I’m talking about Iran, of course. Here Robert Fox of The Guardian looks at the mullahs’ endless flipflops about nukes, negotiations, and so forth. His bottom line is that they are too tricky by half, and they are quite possibly headed down the same suicidal road as Saddam took when he kept sticking his finger in Western eyes and noses. Fox is certainly no advocate of military action against Iran, but he is smart and realistic enough to know that military action happens, and as often as not it happens because of confusions, suspicion and ambiguity, rather than because of strategic calculation.
Not that strategic calculation is irrelevant. Peter Brookes takes a clear-eyed look at the recent Iranian missile show, and concludes that it was staged (and by now everyone’s seen Charles Johnson’s pictures that suggest the mullahs photoshopped at least some of their images of the missiles) for several reasons, from driving up oil prices to pounding their chests for the benefit of domestic and regional audiences, to fending off possible attacks from us or the Israelis.
All that “makes sense.” The Iranians atop that unhappy country have every reason to believe that they are immune to attack for the next many months, and so they use all the tools at their disposal to buy time for all their nefarious purposes: develop the bomb and related delivery systems, increase the repression of the Iranian people, and move terrorists out of Iraq, where they have been decisively defeated.
But the boy who cried wolf came to an unhappy end, as in the case of Saddam Hussein.
Way back at the beginning of this war, and continuing through tomorrow, we have debated how to win the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. I have always viewed this discussion as important, but perhaps ultimately unknowable, because as Machiavelli loves to remind us, these things are all about winning and losing. The war, not the debate.
During the Cold War there was an endless discussion about our enemy, just as there is today. Back then, the main question was: are we fighting a global movement (international communism), and its attendant ideology, or are we fighting an imperial state (the Soviet Empire)?
I am not sure we know the answer today. But we do know that when the Soviet Empire fell, communist ideology was discredited. That is why, in “The War Against the Terror Masters,” I argued that we shouldn’t worry so much about “exposing the evils of radical Islam” as about winning the war. I said that nothing is more devastating to a messianic ideology than the defeat of the messianic leader. And so it seems to have been in Iraq.
Yes, I know it isn’t really over yet. I know–I insist–that we are fighting a regional war, and that we must still contend with Iran and Syria. However, we have defeated al Qaeda and al Mahdi in Iraq, and that’s a huge event. I am sure that the jihadis are having more trouble recruiting volunteers, because that’s the way it works.
For quite a while now, Nibras Kazemi has been one of the keenest analysts of the Iraq situation, and he’s written a serious essay about it. His blog, Talisman Gate, has an excerpt, although you really will benefit from reading it all.
Here’s the excerpt (the last paragraph says it all):
My paper on the failed jihadist attempt to resurrect the caliphate in Iraq was published online today, [cue trumpets and cymbals] so without further ceremony, here it is:
The Caliphate Attempted: Zarqawi’s Ideological Heirs, their Choice for a Caliph, and the Collapse of their Self-Styled ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (opens up as a PDF document).
Here are a few paragraphs from its conclusion that may give you all a feel as to its relevance:
It has been the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that not only did al-Zarqawi (who was killed in June 2006) and his successors choose to turn Iraq into a battleground on their own initiative but that they subsequently chose Iraq as the incubator for their grand vision of a unified Islamic empire under the aegis of a ruling caliph. They did so without instructions from or consultations with the traditional leaders of Al-Qaeda hiding out in the Hindu Kush Mountains. Rather, they presented the jihadist world with a fait accompli: the Islamic State of Iraq, thereby capturing the imagination of a new generation of jihadists who were already enthralled by the alleged victories of the Zarqawists in Iraq.
