Leaving Iraq

March 2003, Baghdad, Iraq, Shock and Awe

By Alan Caruba

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

Among some foreign policy analysts, the popular conclusion regarding the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is that the U.S. won the war…for Iran.

In practical terms, however, predicting anything about the future of the Middle East these days is likely to leave one looking foolish. Who thought Tunisians would toss out their dictator? Or that Egyptians would demand and get Mubarack to resign? Or that Syrians, after two generations of dictatorship, would turn on the Assad family? Revolution is in the air in the Middle East which is to say that change—rapid change—is the order of the day.

President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops entirely from Iraq is ignorant of history and dismissive of reality. When the Axis was defeated in World War Two, the U.S. retained troops in Europe to ensure a transition to democracy. Same with Japan. And later, the same with South Korea.

President Obama, so reluctant to admit that the U.S. has ever done anything right and ill-inclined to let it happen, has led to the full-scale withdrawal of U.S. troops and, I suggest, set up a situation in which a newly emerging democracy—a distinct rarity in the Middle East—could be deprived of the time to be fully and securely established.

There were real reasons for invading Iraq twice in recent times; first to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and second to remove him as a dangerous, destabilizing force who threatened all the Gulf States.

Forgotten by most, Iraq under Saddam Hussein engaged Iran in war for eight years from 1979 to 1988. Inasmuch as Iran’s Islamic revolution had taken U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979 and held them for 444 days, the U.S. backed Saddam, though officially it took a neutral position.

U.S. policymakers in the administrations following the Carter years regarded Ayatollah Khomeini as a serious threat to the stability of the region and nothing has changed since them. His successors are nothing but trouble.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki found sanctuary in Iran to avoid being killed by Saddam. He is said to have strong ties to the current regime in Iran which is, after all, a very big neighbor with a long common border to the east of Iraq.

On the occasion of the official end of the war and the withdrawal of U.S. military, Maliki’s close ties to Iran were on display at the White House when he brought Iraqi Transportation Minister Hadi Farhan al-Amiri with him. Farhan had formerly been a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The Guards are suspected by U.S. law enforcement of participating in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen billeted there.

Had the invasion of Iraq in 2003 been a limited mission, Saddam might have been toppled and the Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis would have been left to kill each other in the typical Arab fashion of resolving disputes. Also in the mix would have been the Kurds in northern Iraq whom Saddam persecuted and killed throughout his regime.

Eight years later, the tendency of the media has been to focus on U.S. and Iraqi war dead, but there is little mention of the earlier Iraq-Iran conflict with estimates between 500,000 and a million war dead, 1-2 million wounded, and more than 80,000 prisoners. In one 1985 battle alone when Iran launched an offensive to cut the main highway between Baghdad and Basra, it is estimated that the combined total of dead numbered 40,000.

The U.S. still does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, a situation in place since 1979. Iran has declared the U.S. to be its biggest enemy and makes no secret of its intention to destroy Israel. Much of the world is wondering when Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The failure of the U.S. to support this would be a strategic mistake on the order of the British PM, Neville Chamberlain’s claim to have achieved “peace in our time” after negotiations with Adolf Hitler.

Obama’s “diplomatic” efforts with Iran have been a total failure. The latest embarrassment was his “request” for the return of the drone spycraft that the Iranians brought down, apparently without firing a shot. Obama has worried out loud that U.S. diplomats would be targeted for assassination in Iraq…after bargaining away force protection.

It is no stretch to say that President Obama has been a global diplomatic disaster, routinely offending and insulting other nations out of pure ignorance and indifference. His successors will be mending fences in the Middle East and elsewhere for decades.

In the course of three years in office, Obama has only succeeded in fleeing what he regarded as a “dumb” war. He was elected largely on his opposition to it.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial warned that the failure of the Obama administration to consolidate an alliance with Iraq ignored the Middle East’s upheavals and, in particular, in Iran’s longtime ally, Syria. In the best of outcomes, Iraq could have become an outpost of stability in the Middle East, but Obama’s indifference may contribute to its falling “prey to Tehran’s encroachments.”

