Category Archives: War Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The George Romney Democrats

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James Kirchick writes that the Democrats are trying to lie their party to victory, and the country to defeat in Iraq:

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it “did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments.” The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found “no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: “Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.”

Yet Rockefeller’s highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that “top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.” Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were “substantiated by intelligence information.” The same goes for claims about Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don’t get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were “misled” into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

Yes. Bill Clinton’s CIA, since George Bush foolishly left George Tenant in charge of it, even after 911, and never even seriously attempted to clean house, other than the failed attempt by Porter Goss. The president got bad intelligence. But the Democrats are being mendacious in their selective memory and rewriting of history.

I loved this:

A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not because of American propaganda but because he had “brought so light a load to the laundromat.” Given the similarity between Romney’s explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one wonders why the news media aren’t saying the same thing today.

I assume that the last phrase is simply a rhetorical flourish. There’s no reason to wonder at all.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Facts Matter

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Jennifer Rubin reports on a very interesting briefing on Iraq:

I asked O’Hanlon whether his previous criticism that Barack Obama was in denial about facts on the ground still stood. In a lengthy answer he and then Pollack avoided a partisan hit on Obama and I think revealed their true purpose: to inform the public and policy matters about the real situation in Iraq and allow Democrats to in essence climb back off the surge opposition policy limb they have crawled out on. (This is my description; they were quite tactful and even optimistic that this is a time when political leaders can reorient themselves to new facts.) Both indicated that it would be a mistake with critical provincial and national elections upcoming in 2008 and 2009 to begin an abrupt withdrawal in 2009. O’Hanlon offered that Democrats could take credit for having pressured Iraqis on a political front with the clear message that our presence would not be indefinite and that they should accept that “the good news is you may be able to leave earlier than proposed based on progress and not on defeat.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Canadian Kangaroos

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Andrew Coyne is live blogging the “Human Rights” Commission star chamber for Mark Steyn and MacLeans. He’s hoping that his magazine will lose:

Don’t tell my employers, but I’m sort of hoping we lose this case. If we win–that is, if the tribunal finds we did not, by publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book, expose Muslims to hatred and contempt, or whatever the legalese is–then the whole clanking business rolls on, the stronger for having shown how “reasonable” it can be. Whereas if we lose, and fight on appeal, and challenge the whole legal basis for these inquisitions, then something important will be achieved.

I liked this:

Oh God: they’re talking about who they’ll be calling on Friday. Five days in a windowless room. If that’s not a human rights violation…

And this comment on the Orwellian nature of the law:

Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism.

Or in other words, there is no defence.

It’s a good read, so far.

[Update about half an hour later]

Some thoughts from Mark Steyn:

The Canadian Islamic Congress lawyer says that freedom of speech is a “red herring”. If it were, it would be on the endangered species list.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Splitter?

With Al Qaeda on the ropes, in Iraq (a central front by their own definition) and elsewhere, is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif becoming the hirabist movement’s equivalent of Trotsky?

A key point from the Journal editorial:

Zawahiri himself last month repeated his claim that the country “is now the most important arena in which our Muslim nation is waging the battle against the forces of the Crusader-Zionist campaign.” So it’s all the more significant that on this crucial battleground, al Qaeda has been decimated by the surge of U.S. forces into Baghdad. The surge, in turn, gave confidence to the Sunni tribes that this was a fight they could win. For Zawahiri, losing the battles you say you need to win is not a way to collect new recruits. …

[I]t is the surge, and the destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq , that has helped to demoralize al Qaeda around the world. Nothing would more embolden Zawahiri now than a U.S. retreat from Iraq, which al Qaeda would see as the U.S. version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.

That should be required reading for the Obama campaign. If we had followed his advice, we’d already have such an emboldened Al Qaeda. But they seem to be in denial:

…if Obama fails to “capitalize”-to take advantage of circumstances his opponent helped create and he opposed-is he guilty of only excessive pessimism? Or has he proven himself to be inflexible, unmoved by new facts, unwilling to admit error and divorced from reality? Hmmm, seems like someone said similar things about George W. Bush.

It does seem ironic.

[h/t to Cliff May for the Journal piece]

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s not just Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq. The Mahdi Army and its Iranian allies aren’t have a good time, either:

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Iraqi Army interdicting Iranian operations in the South
By Bill RoggioJune 1, 2008 10:48 PM

Click to view larger interactive map of southern Iraq.