The Zarqawists believed that they were winning at the time when they declared their state, taking the gloomy forecasts of an American ‘quagmire’ and ‘defeat’ in Iraq, as peddled by the U.S. media, as a sign that they were about to turn a corner in the war. As far as they were concerned, there was no greater service to Islam—not even ‘Servitude of the Two Holy Shrines’ of Mecca and Medina—that would compare with what the jihadists were proffering in Iraq, a distinction that ranked them as the elite and vanguard of a victorious Islamic regeneration. The merit of a successful jihad, waged against the world’s greatest power, earned them the authority and responsibility for resurrecting the caliphate, since they alone were the rightful ahl ul-hel wel-’aqd of their time…Their ‘state’ would be the “real caliphate” once again, set to expand under Muhammad’s own banner from the very heart of the Dar al-Islam, from ancient Baghdad and its environs; a venture far more ambitious and daring than a marginal emirate within the remote folds of the Hindu Kush.
The Islamic State of Iraq was to be the shield and spear of Islam, facing down infidel foes from within and without. It was to be the harbinger of glory and redemption, the “ummah’s hope” for an avenger to its many humiliations. And should the jihadists meet some slight setbacks here and there, then that too shall pass, for as al-Baghdadi says when giving his reasons as to why he is confident that the Islamic State of Iraq shall persist: “we are certain that Allah will not break the hearts of the embattled monotheists and turn us into the object of ridicule by the oppressors.” Yet, it does not seem as if the Islamic State in Iraq is about to make a comeback, especially since the Iraqi Sunnis that it claimed to be fighting on behalf of, and to whom its laurels shall accrue in victory, seem to have irreversibly turned against it. So could it be, after all the blood, treasure and prayers that went into the Islamic State of Iraq, that Allah too had turned His back on the jihadists?
The corollary to the military defeat now being experienced by the jihadists is the even more agonizing prospect of doctrinal collapse: the heralded caliphate is stillborn; the glorious vision of a reinvigorated Islamic State has been smashed. The anguish and demoralization brought about by this byproduct of battlefield victory cannot be overstated, for to smash the dreams of a man who lives for a cause, who endures cruel deserts and damp caves while awaiting martyrdom, is a fate far worse than death. In a battle of wills where a young man is able to summon the necessary willpower to press a button and to detonate himself among innocent bystanders for the cause of jihad and for a deferred utopia of a resurrected and avenging Islamic world power, nothing breaks the will of the individual jihadist than to see, in real time, his ideology bear fruit and to watch that fruit rot away right before his eyes. Such has been the impact of the ‘Zarqawist’ Islamic State of Iraq—the caliphate to be, under the Commander of the Faithful Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi the Qurayshite—and the bitter aftertaste of its ruinous downfall.
Read this letter from a woman in Zimbabwe, and weep. Weep for the dying and the starving and the penniless in Africa, and weep for the bureaucrats in the “centers of power” who just cannot find a way to bring an end to the terrible evil that is Robert Mugabe’s tyranny.
Years ago I wrote a little book called “Freedom Betrayed” in which I decried the fecklessness of the West–above all, the Clinton Administration of the time–in combating tyranny, after we had led a global democratic revolution that had transformed much of the world. On this anniversary of the great democratic revolution that created America, it is clear that the West remains feckless. If anything, it is worse today than it was then, because back then the threats to freedom seemed remote, whereas today they are manifest and imminent.
If we cannot support a fine nation that clearly expressed its wishes in a difficult election, it is unlikely we will find the will to fight the vicious tyrants in the Middle East, even though they daily promise to destroy us. And what will they be thinking in Beijing and Moscow and Pyongyang?
Thanks to Gateway Pundit for informing the blogosphere that Iran’s most famous dissident, Ahmad Batebi, is now here with us. And what better time to break the news than the 4th of July weekend? Batebi is the student leader whose picture ran on the cover of The Economist, holding up the blood-stained tee shirt of one of his friends, who was killed by the regime’s thugs in 1999.
Batebi did an interview with the Voice of America, and I’m told it had a record audience, as I’d expect. Follow the links, you’ll find the VOA’s press release and other useful items.
