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Joe Lieberman: America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists

"I believe we are fighting to create a tolerant and accountable democracy which will bring peace and justice to a country whose people have been denied both for so long.  Ranged against us is a ruthless foe, who knows he must break us in Iraq if he is to succeed.  If he does succeed, Iraq will plunge into a new era darkened by oppression and persecution.  It will be internally riven and fought for by its neighbours.  But more than that: a terrorist victory will feed the monster of Islamic extremism worldwide - opening every city from New York to Berlin and from London to Paris to a rejuvenated terrorist onslaught.  The terrorists don’t want to win in Iraq in order to begin a happy retirement.  They want to win in Iraq as a stepping stone to America and other free nations around the globe."

Those words come from a recent speech by Iain Duncan Smith.   Few people have a keener understanding of the terrorism that will be visited on neighbouring countries by a failed Iraq than the Jews.  Israel would be a number one target for a failed Iraq - just as Saddam paid money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Senator Joe Lieberman (David Davis lookalike?) is one of the few American Democrats that understands what is at stake in Iraq - perhaps because he is Jewish.  This is what he wrote in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal:

"It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority."

The Senator fears that the war is being lost in Washington as it is bearing fruit in Iraq:

"While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory."

Mort Kondracke: Bush's Iraq Policy, Flawed As It Is, May Still Succeed

Today's news that Iraq's draft constitution has passed is further proof that Iraq's democratic strides forward are greater than the backward security stumbles.  That's certainly the view of two commentators on RealClearPolitics.com.

The first - Mort Kondracke - acknowledges the flaws in Bush's Iraq policy:

"The immediate post-war administration of Iraq was botched. We had too few troops. We allowed massive looting and destruction of key infrastructure. We mistakenly disbanded the Iraq army. We allowed Hussein's henchmen to constitute a vicious insurgency, equipped with vast quantities of unsecured munitions." 

The second - Quin Hillyer - complements that list by noting infighting within the adminstration and the failure to secure Iraq's borders with Iran and Syria.  Nonetheless, when it comes to the strategic issues, Mr Hiller believes that the President's Iraq policy keeps passing the tests that are put up by its critics:

"Bush was incompetent because we couldn't capture Saddam -- until we did.

Bush "lied" about Saddam having harbored terrorists -- even though we found a whole terrorist training camp called Salman Pak, and even though the main terrorist about whom Colin Powell warned (Abu Masab al-Zarqawi) did indeed turn out to be there in Iraq, intent on beheadings and a jihad that continues to this day.

The critics said the parliamentary elections last January would be a mess -- until they went off without a hitch.

Then they said the temporary parliament would never be able to produce a constitution -- until it did."

Here are some of the most positive achievements of the Iraq policy:

• Saddam Hussein - one the world's most dangerous dictators - is on trial
• Through the example of Iraq, Libya disclosed and gave up his nuclear weapons program
• Iraq, the cradle of civilisation, is becoming a constitutional democracy
• The Bush Doctrine is inspiring democratic reforms in "Ukraine, formerly Soviet Georgia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq and even in some ways in Saudi Arabia and Egypt."

The security situation is also improving, according to Kondracke: 

• "The formerly impassable highway from Baghdad International Airport into town is now well-guarded and clogged with traffic."
• "Another reason for optimism is that Iraqi security forces are increasingly capable of engaging in combat. Democrats loudly seized upon the fact that top U.S. commanders testified that only one Iraqi battalion is capable of independent fighting. But Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, formerly in charge of training Iraqis, clarified the situation by saying that while only one battalion can operate completely without U.S. support, 36 can "take the lead" in combat with U.S. assistance and 40 more can fight alongside American forces."
• "Not only has civil war not broken out, but al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has urged Zarqawi to stop slaughtering Shiites, at least for now, because it gives jihad a bad name around the world."  Michael Barone had already noted that souring effect of the terrorist insurgency on Muslim opinion worldwide.

And the final piece of good news in the war on terror is that the two run-off candidates for the Tory leadership both supported and support the Iraq campaign.  One-by-one the various anti-war candidates (Alan Duncan, Andrew Lansley, Malcolm Rifkind and, finally, Ken Clarke) fell by the wayside.  Good news!

Jalal Talabani: We Need American Troops

The images from British-protected southern Iraq in the last couple of days have provoked another wave of anti-war feeling.  The events of Monday are certainly a wake-up call to those "in charge" of Basra's security who have slept whilst rogue elements have infiltrated the city's police.  The extent of infiltration is unknown but it has been long discussed and was highlighted on this page some months ago.  Monday's events appear, of course, to be a furious response from the city's militia men to belated action against two of their Iran-sponsored leaders.  We must hope that that furious response does not deter the necessary tougher line from the British forces and their Iraqi allies.