In an analysis by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, published in Beirut’s The Daily Star, he anticipates that most of the future violence in Iraq will be between “political factions, even those of the same ethnic and religious group.” The Sunnis are the predominant Islamic sect in most of the Middle East, but the Shiites are the largest sect in both Iraq and Iran.

Al-Maliki heads a loose confederation of many different political parties, but seems to have asserted a very strong level of control over government policies at this point. Ironically, both Saddam and now Al-Maliki must contend with a semi-autonomous Kurdish faction that is pushing for resolution of territorial boundaries, seeking to reverse changes made by Saddam in Arab-Kurdish areas.

Ultimately, everything in the Middle East involves who controls oil revenues.

Iraq’s 2005 constitution promised a hydrocarbon law that would settle issues related to who had the final say of various oil deals. No such law has been legislated to date and the Kurds have pretty much gone their own way. Al-Maliki’s government has declared Kurdish contracts with oil companies illegal, banning companies that have signed them from bidding on oil business in the rest of Iraq.

In the recent history of the Middle East, dating from the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, its nations have been ruled by dictators and monarchs. Such “democracy” as exists is mostly one in which the ruling regime stuffs the ballot boxes and the military determines the winner. Egypt’s recent turmoil is an example. Syria’s ruthless suppression of its people is another. Iran remains a prison state intent on imposing its hegemony over the region.

Can Iraq sustain its fledgling democracy? Nobody knows. If history is any guide the prospect is not good. Only a strong America could have played a role and Obama has chosen to leave.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Haranguing Israel

By Alan Caruba

The exercise in futility that passes for the relationship between the United States and Israel was played out last week when Vice President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu both got sandbagged by Israeli politics.

For decades since Israel was founded in 1948, various administrations starting with Jimmy Carter have been haranguing Israel every time it had the nerve to actually build new housing for its growing population.

One can only imagine the reaction if the situation was reversed and Netanyahu issued a demand that a housing development near the border of Mexico be stopped because it was being built on land the U.S. secured militarily.

I am sorry if Biden felt embarrassed when some element of Netanyahu’s coalition announced the building of 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem, because I am reminded weekly that Biden is perfectly capable of embarrassing himself without any help. Suffice it to say, given the way Netanyahu’s cabinet of ministers is held together by duck tape, it did not surprise me that one of them would wander off the reservation.

If you really want to see something embarrassing, just listen to the mindless blather of Speaker Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Reid. According to Madame Pelosi, never mind that 75% of Americans hate Obamacare, it just has to be passed so everyone, including most of the members of Congress, can find out what’s in it.

The disputed land that the Palestinians, otherwise known as the losers, keep claiming was lost as the result of several wars perpetrated against Israel. Even when the Israelis pulled their own people out of Gaza and returned it to Fatah (who later were chased out by Hamas), the Palestinians continued to fire rockets every day into Israel.

With neighbors like the Palestinians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, and the utterly crazed ayatollahs of Iran, a few homes in East Jerusalem is small potatoes against the bigger threat of being annihilated by a nuclear-tipped missile.

Even so, Debka, an Israeli news service, said, “The fallout from the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s 48 hours in Israel undid a year of effort by the Netanyahu government to build a foreign policy and an understanding with Washington as the bedrock of a coordinated proactive policy on Iran.”

Given the pathetic foreign policy efforts by President Obama and his administration regarding Iran; essentially getting their face slapped every time they sent a signal seeking a reduction in hostilities, a wish to negotiate issues, or just to get U.S. hostages returned, one would think that a bit of friendship building with Israel would be a good idea.