The Fourth is the birthday of the modern world, the day we became free, and ever since that day we have inspired freedom-loving people all over the planet. It’s a wonderful holiday, an inspiration to us and our friends. And there’s a great symphony to celebrate it:
Once again Seymour Hersh wastes our time with an essay that would have been more suitable for a psychiatrist’s couch, accompanied by the question, “Doctor, why do I keep making up these things?”
The doctor might say, “what things?”
And Hersh would say, “you know, these stories saying that America is preparing to go to war with Iran, that we’re going to bomb them, that secret military units are running all over Iran, that we’re supporting killer fanatics. That sort of thing.”
It’s some sort of wacky compulsion with him. Back in the spring of 2006 Hersh told us that the Bush Administration, a.k.a. the Great Satan, “has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack…teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups…(Hersh’s sources) say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.”
Last summer, he announced again that we were on the verge of war with Iran. “This summer, the White House…requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran…The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere…”
We did not bomb, of course, and those alleged plans have vanished from the latest “revelations.” This time around he tells many of the same stories, except without the bombing. And this time he refers to a secret Presidential “Finding,” approved with bipartisan Congressional support, that makes all these things legal. Now it’s just the alleged support for ethnic minority groups, the collection of information about the Iranian nuclear program, and generally seeking to “destabilize the…leadership.” For extras, he suggests that some of our Special Forces have sneaked into Iran, kidnaped some members of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, and dragged them across the border into Iraq for interrogation. But he just can’t help himself. In the midst of discussing these alleged operations, he suddenly and inexplicably erupts in yet another of his “we’re going to bomb them!” seizures.
A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates…warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America…” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization)…
In other words, Gates denies the senator’s account. Hersh can’t quite bring himself to say that, so he sticks it between parentheses. You have to parse Hersh very carefully, because he carefully uses words that don’t exactly admit that he doesn’t have much of a case, but show it nonetheless. Take his remark at the top of the story, in which he leads the reader to conclude that we’re spending a mountain of money to destabilize Iran. “These operations,” he writes, “for which the President sought up to (my emphasis) four hundred million dollars…” But the question is not what he asked for, but what he actually got. Inquiring minds would like to know the actual budget, but it seems Hersh does not know it. The language he uses covers everything from zero to four hundred million. The “operations” he describes (most of which I doubt) are pretty small potatoes, like providing funds for Iranian dissidents in order to fight back against the brutal repression (missing from Hersh’s account) that Tehran has directed against its own people, with particular savagery against the Ahwaz Arabs and the Balouch, along with religious groups such as the Baha’i. I think even the frolicsome crowd at CIA’s Directorate of Operations would have trouble crafting a four hundred million dollar invoice for such things.
As so often in Hershian lore, you can pretty much forget about solid information or identifiable sources. His favorite source, who provides many of the juiciest quotations, is simply called “a Pentagon consultant.” Those who don’t live in Washington can’t possibly imagine a)how many of these characters work the city’s streets or b)how many of them claim to know absolutely everything of significance. If you take Hersh seriously, this guy is privy to conversations among small handfuls of people in the Oval Office. I suppose there may be such a person, but it’s hard to take it on blind faith, especially when Hersh quotes him as being pretty incoherent. The Consultant shifts tense and substance in a single paragraph:
Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. (ML: an anti-mullah group under American arrest in Iraq) coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts…
So first we hear that the bad guys “may well” get money from the USG, because a new task force “WILL work” with them. Then, one baited breath later, he says that they are already “getting,” and indeed stashing lots of it away in their own bank accounts.
One wonders why Hersh didn’t at least get the tenses consistent. One wonders why The New Yorker editors didn’t insist on it. In fact one wonders if anyone at The New Yorker did any checking of Hersh’s “facts.” As Roger Simon pointedly asks, who are these sources? Does The New Yorker even know?
