How to Cope with Global Jihad – Ariel Cohen, Real Clear Politics
The conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan and the global Islamist insurgency have revealed that Western democracies and their political and military leaders do not fully comprehend the multifaceted threats represented by radical Muslim nonstate actors. In this, they violate the most famous dictum of Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategic genius of 2,500 years ago: "If you know yourself and understand your opponent you will never put your victory in jeopardy in any conflict."
The broad support that al Qaeda jihadis and radical Islamist militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah enjoy in the Muslim world and in the global Muslim diaspora, as well as among non-Muslim anti-American political forces around the world demonstrates that describing the global Islamic insurgency as a fringe or minority phenomenon is unrealistic and self-defeating. Since 9/11, democracies have fought three wars against nonstate Islamist actors. The West needs to draw important lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the clash between Israel and Hezbollah to address these strategic deficits. Lack of clarity in defining the enemy and delays in formulating political and information strategy severely endanger U.S. national interests and the security of the West…
Bali Carnage Recalls Islamism Threat – The Australian editorial
October 12, 2002 was a dark day for Australia in the age of Islamist terror. Although it lies beyond Australian shores, Bali is loved by so many Australians as a holiday destination that it feels like a home away from home. At 11:05pm on that Saturday night five years ago, the war on terror came home. For the first time, Australians realised that the front line in the war on terror was everywhere. That night, for 202 people, including 88 Australians, the front line was Paddy's Pub and the Sari Club in Kuta Beach.
Since then, there have been more attrocities in Indonesia, one each year until last year. On August 5, 2003, 14 people were killed when the JW Marriott Hotel was bombed in Jakarta. On September 9, 2004, 11 people were killed by a bomb outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta. On October 1, 2005, three suicide bombers murdered 20 people in the second Bali bombing, including 4 Australians.
Thankfully, in the past two years there has been considerable success in breaking up terrorist networks, with many killed or detained. Yet Abu Sayyaf in The Philippines still shelters Jemaah Islamiah operatives Dulmatin and Umar Patek, who were involved in the Bali bombing, and JI's spiritual head, Abu Bakar Bashir, is a free man…
The Muslim Brotherhood Shows its True Colors - Mohamed Elmenshawy, Christian Science Monitor
If Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were alive today, he would celebrate the expansion of his Islamist vision. As evidenced by the latest version of the Muslim Brotherhood's recently released political party platform, the late Iranian leader's dream of spreading the ideology of Islamic revolution is gaining ground in Egypt, the largest Sunni Arab country.
The draft is just that – a draft still open to adjustment, reflecting ongoing debate within the Brotherhood itself about its stances before it publishes the final version of the platform. Still, the preliminary program that it outlines doesn't herald the democratic values the Brotherhood has claimed to hold in previous public statements and addresses. Instead, it calls for the adoption of a "Civic Islamic State."
Perhaps the most alarming feature of the draft platform is the call to create a Majlis Ulama, or Council of Islamic Scholars, that could end up being elected by Islamic clerics, not through free and fair elections. Reminiscent of Iran's Guardian Council, this undemocratically selected body could have the power vested by the state to veto any and all legislation passed by the Egyptian parliament and approved by the president that is not compatible with Islamic sharia law…
How Goes the War? – Paul Greenberg, Washington Times
How is the war going? It all depends on who's talking — or writing. Do you go with the doubters-at-a-distance who have been saying the war was lost even before it began? Or with the separate but equally sure experts who have been assuring us we're on the verge of victory — for years now.
We scan the headlines looking for hope. Should we take heart from the latest news out of Anbar Province, where Sunni chieftains have finally decided to team up with the Americans against the terrorists who have been horning in on their traditional territory? The change there has been the most dramatic — and most welcome — of the war's various ups and downs and sideways…
Mission Accomplished – Bartle Bull, Prospect Magazine
The question of what to do in Iraq today must be separated from the decision to topple Saddam Hussein four and a half years ago. That decision is a matter for historians. By any normal ethical standard, the coalition's current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq's other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition's role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam's struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.
