Almost a year ago, I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal in which I said we were winning the battle of Iraq. I came in for the usual derision from the anti-war crowd, which was desperately invested in our defeat in the Middle East, but the facts, as usual, were inescapable. It is very difficult for anyone to deny that things are very much better in Iraq, and the debate has now shifted to the consequences of the defeat of al Qaeda. Take a look at this piece, for example, from the “Guardian,” hardly suspect of being a mouthpiece for Bushhitlercheney:
Today’s Washington Times notes that there has been a significant drop in the number of “suicide attacks” in Iraq. And I am told that many of those recent attacks are actually conducted by remote-controlled vehicles, not by fervent martyrs-to-be. This suggests two things: Coalition forces are doing a better job patrolling the borders (especially the Syrian border, which has long been the route of choice for most of the terrorists), and the Islamic fascists are having increasing trouble recruiting young men and women to their ranks.
The defeat of al Qaeda cannot but shake the Islamofascist world. I have no doubt there are now serious ruptures within it, even though one or another alleged detail may be dubious. It must shake Tehran and Damascus as well, for they went all-out to drive us from Iraq. So this is also their defeat. It must therefore be heartening to the dissidents in Syria and Iran, who are constantly told by their oppressors that “America can’t do a damn thing,” that the Americans are losing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the Mahdi will soon return to reign over a glorious imperial caliphate. Instead, the infidels and crusaders have smashed the several terrorist organizations funded, armed and trained by the mullahs, from al Qaeda to the Mahdi Army, the Taliban and Iraqi Hezbollah.
So this is another good moment to rally to the side of Iranian and Syrian dissidents, but nobody in the “Western world” has the stomach for it. We are still treading water with regard to our major enemies in the terror war. As I wrote last October,
Not a day goes by without one of our commanders shouting to the four winds that the Iranians are operating all over Iraq, and that virtually all the suicide terrorists are foreigners, sent in from Syria. We have done great damage to their forces on the battlefield, but they can always escalate, and we still have no policy to direct against the terror masters in Damascus and Tehran. That problem is not going to be resolved by sound counterinsurgency strategy alone, no matter how brilliantly executed.
There is still no strategy worthy of the name (unless you think sanctions will do the trick; I don’t), and they still get the first shot.
The longer we wait, the more lives will be lost, and the greater the cost will be. Which is, after all, why I keep saying “Faster, Please.”
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a Duoist:One of the interesting tactics used by civil rights groups to influence corporate behavior was the secondary boycott. For instance, instead of boycotting the N.Y. Times for stating an unsympathetic position, a boycott would be launched against the regular corporations who spend their advertising budgets on the N.Y. Times. Eventually, the secondary boycott makes the original target comply, or lose its best customers.
The financial squeeze is already begun against Iran. Why not expand the squeeze to include a secondary boycott? For example, tell the major banks having commercial relationships with customers doing business in Iran that they will n longer have access to U.S. capital markets if their customers persist in helping Iran.
No banker wants to lose a good local customer, but to lose the entire U.S. market as a customer would be financially catastrophic.
Squeeze Iran financially. And then squeeze them harder. And then, harder again. No mullah has any inkling of economics; squeeze their theocracy into autarky and financial near-collapse. The Iranian people will finish the job.
Jun 12, 2008 - 2:33 am Ira Zad:Kodus to Dr. Ledeen who keeps the flame lit despite our administration officials who take turn in trying to snuff the Iran secular democracy flame almost every chance they get and in everything they say or do.
Take Germany, for example: I thought the President was quite friendly towards the mullahs when he said that if only Iran would just stop enriching Uranium then “All of us (including Europeans I guess) will be its friend.” And then he tried the now tired old shoe “All options are on the table.” which all know by now how utterly meaningless and empty it sounds. A hollow drum, as the Iranians call it.
This is all enough to make any Iranian dissident have a chill in his or her bed at night with a lot of cold sweat.
In fact Bush’s meaningless and old rhetoric shows several other things, that:
(a) Mr. Bush’s Swan Songs on Iran are more confirmation that nothing has changed, and that America has no intentions at all of helping Iran dissidents to change the regime. For that, we have to thank Condi Rice, Robert Gates, and the rest of the Iran appeasers in charge of our totally bankrupt Iran policy.
Iran (and everyone else) knows that every time an EU meeting is close, like it is now (Javier Solana will again meet with Tehran soon for the umpteenth time to talk over incentives mostly for Iran if it…), we turn up the rhetoric volume so to affect ‘change of behavior ‘ by Iran. (Condi Rice’s favorite fantasy phrase ‘change of behavior’ of Iran. In Iran, people laugh at this phrase as it reminds them of what an old and stuffy primary school principal told them when they were 7 years old. Except that the principal had a sturdy ruler in his or her hand and she actually used it.) Iran is not stupid. It knows how to read patterns and judge circumstances. Ahmadinejad called Bush a “Wicked man whose era is over.” Just yesterday. America’s policies are the laughing stock of the Iranian mullahs who are sitting pretty in their multi-million dollar villas and houses, more confident in their power, and bolder than they have ever been.
(b) That Condi Rice continues to have private audience and almost constant control over our Iran policy by whispering soft appeaser songs into the president’s ear on Iran.