Hersh even makes sources of on-the-record statements look bad. He fancies that lots of senior military officers in the Pentagon are fighting a desperate war against warmongers like Bush and Cheney, going all-out to stop tomorrow morning’s bombing run against the Iranian nuclear reactors. In this month’s episode, Hersh’s hero is Admiral William Fallon, briefly in charge of our Central Command until he was suddenly terminated. Hersh would have us believe that Fallon was fired because of his opposition to Administration policy. Hersh cites the following statement by Fallon as the sort of thing that got him into trouble in the White House:
…late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”
But President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said precisely that, numerous times. Whatever the reasons for the firing, it certainly wasn’t a statement that was totally in sync with announced Administration policy. If Fallon was indeed fired for something he said, it’s more likely this sort of thing, which Hersh admiringly reproduces:
“Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”
Again, one wonders where the editors have gone. Sure, everyone’s an individual; but in a dictatorship of the sort that rules Iran, only a few people matter. If I were the president, and I heard the head of Centcom talking like that, I too would want him out of there.
That leaves us with Hersh’s encouraging claims that we’re striking back at Iranian military forces on both sides of the border, that we’re supporting some minority groups against the regime, and that our Special Forces guys are running around Iran, gathering information on the nuclear program. We should be so lucky.
I would be delighted if American soldiers were (finally) taking steps against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on their own turf. It has been known for some time (although Hersh, not having heard it anonymously from his omniscient consultants, somehow doubts it) that the Iranians have been training terrorists on their own territory, and then sending them into Iraq and Afghanistan to kill as many people as possible, above all, our troops. Until quite recently, our soldiers were not permitted to initiate action against the Iranian officers who sometimes accompanied the terrorists, even in Iraq. But then, roughly about the same time as the change in doctrine that accompanied the surge, we and the Iraqis started to operate against the so-called “Special Groups” that were in cahoots with the Iranians, and the Quds Force officers who supported al Qaeda. It seems logical that these operations should extend to the training camps across the border, and to the Iranians who run them and command the terrorist squads. Otherwise, one tacitly accepts the legitimacy of Iranian attacks across the border, but denies our right to fight back on their terrain.
So far as I can discover, no such operations are taking place. A high-ranking intelligence official in the United States Government, who has proven reliable for many years, told me categorically that we do not capture, kill, or kidnap anyone in Iran, and that our troops have been told they cannot cross the Iranian border, even in “hot pursuit.” So unless Hersh has real evidence, I’m going to doubt it, even though I wish it were true.
Are U.S. Special Forces collecting information about the Iranian nuclear program? I sure hope so, even though Hersh seems to think there’s something wicked about it. In this connection, he seems to me to reveal a great deal about the sources of his information. He praises the linguistic and cultural skills of CIA “agents and assets,” implying that Special Forces don’t have such skills. Nothing could be farther from the truth; Special Forces have excellent linguists. Indeed, many CIA officers do their language training at Monterey, at the celebrated language school run by the military. Hersh thinks CIA is somehow culturally superior, which it isn’t. It’s the kind of idea that is more likely to come from an Agency employee than from someone in uniform, from the sort of guy who thinks our military is composed of untutored lunkheads, while the CIA–with its long record of failure that even Inspector Clouseau would envy–is composed of MENSA members.
I don’t know anything about support for the minority groups (although I do know that a program with one of the major tribes was totally shut down more than a decade ago), but I’m against it. The regime in Tehran is hollow, having lost the support of the vast majority of the Iranian people. The Iranian people are in fact the greatest threat to the regime, and we should support them all, not group by group or tribe by tribe, but as an entire nation. Our support should be almost entirely political, not military. It must start with an open declaration that we wish to see the end of the regime and that we will support a peaceful democratic revolution. Just as in the successful Reagan strategy against the Soviet Empire, the revolutionaries’ most urgent requirements are communications devices, and we should get them cell and satellite phones, laptop computers, servers, and anti-filtering software to beat the filters the mullahs have obtained from the Chinese censors and other friends. And we should turn our own broadcasts, as in VOA, into sources of accurate information about the latest developments inside Iran.
