One of Ours

The war in Iraq may end up going well or catastrophically, but either way, this war has always been central to the broader war on terror. That is because terror has never been a matter of a few hundred crazies who could be rounded up by the police and special forces. Terror grows out of something larger — an enormous wave of political extremism...

...These movements draw on four tenets: a belief in a paranoid conspiracy theory, according to which cosmically evil Jews, Masons, Crusaders and Westerners are plotting to annihilate Islam or subjugate the Arab people; a belief in the need to wage apocalyptic war against the cosmic conspiracy; an expectation that, post-apocalypse, the Islamic caliphate of ancient times will re-emerge as a utopian new society; and a belief that, meanwhile, death is good, and should be loved and revered...

...The police and special forces were never going to be able to stamp out the Qaeda cells so long as millions of people around the world accepted the paranoid and apocalyptic views and revered suicide terror. The only long-term hope for tamping down the terrorist impulse was to turn America's traditional policies upside down, and come out for once in favor of the liberal democrats of the Muslim world. This would mean promoting a counter-wave of liberal and rational ideas to combat the allure of paranoia and apocalypse...

...astonishing progress was made in tracking down weapons programs and trafficking in Libya, Iran, Dubai and Pakistan. Some people will go on insisting that sudden progress on these matters has nothing to do with Iraq, and the dominoes tumbled simultaneously by sheer coincidence...

...It is tempting to conclude that, all in all, we would have been better off staying out of Iraq altogether — and maybe this will turn out to be the case.

But everyone who feels drawn to that conclusion had better acknowledge its full meaning: the unavoidable implication that we would be better off today with Saddam Hussein in power; better off with economic sanctions still strangling the Iraqi people; better off with American army bases still occupying Saudi soil (Osama bin Laden's original grievance against us); and better off without the progress on weapons proliferation in the Muslim world...

...it was Senator John Kerry who made a public appeal to Mr. Zapatero to keep troops in Iraq.

I wish the Democrats would follow Mr. Kerry's example and take it a step further by putting together a small contingent of Democrats with international reputations, a kind of shadow government — not to undermine American policy but to achieve what Mr. Bush seems unable to do. The Democrats ought to explain the dangers of modern totalitarianism and the goals of the war. They ought to make the call for patience and sacrifice that Mr. Bush has steadfastly avoided. And the Democratic contingent ought to go around the world making that case.

The Democrats ought to thank and congratulate the countries that have sent troops, and ought to remind the economically powerful Switzerlands of this world that they, too, have responsibilities. The Democrats ought to assure everyone that support for a successful outcome in Iraq does not have to mean support for George W. Bush. And how should the Democrats make these several arguments? They should speak about something more than the United Nations and stability in Iraq. They should talk about fascism. About death cults. About the experiences of the 20th century. About the need for democratic solidarity.

This is not a project for after the election — this is a project for right now. America needs allies. Today, and not just tomorrow. And America needs leaders. If the Bush administration cannot rally support around the world, let other people give it a try.

I was thinking about this, and the Kurds meet all of the qualifications to get a state. They are a cultural and national group with strong ties to the land on which they live. They've been persecuted mercilessly for a long time (much worse then the Palestinians, FWIW), and even better, they have quietly gone about building the institutions of statehood and a civil society pretty much on their own.

So, if you want to talk about ethnic groups that deserve a state of their own, the Kurds ought to be at the top of anyone's list.

Oh, one other thing. The Kurds have never blown up any busses full of civilians, never desecrated religious shrines, never mutilated 'enemy' corpses, never machine-gunned elementary schools, never sent teenagers in bomb vests to kill other teenagers at restaurants and coffee shops, and as far as I know, they have never tried to make a bomb filled with rat poison or HIV+ blood.

Perhaps the Kurds should do all of those things. Then they would be rewarded with diplomatic recognition, become the toast of the entire Arab world, and be fawned over by university professors, guilt-ridden Westerners, and European diplomats. People would say that there can be no peace in the Middle East until the Kurds get a state, and Kurdish leaders would be seen as heroes, even as they massacre 'enemy' civilians by the hundreds ever year.