Some just wars, however, are not worth fighting. There are countries that do not matter very much to the rest of the world. Rwanda is one tragic example; and its case illustrates the immorality of a completely pragmatic foreign policy. But Iraq, the world's axial country since the beginning of history and all the more important in the current era for probably possessing the world's largest reserves of oil, is no Rwanda. Nor do two or three improvised explosive devices a day, for all the personal tragedy involved in each casualty, make a Vietnam…
While Kurds Smell Success, Turks Go For Guns – Con Coughlin, London Daily Telegraph
The semi-autonomous enclave of Kurdistan in northern Iraq has long been regarded as an oasis of stability and good governance in a country otherwise riven with violence and sectarian strife.
Even when militant insurgent groups have carried out attacks against Kurdish targets, such as the devastating truck bombings of the Yazidi community last August that claimed more than 400 lives, the Kurds have managed to resist being drawn into the endless spiral of tit-for-tat attacks that has accounted for so many innocent lives throughout the rest of the country.
The ability of the Kurds to rise above the internecine blood-letting that has come to characterise post-Saddam Iraq owes much to the fact that they have administered their own affairs for more than a decade; Iraq's Kurdish region was protected from Saddam's murderous designs by the no-fly zones established after the 1991 Gulf war.
The Kurds' aptitude for self-government was finally rewarded in the summer when American military commanders handed over control of the three Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dahuk and Sulaymaniyeh to Massoud Barzani, the veteran Kurdish warlord.
But this rare Iraqi success story now looks as though it could soon implode, should the Turkish government go ahead with its threat to invade Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to root out terror cells that have been carrying out attacks on Turkish soil…
Blackwater May be Tip of the Iceberg - Paul Weinstein Jr. and Marc Dunkelman, Baltimore Sun
Capitol Hill is abuzz over allegations of vigilantism and recklessness by U.S. contractors in Iraq. But reports that Blackwater USA has operated outside the law could turn out to be a window into a much larger Bush administration scandal.
Largely unnoticed over the last seven years, President Bush has increased the number of contractors working for the federal government at an unprecedented rate. And as the Blackwater debacle shows, the federal government is not equipped or prepared to exercise proper oversight over this vastly expanded, federally empowered work force.
Under President Bush, 2.4 million contractors have been added to the federal payroll. As a result, there are now more than three times as many contractors working for the federal government - about 7.7 million - than the total number of military personnel and civil servants combined…
Keep Pressure on Karzai – Toronto Star editorial
Ever since he took power, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made only half-hearted efforts to get Afghanistan to clean up its shoddy human rights record. For the most part, it has been a losing battle, and part of the blame can be placed at the feet of Harper himself.
Last spring, Harper had to be dragged into reacting to reports that Taliban detainees handed over by Canadian troops to Afghan forces had later been beaten, clubbed and shocked while in prison. At first, Harper dismissed those allegations as "rumours," but after weeks of uproar in Parliament, his government grudgingly signed a deal with the Afghans that would allow Canadian officials unrestricted access to detainees to ensure they were not being tortured.
Now comes word that 15 Afghan prisoners, convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape, have been executed by firing squad. The Afghan government says it fully intends to execute more prisoners…
Germany's Afghanistan Conundrum - Ulf Gartzke, Weekly Standard
Today the German parliament is scheduled to vote on whether to extend the Bundeswehr's 3,000-strong ISAF military deployment in Afghanistan for another year. While there is no doubt that Chancellor Merkel's Grand Coalition has enough votes to get the measure passed, the much-anticipated Bundestag debate will certainly highlight growing opposition to what is increasingly viewed by the German public as a lost-cause mission with close to zero moral legitimacy. Public opinion in Germany, like in Canada, has already turned firmly against the ISAF/OEF missions in Afghanistan, with recent surveys indicating that two-thirds of all Germans favor an immediate military withdrawal. For Chancellor Merkel and her conservative CDU/CSU allies, the Bundeswehr's bloody, seemingly open-ended Afghan engagement is a political time bomb that could easily blow up in the run-up to the next federal elections to be held by fall of 2009. In fact, Afghanistan is arguably Merkel's only foreign policy weak spot and, at the same time, her biggest potential domestic political liability.
