About that plot of Islamists in Britain to kidnap a couple of British Muslim soldiers and behead them (”Let this be a warning to you all. . . “) , it turns out that the two Muslim soldiers designated by the terrorists to be snatched were aware of the plot. And, better yet - and bully for them - they actually agreed to put themselves at risk to help authorities nab the terrorist wannabes.

The soldiers - who are not thought to have told their families that they were potential targets - were placed under unprecedented surveillance for weeks as officers waited for the terrorists to strike.

And as they tried to carry out their ordinary duties, the pair were aware that if the gang attempted to stage their abduction they could be attacked and bundled into a waiting vehicle at any time.

To prevent this, the security forces mounted a sophisticated surveillance operation.

In an operation reminiscent of a spy drama, their every move was monitored by a team of crack MI5 agents - linked to the soldiers by the latest in modern technology. ...

Incredibly, the two men carried on with their daily routines but were secretly shadowed around the clock by police and intelligence personnel, using high-technology tracking and bugging techniques. Surveillance teams kept a constant watch, looking for any sign of the plotters.

The two men were fitted with discreet tracking devices, with similar beacons attached to their cars, and armed response teams were on permanent standby to stage a rescue mission in case a kidnap plot was sprung. ...

The 330 Muslims serving in the UK military - including some 250 Army soldiers - have been ordered to take particular care over their own security.

An amazing story, and major kudos to the two soldiers who agreed to place themselves at lethal risk to defend their country. I hope this part of the story gets major publicity. If Western Muslims are sometimes criticized for passivity in the face of Islamist terrorism, then their courage against it should be widely acknowledged. I’ve done my part, anyway.

Welcome friends from Down Under! I think this is the first time an Australian media outlet has linked to my site. Thanks for following the link.

So wrote Europe’s premier war theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, which he amplified thus, “Without killing there is no war.” This should seem self evident, but its truth is easy to lose, and easiest for the civilians who (rightfully) finally command our military. Even senior military officers, removed by distance and time from personal battle experience, can fail to remember that truism.

Of all the failings of the previous “strategy” in Iraq, directed by the commanders whom Gen. David Petraeus will very soon replace, the main failing was not keeping the main thing the main thing. In counterinsurgency, as with any other kind of fight, the main thing is killing the insurgents, for which civil assistance to Iraqis must play the supporting, not primary role.

Hence, the “surge” of 21,500 more soldiers and Marines being sent to Iraq does in fact represent a new strategy in the recent history of this war, though not new in the history of warfare. Gen. Petraeus, asked recently by one of the Congress’ armed services committees whether 21,500 was enough new troops, replied that how the new troops are used is more important than the number sent.

And lethality is the focus now, as we saw from the release of an unclassified version of the strategy by the plan’s authors themselves, which I analyzed on Dec. 17. Retired General Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, and Frederick W. Kagan, former West Point professor, wrote (and briefed President Bush) that,

We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence. Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority.

“Securing the population” = “kill the insurgents.” And that is what the troops in Iraq, reinforced by the “surge,” are already doing, says Nibras Kazmi (also posted at Blackfive).

Last October, my sources began telling me about rumblings among the insurgent strategists suggesting that their murderous endeavor was about to run out of steam. This sense of fatigue began registering among mid-level insurgent commanders in late December, and it has devolved to the rank and file since then. The insurgents have begun to feel that the tide has turned against them.

In many ways, the timing of this turnaround was inadvertent, coming at the height of political and bureaucratic mismanagement in Washington and Baghdad. A number of factors contributed to this turnaround, but most important was sustained, stay-the-course counterinsurgency pressure. At the end of the day, more insurgents were ending up dead or behind bars, which generated among them a sense of despair and a feeling that the insurgency was a dead end.

The Washington-initiated “surge” will speed-up the ongoing process of defeating the insurgency. But one should not consider the surge responsible for the turnaround. The lesson to be learned is to keep killing the killers until they realize their fate.

For some reason, this is a lesson that the US seems to have to learn anew every war. It wasn’t until 1863, for example, that the Union Army finally came to understand that the army of the CSA would not be defeated until it had been vanquished in the field one time after another, over and over again. U.S. Grant was the first Union general to understand this fact, for which President Lincoln rewarded him with command of all the Union armies in the field. “I can’t fire this man,” Lincoln told critics, “he fights.”