Note: According to an article recently published in The Weekly Standard by Stephen Hayes, Rice — having no husband or family — spends most of her time with the President even during holidays. The author even calls this bizarre affinity “almost like a platonic boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/145jmmdg.asp
So, we can hope and wish for things to happen and change in and towards Iran. But sadly, as the infamous line goes: “There is just no ‘there’ there.”
Jun 12, 2008 - 1:54 pm njcommuter:They may have gone all-out to defeat us, but they ran little risk.
Jun 12, 2008 - 5:20 pm Jeff Perren:For all the good efforts made in Iraq it’s mortifying that the U.S. has NOT attacked Iran directly. Shameful, and completely mystifying. The Administration has repeatedly defied the naysayers and pressed forward in Iraq, but will not take on Iran point blank. It’s like liberating France, but refusing to cross the Rhine.
True, such a move would be unpopular. But the whole war effort has been unpopular for years. Why Bush won’t take that step, why he listens to Rice instead of Cheney (just to pick two) is a mystery.
Jun 14, 2008 - 8:49 am winston:US government under president Bush leadership had the biggest opportunity to help depose these criminals in Iran between 2002-2005 and they didn’t do it. It’s something I don’t understand. Why didn’t they do it? Why wouldn’t they let the criminals go free when they could just do some minor stuff and remove these bastards?
Jun 14, 2008 - 7:51 pm j green:So the extremists hate us and our way of life. They hate everything we stand for. And when they can no longer recruits idiots to blow themselves up to deal what they are told is “the crippling blow to the Great Satan, which will collapse with their sacrifice”, they resort to automation. Wester culture desired automation for manufacturing, betterment of lives, among many other examples. They seek automation for killing.
These are not people you can negotiate with.Will our government finally “get it”?
Jun 15, 2008 - 1:45 pm Ira Zad:wisnton, jeff and J green-
The conclusion that our government does not do anything to confront the Republic of Islamic Terror of Iran, then, is that it does not want to? Or is it too afraid of the consequences? The history of this administration has been to take actions out of sequence (should have taken out the Iranian regime first before Saddam); and to use military action in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What is ‘obvious’ to us, namely the immediate change of regime in Iran that should have happened three times over since 8 years ago, is now lost to the Bush bandwagon.
And now they have all turned into quivering mush.
He looked so pathetic and weak in Europe playing the same old broken record about Iran. He is too comic when he says: “Syria should stop fooling around with Iran.”!! Fooling around, Mr. President? You have turned into the collective Marx Brothers in your last year?
What a farce!
Tough luck for the Iranian people, and the secular democratic dissidents rotting in the jail in danger of execution.
I have totally given up on Bush and his platonic girlfriend, Iran Appeaser-in-Chief,
Condi-ollah Rice.
But stay tuned, coming soon in January ‘09: B.Hussein Al-Amoeba to administer the final head shot to the Iranian secular democracy by sleeping in one big, happy bed with all the mullahs bar none.
And We deserved this?
Jun 16, 2008 - 12:40 am Alireza:It is sickening to notice how lower number of so many innocent people killed makes the impression that things in Iraq are improving!! When you compare 75 people killed vs. 150 people, you call that improvement!!! What are you smoking/Injecting?
Then these stupid comparisons show up in MS-Excel 3D charts and then people start congratulating one another…”Great job!! Keep up the good work!”
Moments ago I read on CNN site a bomb exploded in Baghdad and at least 51 people were dead…. Since none of you are part of such explosions and violence, everything to you—Starbucks coffee drinkers—appears to be improving. Its like you keep pumping the bubble around you and ignoring so much more that is happening. So get busy and start pump the bubble before it goes flat.
Jun 17, 2008 - 12:49 pm Ira Zad:Talk about buying your enemies a beer: Instead of confronting and kicking out terrorist Hamas out of Gaza, Israel under Olmert is now making nice with Hamas: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,368270,00.html
It seems the appeasement and spineless bug in Washington has reached Tel Aviv (and her name is Condi.)
Jun 18, 2008 - 2:43 pm David W. Lincoln:Michael, I harken back to Max Dimont’s book, “Jews, God & History”.
One of the faces of history that was favoured by Toynbee, Spengler and Hegel was that the ideas and ideals of a society determine the history and health of that society.
When proof that Iranians are running loose like wild mustangs are ignored, those who do the ignoring are showing themselves to be true to their less than salubrious view of humankind.
These tend to be the people who are contempuous of the
Jun 19, 2008 - 9:49 am kourosh:“dead white men”.
I wish the world could realize the contribution of US and President Bush to human kind and civilization. Europe could not stop Islamist many centuries ago and they backward came all the way to Spain. However, now in 21st century US / Bush stopped backwards Jihadists / Khomeinists / Talibanist / Islaimst at their own gate in Iraq. What Bush did was brilliant. He took the war to Islamists and stopped spread of terrorism and Jihadist / Khomeinists disease. Let the real historians judge such an event not BBC / History channel. Those who think Iraq war wasn’t necessary, have no idea how Islaimsts / Khomeinists were /are spreading taking advantage of all democratic laws and tools available in the West. Just as an example, they use free speech to establish Shar-ia backward Islamists law in the Western communities to force women apartheid. How strange is that concept? They are slowly entering women with cover into TV, sport arenas, and other places. The Backward / Islamists are very patient and they go about their influence in Western civilization slowly knowing Westerners have no patient.
Jul 9, 2008 - 8:52 am