the Arab world. This is the strategic loss that Israel suffered in this war.

Joke Headline of the Day

2006-09-01T09:17:00.000-04:00

Annan: Syria to enforce arms embargo. Is he serious? Annan couldn't really be that stupid. In which case he is simply coddling and appeasing dictators.

The Face of Battle

2006-08-31T13:08:00.000-04:00

Powerline today links to a riveting video of what combat in Lebanon for the IDF was really like. Israeli journalist Itai Anghel went into Lebanon with one regiment of the Nahal Brigade and recorded the brutal fighting that the IDF had to face against Hizbullah terrorists. The video is about 25 minutes long, but well worth watching. To watch, paste this link into your browser. http://switch248-01.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ClipMediaID=209947&ak=63628786

Amnesty International's Redefinitions

2006-08-31T12:57:00.000-04:00

Last week Alan Dershowitz took on Human Rights Watch and its looking the other way at Hizbullah's use of human shields. This week he attacks Amnesty International's redefinition of "war crimes" and its accusations against Israel.

For Amnesty, "Israeli war crimes" are synonymous with "any military action whatsoever."

The real problem with Amnesty's paper is that its blanket condemnations do not consider the consequences of its arguments. (It doesn't have to; it would never advance these arguments against any country but Israel.)

Amnesty International's conclusions are not based on sound legal arguments. They're certainly not based on compelling moral arguments. They're simply anti-Israel arguments. Amnesty reached a predetermined conclusion - that Israel committed war crimes - and it is marshalling whatever sound-bites it could to support that conclusion.

The Media and Israel

2006-08-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

Throughout the Oslo War (aka Second Intifada) the mainstream media, especially in Europe, was overwhelmingly biased towards the Palestinians. To say that they were biased against Israel in Israel's war against Hizbullah would be an understatement. In this excellent essay, Melanie Phillips details a few of the media's distortions and outright lies and comes up with this conclusion:

But the big answer is that the western media transmit the lies of Hezbollah because they want to believe them. And that's because the Big Lie these media tell - and have themselves been told - about Israel and its place in history and in the world today has achieved the status of unchallengeable truth. The plain fact is that western journalists were sent to cover the war being waged against Israel from Lebanon as a war being waged by Israel against Lebanon. And that's because that's how editors think of the Middle East: that the whole ghastly mess is driven by Israel's actions, and that therefore it is only Israel's aggression which is the story to be covered. Thus history is inverted, half a century of Jewish victimisation is erased from public consciousness, victims are turned into aggressors and genocidal mass murderers turned into victims, and ignorance and prejudice stalk EnglandÂs once staunch and stalwart land.

That's why the fact that hundreds of thousands of refugees from the north of Israel fled to the shelter of strangers in the south; that within one third of Israel, those too poor or old or handicapped or disadvantaged to seek refuge elsewhere were forced to live in shelters for a month in great hardship; that the entire economy of northern Israel was effectively shut down for a month; that thousands of rockets were fired at northern Israel, hundreds every day, many times more than were daily fired at Britain during the Blitz - that's why none of this was reported in Britain (where as a result such facts, when now related, are received with open-mouthed astonishment) because journalists were told to ignore it all since that wasn't the story their editors wanted. Israel's victimisation simply was not, could not, be the story. The only story was Israel's aggression. But that story is a Big Lie. So a host of lies were transmitted to support it.

UNIFIL Past and Future

2006-08-30T12:32:00.000-04:00

Throughout its existence, UNIFIL has been a disaster for Israel and not much help to the Lebanese. The only group that it has been good for is Hizbullah. In fact, they have been so good for Hizbullah that during this past war UNIFIL gave them critical intelligence.

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

Given this past, the question is why did Olmert agree to an expanded UNIFIL force?

Mario Loyola thinks that the UN and Europe have effectively tricked themselves into protecting Israel with the new UNIFIL.

What is a new and very real possibility now is open conflict between Hezbollah and the U.N. force. UNIFIL has in past years been accused of coordinating with Hezbollah, which it might have had to do just as a matter of survival. But the robust UNIFIL, operating with the military freedom of action which France appears to have secured at the urgings of its army, will be in a position to impose facts upon Hezbollah. It will be high profile, and its commanders will want to prove that it is not "a joke", as one Israeli ambassador described the current force. Importantly, it will not have to seek Hezbollah's permission to move around. And although U.N. officials have made it clear that the U.N. force will not actively seek to disarm Hezbollah, they will demand that Hezbollah fighters found in the open give over their weapons, and they are prepared to use force to exact obedience.

The enhanced U.N. force will no doubt create many frustrations for Israel, and we should be prepared for the possibility of a hostile encounter between the two at some point. But we should also recognize one important bit of good news in all this: From now on, Hezbollah's activities will be Europe's problem, too. And however much the Europeans may oppose us on Iraq, their Angry Muslim problem is starting to dominate both their domestic- and foreign-policy agendas, and one gets the feeling that they are starting to get really sick of it now.

I'm not quite sure that it will work out this way, given Europe's prediliction against taking any military action and the large presence of Muslim forces among the new UNIFIL. But UNIFIL may provide enough of a buffer to enable the Lebanese to eventually do something about Hizbullah themselves.

Would That It Were So

2006-08-26T23:35:00.000-04:00

One can only wish that our leaders spoke this way:

(2006-08-26) — Just hours after Iran opened a new plant capable of making plutonium “for peaceful purposes”, U.S. President George Bush assured his Iranian counterpart that any B-2 bombers that appear over Tehran in the near future would also serve peaceful purposes.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut the ribbon on the new heavy-water nuclear plant Saturday as part of a month-long Iranian tribute to the effectiveness of the United Nations.

Mr. Bush hailed Iran’s “transparent diplomacy” and said, “I called President Ahmadinejad today to congratulate him, and I told him that if he happens to notice one of them Stealth bombers going over his town at about 600 miles per hour, he can be assured that the pilot has only the best intentions in his heart for world peace.”

“There’s nothing like the B-2 when it comes to giving peace a chance,” Mr. Bush added.

Human Rights Watch

2006-08-26T12:31:00.000-04:00

As Israel was battling Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Hizbullah rockets were raining down on Israeli cities, Human Rights Watch - the self-proclaimed arbiter of human rights violations - was condemning Israel. Their complaint was that Israel was committing war crimes by bombing civilian areas. When it was reported that Hizbullah was using these civilian areas to launch rockets and hide their weapons, HRW's response was

Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hizbullah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.

As Alan Dershowitz points out, it is unclear what exactly Human Rights Watch was watching. Dershowitz lists multiple eyewitness reports from inside Lebanon that show exactly what Hizbullah was doing.

HOW COULD Human Rights Watch have ignored - or more likely suppressed - this evidence from so many different sources? The only reasonable explanation is that they wanted there to be no evidence of Hizbullah's tactic of hiding behind civilians. So they cooked the books to make it come out that way.

Even after the fighting ended and all the reports of Hizbullah hiding among civilians were published, HRW chief Kenneth Roth essentially repeated the demonstrably false conclusions that "in none of those cases was Hizbullah anywhere around at the time of the attack." So committed is Human Rights Watch to its predetermined conclusions that it refused to let the facts, as reported by objective sources, get in its way.

HRW is the organization that was screaming loudest about a "massacre" in Jenin in 2002, only to quietly say "never mind" when it was shown that no such "massacre" ever occurred. I would say that their credibility is pretty close to zero at this point.

Katyusha Defense

2006-08-26T11:33:00.000-04:00

One of the results of the recent Lebanon War has been the restarting of the debate about a defensive system for short range rockets - Katyushas - and mortars, the primary weapons of Hizbullah.

Such a system had been in development by the US and Israel for approximately the last ten years. The System is called Nautilus Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) and the Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL). Both systems had shown themselves to be fairly effective, being able to track, lock on, and shoot down Katyushas - both singly and in salvos - and even artillery shells. Yet, the funding for the systems was withdrawn by the US Army and Israel last year. Now there is renewed interest in the systems and Northrop Grumman says that it can deliver an operational system in 18 months. Given the damage done by Hizbullah's rockets in the past month, this seems like a worthwhile investment.

Europe's Learning Experience

2006-08-25T14:47:00.000-04:00

In the last few years Europe has come to view the UN (and other international institutions) as the arbiters and solvers of all situations. But as Denis Boyles writes, the past few weeks may finally be giving them some pause as to the usefulness of these institutions.

The events that seem to have upset Europe's assumptions are Iran's response to the nuclear offer, and the cease-fire Resolution in Lebanon. The main lesson with Iran is that

Not even Iranians can be persuaded carrots make a meal and confusing a U.N. resolution with a stick offends the dignity of sticks everywhere.

Olmert Done

2006-08-25T14:01:00.000-04:00

I guess this should not be a surprise, but in the latest poll by Yediot Ahronot, 63% of Israelis think that Olmert should resign. Even more - 74% - think that Peretz should resign. It seems that elections will be held fairly soon, and Kadima will, like almost all new parties, be a one-time event. Bibi has positioned himself very well to be the next Prime Minister. And most likely, the next Defense Minister will be Moshe Ya'alon, the IDF Chief of Staff who was pushed out due to Sharon's Gaza disengagement.

Uzi Landau

2006-08-24T23:23:00.000-04:00

Here is an interesting interview with Uzi Landau, a former Member of Knesset and a Minister in the previous government. Unlike many politicians and ex-politicians, he is not afraid to express his views, even if they are not sensitive and politically correct.

Soviet Legacy

2006-08-24T12:58:00.000-04:00

It has been fairly well known that one of the Soviet Union's activities was the organization and financing of terrorism against Israel, especially after the Six Day War. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former leader of Romania's intelligence service, details the extent of Soviet involvement and its continuing effects.

Today's international terrorism was conceived at the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. I witnessed its birth in my other life, as a Communist general. Israel humiliated Egypt and Syria, whose bellicose governments were being run by Soviet razvedka (Russian for "foreign intelligence") advisers, whereupon the Kremlin decided to arm Israel's enemy neighbors, the Palestinians, and draw them into a terrorist war against Israel.

General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, who created Communist Romania's intelligence structure and then rose to head up all of Soviet Russia's foreign intelligence, often lectured me: "In today's world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."

Nationalism and Jihadism

2006-08-23T12:33:00.000-04:00

In the past few weeks there have been a number of articles (one is here, although registration is required) about the transformation of Palestinian nationalism into just another branch of the international jihad. Today, Amir Taheri takes up that argument.

The same is now true of pan-Islamists. They dream of a universal Islamic state, either under Iranian Shiite leadership (as with Hezbollah), or under the leadership of Salafi movements. In their vision, there can be no distinct Palestinian identity, let alone Palestinian nationalism.

Muhammad Khatami, the mullah who was president of the Islamic Republic, has dismissed nationalism as an illegitimate child of the European Enlightenment which led to colonialism, imperialism and world wars. In this view, the idea of a nation-state of Palestine is a Western concoction, alien to Islam. Even the "one state" formula (the fusion of Israel and Palestine) is only an intermediate step. Such a state would eventually be absorbed into the single universal Islamic domain.

Undoubtedly, in the past few years the Palestinians have drawn closer to Islamism and away from nationalism; Hizbullah as well as al Qaeda has infiltrated at least Gaza, if not also the West Bank. More importantly, the election of Hamas shows the route that the Palestinians want to take - religion as opposed to secular nationalism.

However, Taheri's conclusions are completely incorrect.

Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert is wrong in putting Ariel Sharon's policy of unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank on hold. For the two-state formula to work, it is imperative for Israel to decide exactly where it wants its frontiers to be drawn. Once it is clear where Israel wants to be, it would be possible to discuss where Palestine could be as a state.

His "solution" ignores the facts on the ground. Israel's two withdrawals (Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005) have not led to peace. In fact, the very opposite has happened. Both groups saw weakness in the Israeli withdrawals, and the lessons that they took away were that through rocket attacks and bombings Israel would be forced to withdraw. The same will happen with a withdrawal from the West Bank. Palestinians have already been smuggling rockets into the West Bank, and preparing to use them. Without an Israeli presence, they would undoubtedly smuggle in longer range rockets from Hizbullah and its sponsors. They would then have the capability to directly attack Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. One of the main lessons of the Lebanon war was that withdrawal doesn't work; and the idea of a Palestinian state has been postponed for another generation.

Reassessments

2006-08-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

Already the reassessments of Israel's performance in the war against Hizbullah is starting. Edward Luttwak, in today's Jerusalem Post, thinks that the results of the war have been misread. In general, his analysis is that the IDF performed much better than what it is being given credit for. His argument is, in essence, that on the tactical level Israel won. This is undoubtedly true; the IDF destroyed a large portion of Hizbullah assets and personnel, while suffering fairly light casualties. Strategypage drew very similar conclusions a few days ago.

While Hizbollah can declare this a victory, because it fought Israel without being destroyed, this is no more a victory than that of any other Arab force that has faced Israeli troops and failed. Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel for over half a century, and Hizbollah is the latest to fail. But Hizbollah did more than fail, it scared most Moslems in the Middle East, because it demonstrated the power and violence of the Shia Arab minority. Sunni Arabs, and most Arabs are Sunnis, are very much afraid of Shia Moslems, mainly because most Iranians are Shia, not Arab, and intent on dominating the region, like Iran has done so many times in the past. Hizbollah's recent outburst made it clear that Iran, which subsidizes and arms Hizbollah, has armed power that reaches the Mediterranean. This scares Sunni Arabs because a Shia minority also continues to rule Syria (where most of the people are Sunni). The Shia majority in Iraq, which have not dominated Iraq for over three centuries, is now back in control.

I would agree with both those assessments, but as I have written previously, Israel has suffered severe damage to its reputation of invinciblity and ability to cause total destruction to an attacking army.