But I digress. The major, and unsurprisingly unheralded, accomplishment in Iraq in recent months was to squeeze the life (literally and metepahorically) out of the domestic Iraqi insurgencies. That means the Sunni insurgencies, who were mainly oriented toward the preservation of Baathist party and Tikriti tribal power. The Shia militias weren’t really trying to overthrow the central government (PM Maliki was in their pocket, so what’s the point?) but until the end of 2006 the Sunni insurgents entertained the notion that could could wield majority power again.

What changed their mind, at least most of them? Well, Saddam’s short drop and sudden stop had a lot to do with it. But mostly it sank in to them that they cannot win. US and US-led direct action against them (that is, killing them) unintentionally combined with the ruthlessness of the Shia militias made them come to reality, says Kazmi.

The wider Sunni insurgency — the groups beyond Al Qaeda — is being slowly, and surely, defeated. The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted. Those who have not been captured yet are opting for a quieter life outside of Iraq. …

The enormous carnage the media report daily in Iraq is the direct result - in fact, the actual intention - of al Qaeda in Iraq, whose now-dead chief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, made plain early in 2004 that killing Iraqi Shiites was his only means of finally defeating the US in Iraq. After tacitly admitting that al Qaeda cannot defeat America militarily in Iraq, Zarqawi wrote that al Qaeda must turn to terrorism against the Iraqis in order to destabilize the country so much that its return to sovereignty that summer would not be effective.

“So the solution, and only God knows, is that we need to bring the Shia into the battle,” the writer of the document said. “It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands” of Shiites. …

“You noble brothers, leaders of the jihad [meaning other al Qaeda leaders - DS], we do not consider ourselves people who compete against you, nor would we ever aim to achieve glory for ourselves like you did,” the writer says. “So if you agree with it, and are convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects, we stand ready as an army for you to work under your guidance and yield to your command” [emphasis added].

Zarqawi went on to write that al Qaeda fighters in Iraq must wage war against the Shiite Iraqi majority (i.e, the “perverse sects”) and that the war on them must be well underway before the US returned sovereignty to the country. That way al Qaeda could propagandize that the Americans are responsible for the sectarian violence.

Like so much that Zarqawi planned, this tactic backfired. The Shia majority in Iraq did not turn against America (in the main), as Zarqawi thought they would, but against the Sunnis, and ferociously so. Kazmi again:

Sunni sectarian attacks, usually conducted by jihadists, finally provoked the Shiites to turn to their most brazen militias — the ones who would not heed Ayatollah Sistani’s call for pacifism — to conduct painful reprisals against Sunnis, usually while wearing official military fatigues and carrying government issued weapons. The Sunnis came to realize that they were no longer facing ragtag fighters, but rather they were confronting a state with resources and with a monopoly on lethal force. The Sunnis realized that by harboring insurgents they were inviting retaliation that they could do little to defend against.

Sadly, it took many thousands of young Sunnis getting abducted by death squads for the Sunnis to understand that in a full-fledged civil war, they would likely lose badly and be evicted from Baghdad. I believe that the Sunnis and insurgents are now war weary, and that this is a turnaround point in the campaign to stabilize Iraq.

The upshot of this is that now there is no significant insurgency in Iraq except al Qaeda. This is a huge accomplishment, though not entirely the doing of American action. Now the focus in Iraq has swung toward two main goals: bringing destruction upon al Qaeda there and bringing to heel the Shia militias, especially the Mahdi militia of Ayatollah Moqtada al Sadr. About these ends PM Maliki spoke to parliament yesterday. As you read this account by Iraqi blogger Mohammed Fadhil, remember the first of “15 rules for understanding the Middle East:” “What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. … In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public. …” So here is Mohammed’s account:

PM Maliki spoke to the parliament to explain the goals and strategy of his new plan and to hear their feedback, suggestions and reservations.

Maliki’s speech was sharp and straightforward. He stressed that the Baghdad plan was not directed against one faction over the other. He called it a plan “enforce the law” and said it would use force to apply the law against those who kill Iraqis and displace them from their homes.

Maliki didn’t forget to criticize the media that accuse the plan of being impartial and he asked the local media to support the plan and encourage the citizens to cooperate with the authorities.

Maliki’s most important warning was when he said that no one and no place would be immune to raids. Mosques (Sunni or Shia), homes or political offices will all be subject to searches and raids if they are used to launch attacks or hide militants.

There was considerable parliamentary, ah, discussion about the PM’s presentation, but it would seem that Maliki has put his personal honor on the line by saying his government will crack down on sectarian death squads. On a b-roll I saw on the news, Maliki emphasized to parliament that these operations were Iraqi led and that coalition forces were in a supporting role, although my guess is that it all depends what “supporting” means.