Iraqi and Coalition forces press operations against the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and Basrah despite the cease-fire signed with the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. The Iraqi Army has expanded its operations in Basrah province to the east just along the Iranian border, while 11 Mahdi Army fighters have been captured during operations in Baghdad over the past 24 hours.

Iraqi soldiers and police, backed by US and British advisers, have expanded Operation Knights’ Assault to the eastern town of Abu Al Khasib, in a region east of Basrah on the Iranian border. A brigade from the 1st Iraqi Army Division, backed by a battalion from 14th Iraqi Army Division and two Iraqi National Police battalions conducted operations along the border over the past two days. One suspect was detained and 52 AK-47 assault rifles and one submachine gun were found during the sweep.

Abu Al Khasib is on Highway 6 at the border crossing with Iran at Shalamcheh. The Iranian city of Shalamcheh is the main forward operating base for the Ramazan Corps’s southernmost command. The Ramazan Corps is the Qods Force command assigned to direct operations inside Iraq. Weapons, fighters, and cash smuggled across the border into Basrah would pass through Abu Al Khasib.

The Iraqi Army has been expanding its operations along the Iranian supply routes in the South during the month of May. After clearing the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed militias from Basrah, operations have expanded into Az Zubayr and Al Qurnah.

It’s still five months to go until the election, with a lot more potential progress to come. I can imagine the anti-Obama ads, contrasting the (undeniable, at that point) progress in Iraq with video of the evacuations from the embassy roof in Saigon. It could be a repeat of either McGovern, or Carter in 1980.

[Update a little while later]

Victor Davis Hanson has some related observations:

How odd (or to be expected) that suddenly intelligence agencies, analysts, journalists, and terrorists themselves are attesting that al-Qaeda is in near ruins, that ideologically radical Islam is losing its appeal, and that terrorist incidents against Americans at home and abroad outside the war zones are at an all-time low–and yet few associate the radical change in fortune in Iraq as a contributory cause to our success.

Actually, given the pervasive bias in the media on this subject, it’s to be expected, not odd at all.

[Early afternoon update]

The Taliban is on the ropes in Afghanistan, too.

Technology and Society, War Commentary

Maybe They Could Use Crayons

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There’s been quite a bit of commentary about the technological backwardness of the enemy. That is certainly a key distinction between this war and World War II and the Cold war, in which we were at war with technologically advanced industrial states (Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union), whereas the hirabis have virtually no industrial or weapons-making capability, short of nail bombs. I think that it was Rich Lowry who compared the two cultures by writing something like “…we build skyscrapers and jet airliners–that’s our idea. They hijack our airliners and fly them into the skyscrapers–that’s their idea.”

Anyway, there was some buzz recently that they had developed a computer graphic of a nuked Washington DC for one of their propaganda videos.

Nope. They had to lift it from a western video game. They’re not only incapable of carrying out our destruction, they’re not even capable of simulating it. But it does speak strongly to their intent if they ever get their hands on advanced weaponry, something that, with advancing technology, will become more and more of a problem in the future.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

What Doesn’t?

Apparently, the phrase “War on Terror” offends Muslims. Words fail.

Well, OK, not completely. Somehow, this reminds me of the (feigned?) outrage that the Democrats exhibited when President Bush talked about appeasers in his speech to the Knesset, but didn’t name names. You know what? If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. It doesn’t really serve your cause when, in response to criticism of someone unnamed, you jump up and shout, “Hey, he’s talkin’ ’bout me!”

Similarly, how can Muslims be offended by a “war on terror”? Do they think that terror and Islam are inevitably and appropriately identified with each other, and inseparable? Well, if so, stupidity like this just fuels that perception.

[Update in the evening]

Robert Spencer has further thoughts on fantasy-based policy making.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

What Doesn’t?

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Apparently, the phrase “War on Terror” offends Muslims. Words fail.

Well, OK, not completely. Somehow, this reminds me of the (feigned?) outrage that the Democrats exhibited when President Bush talked about appeasers in his speech to the Knesset, but didn’t name names. You know what? If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. It doesn’t really serve your cause when, in response to criticism of someone unnamed, you jump up and shout, “Hey, he’s talkin’ ’bout me!”

Similarly, how can Muslims be offended by a “war on terror”? Do they think that terror and Islam are inevitably and appropriately identified with each other, and inseparable? Well, if so, stupidity like this just fuels that perception.

[Update in the evening]

Robert Spencer has further thoughts on fantasy-based policy making.