The French....Again

2006-08-18T14:19:00.000-04:00

The French were one of the countries most strongly pushing for the cease-fire resolution, promising to lead the International force that would come in to south Lebanon and disarm Hizbullah. Well, as most French promises this one wasn't even worth the paper it was written on. The French have now displayed their commitment to the cease-fire and the UNSC Resolution by promising to send 400 soldiers - from an engineering battalion - to lead this joke of a force. Additionally, before sending these "fighters", they also

called for safety guarantees for its soldiers before making further commitments.

The UN Resolution is basically dead. It will have the same effect of disarming Hizbullah or helping the cause of peace as all the other previous Resolutions. And once again, we see how useless the UN and the French really are.

Hope?

2006-08-18T14:15:00.000-04:00

It's Friday, so there must be something from Victor Davis Hanson. Even with all the recent setbacks in the Middle East, Hanson sees some Hope Amid Despair.

In an amorphous war of self-induced Western restraint, like the present one, truth and moral clarity are as important as military force. This past month, the world of the fascist jihadist and those who tolerate him was once again on display for civilization to fathom. Even the most timid and prone to appeasement in the West are beginning to see that it is becoming a question of “the Islamists or us.”

In this eleventh hour, that is a sort of progress after all.

The "Nutroots" Losing Again

2006-08-17T12:59:00.000-04:00

After Lamont's victory over Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary, the "Nutroots" - the left wing websites promoting a "progressive" agenda, were positively gleeful. The media trumpeted his win as a rejection of Bush and the Iraq war, and that this showed that the Democrats would definitely retake Congress. But now it seems that all is not so rosy in "progressive" land.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), a three-term Democrat now running as an independent candidate, leads the man who beat him in last week's primary vote by 12 points in a three-way race, a poll released on Thursday shows.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll, conducted between August 10-14, shows Lieberman leads Democrat Ned Lamont, a wealthy businessman with little political experience who has played on anti-war sentiment, by 53 percent to 41 percent among likely voters in November's election.

What actually happened, and what happens in almost every primary, is that the extremist wing of the party controls this initial round. In the general election, though, a party needs a candidate that is much more centrist than what the "base" of the party wants. This is why Lieberman will win, despite the efforts of his party.

The First Result of the War

2006-08-17T12:46:00.000-04:00

As I had written before, Israel's failure to destroy Hizbullah would have serious consequences in how Syria and others around would react. Today there is the first hint of that.

On the heels of what it views as a Hizbullah victory against the Jewish state, Syria is forming its own Hizbullah-like guerilla organization to fight Israel in hopes of "liberating" the Golan Heights, an official from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Ba'ath party told WorldNetDaily yesterday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria learned from Hizbullah's military campaign against Israel the past month that "fighting" is more effective than peace negotiations with regard to gaining territory.

It seems that the Arabs are learning fairly quickly from Israel's actions against Hizbullah. At the same time, I am certain that Israel has also learned important lessons from this war. One of them is that airpower alone does not work well against entrenched guerilla positions. My guess is that when there is another confrontation with Hizbullah - or with a similar group - Overwhelming ground forces will once again be put into use.

Folly and Surprise

2006-08-16T12:37:00.000-04:00

Since the beginning of the war with Hizbullah, Ari Shavit has been one of the most vocal critics of the current Israeli government. In this article from a week ago, he places the blame for Israel's current condition not just at the feet of Olmert and Peretz, but of the society that created and elected them.

A simple thing happened: We were drugged by political correctness. The political correctness that has come to dominate Israeli discourse and Israeli awareness in the past generation was totally divorced from the Israeli situation. It did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an existential conflict. It did not have the tools to deal with a reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. That is why it focused entirely on the Palestinian issue. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest and perpetuating the instability.

At the same time, political correctness assumed that Israeli strength is a given. That Israel is insanely strong. Therefore, political correctness disdained any attempt to build and maintain Israeli strength. The defense budget was cut, the values of volunteerism were mocked, the concepts of heroism and fortitude became despicable. Since the Israel Defense Forces was identified as an army of occupation - rather than as an army defending feminists and homo-lesbians from the fanaticism of the Middle East - they had reservations about it, they shook it off and became alienated from it. After all, in the spiritual world of political correctness, power and army have become dirty words.

Hizbullah Refuses

2006-08-15T22:39:00.000-04:00

As would be expected Hizbullah has refused to disarm. Instead, they have made a deal with Lebanese PM Siniora that they will keep their arms, but not display them publicly. There is no chance that the Lebanese Army will attempt to disarm Hizbullah by force, since around half the army is Shiite and the military capability of the Lebanese Armed Forces is close to zero. At the same time, Kofi Annan has stated that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN". So if the UN is not going to do it despite passing Resolution 1559 and 1701 - both demanding that Hizbullah be disarmed - and the LAF will not do it, who is left?

An official in Israel's Prime Minister's Office has stated that if Hizbullah refuses to disarm, Israel will restart the war. This seems highly unlikely. Israel would come under intense international condemnation and pressure if it were to restart the war without a direct Hizbullah attack - and at this point Hizbullah would be crazy to do something like that. This threat sounds a lot like the threatened full-scale invasion that kept getting delayed; it is meant purely for political effect - a way to prod the UN to do something. The UN of course will do nothing, no matter how much Tzipi Livni talks to Kofi Annan. It will once again have proven itself to be completely powerless and useless in any matter that requires something more than talk, and dangerous to the security of Israel.

By not allowing the IDF to achieve a decisive military victory, Olmert destroyed the perception of the invincibility of the IDF. From Stratfor:

In the regional equation, there has been an immutable belief: that, at the end of the day, IDF was capable of imposing a unilateral military solution on any Arab force. Israel might have failed to achieve its political goals in its various wars, but it never failed to impose its will on an enemy force. As a result, all neighboring nations and entities understood there were boundaries that could be crossed only if a country was willing to accept a crushing Israeli response. All neighboring countries -- Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, prior to the collapses of central authority -- understood this and shaped their behavior in view of it.
...
In this conflict, what Hezbollah has achieved is not so much a defeat of Israel as a demonstration that destruction in detail is not an inevitable outcome of challenging Israel. Hezbollah has showed that it is possible to fight to a point that Israel prefers a cease-fire and political settlement to a military victory followed by political accommodation. Israel might not have lost any particular battle, and a careful analysis of the outcome could prove its course to be reasonable. But the loss of the sense -- and historical reality -- of the inevitability of Israeli military victory is a far more profound defeat for Israel, as this clears the way for other regional powers to recalculate risks.

At the same time, he has placed Israel's security needs in the hands of the UN and a weak international force. By his actions, he has reaped neither the benefits of a military victory nor of the negotiated solution for which he waged the military campaign.

So what next? It is almost inevitable that there will be another round. This may not happen right away, and most likely will not be under the direction of the present government. Efraim Inbar suggests that in this next round it should not be just Hizbullah that is targeted, but also Syria.

SUBDUING SYRIA is the key to managing the Lebanese crisis, to rolling back Hizbullah, and to weakening Iran and its radical Islamist influence in the Middle East. In order to attain victory in the next military engagement, Israel should target Damascus.

Syria allows supplies for Hizbullah to pass into Lebanon from its territory and provides the channel for Iran to do likewise. Syria's use of Hizbullah as a means of bleeding Israel has gone unpunished for too long.

That being the case, the strategic address for dealing with Hizbullah and for restoring lost deterrence remains Damascus. Only military pressure on the regime of Bashar Assad can deny Hizbullah military capabilities and signal Israel's readiness and ability to respond tenaciously.

Sooner or later this has to happen, although Israel will have to act carefully. It is not in Israel's - or the US's - interest for Assad to be overthrown. What replaces him could very well be more dangerous than the weak Assad.

The Best Information is Inside Information

2006-08-15T14:59:00.000-04:00

It seems that IDF Chief of Staff has been caught in an "insider trading" scandal. A few hours after the Hizbullah cross-border attack and abduction of 2 soldiers, Gen. Halutz went to the bank to sell his portfolio of stocks.

"It was my portfolio of shares, on which I had lost NIS 25,000," Halutz told Maariv. "It is true that I sold the portfolio on July 12, 2006, but it is impossible to link that to the war. At the time I did not expect or think that there would be a war."

So a few hours after this attack, as the cabinet and military leaders met to discuss possible war, Halutz did not expect a war? Either he is a terrible liar, or he is out of the loop on major military decisions. This is simply another embarrassment in a long line of embarrassments in the conduct of this war.

The Aftermath

2006-08-15T11:11:00.000-04:00

Nothing new in this Yossi Klein Halevy article, but a well written description of the feeling now in Israel.

The European View

2006-08-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

Given the European reaction to Israel's war against Hizbullah, here is what their reaction would have been to another instance of Jews defending themselves.

Who Won?

2006-08-14T20:36:00.000-04:00

President Bush today declared that Hizbullah suffered a defeat in this war. PM Olmert declared that Hizbullah suffered a "harsh blow". And as would be expected Nasrallah claimed a "strategic, historic victory." So who won and what?

There were 5 main players involved in this war - Israel, Hizbullah, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran - and it's important to see what each has won and lost over the course of the last month. While most pundits see simply an Israeli defeat and a Hizbullah victory, the situation - as is often the case - is a bit more complex. So here's my attempt to sort out the results.

ISRAEL
Israel's stated war aims - at least its initial war aims - were the return of the two kidnapped soldiers, the destruction of Hizbullah as a fighting force, and the removal of the rocket threat to its northern cities. Judged by these aims, Israel failed since it was not able to achieve any of them. As I have written before, this failure was due entirely to the tactics of the political echelon and not the IDF. Olmert and Peretz decided that they would talk of military goals, but attempt to achieve those goals diplomatically. It is the first time in Israel's history that it went to war in order for a cease-fire to be imposed. Previously, the IDF would attempt to accomplish as much as possible before the imposition of a ceasefire by the "international community". Had the initial cease-fire agreement between the US and France been approved, instead of the one actually approved, Israel could have claimed that it achieved its ends diplomatically. However, UNSC Resolution 1701 leaves the matter of Hizbullah disarmament and the return of the IDF soldiers very vague.

Israel's main loss is in the area of deterrence. Again, I will quote Stratfor's analysis:

The first strategy was the air campaign. The second strategy was a complex warfighting/diplomacy strategy designed to achieve Israel's ends without having to systematically destroy Hezbollah. The end result of this strategy -- if it is carried out to its logical conclusion -- is that Hezbollah will have fought and survived, and that in fighting, it will have shaped Israeli political decisions. In other words, we will have moved from a world in which Israel's military force trumps all other considerations to a world in which Israeli military power is circumscribed by Arab power.

It seems clear that Israel could have crushed Hezbollah if it was willing to spend the lives. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's view seems to have been the rational one -- that the rockets Hezbollah has been firing at Israel were creating fewer casualties by far than a war would. On that cost-benefit analysis, Olmert not only was correct, but followed the reasoning of Ariel Sharon. Sharon's strategy focused on building barriers between Israel and Arabs in order to avoid the costs and casualties involved in counterinsurgency operations. Olmert has extended that logic to southern Lebanon, seeking a low-cost solution to the Hezbollah threat.

In so doing, Olmert, intentionally or not, has shifted the basic architecture of Israel's strategic policy. He has avoided an extravagant cost in lives, but in so doing, has undermined the military certainty that was the foundation of Israeli national security. Hezbollah was able to start a war and has survived it defensively. In due course, an Arab force will be able to start an offensive war and win it. There is no inherent reason that an Arab army cannot defeat an Israeli army. Whether there is a cease-fire or not, the psychological foundation of Israeli power has been breached.

This is a major change in the Middle East, the results of which will have long-lasting repercussions vis-a-vis the entire balance of power. Already Syria is saying that the chances of peace with Israel are low, and that they will "liberate the Golan", and Hamas will attempt to adopt Hizbullah tactics.

Overall, Israel has lost much and gained little. One can only hope that the political establishment and the IDF will learn lessons from this war that they will be able to apply to the next round. They have been very good at doing this in the past.

HIZBULLAH
Hizbullah's main achievement has been its survival. In being able to hold off the IDF for a month, they have emerged as the best Arab army, and the only one not to have been fully defeated by Israel. This has added to their prestige in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world. In enhancing their reputation, they have also effected a stealth coup d'etat in Lebanon. They are now the power, and the Lebanese government must go to them for all decisions. While this may have been the case previously, it was behind the scenes. Now it is fully out in the open.

However, Hizbullah has paid a very high price for this "victory". They have lost most of their long-range missiles and launchers - taken out by Israel in the first day of the war - and they have suffered somewhere around 500 dead. For a fighting force of 3000-5000, this is a tremendous loss. Additionally, their network of bunkers and tunnels has been exposed, and their fighting tactics revealed. Armies that win wars - or think they win wars - are less likely to learn lessons, and if fighting resumes, they will be at a significant disadvantage. Hubris has its costs.

Overall, Hizbullah has achieved much in this war but at the same time has suffered serious losses. They have been somewhat degraded as a fighting force, but politically have made major gains.

LEBANON
Lebanon is the clear loser in this war. Their infrastructure has been damaged to the tune of $2-$4 billion, and for a country with a total GDP of around $20 billion, it will take quite a while for them to recover. More importantly, their government has been exposed as completely powerless and is now run by Hizbullah. PM Siniora's life is now clearly in danger, and the gains of the Cedar Revolution seem to be no more than memories. Unless the UN force moving in can actually control Hizbullah, and this is highly unlikely, they will have to wait for Israel to fully and completely destroy Hizbullah in the next war if they hope to regain their country.

SYRIA
Assad is thrilled that he didn't get dragged into this war. If he had, he would most likely no longer be the ruler of Syria. Syria's gain is that they did not get punished for their support and supply of Hizbullah. This will undoubtedly lead them to the conclusion that they can continue their support not just of Hizbullah, but of Hamas and of insurgents in Iraq.