Hersh doesn’t know very much about Iran, judging from the sources he quotes to bash the alleged support for the two tribes and the M.E.K. Iran is a far cry from the description approvingly quoted from Professor Vali Nasr, who holds forth at Tufts and the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic”
Professor Nasr studied with Frank Fukuyama, but apparently never heard that Germany is younger than the United States, by nearly a hundred years. And Iran is ethnically very different from France or Germany, which have long had basically homogeneous populations. Only half of Iranians are Persians; the rest range from Azeris, Kurds and Balouch to Ahwaz Arabs, and many other tribes. But Nasr is quite right (as is Hersh, who uses him as a proxy) to oppose any American policy that supports ethnic separatism. It’s worse than a crime; it’s stupid. When you’ve got most of the population on your side, you want to embrace it as a whole, not divide it into smaller units that might spat with one another.
It’s hard to even raise this kind of consideration while talking about Hersh, because he lives and writes in a world in which you only get half the story at best, and that half consists of sliming the United States. One would never know from reading Hersh that Iran has been waging war against us for nearly thirty years, and we have yet to respond. He seems not to know that there are military documents, photographs, confessions, and captured laptop computers proving that Iranians operate inside Iraq. If he does know, he doesn’t inform his readers. He writes as if anyone who acknowledges the murderous role of Iran in the world, and wants an end to its evil regime, automatically favors armed war against it, even though many of us are unstinting in our criticism of the mullahs, favor regime change, but oppose a military campaign.
And so I imagine his doctor saying to him: “Well, Mr. Hersh, it seems you’re an obsessive/ compulsive neurotic, doesn’t it? You keep writing the same story over and over again, with minor variations, year after year.”
And I hear Hersh saying: “Yes, but it feels so good when I finish writing it, Doctor. Every time. And they even pay me for it.”
UPDATE: Ron Rosenbaum adds more, focusing on Hersh’s botched description of the infamous NIE on the Iranian nuclear program. You should read it.
It would be churlish not to credit Helene Cooper of the New York Times for noticing, or deducing, that it is most unlikely that this administration is going to attack Iran. I hope that someday someone will notice that we have repeatedly stated this, but for now it’s quite sufficient and most gratifying to see that Ms Cooper is there with us. To be sure, she says that the evidence is “mixed,” but once she gets into it, she’s careful and accurate, and sees no reason to believe that we will launch any military operation against the mullahs.
I have one quibble with the context in which she places the issue. She says
…Iran appears ascendant, its political and economic influence growing, its historic foes in Iraq and Afghanistan weakened, and its nuclear program continuing to move forward.
Ms Cooper’s on solid grounds concerning the nuclear program. It is decidedly moving forward, and none of the measures designed to stop it–even the new round of sanctions against Iranian banks and nuclear scientists and overseers–seem remotely up to the task. But Iran does not appear to me to be gaining strength in either Iraq or Afghanistan. On the contrary, Iran has clearly suffered a major humiliation in Iraq with the defeat of al Qaeda and the Sadrist Mahdi Army, and the growing military strength of Iraq has got to worry the mullahs a lot. They are desperately trying to intimidate Maleki into refusing a mutual defense agreement with us, and, so far at least, have failed. Utterly failed.
They had been doing better in Afghanistan, but the Taliban’s death wish has seemingly overcome sound military doctrine, and they are being killed in amazing numbers by our forces on several battlegrounds. The Iranian-supported Taliban keep trying to pull off a big military victory against us, which is just what we want. One Special Forces officer recently called it “target practice” for his guys. And now that Silvio Berlusconi either has, or soon will, tell his carabinieri that it’s ok for them to shoot real ammunition, the Taliban will have even more trouble. Those Italians are smart and brave, they will do well.
But I digress. The important point is that even the Times now recognizes the lunacy of all those claims by the likes of Seymour Hersh, and various lefty bloggers who I will not name for fear of contaminating my computer screen, that it was only a matter of hours before the big assault against Tehran was unleashed.