Looking beyond Basra, the President of Iraq, Jalal Talibani, reminds us all of the big issues at stake in Iraq in an article for today's Wall Street Journal.  President Talibani thanks and singles out the Anglosphere nations of America, Britain and Australia for their contribution of troops to his country's "inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism".  He highlights progress that continues to be made - including the fact that Iraqis are now fully in charge of security in the holy city of Najaf.

It is often said by the BBC that the Iraq war has been a recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda.  Talibani notes that there is another and bigger side to that particular analysis:

"Every terrorist attack on Iraqi forces leads to a surge in military recruitment--the opposite of the appeasers' myth that resisting terrorism causes more terrorism."

He makes it absolutely clear that Iraq's security depends upon the continued commitment of coalition troops:

"While the problem of some of our neighbors supporting terrorism is bad enough, we can only imagine what our neighbors might have done if American troops had not been present. Most likely, Iraq would have been transformed into a regional battlefield with disastrous consequences for Middle Eastern and global security.  Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world. With its allies, the United States has provided Iraqis with an unprecedented opportunity. Iraqis have responded by enthusiastically embracing democracy and volunteering to fight for their country. By giving us the tools, your troops help us to defend Iraqi democracy and to finish the job of uprooting Baathist fascism."

Christopher Hitchens: The war hasn't kept us from fighting the flood

A brilliant, brilliant article by Christopher Hitchens on Slate.com.

He demolishes one myth that has grown up since Katrina hit America's Gulf Coast and exposes one shameful betrayal of the world's poor by the left.  The myth (relentlessly propagated by the BBC) is that Iraq denied New Orleans enough troops.  The betrayal of the world's poor is that Iraq would have been worth abandoning if New Orleans had been denied troops.

EXPOSING THE MYTH

"Lt. Gen. Steve Blum was able to tell Donald Rumsfeld early last week that he could put 40,000 troops into the area at once and double that figure if he was asked to. Huge naval vessels like the USS Iwo Jima and Bataan, which can desalinize and pump thousands of gallons of fresh water, and which have thousands of potential hospital beds, were free and on call in the vicinity, as were numberless helicopters. The 82^nd Airborne and the First Air Cavalry, now deployed, have acquired huge experience in civil affairs, emergency repair, water provision, and other necessary skills—in guess which recent theater of operations. National Guardsmen from several dozen states, many of them also toughened by hard conditions in Iraq, were in position on time. The whereabouts of some Louisiana Guard units is immaterial, because they would have needed massive augmentation in any case. And only 100 National Guardsmen from Louisiana failed to show up for work, which is remarkable in the circumstances and contrasts vividly with the disgraceful performance of the New Orleans Police Department. But the president is not permitted by the Constitution to use the military for law enforcement, or not without the permission of the governor of the state, and the fuss about this is at least partly a cover for a feeble governor and a flaky mayor, who seek to displace the blame."

EXPOSING THE BETRAYAL

"A favorite trope among those who try to politicize the justified outrage over New Orleans is the plight of the slum-dwellers and the dark-skinned, and quite right, too. But it's highly objectionable to be told, by those who go on in this way, that we should instantly dump the Iraqis and Kurds who are fighting for their lives in a slum that could become another slaughterhouse and plague-spot. There is something degrading and suspect here—why lavish any of our care and resources on the wogs? Does this suggestion do anything to diminish xenophobia and resentment "at home," at just the time and just the place where we don't need it? Am I expected to tell a homeless woman in Biloxi that she has just been ripped off by an Ay-rab? A scuttle from Iraq or from Afghanistan (where the Kabul-Kandahar highway also took a lot of time and equipment and manpower to build) would add to the number of stricken and broken cities in the world, and not reduce it. If liberalism and humanitarianism do not mean internationalism, they mean precisely nothing. Shame on those who try to turn the needy and the victims against each other."

Christopher Hitchens: A War To Be Proud Of

Yesterday produced two good articles on progress in Iraq.  Andrew Sullivan penned an article for The Sunday Times in which he asked these two questions:

"Will what emerges be preferable to a sanctions-wrecked Iraq still run by Saddam or on the brink of being handed over to his psychopathic sons? Will it be more democratic than any other Muslim country in the Middle East?"

He says that the prospect of success on both fronts remains tantalisingly close and he appears to side with the likes of Frederick Kagan and Bill Kristol who believe additional troops are needed to be surer.

Christopher Hitchens provided the most powerful piece, however.  He reminded us of the nature of Saddam's Iraq:

"It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof."

At some point Iraq was going to explode.  The question was when?  At a time of our choosing (which we could attempt to manage)?  Or at a time of Saddam's choosing or those who would succeed him?

Mr Hitchens concludes his article by listing ten positive fruits of the Iraq campaign.  They're well worth reading.