IRAN
Like Syria, Iran was not punished - as of yet - for their support of Hizbullah. Their status, as the backers of the premiere Arab army, has certainly been enhanced. And they have received valuable information on the performance of their weapons systems. But the outcome for them is a lot more mixed. Undoubtedly they are unhappy with Hizbullah losing so much of the hardware that they provided - estimates of the dollar value of the losses are around $2 billion. Much more importantly, they have lost a major deterrent. Hizbullah's rockets and missiles were supposed to be the deterrent threat to Israel and the US in the event of an attack on Iran's nuclear program. This deterrent is now gone for the Iranians, both physically in the destroyed Zelzal missiles, as well as strategically. It will be difficult for Iran to smuggle more of the Zelzals to Hizbullah; they are very large systems requiring a truck to launch, and everyone is now watching what they are doing. Their support for Hizbullah will be another in the long list of US grievances against them.

I think that this war is far from over. Just tonight there was a report of Hizbullah firing 10 Katyusha rockets. All of them landed inside Lebanon, so Israel is not responding. If Hizbullah is seen to violate the cease-fire, Israel will be able to finish them off. It is what the US, Lebanon, Israel, and most countries of the Middle East are secretly hoping for.

Interview With Brig. General Kuperwasser

2006-08-11T16:16:00.000-04:00

A very interesting interview with Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of the research division of the IDF Military Intelligence.

Resolution?

2006-08-11T14:37:00.000-04:00

Apparently, the US and France have reached a compromise on the ceasefire resolution and the UN Security Council will take up the matter at 3pm Eastern Time, with a possible vote this afternoon. The Resolution seems to be pretty much the same as I wrote about last night. It will be up to Israel to decide what to do, since most likely Hizbullah will (at least at first) abide by the ceasefire - they have achieved their strategic goals.

Ari Shavit is absolutely right that if Olmert accepts this ceasefire he should resign immediately.

Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege. Olmert is a prime minister whom journalists invented, journalists protected, and whose rule journalists preserved. Now the journalists are saying run away. That's legitimate. Unwise, but legitimate.

However, one thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops, I made a mistake. That was not the intention. Pass me a cigar, please.

On Again

2006-08-11T12:55:00.000-04:00

The Israeli Cabinet has given the green light for the IDF to advance to the Litani. The reason given is that not enough diplomatic progress has been made. At the same time, they have decided that if progress is made, then the IDF will once again been stopped.

Napoleon once said "If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna". PM Olmert and co. should have been reminded of this maxim before beginning this war. Unfortunately, Israel at this point does not have the leadership to be able to take a decision and carry it through to its necessary conclusion. Uri Dan writes about this leadership vacuum and concludes:

I have this to say to the government: If you do not bomb Hizbullah to kingdom come now, you will have lost the right to blame the allies of World War II for not bombing Auschwitz.

Five Minutes to Midnight

2006-08-11T11:46:00.000-04:00

At The Corner on National Review Online, Michael Ledeen posts a piece written by Robert Tracinski from The Intellectual Activist (subscription required). It is about the inevitability of war with Iran. It's somewhat long, but well worth reading. Here's one part of it:

It is, indeed, "five minutes to midnight"Ânot just for Israel, but for the West. The time is very short now before we will have to confront Iran. The only question is how long we let events spin out of our control, and how badly we let the enemy hit us before we begin fighting back.

We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it. That is the real analogy to the 1930s. Hitler came to power espousing the goal of German world domination, openly promising to conquer neighboring nations through military force and to persecute and murder Europe's Jews. He predicted that the free nations of the world would be too weakÂtoo morally weakÂto stand up to him, and European and American leaders spent the 1930s reinforcing that impression. So Hitler kept advancingÂthe militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the Spanish bombing campaign in 1937, the annexation of Austria and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the invasion of Poland in 1939Âuntil the West finally, belated decided there was no alternative but war.

That is what is playing out today. Iran's theocracy has chosen, as the nation's new president, a religious fanatic who believes in the impending, apocalyptic triumph of Islam over the infidels. He openly proclaims his desire to create an Iranian-led Axis that will unite the Middle East in the battle against America, and he proclaims his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," telling an audience of Muslim leaders that "the main solution" to the conflict in Lebanon is "the elimination of the Zionist regime." (Perhaps this would be better translated as Ahmadinejad's "final solution" to the problem of Israel.)

Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad regards the free nations of the world as fading "sunset" powers, too morally weak to resist his legions of Muslim fanatics. And when we hesitate to kill Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, when we pressure Israel to rein in its attacks on Hezbollah, when we pander to the anti-Jewish bigotry of the "Muslim street"Âwe reinforce his impression of our weakness.

Ceasefire

2006-08-10T22:47:00.000-04:00

A new ceasefire resolution is being discussed at the UN. It seems that there is a good chance that this resolution will be voted on tomorrow and will pass. If approved, this ceasefire will prove to be disastrous to Israel as well as to Us interests.

As now proposed, the ceasefire would have Israeli forces withdraw gradually as the Lebanese army reinforced by UN peacekeepers - mostly French troops - take control of south Lebanon. Hizbullah would have to move north of the Litani River. The resolution does not demand the disarming of Hizbullah, as Resolution 1559 demanded, and it does not demand the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Lebanon and Hizbullah would be stupid not to accept this ceasefire. The IDF is rightly upset about this ceasefire. It is a complete defeat, both strategically and tactically, for Israel. As Stratfor pointed out this morning, Israel had just seized the strategically important village of Marjayoun, from where they could move west to the Litani River, north to the Bekaa, or both. Such an operation would envelop Hizbullah in the south, and destroy its base in the Bekaa Valley. It seems that this operation will now be cancelled, and Hizbullah will have decisively won.

It should also be clear what the result of the peacekeepers in South Lebanon will be. Hizbullah will not be disarmed. No matter what kind of arms embargo is placed on Hizbullah, they will rearm with weapons from Syria and Iran. At some point in the not too distant future Hizbullah will once again launch missiles at Israeli cities, and because of the presence of the peacekeeper Israel will be unable to respond. In effect, the peacekeepers will be the protectors of Hizbullah. Any hope that Lebanon would become a normal, stable country is gone. It will have been, in effect, taken over by Hizbullah. Israel's deterrence will have been tremendously eroded, and to regain it they will need to do something truly dramatic - taking out Iran's nuclear program is one such possibility, though this would undoubtedly lead to a much more serious war.

Prime Minister Olmert, Defence Minister Peretz, and IDF Chief of Staff Halutz are the people most responsible for this utter failure. Their passivity and hesitation has made this defeat possible. It should have been clear to them that the US could only protect Israel from the "international community" for so long. It is one of the reasons why IDF doctrine has always been based on a short war with overwhelming firepower. It should also have been clear to them that once they embarked on this war, they had to win. And while Olmert spoke often and passionately about winning, he did nothing to make it happen.

The only hope, at this point, is that Hizbullah and Lebanon behave like their Arab brethren before them and pass up this ceasefire in favor of believing their own bluster. Otherwise, the region and the world will have become a much more dangerous place.

Bellum Interruptus

2006-08-10T11:17:00.000-04:00

It seems that the US is putting pressure on Olmert to delay the promised offensive.

The troops were already rolling late Wednesday when they were ordered to halt. It appears heavy US pressure delayed the offensive to allow diplomacy to run its course. A senior minister said Wednesday that Israel might delay the expansion for 2-3 days for that purpose.

This was inevitable given how long it has taken Israel to actually start moving. It's pretty clear that the diplomacy is unlikely to produce any result good for Israel, but Olmert seems more than happy to delay. He is undoubtedly Israel's most incompetent PM to date.

On the other hand, there do seem to be some positive results that have been achieved by the IDF already. Ken Timmerman lists a number of them. I think he is being overly optimistic on the achievements.

Missiles Fired at Tel Aviv?

2006-08-10T11:09:00.000-04:00

Yoni the Blogger relays information that Hizbullah today fired 3 missiles that were aimed at Tel Aviv. None of the missiles made it, but they were of a different type than previously fired missiles.

State Of The War

2006-08-09T21:55:00.000-04:00

Israel's security cabinet today approved the expansion of ground operations in Lebanon, although it seems that this does not mean that the IDF is cleared to go in right away. The plan, as reported, is to drive to the Litani River - about 20 miles to the North - and then clear Hizbullah out of South Lebanon. According to the Jerusalem Post, there are about 40,000 IDF troops waiting on the border to advance. If implemented, this is the ground campaign that should have been waged from the very beginning.

Such an invasion would be classic IDF fighting doctrine, as opposed to what has been going on for the last 3 plus weeks. The idea would be a fast move up to the Litani, surrounding but bypassing Hizbullah strongholds to get to the enemy rear. This could be accomplished in a week, according to one IDF general. After that, it would take 4-6 weeks to clear out the Hizbullah strongholds and remove, or at least reduce, the Katyusha threat. The clearing out operations will be difficult and exact fairly high casualties on the IDF (estimates are between 100 and 200 dead). Stratfor's (subscription required) analysis:

Hezbollah presents both the complexities of fourth-generation warfare that the United States faces in Iraq and the intractability of a deeply entrenched enemy. In the course of engaging positions as well-camouflaged and heavily fortified as Hezbollah's, there are stages of the engagement where an attacker must absorb casualties while inflicting zero casualties on the defender. The purpose of defensive fortifications is to force the attacker into these positions for the longest amount of time to maximize attackers' vulnerability to the defender's established and covered fields of fire. There are also shoulder constraints, restricting the number of attacking troops that can effectively mass inside of these defensive constraints. Thus, a successful assault is not always a matter of how many troops or how many casualties an attacker is willing to take, but rather a function of the tactics used. Hezbollah has so far seemed able to deal effectively with smaller incursions by the IDF composed of an infantry escort for a platoon of three or four tanks.

It seems to me that this is exactly the reason that Israel is hesitating in enacting this plan. More than simply an operational plan, Israel is trying to pressure the "international community" to come up with a viable diplomatic solution so that it will not have to carry out such an invasion. This is a losing proposition. It's doubtful that the UN will come up with a Resolution acceptable to Israel, and waiting another few days while continuing to bomb will only bring more comments like this from the US (comments from European and Arab countries are not really important at this point).

By waging the war as Israel has waged it for the last 3 weeks - that is to say poorly - Israel has put itself in a horrible position. At this point, it is hard to see what kind of outcome will not allow Hizbullah to claim victory and to enhance its reputation and prestige - as well as control of Lebanon. Hizbullah has been able to withstand the aerial bombardment as well as the assaults of the IDF - assaults that have up to now been reminiscent of the poorly planned IDF armor charges against the Egyptians in the first few days of the Yom Kippur War. Israel has thus been forced into the position of not being able to lose, no matter what the casualties are. Outside of this they need to accomplish something dramatic like killing Nasrallah or freeing the two kidnapped soldiers, neither of which seems likely at this point.

Overall, this war has been incompetently managed by Olmert, Peretz, Halutz and OC Northern Command General Adam. The best that Israel can hope for now is a tactical victory where it kills a large number of Hizbullah fighters and destroys Hizbullah's infrastructure in south Lebanon. But at this point, a strategic victory over Hizbullah seems out of reach. The seeds of the next regional Middle East war have been sown.

August 22nd

2006-08-08T22:49:00.000-04:00

When Iran said that it would respond to the US nuclear offer on August 22nd, many analysts were puzzled as to why he chose precisely that date. Now it is becoming more clear. Bernard Lewis, in today's Wall Street Journal op/ed page (subscription required) explains the importance of that date.

This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

If it isn't clear yet, it should be becoming clearer that we are not dealing with a rational leader. Mutual Assured Destruction, the threat of total annihilation of all that was enough to keep the US and Soviet Union from going to war, will not work against madmen intent on bringing on the end of days. Until we acknowledge who we are up against - who our enemy is and what they are capable of - we will never be able to confront them.

French Perfidy...Again!

2006-08-08T22:33:00.000-04:00

The French have done it again. The US spent days negotiating with France a ceasefire resolution to bring to the UN. The US compromised on the French desire for 2 resolutions instead of one. The US compromised on the French desire for the sequence of events - first a ceasefire then an international force. And now after all this, the French are backing out. According to CNN and FoxNews, France has stated that they are not happy with the resolution and reneging on the agreements with the US. They are once again puckering up their lips to the Arab asses and supporting all the Arab demands, especially for an Israeli withdrawal. Why should the US ever negotiate with them again? What a worthless country.

One of these days, their displays of weakness towards the Arabs will come back to haunt them. Despite all their ass-kissing of the Arabs (or maybe because of it) there will be a terrorist attack in a French city, and that will be the first time I will applaud the Arabs for their action. Eurabia indeed!

Just War

2006-08-07T20:49:00.000-04:00

In the past few weeks, with Israel's war with Hizbullah, the concept of Just War has once again come to the forefront. Just War Theory says that a war is justified if it is waged based on a number of conditions. These are usually divided into jus ad bello (when it is justified to go to war) and jus in bello (how a war is waged). Most rational commentators agree that Israel's campaign against Hizbullah meets the first condition - Israel was justified in waging war on Hizbullah. On the second issue - of how Israel is waging the war - there is much more disagreement.

But what if this concept is itself outdated or simply doesn't work in the era of fourth-generation warfare. David Warren suggests that this is indeed the case. That by waging moral war, we do not save civilians, but actually endanger more of them.

By openly stating that we will, under no circumstances, attack targets where civilians are present, we "hand the foe a blueprint of our acts, incite him to step over our carefully drawn line, encourage his vice and incur our own defeat." (I am quoting a priest who has considered the broader implications of the Catholic just war doctrine.)