The short, straight line to realize how crazy this claim was/is, is to ask yourself the question, can you imagine Condi Rice and Steven Hadley approving such a thing, absent some huge smoking gun showing Iranians murdering Americans? Even the impressive quantity of evidence to that effect hasn’t been enough for these unworthies to approve simple measures of legitimate self-defense such as attacking the terrorist training camps in Iran (and its puppet regime in Syria, let’s not forget). If they won’t even do that, they certainly aren’t going to something approaching all-out war.
Airedales are funny dogs. Funny ha-ha and funny peculiar. The main thing to know is that you really have to want to spend lots of time with your dog if you’re going to have an airedale, because they move right in. It doesn’t take them long to figure out that the two-legged ones have it better. Better in every way: they eat better, they get the best rooms, and they play a lot more than the four-legged guy.
So they set out to get all those good things reserved for the two-leggeds. They figure out how to get at the food, they learn to open doors, and after a while they pretty much take over the house. And with the passage of time, they develop their own neuroses. Our first airedale, Barnaby of Blessed Memory, “knew” for seven years or so that everyone who came to the house had come to see him and play with him. I mean, why else would they come? He was smarter, faster, stronger, fluffier and cuter.
Over the years it slowly and terribly dawned on him that there were some folks who came to the house for some other reason. What could it be? And so he pondered it, until the horrible truth became all too clear: THEY HAVE COME TO EAT MY FOOD. No other explanation was possible. And so, when the doorbell rang, he would race to the door, tail wagging, rapid breathing, bouncing up on the door in preparation for his welcoming bounce on the visitor. The guest would get maybe half a minute to make his intentions clear, and once Barnaby decided it was one of THOSE, he would let out a mournful wail, race to the kitchen, and lie flat on the floor with his arms around his bowl. If the poor soul–the visitor, that is–set foot in the kitchen, Barnaby would emit a vicious growl, and the guest would quickly retreat.
It has been said that you can’t really train an airedale, which is a bit of an exaggeration. True, they don’t take to discipline. But they certainly understand what you want from them, and they are even prepared to do it, for the most part. “For the most part” is key, because they view your commands the same way Neapolitan drivers view red lights: a strong suggestion, something to be seriously considered. However this does not mean blind obedience. An airedale has a very strong will, and there will be times when he will decide it’s best to ignore a command. As when there is a squirrel within five miles, for example. It’s better to chase the squirrel. Sometimes airedales even catch squirrels, and then bring them to you as a sign of their love.
I’ve often wondered how airedales would do in politics, because they have great charm, and some of them have great charisma. Our current airedale, Thurber, isn’t very charismatic, but he makes up for it with charm and cuteness. Everybody loves him, even anti-dog people. So I would think he would win most elections, and I’m sure he’d make good decisions in office.
All of which brings us to the horror story of the month, in which the Governor of the State of Maryland (aka the People’s Republic of Maryland), one Mr. Martin O’Malley. He is not, so far as I know, related to the legendary Mr. O’Malley, the cigar-wielding fairy godfather of barnaby in the old comic strip of the same name. If so, he has lost the magic, because this particular O’Malley actually evicted an airedale from his home. His mansion.
According to the Washington Post, Governor O’Malley had an airedale named Scout, who seems to me to be a model of his breed. The Post had previously reported, in the words of the two journalists,
that the pup was asserting authority beyond his actual powers, aggressively patrolling the perimeter of the governor’s mansion and barking fiercely at every tourist and legislator who passed by. Now, after months of unaccustomed silence from Scout, the O’Malleys are confirming that the dog is no longer with the family, as reported by the Baltimore Examiner.
Scout was doing exactly what he should: protecting his turf. And barking at legislators is one of the highest callings of an airedale. To say that he was overstepping his bounds could not be more mistaken; he was keeping potential enemies outside the boundaries, as well he should.
Mrs. O’Malley (Katie) actually made a nasty remark about Scout, whom she had evicted from the mansion. She cruelly told the Post that
He’s living with Baltimore friends who’ve trained other problem dogs and take him for long runs every day.