So far, only the post-Communist Left party is officially calling for a pullout. However, many left-wing MPs from the governing SPD party and even a growing number of CDU/CSU MPs, under strong pressure from their local constituents, are more or less openly opposed to the Afghanistan mission. The Greens are divided, with some MPs indicating that they will vote for the ISAF extension, thus ignoring a recent, non-binding party congress resolution demanding exactly the contrary…
Musharraf's Cynical Election Victory – Toronto Star editorial
Gen. Pervez Musharraf's "election" last weekend as Pakistan's president was a perversion of democracy.
The vote was not really a vote since, knowing how badly the deck was stacked, the opposition parties refused to participate. The results must be certified by the Supreme Court, which must decide whether Musharraf was even eligible to run while still in uniform. We hope the court will rule fairly and independently – and that Musharraf's enablers in Washington will make clear that he must respect that decision and finally start moving his country toward the rule of law.
Returning Pakistan to civilian government has been a declared goal of the United States since Musharraf seized power in 1999. Time and again he has promised that he would resign his post as chief of army staff and take off the uniform, but even now he is playing cute about when – and whether – that might happen…
What Iraq and Burma Have in Common – Michael Hirsh, Newsweek Magazine
… Here is an academic flying so high in the empyrean of abstraction that he (Wolfowitz) doesn’t stop to pay attention to the details on the ground. The details were these: the East Asian governments (the Philippines excluded, but that is another story) followed a three-generation plan for prosperity that gradually laid down conditions for democracy. In the decades after World War II these countries focused purely on development, creating an economic middle class. That in turn engendered a broad-based hunger for democracy, the wealth and economic power to sustain it, and the judicial structures to enforce democratic freedoms. As Suu Kyi said poignantly in 2000, in a videotaped message at the first Community of Democracies conference in Warsaw (she was still under house arrest), democracy also means “freedom after speech and freedom after elections.”
Democracy is very, very hard. It can’t be imposed from without. (The two examples the Bush administration loves to cite—postwar Germany and Japan—both featured highly developed countries that had had considerable experience with democracy before the U.S. occupation.) It is evolutionary, not revolutionary. And it is certainly not a panacea. (Two of the biggest East Asian economic success stories, China and Singapore, have prospered under enlightened autocrats, not democracy.) One hopes that the long-suffering Burmese will soon have a taste of freedom, and that Suu Kyi will too after 18 years of standing up for principle. But for them that will only be the beginning…
More Than Talk for Burma – Washington Post editorial
One week ago the U.N. Security Council met to consider a bloody crackdown by Burma's dictatorship against Buddhist monks and others who had been peacefully protesting in favor of democracy. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the use of force "abhorrent and unacceptable" and urged Burma's rulers to "take bold actions towards democratization and respect for human rights." Mr. Ban's special envoy to the country, having returned from a visit to the Southeast Asian nation, relayed "continuing and disturbing reports of abuses . . . including raids on private homes, beatings, arbitrary arrests and disappearances." He said he had found "accelerating impoverishment" in Burma (also known as Myanmar) and "deep and widespread discontent." He promised an "intensification" of diplomatic efforts.