Even "just war" acknowledges that, as in medicine, real mercy can sometimes require ruthlessness. We have forgotten this in the West. If we want to save civilians, over the longer run, we must resolve to call the enemyÂs bluff. Show him by our actions that hiding behind baby carriages will not save him. For the enemy will only stop using Âhuman shieldsÂ when they cease to serve his purposes.

One Lebanese Who Gets It

2006-08-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

The New Republic has posted an extraordinary article by a journalist living in Beirut.

Lebanon a victim? What a joke!

Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. In Beirut, innocent citizens like me were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army, and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah's and the Syrians' command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter (in red on the satellite map). A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army, possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all ... its government. A "government" that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government--in which Hezbollah also had its ministers!--to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge the United States into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli, the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising.

Behe clearly sees that the people responsible for this war are the powerless and gutless members of Lebanon's government, who allowed Hizbullah to hijack the country. I am sure that many Lebanese think the same way but can not or are afraid to publicly say what Behe says.

But more than just this war being Lebanon's fault, it is the fault of the "international community". As they have done numerous times, they passed resolutions and then failed to enforce them. Had Resolution 1559 actually been implemented and Hizbullah disarmed, there would have been no war. Had the Taif accords been actually implemented, Hizbullah would never have acquired 15,000 rockets and missiles. But as always, the diplomats in Turtle Bay can will the ends but never the means of achieving those ends. And by that, they have made themselves worse than useless; they have become abettors and appeasers of the fascists of our age.

Mughniyah Wounded?

2006-08-04T14:19:00.000-04:00

According to Geostrategy-Direct(registration required), Imad Mughniyah, the Hizbullah mastermind terrorist who was responsible for the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1982, as well as numerous Israeli and Jewish targets has been seriously wounded.

Mughniyah, the foreign liaison and intelligence chief for Hizbullah, attended a Hizbullah meeting of commanders on July 19 when Israeli fighter-jets struck their headquarters in southern Beirut. Western intelligence sources said part of the command bunker collapsed, killing or wounding most of the dozen people inside.

If this is actually true, it would be a big blow to Hizbullah's terrorist operations. Mughniyah was also in charge of delivering weapons to the Palestinians, including organizing the Karine-A weapons shipment. Israel is also saying that more than 40 high-ranking Hizbullah commanders have been killed, though they haven't identified exactly who.

I'm Back

2006-08-02T12:02:00.000-04:00

Its been almost a year since I blogged last. And now it feels like its time to start up again; the Nudnikette has been urging me to blog instead of bother her with my rants. So here we go again. I apologize in advance for my initial rustiness, but hopefully I will get back into it quickly enough.

And the War on Terror Goes On

2005-07-07T08:40:00.000-04:00

7/7/2005

A terrorist president?

2005-06-30T22:00:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time kids ... but Mad is back ...

... and with some shocking news too ... this time about a terrorist president.

And no you silly libs, I'm not talking about President Bush :)

Tonight, one cable news station (and it wasn't CNN) is broadcasting photographs from November 1979 of US hostages in Iran being escorted around by a man suspected to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's newly "elected" president (elected is such the wrong word). Add to this the stories (and more stories) from hostages Charles Scott, David Roeder, William J. Daugherty, Don A. Sharer, Kevin Hermening and William A. Gallegos who all insist that Ahmadinejad was a leader among the hostage-takers.

"As soon as I saw his picture in the paper, I knew that was the bastard," Colonel Charles Scott, 73, told the Washington Times. "He was one of the top two or three leaders ... The new president of Iran is a terrorist."

But wait, there's more:

Scott ... [also] said the new Iranian president sat in on parts of his monthlong interrogation and whispered guidance to the men who were questioning him.

So we report, you decide: is it him?

And this isn't that much of a stretch. Just consider this:

Mr. Ahmadinejad was a founding member of the Office of Strengthening Unity, the student organisation that planned the embassy takeover.

And he's been accused of many worse crimes:

Previously, Austrian parliament representative, Peter Pilz, alleged Ahmadinejad to have possibly had a hand in international assassinations ordered by the Iranian government against political opposition groups ... Some have also alleged that Ahmadinejad had been a "Last Shot-in-the-head" executioner of political prisoners, shooting the executed prisoners after they were shot by a firing squad to ensure that they are dead, in the Evin prison in Tehran, and claim that he has delivered around a thousand such shots.

Well ... you know what they say: you have to step on (or shoot) a few heads to get to the top!

And ole' Ahmadinejad isn't holding back his punches ... today he was quoted as saying:

"The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end," he said, in an apparent reference to Iran's arch-foe the United States. "The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world"

Ummmm .... ya ... right ...

So what we have here shouldn't surprise anyone: The biggest state-sponsor of terrorism in the world has rigged its elections to install a terrorist with American blood on his hands. And a terrorist who wants to spread the "wave of the Islamic revolution" to "the entire world." So how does he plan to do that? Well, with the soon-to-be-completed arsenal of Iranian nukes of course!

Can we please, please, please start taking this problem seriously now???

To cite the eternal words of Michael Ledeen: Faster please!

Vacation

2005-05-27T15:57:00.000-04:00

I am off to the Holy Land for the next two weeks. Posting will resume then.

Selling the EU

2005-05-25T11:30:00.000-04:00

In a few days France will vote in a referendum on the new EU Constitution. It seems, at this point, that French voters will reject this 300 page monstrosity. But not to worry, I'm certain that similar to previous votes on EU matters, if the French get this vote "wrong" they will be given the chance to vote on it again and again until they produce the answer that Chirac and Giscard actually want.

But what is interesting, is the way the bEUreaucrats are trying to sell this constitution. Mark Steyn has an interesting write-up of their campaign.

Scornful of such piffling analogies, the prime minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende, thinks a Balkan end is the least of their worries. "I've been in Auschwitz and Yad Vashem," he says. "The images haunt me every day. It is supremely important for us to avoid such things in Europe."

At the Theresienstadt (or Terezin) concentration camp in the Czech Republic, Sweden's European Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, declared: "There are those who want to scrap the supranational idea. They want the European Union to go back to the old purely inter-governmental way of doing things. I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that old road leads."

Golly. So the choice for voters on the Euro-ballot is apparently: yes to the European Constitution, or yes to a new Holocaust. If there's a neither-of-the-above box, the EU's rulers are keeping quiet about it. The notion that the Continent's peoples are basically a bunch of genocidal whackoes champing at the bit for a new bloodbath is one I'm not unsympathetic to. But it's a curious rationale to pitch to one's electorate: vote for us; we're the straitjacket on your own worst instincts.

The Left Keeps Trying

2005-05-25T11:26:00.000-04:00

Arianna Huffington has recently started a celebrity-laden group blog. Ned Rice reviews this latest contribution to our virtual discussion world, as as well as some old technology attempts by the Left to "get their message out".

Apart from its larcenous origins and hit-or-miss content the other glaring weakness of "The Huffington Post" is that it's pretty much what sources like N.P.R., the A.P., and most TV networks already offer: a conventional left-of-center perspective with a few conservative voices tossed in for window dressing.

With this new blog, as well as AirAmerica, and Al Gore's proposed liberal network, the Left continues to believe that if only they could get their message out, people would vote for them. It seems, though that the key problem for the Left is not "getting their message out", but actually getting a message that people actually support.

Attention Democrats: the American people have heard your message loud and clear, and the more they hear of it the less they like it. You can launch all the feeble new media ventures you like ("Hey, how about a liberal 'zine? That'll turn this thing around!"). You can spend as much of George Soros's fortune as he's stupid enough to part with. You can even get Margaret Cho to come back out of the closet and denounce President Bush again - or did she do that already? Thing is, until you advance a political philosophy that has some sort of connection with mainstream America you might just as well get used to being the minority party no matter how many New Media outlets you horn in on.

US is Evil...Again

2005-05-25T10:46:00.000-04:00

Well, the jackasses at Amnesty International have done it again in their annual report on human rights around the world: U.S. leads global attack on human rights -Amnesty. Of course, the main reasons for this assessment by AI is Abu Ghraib and detentions at Guantanamo. It is hard to imagine a more morally obtuse report than this.

In the four years since 9/11, the US has liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, ensuring rights for all the people there. After that the US liberated Iraq from one of the most brutal dictators of the last 50 years, once again improving the human rights of the people there immeasurably. The US has done more for human rights just in the last four years more than AI has done in its entire existence. Yet the only thing that the anti-American morons at AI see is Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Of course, the other country so assaulted by AI is Israel. They have accused Israel of "war crimes and crimes against humanity". The basis for these accusations is that Palestinian civilians have been killed in "attacks on residential areas". Perhaps it would behoove AI to actually read international law before propounding these inanities. Yes, Palestinian civilians have been killed. But according to international law the responsibility for these deaths lie solely on the terrorists who hide out in civilian areas - a war crime under international law - and use civilians as human shields - also a war crime. These Palestinian crimes do not merit mention by AI.

Of course, its much easier to accuse democracies of violations of international law than it is to accuse repressive regimes; there is always a fifth column in democracies willing to heap scorn and blame on their own governments and draw even more attention to the baseless accusations of NGOs gone wild - something which usually does not occur in the Sudans and Zimbabwes of the world.

My suggestion is to force the people making these judgments to actually go live in a truly repressive country before they make such accusations. Maybe then they would actually find out something about human rights.

Worthless

2005-05-24T11:47:00.000-04:00

Ariel Sharon today said something that everyone has known, but not been willing to say publicly:

Without offending the Arab world, it must be said that their agreements, declarations and speeches are not worth the paper they're written on.

Clearly this is evidenced by the actions of the Palestinian Authority since Arafat signed the Oslo Accords. Continuing in that rich tradition, within days of signing onto the "Roadmap", Abbas was also violating it and openly talking about it.

Caroline Glick has more on Abbas's continued violations, while at the same time talking peace. I have no doubt that the Bush Administration understands exactly what is going on in the PA. Yet in doing nothing about it except the ritual announcements that the PA "must do more", the Bush Administration is undermining its own principles in the War on Terror.

The Bush administration seems absolutely committed to ensuring that the PA will not become a failed state on the model of Somalia or Lebanon. And yet, in its rush to strengthen Abbas in order to prevent chaos, the US is backing his bid to establish a Palestinian rogue state.

If President Bush really believes in his vision for freedom and democracy for the Palestinians, he would be well advised to tell Abbas that as long as the choices are between a failed Palestinian state and a rogue Palestinian state, the US opts for no Palestinian state.

Marketing

2005-05-17T09:02:00.000-04:00

This is a copy/paste from an email I got. Makes for a good yuk.

Two beggars are sitting side by side on a street in Rome. One has a cross in front of him. The other one has the Star of David. Many people go by and look at both beggars, but only put money into the hat of the beggar sitting behind the cross.

A priest comes by, stops and watches throngs of people giving money to the beggar behind the cross, but none give to the beggar behind the Star of David. Finally, the priest goes over to the beggar behind the Star of David and says: "My poor fellow,
don't you understand? This is a Catholic country. People aren't going to give you money if you sit there with a 'Star of David' in front of you, especially when you're sitting beside a beggar who has a cross. In fact, they would probably give to him just out of spite." The beggar behind the 'Star of David' listened to the priest, turned to the other beggar with the cross and said: "Moishe, look who's trying to teach the Goldstein brothers about marketing."

The Root of All Evil

2005-05-12T13:53:00.000-04:00

Roger Kimball of The New Criterion describes the problems of the university. It is truly stunning what is going on at the "elite" schools of the US.

Blix Again?

2005-05-11T13:05:00.000-04:00

Apparently, in the mistaken belief that anyone still wanted to hear his opinions, Hans Blix decided to once again criticize President Bush.

Blix told reporters there is "a great deal of concern" about North Korea and Iran among states without nuclear weapons.

But "that feeling of concern is somewhat muted by the feeling that the United States in particular, and perhaps some other nuclear weapons states, are not taking the common bargain as seriously as they had committed themselves to do in the past," he said.

He cited Bush administration proposals to build new nuclear weapons and talk in Washington even of testing weapons, ending a 13-year-old U.S. moratorium on nuclear tests. He also referred to statements by Bolton, President Bush's embattled nominee to be U.N. ambassador, devaluing treaties and the authority of international law.

So the reason that North Korea and Iran are developing nuclear weapons is because of statements by Bolton? Blix seems to forget that Iran has been working on this for quite a few years, and that it was during the Clinton Administration that the North Koreans.

Cox and Forkum has the perfect cartoon for Blix's idiocy.

More fundamentally, Blix expresses the continuing delusion of the Left that all one needs to do to guarantee world peace is sign some treaties. It seems that no amount of evidence can convince those that are so blinded that tyrants and tyrannies do not adhere to treaties.

Comme Une Image

2005-05-09T15:21:00.000-04:00

It seems that in connection with the V-E celebrations, a new monument of Charles de Gaulle was opened in Moscow. Russia loves public monuments, but our resident art historian Nudnikette points out some very interesting aspects about the statue. Basically, it signifies cowardice. He looks like a "toy soldier" - well dressed but powerless and unarmed. His feet are facing slightly inwards, like a child's. He is standing at attention, the way a soldier stands before a superior. And the superior is undoubtedly Stalin. Probably not how the French wanted him to be represented, but a fairly true representation nonetheless.

V-E Day

2005-05-09T11:21:00.000-04:00

Today is the celebration of V-E Day in Russia, celebrated a day later than in the West primarily because Stalin delayed the announcement of victory for a day. Pretty much all the newspapers carry stories about Bush and Putin watching the parade and ceremonies in Red Square, yet almost none really say anything about what this commemoration is really about. As those who fought in that war get old and pass away we lose the oral history of those events, and the sacrifices made by all who were swept up in the war.