“He’s happy,” she promised.
PROBLEM DOGS? More like problem pols. Mrs. O’Malley even leaked the ultimate slur, whispering that Scout had bitten their 5-year old son. She quickly added that “it was minor,” which leads me to believe that Scout was loving up the boy, and between the irrational exuberance of the two of them, perhaps a tooth pressed on some skin. Our airedales have always loved children, and while I have known a tooth to press against my skin, none of ours ever bit anyone.
In fairness to Mrs. O’Malley, I must admit that Thurber is named after the great writer, James Thurber, who wrote a story about a family airedale. The story was called something like “The Dog Who Bit People,” and told, as you might guess, of an airedale who bit everyone who entered the house. That rather appealed to me; I thought maybe if I named the puppy “Thurber” he might be a fierce guard dog. But no. Our Thurber is Ghandian to the extreme. He thinks all problems can be resolved with treats and licks.
So maybe Scout misbehaved. But a bit of attention would probably have cured it. And it seems the O’Malley’s have a bit of remorse:
Though Scout still returns for visits, a new appointee has already taken his place: Rex, an English cocker spaniel. Cute, sweet, good with kids, said O’Malley. “He loves it out in the front yard.”
My bottom line: a feckless politicized spaniel was promoted to a position for which he has no qualifications, while a brave, trench-hardened airedale was sent to reeducation camp. Airedales are too good for politics. And, it seems, politicians in the People’s Republic of Maryland.
As most of you know, one of our two sons has been in the Marine Corps for the past four years-plus, has twice deployed to Anbar Province in Iraq, and has consequently been a part of the historic victory over al Qaeda. His younger brother is now two weeks away from completing the ordeal of Officer Candidates School at Quantico. If he makes it–so far, so good–he will then finish his college education (did you know that EVERY commissioned Marine officer has a college degree?) and become a 1st Lieutenant just under a year from now. It is not easy to describe what it’s like to be the parent of a Marine officer, because “proud” really doesn’t get you all the way there. The Marines are awesome. I don’t know another group anywhere that maintains such high standards (and yes, they are human, and they make mistakes, for which they are severely punished), or has such high values. And their ‘in your face’ attitude really helps both the Marines and their families, because it recalls Zero Mostel’s unforgettable outburst in “The Producers”: “When you’ve got it, flaunt it!”
Our two presumptive candidates are sparring on what to do with bin Laden. As I have said often enough, I think he’s dead, so the “debate” is beside the point. Still, it’s interesting to parse Obama’s remarks on Nuremburg, about which he doesn’t seem to know very much (he seems to think that the Nazis had American Constitutional protections, including habeas corpus, which they didn’t). Which brings me to another of my favorite themes: our elite schools aren’t educating their students. And an ignorant elite is very dangerous for us.
Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Iran expert, Vali Nasr, admits that Iran has taken a shellacking in Iraq, but then (of course) argues that this is (the latest) reason for us to negotiate with them. He even says that “Engaging Iran now could even influence who wins the Iraq debate in Tehran.”
Mr Nasr has some interesting theories about that “debate in Tehran,” which seems to me to be over the best way to kill Iraqis and Americans, drive the Coalition out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and impose an Islamic Republic on the poor souls. But Mr Nasr has a different impression:
Tehran will find it difficult to regain lost turf in Baghdad or Basra, or to go back to happily supporting Shiites both at the center and in the militias. It will have to choose whether it is with the state or the sub-state actors.
One wonders just why the mullahs have to make such a choice. I would think that Supreme Leader Khamenei would want it both ways. He wants to support murderous Shi’ites and try to intimidate the Iraqi Government by killing its supporters as often as he can. And above all, he dreads the thought of an independent and politically free Iraq that has an American security umbrella. Which, as the Washington Post editorialists rightly argue, is exactly what is happening, and exactly what Maliki told the mullahs:
He assured his Iranian hosts that Iraq would not be a launching pad for an American attack on Iran. But he pointedly told a press briefing that negotiations on the strategic partnership would continue. He repeated that commitment on Friday, even after warning that the talks had “reached a dead end.” In effect, the Iraqi prime minister was saying that his country does not want to become an Iranian satellite but an independent Arab state that would look to the United States to ensure its security.