Michael Barone: Muslim nations are turning from terror toward democracy

How do we measure progress in Iraq?

It's a big and vital question.  The number of suicide bombs in Iraq is the depressing measurement seemingly favoured by the 'if it bleeds, it leads' media.  Supporters of the Iraq war would prefer people to look at such things as economic progress and increased press freedom.

Writing for Townhall.com Michael Barone encourages us to examine recent polling of six Muslim nations.  That polling suggests that the populations of Jordan, Turkey,  Indonesia, Pakistan, Morocco and Lebanon are all becoming less supportive of terrorist acts and more accepting that democracy is not a western concept.  The acceptance of terrorism is still far too high but there is improvement.

For Mr Barone there are tangible improvements, too:

"Muslims around the world cannot help but notice that Iraq is moving, however imperfectly, toward representative government. They can't have missed the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon and the expulsion of Syrian forces from Beirut. They may have noticed the small concessions to democracy in Saudi Arabia.  They may also have noticed that Egypt will have its first contested election for president next year.

There were no arguments over the United States, Israel, Palestine, Iraq or any of the other 'hot spots' that used to dominate every meal and spill over into tea, coffee and dessert," writes Mona Eltahawy in The Washington Post of her trip to Egypt this summer. "This time, all conversations were about a small but active opposition movement in Egypt that since December has focused on ending the dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. I have never heard so many relatives and friends take such an interest in Egyptian politics or -- more important -- feel that they had a stake in them." Minds are indeed changing."

William Kristol, Anne McElvoy plus John Reid: 'Stay the course in Iraq'

Online today is neoconservative William Kristol's latest defence of the Iraq war.  He quotes (approvingly) President Bush's latest warning to the 'withdraw now' crowd:

"Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy. Immediate withdrawal would say to the Zarqawis of the world, and the terrorists of the world, and the bombers who take innocent life around the world, you know, the United States is weak; and all we've got to do is intimidate and they'll leave."

But Mr Kristol is much less keen on the Bush-Cheney "as Iraqi forces stand up, American forces will stand down" policy.  For him this policy is also a "terrible signal".  It signals that more important than progressing the war on terror and Iraq's transition is the political need to get troops home asap.  Kristol recommends a "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand with them" policy.  Kristol agrees with Frederick Kagan's recent argument that current US troop levels plus 200,000 Iraqi infrantrymen "would point the way to victory."  It is not only that one Iraqi troop is not as potent as one US soldier, Kristol believes that a combined and enlarged US-Iraqi force could bring many dividends:

"We could sweep areas and hold them, instead of sweeping and leaving. We could patrol areas we control - and still launch attacks in areas we don't. We could address problems on the Syrian border - and still concentrate troops in Baghdad. We could do a better job of protecting Iraq's oil infrastructure, and could provide a better security shield behind which real and lasting economic reconstruction could take place."

There have been some other thoughtful defences of the war in Iraq in the last few days.  In Wednesday's Evening Standard Anne McElvoy argued (not available online) that Iraqis deserved the chance of democracy and admitted to "a queasy feeling about those who enjoy the blessings of democracy being quite so sure that Iraq should never have had a similar chance."  The reality, she notes, was that Saddam would never have voluntarily surrendered power and his "two even more psychotically disposed sons" were "waiting to carry on the family business of murder and mayhem."   The toppling of Saddam had unleashed demons but so had the end of the Soviet Union.  She asks if Communist Russia "did everyone a favour by keeping the nationalist leanings of Chechnya and other unhappy dependencies in check"?  "It did not, of course," she answers, "All it did was store up resentments to be unleashed at some future point."

Also defending the Iraq war and, like Anne McElvoy, responding to another attack on the Iraq policy from Matthew Parris, was Defence Secretary John Reid.  In yesterday's Times Mr Reid insisted that progress is being made:

"Do we shrug at the presence of women in decision-making bodies across the country, often for the first time? Are we ambivalent when we hear that millions of Iraqis now enjoy power and drinkable water? Does it not matter that healthcare spending is up thirtyfold from Saddam Hussein’s days? Is the rebuilding and revamping of 3,095 schools (with another 753 under way) irrelevant?"

He argues that there is little point constantly rehearsing the arguments over whether it was right or not to topple Saddam.  What is important now is for "Iraqis to triumph: to establish democracy, on their terms, as they want it; to help them to take the lead in their own counter-terrorism strategy and make themselves secure; and, to help them to rebuild their shattered infrastructure after decades of neglect."   It is a battle between the Iraqi people and the terrorist insurgents.  Britain "won't cut and run" from supporting the Iraqis in their challenges, Mr Reid concludes.