The experiences of the US and the Soviet Union, and the soldiers of the respective countries, were vastly different. Around 27 million soldiers and civilians of the Soviet Union were killed in the war. By contrast, US dead numbered around 400,000. And while the US was fighting for an idea, the destruction of the Nazi regime, the Soviet Union was fighting for something much more tangible – their homes. The US homeland was never really threatened during the war. Even if the Nazis won the US would not be invaded, and while life might have been different, the US would have continued more or less as it was. Soviet soldiers were fighting for their very homes, knowing that losing meant death for them and their families.

The way the US and the Soviets fought was also entirely different. One of the reasons for such heavy casualties in the Soviet army was the complete lack of concern of the Soviet leadership for the welfare of its people. It would be inconceivable for the US army to send troops into battle unarmed, with orders to pick up the rifle of the soldier next to you. Or to place machine guns behind your own advancing troops and gun down any who did not advance. Yet this is what the Red Army regularly did.

My Grandfather was one of the millions who fought in the Red Army. He was a 17 year old lieutenant when the Nazis invaded, fought outside of Stalingrad, and towards the end of the war commanded an anti-tank artillery unit that ended up in East Prussia. I have heard many stories from him about those years, yet I still can not fully imagine what he and that generation had to go through.

And with every day, there are fewer and fewer people to explain what happened and to relate what they saw. V-E Day loses its importance and allows us to forget what happened, and lose the lessons for our current situations - as more attention is paid to the goings on of Paula Abdul and American Idol, than the commemoration of a world struggle and triumph over unimaginable evil.

I wonder if there will be a 100th anniversary commemoration of V-E Day, and if there is what it will look like.

Gaza Withdrawal

2005-05-06T15:28:00.000-04:00

I haven't really written anything on Israel's upcoming withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip later this summer. Until recently I was very conflicted on the wisdom and the necessity of this move. As a strategic concept, trading Gaza for part of the West Bank is a good move for Israel. However, more and more it seems that such a strategy will be difficult to achieve. I am now firmly of the belief that leaving Gaza will be a major mistake; it will not improve Israel's bargaining position vis-a-vis the Palestinians or the US.

The most likely outcome from this evacuation will be to produce a result similar to Barak's withdrawal from Lebanon 5 years ago - the Palestinians will be emboldened into thinking that they can achieve the same result in the West Bank; Hamas leadership has already said as much. The strategy of the Palestinians will be not to attack within the Green Line, something that is daily made more difficult by the separation barrier, but to attack the settlements in Judea and Samaria. And just as we heard about the settlements in Gaza - they're difficult to protect, why waste soldiers on this, etc - we will hear the same about these settlements. The Palestinians have not wasted time during this hudna and have been stockpiling and preparing everything from rifles and explosives to anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles smuggled in from Egypt. They have also brought in and have started manufacturing Kassam rockets in the West Bank. No longer will these rockets be falling in the desert or on the outskirts of Sderot, but on Kfar Saba and the outskirts of Jerusalem.

With this withdrawal Israel, with the urging and help of the US, will have succeeded in creating a new terrorist enclave in the Middle East and brought on itself a wider and deadlier war. As Caroline Glick points out, this is completely contrary to the goals of the Bush administration.

Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria present a tangible threat to US national security interests from both military and psychological warfare perspectives.

On the military level, one of the core principles of the US counter-terror strategy is to deny terrorists sanctuary. Yet Gaza and northern Samaria are both poised to become new operational bases for global terror organizations.

During his negotiations with the terror chiefs in Cairo in March, in the presence of Syria's foreign minister, PA chairman and US favorite Mahmoud Abbas invited the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to relocate from Damascus to Gaza after Israel withdraws. How does this square with the US strategy to bar terrorists from receiving shelter?
[...]
On a psychological level, the images of an Israeli retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria will be footage for jihadi recruitment videos for years to come. In Iraq, a large proportion of the insurgent groups' energies are devoted to producing images that portray them as strong and the US forces as weak. Al-Jazeera and its clones along with cameramen employed as stringers by Western news networks and agencies work hand-in-glove with the terrorists to produce just such images. The point, of course, is that in at least one central respect, Arabs are no different from Americans. Both like winners. Videos showing the decapitation of hostages are meant to mobilize supporters.

Yet there can be no doubt that, as attractive as watching helpless hostages getting beheaded may be to potential recruits, the spectacle of Hamas and Fatah flags being foisted onto Israeli homes in Gaza and Samaria is even more alluring. And footage of Jews attacking one another as Israel comes apart at the seams will also serve the terrorists' purposes wonderfully well.

The damage to US interests and democracy promotion in the Middle East would be immeasurable.

But the decision for this "evacuation" has been made, and it seems there is no turning back now. The main question that remains then is what to do with the buildings in the soon to be abandoned settlements. Many in Israel, including the man who brought us the Oslo War yet continues to push for more appeasement - Shimon Peres - thinks that the settlements should be turned into a Club Med or Palestinian resorts. It is ironic, as David Warren shows that the Palestinians would prefer to have the settlements destroyed by Israel, while Israel would rather abandon them intact.

It is typical of the non-meeting of minds, that the Palestinians mostly want the buildings demolished and their sites cleared, while most Israelis want to hand over the buildings to the Palestinians rather than wasting them. The Israeli authorities are also aware that if the buildings are demolished, the international media will have an anti-Israeli field day showing the scene. Which is in turn why many Palestinians want the demolition to happen: they would rather see that TV show, than have the use of buildings better constructed and serviced than most they now own.

And now the PA is considering giving families of suicide bombers these homes. No matter what bad PR comes of it, these settlements must be destroyed. Pictures of Palestinians dancing on the homes of the departed Israelis will be worse PR. Uri Dan is right:

Israel's momentary profit from being represented in the world media as a peace lover giving the keys of Jewish displaced persons' homes to the Palestinians will be swallowed up by a long-term loss: unambiguous encouragement of the enemy to continue its war against the kibbutzim in the region, against Ashkelon and Ashdod, from the Gaza Strip, and against the heart of Israel from Judea and Samaria.

Ariel Sharon, as defense minister, destroyed the Yamit settlements in 1982 with government approval because he didn't want Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, with whom Menachem Begin had signed a peace agreement, to implement his program to transfer between half a million and a million Egyptians to a region close to the overcrowded Gaza Strip. You don't need a great deal of imagination to realize how terrible Israel's situation would be if another two million Egyptians were living there today. If it was right then, during the withdrawal from Sinai, after signing a peace agreement with Egypt, it is even more right to follow that path today in the Gaza Strip, in the face of Hamas's and Islamic Jihad's plans to continue the war.

So destroy it all!

At least this may salvage some good from a horrible decision.

Iran Rolls On

2005-05-03T12:29:00.000-04:00

It seems that the "talks" between Iran and the EU-3 have come to an impasse, and Iran is now saying that it is determined to pursue uranium enrichment. Clearly this sets it up for a confrontation with the US, and once again the efficacy and worth of the UN will be tested. The US will undoubtedly want the matter referred to the UN Security Council in order to impose sanctions on Iran. Even if China and Russia go along and don't veto such a resolution, what effect would sanctions actually have? Iraq managed to survive under sanctions for 12 years, South Africa even longer. While we could afford to wait with those countries, Iran is only a couple of years away from a nuclear bomb, and according to Israeli intelligence, will achieve a "point of no return" - when they have worked out all technical issues and will be able to proceed without outside help - possibly by the end of this year. Sanctions are, in effect, an acceptance of a nuclear Iran.

Iran is due to have elections in June. There is some hope that some kind of democratic movement will emerge to overthrow the mullahs - although this hope is fairly faint. Despite the continuing reports of demonstrations and riots in a number of cities in Iran - reports that rarely, if ever make the news here - there doe not seem to be enough of an organized movement to remove the mullahs.

More and more, as risky and uncertain as it is, it seems that a military strike on Iran's facilities could be the best option. The best case scenario would be if there were some kind of democratic demonstrations which would then be "supported" by US airpower. Such airstrikes would aim to destroy not just the nuclear installations, but also government command and control assets, military, and Revolutionary Guard installations. This could then have the possibility of overthrowing the mullahs. The worst case scenario is flat out airstrikes on nuclear installations. Since we don't know where all of them are, this would not destroy the Iranian nuclear program, but could delay it for long enough. And once again, the hope would be that the mullahs would be overthrown from within. None of these options are good ones. But once again, the US (not the UN or France) will have to choose and execute the least bad option.

Columbia's Israel Problem

2005-04-29T15:05:00.000-04:00

As stunning as this may seem, Columbia University does not have a Jewish Studies Department. They have decided to try to rectify this by creating an Israel Studies chair, endowed by four trustees. But as Martin Kramer points out, the search committee for this chair shows that Columbia still doesn't get it.

The committee includes Ira Katznelson, chair of the ad hoc (a.k.a. "whitewash") committee that investigated student grievances; Dan Miron, a long-suffering Hebrew lit professor in the Middle East department; and Karen Barkey, an authority on the Ottoman empire. So far, reasonable. But then add this to the mix: Rashid Khalidi, the ubiquitous Edward Said Professor; and lesser-known Lila Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian American anthropologist and signer and supporter of Columbia's divestment petition.

This is a joke. Jewish alumni, and those who care about Columbia's intellectual honesty should withhold their contributions. Maybe then Columbia will get the message.

Disliked

2005-04-29T14:25:00.000-04:00

Victor Hanson writes today that we shouldn't be too upset that some countries don't like us. In fact, it may be a sign that we are doing things right.

In short, who exactly does not like the United States and why? First, almost all the 20 or so illiberal Arab governments that used to count on American realpolitik's giving them a pass on accounting for their crimes. They fear not the realist Europeans, nor the resource-mad Chinese, nor the old brutal Russians, but the Americans, who alone are prodding them to open their economies and democratize their corrupt political cultures. We must learn to expect, not lament, their hostility, and begin to worry that things would be indeed wrong if such unelected dictators praised the United States.

In another excellent article, he criticizes the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of those Senators opposing him.

European Predictions

2005-04-29T12:06:00.000-04:00

Denis Boyles, National Review's European correspondent in Paris has grown weary of Europe, so he is going to the Midwest.

One Kafkaesque morning, as I was waking up from anxious dreams, I discovered I dreaded going to work. All I wanted to do was cheat on my perfect wife, ignore my children, stab my oldest friend in the back, and smoke a cigarette, even though I havent smoked for almost 20 years. My hair broke out in gel and my underwear turned into briefs - then shrunk three sizes. I realized I was slowly becoming a French person.

But as he leaves EUtopia, he has some predictions for what we should expect from the Continent this summer.

The Democratic Philosophy

2005-04-29T12:00:00.000-04:00

David Gelertner perfectly defines the philosophy of the Democratic Party - 'We're Smart, You're Dumb'.It seems that the entire Democratic agenda is to make sure that people don't make decisions for themselves, because obviously the Democrats know what is better for them.

How could anyone be opposed in principle to private investment accounts within Social Security? I could understand Democrats arguing that "private accounts are a wonderful idea but the country can't afford the transition costs right now." But mostly I hear Democrats saying they're a lousy idea, and that President Bush wants to wreck Social Security Â because, after all, he wants to let you keep a great big whopping 4% of your payroll taxes in a private account instead of handing over every cent to the government. How on Earth could anyone be opposed in principle to letting taxpayers manage a minuscule fraction of their own money (their own money, dammit!) if they want to? Because private accounts violate the Infantile American Principle, so dear to Democratic hearts. Little kids should turn over their cash to the Big Smart Government for safekeeping.

This principle relates to much more than the current debate on Social Security. Virtually every proposal of the Democrats relies on the reasoning that the Government will decide for everyone. This has been the basis of a few failed ideologies of the 20th century, yet the Democrats seem to have not learned from history.

Krugman's Healthcare

2005-04-28T13:36:00.000-04:00

We constantly hear from the left (among others) that the healthcare system in Europe is so much better than in the United States. Paul Krugman wrote a column about this last week in the New York Times. His argument focused on the "fact" that the infant mortality rate is higher in the US than in Europe, and that life expectancy is greater in Europe than in the US. David Hogberg, in The American Spectator, debunks these claims and shows that the government run health systems of Europe, are in many cases much worse than the private healthcare of the United States. He ends with these statistics:

Of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States, one-fourth die of the disease. About one-third die in France and Germany, and a little less than half do in the United Kingdom. Of men diagnosed with prostate cancer, less than one-fifth die in the U.S., while one-fourth do in Canada, nearly half in France, and more than half in the U.K.

Iran's Nukes and Russia

2005-04-28T13:20:00.000-04:00

In a move that is probably designed more to appease the US and Israeli publics, Putin today took a harder line on Iran's nuclear program.

Putin, at a news conference in Jerusalem, said Tehran's agreement to return spent nuclear fuel to Russia -- which agreed to supply the material to Iran's Bushehr plant -- "does not seem to be enough."

He said that in addition, the Iranians should "abandon all technology to create a full nuclear cycle and also not obstruct their nuclear sites from international control."

Since Russia is the main sponsor of Iran's nuclear program, it seems to me that this statement is pretty much meaningless. Still, maybe the US sale of 100 laser-guided "bunker buster" bombs to Israel has something to do with his greater interest in controlling Iran's nuclear ambitions.

At the same time, Iran is once again threatening that if talks with the EU-3 fail, it will restart its Uranium enrichment program. I wonder what the EU-3 will compromise on now.

Arab Government

2005-04-28T12:55:00.000-04:00

RealClearPolitics.com reprints an article from the current issue of Foreign Affairs by Bernard Lewis entitled Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East. Lewis is one of the preeminent scholars of the Arab world, and is writing about the possibility of consensual government there. He points ot that the current idea that Arabs are incapable of consensual government because dictatorship is endemic to the culture is simply wrong. Consensual government did exist in the Arab world, though not in the form that we are used to.