That is why the Supreme Leader must try to intimidate Maliki at the same time he has his killers slaughter Iraqis. Any Iraqis, neither their cult nor their ethnicity interests him in the least. There’s abundant evidence that he is doing precisely that. First, the London Timesinforms us that the latest car bomb (which, interestingly, has not been called a “suicide attack,” perhaps because it was remotely controlled) that killed so many Shi’ites in Baghdad a few days ago was essentially an Iranian operation. As American Lt.-Col. Steven Stover pout it, our people are convinced that “this atrocity was committed by a Special Groups cell,” language that is used to describe groups closely tied to Iran.
Please notice that this is not the celebrated sectarian conflict that has been so shamelessly promoted as the cause of nearly all violence in Iraq for so many years; this is Shi’ites blowing up other Shi’ites, with Iran pushing the buttons. And I am sure when all is said and done, we will find that Iran has sponsored violence on all sides, Sunni and Shi’ite, Kurd, Turkoman, and so forth.
And as for Mr Nasr’s quaint notion that Iran wants to play some sort of “constructive” role in Iraq, the wonderful Caroline Glick, whose new book, The Shackled Warrior, should be on the top of your reading table, tells us everything we need to know about that.
On Tuesday, the day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki completed his three-day visit to Iran, his envoy to the Islamic Republic received a care package - delivered to his front door. When Iraqi Ambassador Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh’s driver opened the package, he discovered it was a bomb.
In their best Farsi imitation of the Godfather, Iranian police spokesmen claimed that the package was not a bomb - but aquarium equipment. And in a way, they were right. The package was supposed to help Sheikh “sleep with the fishes.”
I think Mr Nasr has the context entirely wrong. Iran is not a normal state, its rulers are not normal politicians, and its policy is not based on our models of “conflict resolution.” They are waging war against us, as they have for nearly thirty years, and will use all means to win it.
Mr Nasr concludes that this is a great time to negotiate with the mullahs. To be fair, it is hard to remember a time when he didn’t think conditions were right for talking to Iran, so this is nothing new. Nor has he ever seemed to notice that we are in fact negotiating right now, and we have been talking to them ever since Khomeini seized power in early 1979.
This is classic Council on Foreign Relations silliness. Their self-important experts told us all during the Cold War that we should be nice to the Soviets, that we shouldn’t support the dissidents, and that Reagan was a militaristic lunatic. So today they tell us to be nice to the mullahs, remain silent on the massacre of decent Iranians, and Bush is a militaristic lunatic.
…transcend[s] mere descriptive narrative and seek[s] to fix a value—political, philosophical or strategic—on the events of 9/11…
—Tunku Varadarajan Wall Street Journal
by Michael Ledeen
Michael Ledeen takes a fresh look at Tocqueville’s insights into our national psyche and asks whether Americans’ national character, which Tocqueville believed to be wholly admirable, has fallen into moral decay and religious indifference.
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Ledeen offers an updated version of the rules for leadership laid down by Machiavelli. Its the nature of humans to do evil, and war is our natural state. Anyone who would wield power in such a setting, writes Ledeen, echoing Machiavelli, “must be prepared to fight at all times.” This is as true in business, sports, and politics as it is on the battlefield. Kirkus Reviews
With the skill of a born storyteller, Michael Ledeen weaves together key moments in the fall of communism. His insider’s knowledge of the interplay of complex personalities and Byzantine strategies makes a compelling narrative, one enlivened by his wry wit and flair for the dramatic.
In this call to embrace the worldwide democratic revolution, the author argues that global democracy should be the centerpiece of U.S. strategy.