That's the problem with the Kurds. They spend their energy and talents on things like economic development, education, and infrastructure. They just go ahead living their lives, farming, raising their kids, passing along their culture to new generations. If they just taught their kids to hate, and turned their whole society into a psychotic death cult, well, a state would practically be thrown at them.

At this date, I don't see any particular advantage in bowing to those who want to continue to control the Kurdish population. In particular, if Iraq cannot form a government, then the U.S. should support independance for Kurdistan. Even in this worse case scenario, I am certain that the Kurds would be quite happy to allow the U.S. to use aribases and military facilities in the Kurdish area.


In any case, both peoples deserve a state.

...You cannot overstate the importance of roads to the security and rebuilding mission in Iraq. Simply put, the roads are the arteries of Iraq, and the nation will die without them. They allow food, water, commerce, labor, and security forces to flow around the country. They also provide insurgents with a chokepoint to use to target and prevent the flow of these things. Thus, the fight over Iraq's roads is a fight for whether the U.S. can deliver food, water, medical care, security and reconstruction to the people of Iraq. The roads of Iraq have been the insurgents' battleground of choice for the past year, because this terrain supports their tactics of choice: hit-and-run ambushes and command-detonated improvised explosive devices ("IEDs"). For the foreseeable future, it's certain that these roads will continue to serve as key terrain for the battle in Iraq.

...As an operational planner in 4ID, we wargamed these kinds of scenarios in planning and command exercises quite a bit. The conventional answer is to allocate forces to route security -- MPs or infantry or scouts -- who can patrol routes constantly to detect and interdict insurgent ambushes before they're set. Another option is to conduct counter-reconnaissance patrols of key terrain which observes and controls the roads -- high ground on either side of the road, for example. However, as simple as these measures are, they require forces to be pulled from some other mission, and that was always the difficult inherent in these solutions.

It's true that there are 125,000+ U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. It's also true that if you add up all of the mission requirements, force-protection requirements, support requirements and other requirements, you quickly find these troops depleted. Especially when you consider that only a fraction of these are actual "trigger pullers" who can effectively do a mission like route security. If memory serves right, our planning factor was that it takes one MP company to patrol 90km of road in a semi-permissive corps rear area. Given the threat in Iraq, I might reduce that territory slightly or boost the force slightly. Gen. Abizaid has requested two additional brigade combat teams with which to secure his routes and conduct other counter-insurgency missions. The 1st Armored Division and 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment have been held in-country for another few months. 2ACR is the ideal force for this kind of mission; its light cav MTOE and training are extremely well-suited to route reconnaissance and security. Before Iraq, that was probably a METL task for this unit. I think it's likely that we will use this unit and others to conduct running patrols of key routes in Iraq in order to get them all up to "amber" or "green" status.

Large amounts of nuclear-related equipment, some of it contaminated, and a small number of missile engines have been smuggled out of Iraq for recycling in European scrap yards, according to the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog and other U.N. diplomats.

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council in a letter that U.N. satellite photos have detected “the extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings” from sites that had been subject to U.N. monitoring before the U.S.-led war against Iraq...

...Evidence of the illicit import of nuclear-related material surfaced in January after a small quantity of “yellowcake” uranium oxide was discovered in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam’s harbor. The company that purchased the shipment, Jewometaal, detected radioactive material in the container and informed the Dutch government, according to the Associated Press. A spokesman for the company told the news agency that a Jordanian scrap dealer who sent the shipment believed the yellowcake came from Iraq...

...Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said a video recording of the killing showed that Quattrocchi was hooded when his kidnappers put a gun to his head.
"When the murderers were pointing a pistol at him, this man tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'Now I'm going to show you how an Italian dies'. And they killed him," Frattini said.

"He died a hero," he added...