Consultation is a central part of the traditional Islamic order, but it is not the only element that can check the ruler's authority. The traditional system of Islamic government is both consensual and contractual. The manuals of holy law generally assert that the new caliph--the head of the Islamic community and state--is to be "chosen." The Arabic term used is sometimes translated as "elected," but it does not connote a general or even sectional election. Rather, it refers to a small group of suitable, competent people choosing the ruler's successor. In principle, hereditary succession is rejected by the juristic tradition. Yet in practice, succession was always hereditary, except when broken by insurrection or civil war; it was--and in most places still is--common for a ruler, royal or otherwise, to designate his successor.

But the element of consent is still important. In theory, at times even in practice, the ruler's power--both gaining it and maintaining it--depends on the consent of the ruled. The basis of the ruler's authority is described in the classical texts by the Arabic word bay'a, a term usually translated as "homage," as in the subjects paying homage to their new ruler. But a more accurate translation of bay'a--which comes from a verb meaning "to buy and to sell"--would be "deal," in other words, a contract between the ruler and the ruled in which both have obligations.

Despotism and dictatorship were actually fairly late imports from Europe, specifically from Nazi Germany.

Lewis is cautiously optimistic that with the elections in Iraq we are seeing a reversal of the rule of despotism and the possibility of the birth of true consensual governments in the Arab world.

"I punched Saddam in the Mouth"

2005-04-27T13:05:00.000-04:00

An interesting article about Samir, the Iraqi now living in St. Louis, who was the man who pulled Saddam out of his spider hole.

Some Good News

2005-04-27T13:04:00.000-04:00

Last week the British Association of University Teachers voted to boycott academics from two Israeli universities, unless they declare that they do not support the Israeli government. Judging by the reaction to this boycott from some British academics, it seems that there are still a few who are willing to stand up against this immoral action.

The backlash, which may take the form of mass resignations from the union, has seen an outpouring of protests by Jewish and non-Jewish academics across Britain.

John Vail, lecturer in political economy at Newcastle University, wrote in an e-mail to fellow academics: "The boycott is blatantly discriminatory and reeks of double standards." He added: "Although I have no current research links with Israeli academics, this has made me want to go out and develop some just so as to show my disapproval of this motion. I hope that our local branch will pass a motion that expresses our disagreement with the national policy."
[...]
The AUT received a further resignation this morning, as a professor from Hertfordshire University cancelled his AUT membership. This followed the resignation of Reinier Salverda, of University College London, bringing the number of academics who have resigned from the union to four. More resignations are expected to follow.

Fifteen academics from the Board of the London-based Leo Baeck Institute signed a letter expressing "dismay" at the AUT resolutions: "All agree in deploring the proposed boycott of Israeli universities and academics who fail to satisfy a political inquisition. Israeli universities, notably the three targets of the boycott, represent the best ideals of the university as a place of tolerance and the free exchange of views, in which Jews, Muslims and Christians study and work together."

The letter, which registered alarm at the "double standards and hypocrisy" behind the resolution, asked: "Will the tests and the boycott apply to Israeli Arab academics or only Jews?"

An excellent question, that I'm sure the boycotters will be hesitant to answer.

More Bolton

2005-04-26T13:43:00.000-04:00

Frank Gaffney makes a good case that the whole argument regarding the confirmation of John Bolton is nothing more than refighting the 2004 election.

They're back. The people who tried to defeat George W. Bush are the same people now trying to defeat his nominee for the United Nations, John R. Bolton.

And George Soros, MoveOn.org, the Democratic Party machinery and, not least, John Kerry hope to demonstrate, by so doing, they were right all along on what is, arguably, the most important national security issue of our time: Need America pass a "global test" to protect its vital interests?

The fact is that the Democrats refuse to have a serious debate about Bolton's views because they know they would lose that debate just like they lost in November of last year. So not being able to discuss the issues, they have sunk to the "politics of personal destruction" based on the most absurd allegations. Proving once again that they are simply not a serious opposition.

Bill Sammon reports that the White House now understands this, after screwing up the initial part of this confirmation battle, and plans to present it to the American people as a debate about the role of the UN. I'm sure the Democrats are not looking forward to that.

Back to the '90s

2005-04-26T11:41:00.000-04:00

An overriding desire of the Democrats seems to be a return to Clinton times. And why not? The market was up every day, every other person was an internet millionaire, we were at peace (relatively), and terrorists didn't kill enough people for us to really care. This regressionary desire seems to be the thrust of today's Nicholas Kristof piece. You see, during Clinton's term, North Korea had no nuclear weapons (maybe one or two), and now under Bush they have six. This of course is due to the fact that Bush refuses to engage in bilateral negotiations with North Korea the way that Clinton did. Kristof is trying to make the argument that the 1994 "Agreed Framework" negotiated by Carter - the greatest example of appeasement since the Oslo Accords - stopped the North Koreans from working on their nuclear program. He does mention, however, that

...but about 1999, it secretly started on a second nuclear route involving uranium.

That was much less worrisome than the plutonium program (it still seems to be years from producing a single uranium weapon), and it probably could have been resolved through negotiation, as past crises had been.

So the "Agreed Framework" worked so well that North Korea started a Uranium enrichment program?

This whole article is complete and utter non-sense. The left side of the political spectrum refuses to learn that appeasement simply does not work. North Korea abided by the agreement for as long as it was convenient for them, and when it was no longer convenient they stopped. Now that they need more oil, and more food, they are once again using the same tactics as before. Their hope is that the Bush Administration will act like the Clinton Administration and agree to supply them with whatever they need, while they pretend to stop their nuclear weapons program. Until, of course, they want something else. Then we will go through this whole routine again. This is the standard result of appeasement.

Realistically, there is only one way to deal with North Korea and that is to force China to pressure them to give up their nukes. China wants hegemony of the region, convincing them that their support (or lack of pressure) on North Korea will harm that desire, i.e. by Japan and/or Taiwan going nuclear, is the best way to disarm North Korea.

Pax Americana

2005-04-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

A very interesting article by Efraim Halevy, former Mossad Director and Ariel Sharon's National Security Adviser, about the possibilities in the Middle East now that the US is fully involved.

The Big Lie

2005-04-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

Since the conclusion of the Iraq War, the Left has consistently peddled the story that Saddam had no WMDs. This of course, led to the shrill cries of "we were lied to!!!!" and that Saddam was contained, therefore this war was unnecessary. I don't think its necessary to once again discuss the actual reasons for the war beyond saying that this war had as much to do with WMDs as World War I had to do with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As with any lie, if it is repeated enough times it eventually becomes accepted as the truth.

Even before the invasion of Iraq, a number of intelligence agencies expressed concern that Saddam's WMD program was being dismantled and shipped out of the country. Now it seems, the IAEA is hopping onto this story(subscription required).

The Saddam Hussein regime dismantled all WMD facilities and either concealed them in Iraq or shipped them to Syria. This is more than the assessment of agencies within the U.S. intelligence community: It is even the assessment of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Last week, the IAEA concluded that Iraq dismantled dozens of nuclear sites that had been operating under the Saddam regime. In a letter to the UN Security Council, the IAEA said satellite imagery revealed significant dismantling and removal activities at 37 Iraqi sites linked to Saddam's clandestine nuclear program since 2003.

Blame Game Shame

2005-04-21T16:30:00.000-04:00

The left continues to find new things that they can blame our president for. As always, Ted Rall is on the front lines of lunacy.

Why do so many cops lie? My pet theory is that, in the same way that Bill
Clinton's sex scandals encouraged promiscuity among impressionable young
people, George W. Bush's contempt for the truth and the law, including granting
permission to torture and jail the innocent, set a tone that emboldens law
enforcement officers to feel that they can get away with anything.

Just wait… next week Ted will have an article blaming George Bush for the bad weather that we are having. He’ll tie it to Kyoto or something.

Bolton Battle

2005-04-20T14:40:00.000-04:00

The disgraceful Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee have managed to browbeat a couple of Republican Senators, forcing the vote on his nomination to be delayed. The Democrats' stated reason for their opposition to Bolton is that he is a "serial abuser" of his subordinates. The evidence of this was quoted by Mark Steyn in an article last Sunday:

So I was interested to hear about the kind of violent Boltonian eruptions that had led Boxer to her diagnosis. Well, here it comes. (If you've got young children present, you might want to take them out of the room.) From the shockingly brutal testimony of Thomas Fingar, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Intelligence Research:

Q: Could you characterize your meeting with Bolton? Was he calm?

Fingar: No, he was angry. He was standing up.

Q: Did he raise his voice to you? Did he point his finger in your face?

Fingar: I don't remember if he pointed. John speaks in such a low voice normally. Was it louder than normal? Probably. I wouldn't characterize it as screaming at me or anything like that. It was more, hands on hips, the body language as I recall it, I knew he was mad.

So Bolton put his hands on his hips, and that makes him a "serial abuser"? The Democrats more and more show themselves for the feckless fools they are. Having lost the election for President, having lost more seats in the Senate and House, they have consigned themselves to throwing pies (literally and figuratively).

Frank Gaffney has the perfect solution for what the President should do in response to these Democratic character assassination: recess appointment, and luckily a Senate recess is coming up in a few days.

Consequently, President Bush should serve notice on the Senate: Complete whatever further investigations now indicated and vote the Bolton nomination in the Foreign Relations Committee and on the floor of the Senate before the upcoming May recess. Or face a recess appointment of Bolton that will enable him to get to work at the United Nations while senators are engaging in constituent services and other important matters outside of Washington.

Perhaps President Bush can make this bitter pill less difficult for committee Democrats to swallow. The president could offer to provide anger-management classes to senators who might be infuriated by their inability further to defame so estimable a public servant as John Bolton and to prevent him from advancing at the U.N. the president's policies - policies that are, in the end, their real reason for their efforts to deny him this post.

I doubt the President will do this. But at this point the only way to fight Democratic intransigence is by descending to their level and declaring all-out war on them.

Zarqawi's Nukes

2005-04-20T11:41:00.000-04:00

Bill Gertz reports today in the Washington Times that US intelligence agencies have received a number of reports that Zarqawi now possesses a nuclear device or is preparing a dirty bomb.

The classified reports have been distributed to U.S. intelligence agencies for several consecutive months and say Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, has stored the nuclear device or dirty bomb in Afghanistan, said officials familiar with the intelligence.

It is still unclear if the source of this information is reliable, especially given the belief that if al Qaeda had a nuclear device they would not hesitate to use it. It seems that if they have actually obtained a nuke or dirty bomb, the most likely place they would use it is in Europe, primarily because of the relative ease of bringing it there as opposed to into the US.

The question then is if a nuke or dirty bomb were detonated in a European city, what would their reaction be? Undoubtedly, a sizeable segment of the European population will blame the US and/or Israel. But would such an attack have any effect on government policies? Would there be some kind of crackdown on Muslims or on immigration? My guess is that while there would probably be some internal changes, European foreign policy towards the Arab world or to the GWOT would remain pretty much the same as it is now - Arabist and anti-American. As to actually retaliating for such an attack, its hard to execute any type of military action when you don't have a military.

Palestinian Education

2005-04-18T15:56:00.000-04:00

Mahmoud Abbas has so far refused to take the crucial step of disarming the terrorists groups operating in Gaza and Hamas. The reason he has given for failing to do this is that this would prompt a civil war in the PA. But, as Micah Halperin points out, there is a much simpler step he could take to show Israel that he is serious about peace - slightly alter the educational curriculum.

The official 10th grade Palestinian school curriculum teaches The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion.

The edition used in the schools is published in Syria. The curriculum never mentions that the Protocols are a forgery of the Russian secret police created by the Czar in order to generate the notorious myth that the Jews control the world.

One must ask: Why teach The Protocols if not to expose the work as a conspiracy theory of Antisemites? In any other context, what is the educational purpose behind teaching The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion to impressionable 10th graders given today's social and political climate?

In order to perpetuate the myth. We all know the answer. The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion has not been removed from the Palestinian school curriculum, the book has not been removed from school library shelves, only, ONLY, in order to perpetuate the myth.

The Palestinians continue to teach The Protocols because they are not yet committed to the reforms. And Mahmoud Abbas, as president, is the man responsible for re-educating or not re-educating his people, for implementing reforms or for letting them linger, ignored if not forgotten.

If the Palestinians refuse to do even this, it should raise serious doubts - for anyone still not harboring them - that the Palestinians really want peace.

Hillary the Politician

2005-04-18T14:40:00.000-04:00

For the past few years, all the talk about Hillary has been about how good of a politician she is. It has been clear to everyone that she is planning to run for President - the New York Senate seat was merely a stepping stone - and that all of her positions have reflected her preparations for the Presidential campaign. Jay Cost thinks that all of her well telegraphed moves actually reflect the fact that she is a horrible politician, not the genius everyone thinks she is.

The answer to this question boils down to obviousness. Hillary's movement is a big deal first and foremost because everybody notices her movement. Mr. Frist and others do not get noticed because, while one can identify their political movements through systematic evaluation of their voting records, their positioning is more subtle. But not Hillary's. There is nothing subtle about her strategic positioning. Not a thing. Everybody talks about Hillary's political calculations not because they are brilliant but because they are obvious, because everything about Hillary screams "political calculation." There is nothing organic to her politics; it all seems artificial.

This is the sign of a bad politician. All politicians do the same things. They all change their views. They all move with the political currents. They are all flexible and pragmatic. What differentiates the good politician from the bad one is that you never notice that the good one is pragmatic. A good politician is as smooth as a well-aged single-malt scotch. Hillary is a bad politician. She is like that bottom-shelf blended garbage that sells for $12 a handle.