The really bad news out of the Biden trip is that “the Obama administration is considering withholding from Israel military items urgently needed in case of a flare-up of hostilities with Iran.” Requests for these items had been made by defense minister Ehud Barak as recently as February when he visited Washington and met with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

I’m willing to bet that the Saudis would love to see the Israelis get whatever they need and probably even offer to pay the bill if it meant the Israelis would do what no one else in the region has the guts to do; attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and other military targets.

The U.S. posture toward Iran has been a disaster, sending signals of weakness and consisting of muttered statements that it does not want Iran to acquire a nuclear capability. Obama’s eagerness to pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan is hardly a secret.

The constant “settlement” demands on Israel are, at this point, tiresome. As President Obama likes to remind his political opponents, “I won”, and the same principle applies to Israel’s right to provide housing for its people, sufficient defense against the proxy forces that Iran has arrayed against it, and the ability to render Iran’s threat a heaping pile of rubble.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Calling Iran's Bluff

By Alan Caruba

If the endgame were not so serious, I would confess to enjoying the way the Israelis and much of the rest of the world are getting ready to call the Iranian ayatollah’s bluff as they hope to avoid a military response to their nuclear quest and the threat it represents.

It wouldn’t surprise me that the ayatollahs who have had Iran by the throat since 1979 are beginning to have serious misgivings about embarking on their nuclear mission.

As the Iranian intelligence community watches the comings and goings of their counterparts, it has surely not escaped their notice that two high-ranking teams of American CIA and DIA intelligence officials were conferring with the Israelis this week, shortly after attending a four-nation intelligence summit held in Amman, Jordan. It brought together key players in the U.S., Egyptian, Jordanian, and Israeli clandestine services.

Such cooperation is unprecedented in recent years and it making the Iranians very nervous. Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said of these comings and going, “Iran is a great world power whose strength is unlimited and on whom no other state would dare impose sanctions.” This is straight out of the late Saddam Hussein’s Book of Hilarious Claims.

Then, too, despite extensive economic ties with Russia, the Iranians are so upset with the delayed delivery of a Russian S-300 air defense system they actually went public with their complaints. It was expected in April.

It is a $1 billion contract and one suspects that the Russians have calculated that the Israelis will attack soon enough, so why waste a perfectly good air defense system that can be sold elsewhere? I hope they got paid in advance.

“Don’t Russian strategists realize Iran’s geopolitical importance to their security,” asked Iranian Chief of Staff, Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi. Yes, they do and so do the Chinese with whom the Iranians also have extensive economic ties, but both nations are hardly in a rush to see a nuclear-armed Iran, run by religious fanatics who might decide to threaten them or worse.

Meanwhile, earlier this month the UN International Atomic Energy Agency announced it found “nothing to be worried about” after a quick, first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran. Are you worried? Am I worried? Certainly not, after all, Mohammed ElBaradei is a Nobel Peace Prize winner just like President Obama.

It has been reported that the U.S. has delivered a number of “bunker-buster” bombs, MOABs, to the Israelis and they are designed for use against nuclear facilities buried deep in mountains or underground.

All their bravado and boasting has only managed to get the Iranians further isolated and at considerably greater risk. Instead of sinking billions into their nuclear program, they could have been building oil refineries and other infrastructure of value. Instead, they have to import much of their gasoline. This is a definition of stupid.

The Iranians (by which I always mean the leadership, not the people) have managed to sour relations with Europe by jerking them around in an endless series of “negotiations” concerning their nuclear program. It is not lost on Europe that Iranian missile systems permit them to target much of that continent. Ditto Russia. Ditto China. Ditto the entire Middle East.

The immediate target, of course, is Israel and Israel has a history of destroying nuclear reactors in their neighborhood, first in Iraq and more recently in Syria when the combined talents of U.S. and Mossad intelligence revealed where the Syrians were building a secret nuclear facility.

There is a historic irony in this because ancient Iran, Persia, provided a sanctuary to Jews when they were exiled from Israel and facilitated their return. Modern Iran’s leaders have mocked the Holocaust and threatened the Israelis with nuclear annihilation.