..."It wouldn't just be vile, it would also damage us if we pulled out (of Iraq) with the job half done. We cannot give in," Defence Minister Antonio Martino told reporters.

Mainstream opposition leaders, many of them deeply critical of Berlusconi's unwavering support for U.S. President George W. Bush during the Iraq conflict, also ruled out negotiations.

"The vile blackmail by a band of criminal kidnappers must not be given the dignity of a political response. Italy is and must remain unified and together," said Francesco Rutelli, leader of a centre-left opposition group, the Daisy party...

...I've been channel flipping every night to catch some of what's happening there. One night, I saw a Marine platoon withdraw from positions under fire (CLARIFICATION: They were ordered to leave certain areas as part of the truce/ceasefire and were being fired upon their departure). They performed the most perfect, beautifully executed bounding overwatch that I have ever seen. That film should be shown at the academies. Tonight, on Fox, I saw Marines setting up positions, taking fire, getting ready for the cease fire to end.

Of course, the Marines are the only ones ceasing anything right now. But not for long...

In Fallujah, Marines and insurgents were fortifying their positions in preparation for more fighting.

In abandoned homes a few blocks into the city, Marines punched bricks out of walls to make holes through which to fire, and knocked down walls between rooftop terraces to allow movement from house to house without descending to the street. They spread shards of glass across doorsteps to hear the boot of an approaching insurgent.

Insurgents were also organizing. Gunmen were believed to be digging tunnels under the houses they hold to allow them to move without being targeted by Marine snipers, Marines said.

A 4-day-old truce was crumbling amid nightly battles in which gunmen in larger groups have been attacking U.S. troops with increasing sophistication. Wednesday night the fighting began again, with AC-130 gunships over the city battering targets below.

The top Marine commander in the Fallujah area suggested time for negotiations was running out before U.S. forces call off their halt in offensive operations.

"I don't forecast that this stalemate will go on for long," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "It's hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us."

Tuesday night, insurgents launched near simultaneous attacks on several positions of a company of Marines controlling a few blocks in the city's northeast. In one attack, the gunmen sent up flares to light up the American position, then unleashed heavy, continuous gunfire, Marines said.

In a five-hour battle the same night, one of two armored vehicles sent to resupply a front-line Marine position got lost during an ambush and ended up nearly half a mile inside the southern part of city.

The vehicle, with 20 Marines inside, came under an even larger ambush. At least 100 gunmen opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades, hitting it at least 10 times, knocking out its communications and its engine and paralyzing it.

"They've been preparing for this the whole time. ... We definitely stumbled into the wasp nest," said Captain Jason Smith, who was at the position meant to be resupplied.

The Marines in the armored vehicle fled into a nearby building, where they waited to be rescued. They threw back grenades that insurgents tossed over the wall and listened to gunmen whisper outside.

A rescue force, backed by four tanks, wandered the streets in search of the beleaguered vehicle, finding it by following black smoke. "We were firing in a 360-degree radius," said Lt. Joshua Glover, part of the team that reached the vehicle. While F-15 warplanes strafed the area for cover, the stricken armored vehicle was hooked to a tank and dragged away.

Alhurra is a very good channel and presents neutral news, in addition to the interesting programs and reports.. but, I think it needs more correspondents, I enjoy watching the news on Alhurra channel, but during the last events in Iraq it wasn’t so active especially in the first days of these events, I was in Basra and I have nothing but the TV! So I followed nearly all the channels I have...they were very busy and preoccupied in how to distribute their poisons and take advantage of that ‘great’ chance for them to kindle the situation and play with Iraqis’ emotions…

While Alhurra was showing news so briefly.. you know.. when Iraqis heard such events were taking place they were certainly searching all the channels to find news about what was happening and then they were always forced to fall in those channels’ dragnets….
It’s so important for Alhurra to work harder and try to attract more and more people, their analysis is very good, but they must increase from their news and interviews.. this time is important for this channel, the beginning is so important.
Also their [web] site should be improved to compete with others..