He may be right that she is a bad politician, but come the Presidential race all this will be irrelevant. She will be the darling of the press who will continue to convince us that she is brilliant.

Experts

2005-04-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

Victor Hanson criticizes all those bien-pensants - Scowcroft, Brzezinski, Albright, among others - who keep coming up with reasons for why Bush's policy just wont work, and how they keep being wrong.

For the last year, such well-meaning former "wise people" have pretty much assured us that the Bush doctrine will not work and that the Arab world is not ready for Western-style democracy, especially when fostered through Western blood and iron.

But too often we discuss the present risky policy without thought of what preceded it or what might have substituted for it. Have we forgotten that the messy business of democracy was the successor, not the precursor, to a litany of other failed prescriptions? Or that there were never perfect solutions for a place like the Middle East - awash as it is in oil, autocracy, fundamentalism, poverty, and tribalism - only choices between awful and even more awful? Or that September 11 was not a sudden impulse on the part of Mohammed Atta, but the logical culmination of a long simmering pathology? Or that the present loudest critics had plenty of chances to leave something better than the mess that confronted the United States on September 12? Or that at a time of war, it is not very ethical to be sorta for, sorta against, kinda supportive, kinda critical of the mission - all depending on the latest sound bite from Iraq?

The EU and Hamas

2005-04-15T14:07:00.000-04:00

The EU wants to be more involved in the Middle East "peace process". So far, Israel has resisted this involvement. In the past few days, some documents have come to light that may explain why.

In June 2002, Alistair Crooke, then security adviser of Miguel Moratinos, then EU special envoy to the Middle East (and currently foreign minister of Spain), met secretly in Gaza with a Hamas delegation headed by the organizations then-leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

The veil of secrecy was broken, however, when the Israel Defense Forces seized a transcript of the meeting in November 2002 at the compound of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service in Gaza. The transcript has now been made available by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, based near Tel Aviv.

If a top EU official meeting with terrorist leadership is not bad enough, it is instructive to see Crooke's interaction with Yassin and the other terrorists.

Crooke: "We believe that the settlements are illegal. The European position on this matter is not vague. . . . The building of settlements must be brought to a complete halt. As for terrorism, I hate that word. I have spent some time in my life with freedom fighters like in Colombia. We were affected by the events of September 11. People cannot tolerate the sight of babies being killed, and that triggers an emotional response. When America reacted to the September 11 events, the Afghan people should not have paid the price for that."

This struck a responsive chord in Yassin: "Time will tell that . . . it was global Zionism that paralyzed the American security, so that war could be declared on the Islamic world and on Hamas. About 100-120 Zionist-American agents [knew about it] and did not report it. I do not rule out the possibility that they attempted to seduce Hamas [operatives] and other Islamic operatives [to do it]."

Crooke: "What Europe has done " [changing the subject:] We do not consider the political wing of Hamas to be a terrorist organization, and the same complaints were made regarding Fatah.'

For the EU, Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups are "freedom fighters", and all those dead Jewish babies are an inconvenience.

Our Worst President

2005-04-14T14:52:00.000-04:00

Ned Rice compares Jimmy Carter to the recently departed Pope. Needless to say, Jimmy comes up a bit short.

As our commander in chief, Jimmy Carter consistently displayed three basic characteristics: hapless incompetence, (what a charitable person might describe as) a distaste for confrontation and danger, and - paradoxically, given the first two - an almost cartoonishly inflated ego. In short, Jimmy Carter was the deputy sheriff Barney Fife of American presidents: alternatively bumbling, then petrified, then egomaniacal, then back to bumbling, and so on for four long, surreal years. One of history's true buffoons, Jimmy Carter was, at best, a post-Nixon electoral palate cleanser of a president whose sole contribution to America's legacy was readying the way for Reagan by his own ineptitude. Or to put it another way, Carter was the transitional boyfriend we dated briefly just after Nixon broke our heart and just before Reagan swept us off our feet. I do wish someone would tell Carter that: He still thinks he's the love of our life.

John Paul II, on the other hand, as a young seminarian risked death at the hands of the Nazis to complete his studies - then again later in life in defying not only the puppet government of his beloved Poland, but the Soviet monolith itself. The assassin's bullet he survived was nothing compared to what the Soviets might have done to the world if not for brave men like himself. President Jimmy Carter's naive, appeasement-based foreign-policy views only made that job harder and more necessary. Lucky for all of us the former Karol J. Wojtyla was up to the job.

Out of Ideas? Throw Food!

2005-04-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

In the last few weeks, a number of prominent conservatives have endured culinary attacks; Bill Kristol and David Horowitz had pies thrown at them, while Pat Buchanan had salad dressing dumped on him. George Neumayer thinks that this is the natural reaction of liberalism's failed ideology, and will only lead to more violent acts as the left continues to lose power.

Underneath the robes, vestments, and suits they collected during their march through the institutions remained the grubby attire of radicalism only now visible as they return to their posture of primitive protesting -- a wild, speechless style of protest that throws light on liberalism's essential hostility to reason and morality. Why do liberals who regard themselves as apostles of Enlightenment reason resort so quickly to intimidation and primitive exertion of will? Because fundamentally liberalism is based not on reason but on force. It is a willfulness writ large that becomes more vivid as liberals lose power and fail to control a people unpersuaded by claims that find no basis in reality and thus cannot be calmly demonstrated by reason.

Ann Coulter, who was herself the target of one such attack, points out that this somewhat contradicts the liberals' assertions that they are the intellectual one.

More Academic Freedom

2005-04-14T11:48:00.000-04:00

An interesting story of an economics professor's battle with the PC police at the University of Nevada. The comment that started his persecution was:

In March of 2004, during a 75 minute lecture in my Money and Banking class on time preference, interest, and capital, I presented numerous examples designed to illustrate the concept of time preference (or in the terminology of the sociologist Edward Banfield of "present- and future-orientation"). As one brief example, I referred to homosexuals as a group which, because they typically do not have children, tend to have a higher degree of time preference and are more present-oriented. I also noted--as have many other scholars--that J.M Keynes, whose economic theories were the subject of some upcoming lectures, had been a homosexual and that this might be useful to know when considering his short-run economic policy recommendation and his famous dictum "in the long run we are all dead."

This, of course, led to charges of a "hostile learning environment" and consequently a full out harassment of the professor by the university administration.

Killing Terrorists Bad?

2005-04-14T11:03:00.000-04:00

Al-Reuters news service comes up with a ridiculous headline this morning: Israeli Soldiers Kill Militant, Straining Truce. Maybe, if the Palestinians actually lived up to their agreements and arrested terrorists, Israel would have no need to do this themselves.

Columbia Whitewash

2005-04-13T15:51:00.000-04:00

Bruce Thornton writes an excellent critique of Columbia University's handling of the recent controversy over anti-Israel bias in its department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. The foxes were sent in to investigate the disappearance of chickens, and lo and behold didn't find any gone.

Appalling, But Not Surprising

2005-04-13T14:54:00.000-04:00

France has so gotten used to appeasing hostile regimes, that it does not seem to know any other way to operate. Today we learn that Chirac has been pushing the EU-3 to accept Iran's "right" to enrich Uranium. At this point, it is no longer a surprise to be betrayed by France. More and more, it seems that the Iranian nuclear program will only end at the hands of the US or Israel.

Disgusting

2005-04-13T12:18:00.000-04:00

We thought that academia in the US was anti-Israel. In the last week, England's academics have shown themselves to be even worse. Once again, they are proposing a boycott of Israeli academics, unless of course they renounce their government. There is nothing that I can say about this that Melanie Phillips has not said in this excellent article.

The motion has already been compared to McCarthyism. This is too kind. However cruel, illiberal and arbitrary that disturbing period was, a number of those who were hounded subsequently turned out to have actually been communists. By contrast, Israeli academics are to be persecuted for failing to denounce their own country for seeking to defend its citizens against genocidal mass murder. A more appropriate comparison would surely be the forced conversion of the Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, or the show trials under Stalinism. For in true totalitarian tradition, only those in the pariah group who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people in the cause of hatred and lies.

The Jerusalem Post editorial calls this the "antithesis of freethinking".

Bolton

2005-04-13T11:09:00.000-04:00

It seems that the Left's objections to John Bolton's confirmation to the UN are grounded in the allegation that he has "disdain" for the UN. The obvious question then, is why does the Left not share that same disdain for an organization that in the past few years has embodied and propagated ideas that are supposedly antithetical to the beliefs of these "progressives". I don't think it's necessary to once again recount all of the UN scandals. The New York Sun's editorial perfectly addresses the Democrats' objections.

The fact is that the Senate hearings on the nomination of Mr. Bolton to the United Nations have been a classic case of what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Here we are in the midst of a war with Islamist terror, in the midst of a historical scandal over the oil-for-food program, in the midst of a crisis of credibility at the United Nations over the behavior of its peacekeeping forces, in the midst of a reform in the management and fundamental structures of the world body, and in the midst of a debate over whether the United Nations ought even to stay in New York. What do the Democrats do but fall to quibbling over the nominee who once dressed down a bureaucrat.

Abbas's Future

2005-04-12T11:38:00.000-04:00

In today's Jerusalem Post, Barry Rubin looks at the situation of Mahmoud Abbas. His conclusion is similar to one that has been written about previously, namely that for all his nice talk and nice suits, Abbas is simply a nicer looking Arafat. His actions up to now, in relation both to Israel and to the terrorists in his midst, have in no way distinguished him from his predecessor. More importantly, his rule may be very short-lived. In the elections coming up in July Hamas is expected to triumph fairly handily over Fatah and Abbas. What the US's reaction to this would be is unclear. It would be difficult to reconcile negotiating with the PA headed by a group on the US terrorist list with the Bush Doctrine.

At the same time, IDF intelligence is warning that the Palestinians plan to return to the war that they have paused, and with greater ferocity. Throughout this hudna, all the terror groups have been re-equipping and recruiting. There are even reports that they have managed to smuggle Strella surface-to-air missiles into Gaza. All of this is happening because Abbas refuses to confront and dismantle these terror groups. Until he does that, any negotiations with him will lead nowhere.

Iran Continues Bubbling

2005-04-08T18:08:00.000-04:00

Another report from Iran of demonstrations in a number of cities.

Street demonstrations calling for democratic reform are spreading in cities throughout western Iran.

The Iranian opposition has reported clashes between Kurdish pro-democracy forces and authorities in western Iran. The opposition said battles took place in Baneh, Mahabad, Marivan, Piranshahr and Sanandaj.

Interestingly, opposition sources are claiming that these demonstrations were inspired by elections in Iraq.

Censorship

2005-04-08T15:44:00.000-04:00

A few years back, Boston Harbor was so polluted that if one took a bucket of water out of there, dumping it back into the harbor would be in violation of anti-pollution laws. Now it seems a similar thinking is being applied to the Koran.

If Kafka met Monty Python, and George Orwell edited their collaboration, they might have come up with something like the following real-life exchange.

It took place in an Australian court where two Christian pastors were found guilty of "religious vilification" of Muslims by lecturing to their flock on Islam. At one point during the trial, defendant Daniel Scot began to read Koranic verses in his own defense. The Pakistani-born pastor hoped to prove to the judge that his discussion of the inferior status of women under Islam, for example, had a specific textual basis in the Koran. As he began to read, a lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria, the plaintiff in the case, objected. Reading these verses aloud, she said, would in itself be vilification. Poor, ultimately convicted, Mr. Scot put it best: "How can it be vilifying to Muslims when I am just reading from the Koran?"

CAIR and various other Muslim groups haven't yet had the Koran banned, but they have forced NRO and others to stop selling other books critical of Islam.

Yad Vashem

2005-04-08T13:49:00.000-04:00

In today's New Republic, Martin Peretz writes a very powerful article about the opening of the new Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. The last paragraph, which is about Kofi Annan's participation in the opening ceremonies is truly scathing.

There was one discordant note in the opening ceremonies, and it was the participation of Kofi Annan. He had taken time out on his way to Jerusalem to pay homage at the Ramallah grave of Yasir Arafat, a certified legatee of the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. How diplomatic! The secretary-general's very presence evoked the offending memory of his predecessors: U Thant, who removed U.N. troops from the Sinai--a decade-old barrier to war between Israel and Egypt--on the command of Gamal Abdel Nasser, which unleashed the Six Day War; and, most grotesquely, Kurt Waldheim, whose personal role in the Final Solution to "the Jewish problem" was suppressed by the great powers and the U.N. bureaucracy. And what were Annan's qualifications for this ceremony? Well, he is an expert on genocide, an expert of a certain sort. In his diplomatic practice of the 1990s, in various U.N. posts, he became a genocide-denier, since he refused to act against the extermination wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. If the history of our time is written honestly, it will record that Annan stood passively by as the new exterminators went to work. Shame will be his memorial, his everlasting name.

Middle East Negotiations

2005-04-08T12:45:00.000-04:00

The land-for-peace negotiations formula has proven to be an unmitigated disaster - with Israel giving up tangible land for intangible promises of peace that have been all too easily broken. Today, Hizbullah has taken this formula one step further. Responding to the UN and US demand to disarm, Hizbullah has proposed that if Israel gives the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon - despite the fact that even the UN has ruled that this territory belonged to Syria - then they might be prepared to discuss disarming. I have very little doubt that the UN and Europe will seize this new formula and force Israel to withdraw from Shebaa Farms so that Hizbullah can move in there. I also have very little doubt that once Israel is forced to withdraw, Hizbullah will come up with another demand, and then another, and then another. Appeasement always works in the same way.