Deroy Murdock: good news from Iraq

There is plenty of bad news from Iraq and yesterday's posting (based on a leader in The Business) highlighted some of that news.  But it's not all bad news.  Far from it.  The good news is regularly recorded by Arthur Chrenkoff in his blog and on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

A preference for reporting bad news over good news is in the media's DNA.  Deroy Murdock cites the 'if it bleeds, it leads' maxim in an article that encourages the same media to highlight some of the more encouraging news emerging from Saddam's old stomping ground.  Mr Murdock's Chicago Sun-Times piece contains two stand-out sections:

• Economic improvement: "Iraq's monthly oil exports have grown from $200 million in June 2003 to $2.5 billion last month. This is due both to higher prices and to the fact that fuel supplies have swelled from 23 percent to 97 percent of official production goals in that period. These key improvements also help explain why Iraq's gross domestic product increased from a World Bank estimate of $12.1 billion in 2003 to a projected $21.1 billion in 2004."
• Blossoming freedom of press and communications: "Commercial TV channels, radio stations and independent newspapers and magazines have zoomed from zero before Operation Iraqi Freedom to -- respectively -- 29, 80 and 170 today.  Internet subscribers have boomed from 4,500 before Iraq's liberation to 147,076 last March, not counting the additional Iraqis who use Internet cafes. When Saddam Hussein fell, Iraq had 833,000 telephone subscribers. In July that figure had soared 356.4 percent to 3,801,822."

The Business: Iraq's slide to Iranian theocracy

The Business - perhaps Britain's most conservative paper - is worried.

It's worried about the west's stomach for the necessary war on terror.  Last week its leader column questioned the west's supine relationship with Saudi Arabia.  A relationship drenched in oil and seemingly blind to the desert kingdom's financing of the most extreme forms of Islam.

Today's leader is biting in its assessment of the current situation in Iraq.  An initial supporter of the Iraq war The Business changed its mind because of the failure to find WMD and the Bush adminstration's failure to have a proper plan for reconstruction.  The Business' new worry is a "steady drift towards an Iranian-style Islamic fundamentalist government".  A drift that is being bred in the soil fertilised by the insurgency and Iraq's awful economic situation.

It highlights the recent death of New York Times journalist Steven Vincent.  Mr Vincent was killed just three days after describing how religious fanatics were infiltrating the Basra police.  This infiltration problem is one example, says The Business, of how developments that appear superficially encouraging are, in reality, signs of rot.  Swelling police numbers reflect infiltration, the newspaper writes, by Shi'ite militiamen acting under Iranian influence.  Growing army numbers reflect the enthusiastic involvement of Kurdish peshmerga - all eager to exact revenge on the Sunni Arabs who repressed Kurdish Iraq during the Saddam years.  Even January's big turnout in the elections was a product of the power of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.  The Iranian Sistani wanted massive Shi'ite involvement in order to produce the theocratic-style constitution that some fear will be unveiled this week.

The Business concludes:

"The failure of the coalition in Iraq is a political, geopolitical and psychological disaster which will blight the start of the 21st century.  It will confirm to Osama bin Laden and his cavemen friends that the West is decadent and incapable of waging a long-term war on terror. It will encourage Americans to turn inwards and return to post-Vietnam non-interventionism. There is already little stomach for doing anything about North Korea, as it rattles its missiles while starving its people, or Iran, as it breaks the seals on its nuclear facilities while thumbing its nose at the West. "

Bill Kristol: George W Bush still believes in the war on terror

There has been some newspaper speculation that the US Government is dropping the idea of the war on terror for the broader idea of a global struggle against violent extremism.  In an editorial for The Weekly Standard Bill Kristol argues that Bush certainly hasn't given up on the phrase he minted shortly after 9/11.

Kristol notes how...

• When announcing John Bolton's long-delayed appointment to the UN he said "this post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war."
• The same day - Monday 1st August - the Oval Office let it be reported that noone had approved the change of rhetoric with the President.
• And, as if to prove the point, on Wednesday the President used the word "war" fifteen times and the "war on terror" five times in a speech in Texas.

Kristol fears that the rhetorical shift from "war" to "struggle" is part of an attempt by some in the Pentagon to downplay the military's role in solving challenges like Iraq.  Pentagon officials are saying much more needs to be done on the diplomatic, economic and political fronts.  That may be true, writes Kristol, but Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers are using the rhetoric to make the case for speedy withdrawal of US troops.  Kristol  is unimpressed:

"The talk from the Defense Department about withdrawing troops from Iraq is doing damage to our chances of political and military progress. The more we talk about getting out, the more our enemies are emboldened, our friends waver and hedge their bets, and various factions decide they may have to fend for themselves and refuse to commit to a new Iraqi army or government."

If Secretary Rumsfeld is unwilling to properly fight the war on terror's "central front", Kristol urges George W Bush, America's war-leader, to get a Defence Secretary who is 100% ready and willing.