So can al Qaeda be defeated in Iraq? Most definitely. As more and more Sunnis realize they will never rule Iraq again, they will distance themselves increasingly from al Qaeda, whose leaders and ranks are mostly non-Iraqi. The alliance between Iraqi Sunnis and al Qaeda was only one of convenience for the Sunnis, whose politics remain mostly Baathist secular rather than Islamist religious. Al Qaeda has bungled that relationship, too, over the past few years, by attempting to terrorize Sunnis into supporting them. But murdering Sunni sheiks and other dastardly deeds brought open reprisals from Sunni clans. Now I think that Sunnis will increasingly turn against al Qaeda because they realize there is nothing al Qaeda can do for them in Iraq anymore.

The main task now before us is simply to kill al Qaeda, top to bottom. What I wrote last December is still true: this new tactic “is the final roll of the dice in Iraq that this administration, or the next, can make there. Either we crush the enemy, various as they are, or we lose the war.”

Update: Further evidence of the new focus on lethality is the President’s approval of killing Iranian agents inside Iraq.

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have been catching Iranian agents, interviewing them and letting them go. The Post says the administration is now convinced that was ineffective because Iran paid no penalty for its mischief.

As one senior administration official told the Post, “There were no costs for the Iranians. They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.”

I think this development buttresses the claim that our strategy is indeed different than before. I also think that US political and domestic opinion will “wait and see” no more than six months whether Gen. Petraeus can turn things around, and the general probably knows this. So I expect that al Qaeda is going to have a very rough six months ahead of it, and Maliki will be squeezed even more to clean up his own house.

Update: This kind of focused lethality is working well in Afghanistan, too.

Pessimism abounds these days and if you are one who understands the gravity of the threat of our enemies in the War on Terror you have reason to be pessimistic Too many don’t even believe we are really in a war. Our leaders who know we are at war are taking a minimalist approach to the war. No one with access to a bully pulpit is effectively articulating what is at stake in the war. God bless President George W. Bush but even as he has had the courage to take the punches of the opposition he still has failed to communicate effectively with the nation and to commit fully to victory.

I am reminded of the 1970s - a time when not only many in America were rooting for communism but when many actually believed we had lost the moral high ground and that it would be democratic capitalism eventually left on the ash heap of history. Fortunately we found a leader who effectively reminded us of the goodness of our system and values and who had the courage to commit to victory. We are fortunate that he was able to lead us to victory by committing the necessary resources - and thereby prevented us from ever having to commit the ultimate resources of total war against communism.

We are there again. We are really nowhere new. Today many of our own doubt our nation’s moral standing, many are rooting against our victory, and many believe we have already lost. Once again we need a leader who reminds us of who we really are as a nation, who can communicate articulately what is at stake, who like Bush is willing to take the punches, and who is willing to commit the resources necessary to achieve victory before we find ourselves in the corner with only the resource of total war left to use. I am waiting for that leader to emerge to inspire us to believe what is good about us and to inspire us to victory.

So with all of that in mind, with our minimalist approach to terrorism (Islamic militancy, jihadism, your term of choice…) and the lack of national unity we are seeing in our government today, the following is the speech I’d like to hear and the plan I’d like to see:

There is great fear that exists in the world today.

Here at home in these United States many fear we are revisiting the unpleasant times of Vietnam - that we are being dragged into a quagmire in which we cannot win. But in fact we have more in common with the unpleasant times of the late 1930s that led to the abandonment of free nations - Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and others to Nazi tyranny and millions of people abandoned to die horrifically in the Holocaust. Out of our fear of a despotic dictator not even 100 years ago we abandoned others, thinking we could buy our own national security. But in the process of that fearful appeasement and isolationism we were abandoning our own security, that is, until a man who had the courage to tell us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself led us out of fear. That man led us from the fear of economic collapse when he first came to office with those words and his words were every bit as applicable a few years later when he led us out of our fear of Nazism. Then a nation that was divided at that time - with 82% of Americans opposing potential war with the Nazis and thus unwilling to face the truth of the threat - finally united in a common cause for the survival of our freedom. Roosevelt refused to be led by that fear and instead led us out of fear as the institutions of America united behind him seeing the security of Americans at stake. Roosevelt saw the moral imperative of the victory of freedom over the evil of tyranny.