Arab Development

2005-04-08T12:18:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, the UN released the latest Arab Human Development Report. As would be expected, these Arab intellectuals placed a large measure of blame for the lack of freedom and democracy in the Arab world on Israel and the United States, showing that the idea of actually looking inward and analyzing their problems has not yet fully taken hold. The US and Israel dismissed this analysis as "misguided". Yet, as Caroline Glick shows, despite the dismissal of these Arab claims, the policies of the US and Israel vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict are based on very similar logic.

The view among American policymakers and Israeli Foreign Ministry types, both egged on by their ideological bedfellows in Europe and the international Left is based on two presumptions. The first is that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the cause of the Arab conflict with Israel. The second is that the Palestinians are weak and the Israelis are strong and that the way to solve the conflict is to strengthen the Palestinians and weaken Israel.

The second presumption is what leads both Israeli and American foreign policy elites to advocate Israeli surrender of land and rights to the Palestinians and to support Palestinian acquisition of arms, money and sovereignty.

The first presumption is what leads both Israel and the US to ignore the direct dependence of the Palestinian conflict with Israel on outside support by Arab League member states led by Egypt. Egypt, like the rest of the Arab world has never accepted Israel's inherent right to exist as a Jewish state in the Levant. Yet over the years, the rhetorical focus shifted from overt calls for Israel's destruction through war to overt calls for Israel's destruction through the establishment of a Palestinian state and unlimited immigration of millions of foreign born Arabs to Israel. These calls are obfuscated to a degree by a public fixation on the perceived weakness and actual misery of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza – both of which are blamed on Israel.

Daniel Pipes and others have long asserted that defining the Arab-Israeli conflict as an issue of Palestinians and a Palestinian state is wrong. The idea that a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians will lead to Arab rapprochement with Israel, is exactly backwards. The Arab-Israeli conflict can only end once Arab states fully accept Israel as a Jewish state in the Middle East. And for this to happen there will need to be a complete political and societal change in the Arab world. When Arab tyrants are no longer around to direct the frustration of their own people onto Israel and the United States, and instead to look critically at their own societies and come up with solutions to their own problems, only then will peace be possible in the Middle East. President Bush has embraced this concept and his policies of spreading democracy reflect that. The Arab world is tentatively wading into this democratic stream. Unfortunately, Europe's continued reliance on the policies of the past are giving Arab tyrants hope that they can outlast Bush and avoid the long necessary reforms.

The Hudna Goes On

2005-04-07T14:48:00.000-04:00

The Palestinian "cease-fire" continues.

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants hit a cemetery in the Negev town of Sderot on Thursday evening, causing no damage and no injuries.

According to Israel Radio, the missile was probably fired from the Beit Hanun area of the northern Gaza Strip.

This seems to be a small indication of what is to come. According to this report, the IDF is preparing itself for a renewal and increase of the Oslo War in the fall of this year. As predicted, the Palestinians have spent their "cease-fire" time re-arming and preparing themselves for more attacks.

Already, a huge amount of weapons has been smuggled from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip, the sources said. They estimated that more than 3,000 assault rifles, 400 pistols and 400,000 rounds of ammunition were brought into the Gaza Strip between July 2004 and February 2005. They said 600 kilograms of explosives have also been delivered to Palestinian insurgents.

Palestinian insurgency groups have also been amassing rockets and missiles, the sources said. They said the groups, particularly Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have acquired more than 180 anti-tank rocket launchers and five anti-aircraft missiles.

It is clear that Abbas has no control over the PA, with infighting spreading to his own party, and that the Palestinian elections, as well as the upcoming "dis-engagement" will not bring Israel one step closer to peace. Until the terrorists are completely wiped out, and the Palestinians fully realize that war will only bring them more and more misery, peace will be impossible. No agreements, no "cease-fires", no Road Maps will mean anything until Israel fully defeats the Palestinians.

France's Problem

2005-04-06T22:21:00.000-04:00

Just about a month ago Paris experienced a race riot. I have not seen this reported in any major news outlets, yet what undeniably occurred should be a serious wake-up call to France. But judging from the way it has been swept under the rug, not just in the US press, but also in France, seems to show that France has no intention of confronting the most serious problem the country has faced since being overrun by the Nazis.

Olivier Guitta in the Weekly Standard describes what happened.

On March 8, tens of thousands of high school students marched through central Paris to protest education reforms announced by the government. Repeatedly, peaceful demonstrators were attacked by bands of black and Arab youths--about 1,000 in all, according to police estimates. The eyewitness accounts of victims, teachers, and most interestingly the attackers themselves gathered by the left-wing daily Le Monde confirm the motivation: racism.

Some of the attackers openly expressed their hatred of "little French people." One 18-year-old named Heikel, a dual citizen of France and Tunisia, was proud of his actions. He explained that he had joined in just to "beat people up," especially "little Frenchmen who look like victims." He added with a satisfied smile that he had "a pleasant memory" of repeatedly kicking a student, already defenseless on the ground.

Another attacker explained the violence by saying that "little whites" don't know how to fight and "are afraid because they are cowards." Rachid, an Arab attacker, added that even an Arab can be considered a "little white" if he "has a French mindset." The general sentiment was a desire to "take revenge on whites."

So if this really happened as described, why is no one talking about it? Most left wing organizations attributed these attacks to economics - an expression of a class struggle. Interestingly, the same people that downplayed and made excuses for anti-Semitic attacks are the same ones now trying to minimize the significance of these events. More and more it should be strikingly obvious to all but the willfully blind that France has a serious problem with its immigrant population - most of whom are Arab or North African, Muslim, unassimilated and oftentimes unassimilable. As the writer points out, these ethnic tensions are most evident in schools. In a study done for the inspector general of education, many of these issues are clear.

Obin discusses the attitudes of Muslim students, some as young as first graders. He reports, for instance, that Muslim students, asked their nationality, answer, "Muslim." When they are told that this is not a nationality and they are French, some insist that they can't be French since they are Muslim. This should come as no surprise. The presidential commission that examined the issue of secularism in 2003 reported that "extremist groups are working to test the Republic's strength and push some young people to reject France and her values."

Reading this after reading the recent interview with Bat Ye'or should be a wake-up call to everyone in the West that if something is not done, and soon, Europe will be lost.

Academic Diversity

2005-04-06T13:13:00.000-04:00

It is pretty much an accepted fact at this point that university faculties are far to the left of the general population and even of their own students. This is one European professor's experience of the climate at an elite US liberal arts college.

In fact, their uncritically positive image of Europe astonished me so much that I began trying to convince them that they were wrong. (In the name of free speech and an educated academic conversation things that you would expect to find on a college campus.) This turned out to be a bad idea: my colleagues slowly but steadily changed their attitude toward me. I refused to acknowledge that the politics in Europe was as superior as European wine, cars or cuisine. (In fact, I prefer California wine, I drive a Chevrolet and I love pumpkin pie!)

The most feverishly liberal among my colleagues now began looking at me as a traitor. One told me to stop expressing my political views when other faculty was around. Why? Because, he said, I do not want to have to defend why we have a conservative here at our department.

As much as this shocked me, I began talking to a close group of friends about it. I had realized that the overwhelming majority of my colleagues were radically liberal, effectively socialist. I had also realized that the overwhelming majority among them, in turn, would not tolerate dissenting political views on campus.

Jonah Goldberg looks at the inane arguments in Paul Krugman's latest column for why there aren't many Republican academics. The attitude on campus is best exemplified by this quote

Heres a better example than anything Krugman musters. And I cite it simply because it was something I read just yesterday. These things happen every day. The historian John Moser, who has just written a fascinating biography of J. T. Flynn, recently went to the Organization of American Historians conference. While there he happened to mention to a colleague that he voted for Bush. She responded, "And yet you write books.

Poor Jimmy

2005-04-06T11:20:00.000-04:00

President Bush is heading to Rome today for the funeral of the Pope, with an official delegation that includes Presidents Clinton and Bush (pere). One President noticeably not included in this delegation is Jimmy Carter. It seems that despite his entreaties, President Bush refused to invite him. After all of Carter's criticisms of the President - something not traditionally done by ex-presidents, especially abroad - its not that surprising that Bush wants nothing to do with him. The Prowler has the story.

Eurabia

2005-04-05T14:42:00.000-04:00

A very interesting interview with Bat Ye'or from the American Thinker. She explains better than anyone why it is that Europe is so anti-American and anti-Israel. And not surprisingly, it all started with France.

Thanks, Ward

2005-04-04T13:42:00.000-04:00

This month's New Criterion thanks Ward Churchill for bringing the issue of "academic freedom" and "free speech" to the forefront. They make an important distinction between the two, and speculate that as more people note that distinction, there will be a backlash against the leftist radicalism currently present in the universities.

Moral Authority

2005-04-01T12:07:00.000-05:00

From today's Washington Times:

The world's most repressive countries hold more than a quarter of the seats in the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission and their presence has subverted the panel's mandate, a respected watchdog group reported yesterday.

In its annual report on the world's biggest human-rights abusers, Freedom House lists 18 countries as the "worst of the worst regimes" and notes that six of them -- China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe -- are members of the commission.

This is, of course, the organization that claims moral authority and regularly issues condemnations of Israel's human rights record. UN delenda est.

Palestinian Civil War

2005-03-31T14:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday members of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade fired shots at the Muqata, the Palestinian seat of government, while Abbas was inside. The al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is actually a part of Abbas's Fatah faction which made this attack somewhat strange. Now it seems that this is just a continuation of the power struggles not just within the Palestinian Authority as a whole, but also within Fatah. A few of the shooters were terrorists who had been holed up in the Muqata for the past 4 1/2 years because they were on Israel's wanted list and were being protected by Arafat and then Abbas. It seems that after this latest incident, they have lost their protection.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday expelled a group of militants from his West Bank headquarters who had been given refuge by Yasser Arafat, a spokesman for the gunmen said.

Abbas ordered the 26 out after half a dozen of the gunmen -- from his ruling Fatah faction -- fired at his Muqata compound in Ramallah overnight while he was inside and then rampaged through the city, damaging shops. No casualties were reported.

One might think that this might spur the Palestinian Authority to actually confront these terrorists, but beyond their declarations they will once again do nothing.

Palestinian officials on Thursday backed away from a declaration that they would go after gunmen who shot up Mahmoud Abbas' office building and rampaged through Ramallah, underlining the difficulties authorities face in restoring order in the chaotic West Bank.

Abbas, who was in the building but was not hurt in the gunfire late Wednesday, ordered a crackdown, and security officials said the renegades had "crossed a red line" by attacking the seat of government. But in the light of day, the officials adopted a conciliatory line, and one admitted they feared coming under armed attack themselves.

The Politics of Churlishness

2005-03-31T14:03:00.000-05:00

That is the title of Martin Peretz's excellent article in The New Republic.

If George W. Bush were to discover a cure for cancer, his critics would denounce him for having done it unilaterally, without adequate consultation, with a crude disregard for the sensibilities of others. He pursued his goal obstinately, they would say, without filtering his thoughts through the medical research establishment. And he didn't share his research with competing labs and thus caused resentment among other scientists who didn't have the resources or the bold - perhaps even somewhat reckless -instincts to pursue the task as he did. And he completely ignored the World Health Organization, showing his contempt for international institutions. Anyway, a cure for cancer is all fine and nice, but what about aids?

I have written before about the Left continually "moving the goalposts" on Iraq and the GWOT, primarily because they can not bring themselves to admit that Bush could have been right about anything. And by doing so they have marginalized themselves, and given the impression that they would rather have the US fail in its enterprise in the Middle East than for Bush to be proven right.

One does not have to admire a lot about George W. Bush to admire what he has so far wrought. One need only be a thoughtful American with an interest in proliferating liberalism around the world. And, if liberals are unwilling to proliferate liberalism, then conservatives will. Rarely has there been a sweeter irony.

Hanson Interview

2005-03-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

Victor Hanson was recently interviewed by the editor of al-Watan, a Saudi Arabian daily newspaper. Both the questions of the Saudi editor as well as Hanson's answers are pretty interesting. i wonder how much of the interview actually made it into al-Watan.

Head in the Sand

2005-03-31T10:51:00.000-05:00

A new poll by CNN released yesterday shows that Europe continues to engage in wishful thinking and delusion.

Almost six out of 10 adults in Britain, France and Germany say that Iran does not pose a nuclear threat to Europe, according to the findings of a new CNN/TIME poll.

This seems to be the triumph of hope over experience and it is followed today by a release from the NCRI - National Council of Resistance of Iran - that Iran has sought to acquire nuclear warheads. This dissident group has been repeatedly correct about Iran's nuclear program, and it is therefore very worrying if they are correct once again about this aspect of Iran's nuclear pursuits. They did not say whether Iran had actually managed to procure these warheads, so there is clearly the possibility that Iran already has as many as three nuclear warheads. Coupled with the revelation last week of Iran's acquisition of a dozen nuclear capable cruise missiles from Ukraine, and with Iran's continuing ballistic missile program, one has to ask "what are the Europeans thinking?".

It seems to me that in part, this is a reaction to the Bush Administration's push on Iran. The Europeans seem to be saying that whatever Bush thinks, they want to be on the opposite side. It also probably has to do with the fact that even if Iran is a real nuclear threat to Europe, there is very little they can do about it. Diplomatically they have achieved nothing over the past few years except give Iran more time. And militarily they are completely impotent. Being unable to do anything about Iran, they seem to have decided to close their eyes and ignore it. Of course, putting your head in the sand inevitably exposes your other end.

The funniest post I will ever make… ever!!!!

2005-03-30T14:22:00.000-05:00

Ok… so if you do the following and you don’t laugh out loud, then I’m sorry… you need to hang out with grandma and check back in when you have your sense of humor recalibrated.

Go to the following site… "asksnoop"

Then type in the URL for your favorite web site (the Nudnik File is mine as a for instance). I am not responsible for this site, but am proud to pass on the yuks.