Since then, we haven't seen much in the way of intensification. The Security Council did issue a unanimous statement yesterday that "strongly deplores" the regime's violence. But it's still not known how many monks and others have been killed and how many arrested; the regime claimed to have released more than 2,000, without disclosing how many had been swept up in the first place. There's been talk of sanctions, of an arms embargo, of the need for united action, of sending the special envoy back -- but so far talk is all it's been…
Keeping Pressure on Junta in Burma - Din Pla Hongsa, Canberra Times
Burma's streets are quiet again but only because the regime has arrested more than 7000 people. The Burmese people, democracy forces and the international community are demanding genuine dialogue between the ruling generals and pro-democracy forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
This is the long acknowledged path to national reconciliation and manageable political transition. The United Nations Security Council is crucial in creating the opportunity for this dialogue to happen. Following a visit to Rangoon last week, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy, Ibrahim Gambari said Burma's military leader, General Than Shwe, may agree to meet Suu Kyi.
The world has more than 18 years' experience with the regime's tactics of delaying, deflecting and alleviating international pressure. The challenge for the UN Security Council is to ensure this all-important dialogue is not allowed to fall back into obscurity…
Selling Out Israel by Bits – Cal Thomas, Washington Times
Name one concession Israel has made in recent years that has been reciprocated by its sworn enemies. This is not a trick question. There are none.
That's why next month's announced "Middle East Summit" in Annapolis should be viewed as one more installment payment in selling out Israel and U.S. interests in the Middle East. While the United States continues to struggle to shore up democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration — like others before it — proceeds to undermine the likelihood that the region's first democracy will endure.
At every negotiating session, Israel is pressured into making concessions for "peace" and receives more war in response. Mostly this is because of the wishful thinking in the West that has replaced sound policy. Why should the Palestinians make concessions when they are drawing closer to their objective of eradicating Israel by throwing stones and bombs and stonewalling negotiations? …
Getting Syria Inside the Tent – Boston Globe editorial
Repercussions from Israel's still unexplained raid Sept. 6 on a site in northern Syria extend to some of the world's most sensitive security issues. These include recent steps by North Korea to begin implementing a laboriously negotiated denuclearization agreement, and preparations for a Mideast peace conference next month in Annapolis, Md.
Israel and the United States have been exceptionally tight-lipped thus far about the target that was hit, the result of the attack, and the intelligence used to justify the strike. But some of the policy consequences are evident. They suggest that President Bush has sided with advisers who were not persuaded by Israeli intelligence briefings that North Korea has been peddling nuclear materials to Syria. This is a healthy sign of Bush's newfound interest in solving grave security problems by diplomatic means…
Friends of Mahmoud - Mark Tooley, Weekly Standard
Not all of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's encounters in New York during his recent trip were testy. The Shiite theocrat had what the New York Times called a "warm, even friendly exchange" with 150 church officials at the United Methodist Women's Church Center for the United Nations.
One sponsor, the Mennonite Central Committee, called the gathering a "time of dialogue and prayerful reflection among the children of Abraham." A Mennonite official further explained that "mutual respect and graciousness in this conversation blunts the demonization which is part of the current rhetoric of both governments."
The meeting is the third between Ahmadinejad and his new church friends. Forty five of them had met the Iranian during his last New York visit a year ago. And 13 church officials saw him in Iran in February.
Seemingly, the church officials are fascinated and perplexed by the chief of Iran's Islamist police state. Unlike most of them, he has uncompromising theological views, especially about the end-times, about which he shares freely. Perhaps the apocalyptic dogma is bracing to these liberal religionists, who might be inwardly bored with their own mantras about endless tolerance…
Thaw Mission to Moscow – Richard Lugar, Washington Times
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are in Moscow today on a repair mission. Their goal: to shore up deteriorating U.S.-Russia relations. Each side is frustrated and disappointed with the other.
Americans are unhappy with the increasingly autocratic tenor of Russian President Vladimir Putin's rule and how he treats his neighbors. Russians think Americans don't understand, or care, how difficult the post-Soviet transition has been, and they don't like our lecturing. They believe we don't really mean it when we say we welcome Russia's re-emergence as a major power…
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