Today there is also fear abroad. But it is not us our enemies fear. What they do fear is what we stand for. Today medieval powerbrokers fear granting women rights. Today medieval powerbrokers fear educating their people. Today medieval powerbrokers fear the economic independence of their people. Today medieval powerbrokers fear liberty for their people. Today medieval powerbrokers fear allowing people to worship in different ways. It is not that these medieval powerbrokers do not understand our ways and the ways of freedom. They fully understand and they fully reject it because it threatens their medieval position of domination.

There is also another fear abroad. A fear of the people dominated by these overlords. They fear that we will abandon them to these medieval powerbrokers as we abandoned over 65,000 free people to be executed by communists in South Vietnam after 1975; as we abandoned over 250,000 South Vietnamese to communist reeducation camps, as we abandoned over two million Vietnamese who said “you will not abandon us and we will not abandon freedom” as they became the boat people of the 1970s. They fear abandonment as we abandoned Beirut in the early 1980s after we were attacked there; as we abandoned Afghanistan once we saw their purpose as served in the late 1980s; as we abandoned Somalis in Mogadishu and Shiites in Iraq in early 1990s. They fear they too will be abandoned as we abandoned so many in the West when we were willing to abandon Eastern Europe to communism until a man said to tear down the wall that represented the enemy’s fear of liberty.

Our allies fear we will abandon them and our enemies are counting on that. Today - sad to say, but this is the ugly truth - our allies and enemies alike wonder if we are gutless. They believe we lack will and perseverance.

So today to answer that question we have to face the facts of our sad actions - and inactions of our past - that the fearful policies of appeasement, isolationism and abandonment have never worked when we’ve tried it and are in fact immoral. Those policies empowered our enemies and cost more lives in the long run. The policies of Churchill, Roosevelt and Reagan are our model if we want security at home and abroad. We have to face the mistakes of our past when we acted fearfully but we can also look to our past for hope when we finally acted with courage and confidence.

We are not gutless. We know - the American people know - that when we abandon our friends that we are then abandoning our own security. After the 1930s we realized we needed willpower and perseverance and we freed the world from the Nazi yoke. During the 1980s we realized we needed willpower and perseverance and we freed millions from the shackles of communism. And we maintained our peace and security. As in the 1930s and 1980s, we today have the ability to summon the superior industry, technology, military doctrine, and moral superiority of liberty that no other nation on earth can do. So the question today is will we once again have the will and perseverance.

Let me tell you something. Way down deep Americans always have and Americans always will. Americans know that ours is a unique place in history that respects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We know we are the nation the world turns to when earthquakes and tsunamis occur. We know we are the nation even whose poor are the envy of third world nations. We know we are the nation who gives more in aid - both public and private - than any other nation on earth. We know we are the nation to whom the oppressed look for hope and help. We are the nation to whom the sick throughout the world look for cures. We are the nation where churches, synagogues, mosques, and secularists live side by side without constant fear of firebombings or death squads. Ours is a nation where a speech like this can be given without the fear of literally having ones tongue cut out. Americans know that is why today we simultaneously fight a battle with medieval powerbrokers who fear those principles while we also fight to control our borders as people from all over the world invade those borders not to suppress liberty but to find it. We know ours is a nation worth defending and of values worth promoting. We count on it and our friends and those who yearn for liberty count on us.

Americans deserve leaders who have as much guts as they have. Americans deserve leadership that is farsighted and not shortsighted, that can see past the next election, that can see the ramifications tomorrow of abandoning your friends today. Americans of tomorrow deserve leadership today that will not abandon them. My friends, if we do not have the will and perseverance demanded to protect and secure our liberty today then we had better hope our children have it because they will need every ounce of it. Roosevelt told us not to fear our own fear. Reagan told us we could have peace by standing strong and looking to the future with hope and confidence.

Today I present a five point plan that puts our fear behind us and that calls for national unity for the security of our values. We have been nickel-and-diming our security and future. In many cases we have refused to see the seriousness of our enemies. That is a policy of fear and the path to failure. Today we must:

One, keep our enemies out of America by defeating them abroad wherever they may be. This means in the Philippines, in Somalia, in Afghanistan, in the Horn of Africa, and yes in Iraq. We must strike at terrorist cells and confront the nations that support them. In Iraq we must seal her borders and crush the militias with whatever it takes including the broad use of US military might. Telling the Iraqis they must fend for themselves is like telling an alcoholic to remain sober in a bar. These long suffering people are addicted to survival and if we do not assist them they will survive in whatever way they can. The patrons in their neighborhood fear liberty as the drunks in a bar fear the wagon. Our allies will only fight with us if they believe we will stick by them. Our friends who desire liberty need our help and it is the only way we will maintain our own liberty.