All of which is to say that, if I were an ayatollah in Tehran these days, I would be thinking about opening a dry cleaning business just about anywhere else on planet Earth.

No Peace in Bethlehem

By Alan Caruba

Not only has there been no sense of outrage over the Islamofascist attacks in Mumbai, India that began on November 26 and lasted until the 29th; the event that took the lives of 170 people and wounded hundreds of others has quickly receded to being just one more atrocity in the name of Allah.

As the world looked on, the perpetrators were referred to as “gunmen”, “militants”, and “extremists”, but rarely as the jihad terrorists that they were.

If you cannot name your enemy, you can never really defend yourself against them or go on the offense against them.

One specific target in Mumbai, a city that is home to thirteen million Hindus and Muslims, was the Chabad Center, a gathering place for Jews where Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his wife, Rivka, and others were slain. Only the bravery of their child’s Indian nanny saved their infant son, Moshe, now orphaned as one of the Jews that far too many Muslims want to exterminate.

In a personal post on the Carter Center website, former President Jimmy Carter reported on a meeting in Damascus, Syria, with Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, one of the two factions claiming to represent Palestinians. The occasion was the anniversary of the founding of Hamas. Carter noted that Hamas was “putting all their eggs in Obama’s basket” to secure their objectives, while failing to note that the destruction of Israel is its primary objective.

Carter also took time to lament that Hezbollah, another Palestinian terrorist organization, lacks missiles to “defend” itself from Israeli aircraft after a visit to Lebanon. You may recall that Hezbollah initiated a war in 2006 against Israel by capturing an Israeli soldier and then by raining down hundreds of rockets on the northern region of Israel. These days, the Israeli overflights provide UNIFIL, a United Nations “peace keeping force”, with ample evidence of the weaponry being smuggled into Lebanon from Syria. UNIFIL has done nothing to stop the traffic and, at the first shot fired, will withdraw its forces.

That’s because, since 1947 when the Jewish state was declared and immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors, the United Nations has passed more than a hundred resolutions concerning the Palestinian refugees that resulted from that war. Not one resolution has been passed regarding Jewish refugees that were forced to flee from Arab nations, often where their families had lived for generations.

Bethlehem, the site of the birth of Jesus, is an active center for the other Palestinian faction, Fatah, which was driven out of Gaza at gunpoint by Hamas. This occurred after the Israelis had unilaterally withdrawn, forcing its Jewish residents to leave. It has been the launch ground for hundreds of rockets against Israel ever since.

Writing in a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report, contributing editor, Harold Evans, took note of how Fatah’s television station and in its schools, Palestinian children are taught that suicide bombing is much to be desired. “Martyrdom is bliss.” As Evans points out, “Children being taught murder by rote is child abuse, a mental deformation more damaging than physical injury,” adding that “This endlessly fraudulent education has had devastating effects on the prospect for peace.”

These “refugees” are now into their fourth generation because none of the Arab nations surrounding Israel would accept them as citizens, confining them for sixty years in slums called camps. Who oversees these camps? The United Nations. Who funds much of UNRWA’s efforts? American taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars thus far.

By contrast, since 1948 Israel has taken in more than 850,000 Jews driven from Arab nations. The Palestinian refugees have swelled from approximately 650,000 to some five million, all seething with hatred toward Israel, pawns of Arab nations, and providing a reservoir of terrorists.

If you want peace in Bethlehem this year, next year and beyond, the United States has to stop funding UNRWA. It has to stop funding Fatah as a “partner for peace.” It has to insist that true peace requires a renunciation of stated goals of extermination and destruction.

The United States and its allies must name terrorists anywhere and everywhere for who they are. They’re not militants or extremists. They are the cold-blooded Muslim killers of innocent people in Mumbai, in Bali, in Haifa, in London, in Beslan, Russia, to name just a few places, and, on September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, D.C.