Two, we must unleash the free market which leads to freedom. We must do more in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with a responsible and aggressive Marshall Plan. We must provide security so that these programs have the opportunity to take root. We must cut out bureaucracy and we must increase the presence of our civilian agencies in addition to our military in these regions.

Third, we must fight an aggressive economic and energy war against terrorist groups and the nations that support them - including especially Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Our energy and economic polices must not enable our enemies. In some cases this will cause short term losses for some American interests and hardships for our people but is crucial to causing the collapse of our enemies and our long term viability. We must isolate our enemies economically and become more self-sufficient ourselves.

Four, we must rebuild our military in a robust way. Transformation does not mean tiny. What is does mean is more flexibility, greater mobility, and soldier skills that relate to effectiveness in different cultures. But we need boots on ground to build relationships and trust and mutual security. Today our nation spends less of its GDP on national defense than at any time since Pearl Harbor. That is unconscionable in a day when we are actively at war. In a world in which our enemies seek our total destruction we can only achieve peace through strength. Strength is what they respect. And they must fear us. Diplomacy is preferred but it only works when it has teeth.

Finally, we must use our bully pulpit. We need to call upon the leaders of the world religions for regular and public summits between the leaders of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The religious leaders of the world need to come out of their ivory towers while their people are suffering. We must support groups who seek liberty throughout the world with moral, economic, and every level of support necessary. We must announce hope to all those who seek liberty across the airways of a Radio Free Liberty that gives hope to the oppressed throughout the world. We must speak directly to the peoples of the Middle East and across the world that we stand by them even as their own governments oppress them and impoverish them for the sake of their own personal power. We must kindle their hopes for when the time comes that they too may be free.

Essentially, we must make our enemies afraid and must give the people of the world hope. There was a day when so many feared Hitler, when so many later feared Brezhnev, and then Saddam. Today many fear Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il and Chavez. But the day came when Hitler feared us, Andropov feared us and Saddam feared us while those they oppressed found their hope in us. If these tyrants of today are smart then Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il and Chavez will fear us too while we bring hope to others and security to ourselves.

Our best days are ahead. The best days of all humanity are ahead. Do we have the will and perseverance to make those days happen or will we abandon our challenge and leave our children to do tomorrow what we refuse to do today? Will we leave them to carry out the last resort because we failed to carry out lesser but no less necessary measures today?

You know the answer and so do I. Let’s do what we have to do. Americans - have no fear. Friends - have no fear. And to our enemies - you have once again awakened a sleeping giant. Freedom and security are on the march once again. History has brought us here. Today the wolves have entered the sheepgate and they must be engaged. We are morally compelled to do so. Jefferson said the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance. McArthur said there is no substitute for victory. Make no mistake. We will conquer our fear. Liberty will triumph over oppression. We will be secure. Yes, we do have the willpower and we will persevere.”

That’s a presidential speech I’d like to hear, and soon. Today, from what I can see, John McCain and Joe Lieberman may be the only people at the levels of high political leadership who get this to a great degree. Bush understands the threat but it seems only McCain and Lieberman understand that we must go all out. One of the problems is that ours is largely a nation that goes about its business as if there were no threat looming over us - at the recommendation of the Bush administration by the way. A mistake, a big mistake in a day when people must understand what is at stake. Ours is the only nation that can morally stand up to tyranny. However it happened - and whether you like it or not - history has brought us here. Others depend on us and believe it or not we depend on others if we are to maintain security and a viable economy such as the one we are accustomed to. It is a moral imperative that stand for and commit to liberty.

Someone needs to make that clear and to commit us to preserving just that.

Hanni Essa, an Iraqi Christian priest, explains on video his perspective on the plight of Christians in Iraq today. It’s not good.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Christians have felt themselves increasingly under attack. During Saddam Hussein’s time, brutal acts were carried out against all Iraqis, but Saddam only permitted atrocities at his whim.

Without the security of Saddam’s strong central state and intelligence apparatus, sectarian, religious, and ethnic in-fighting has sprung up in much of Iraq. The Christian community, already small and isolated, primarily in Northern Iraq and Baghdad, has grown even more worried. They have faced a surge of attacks targeting them, attempting to push them from the country.

These attacks have been all too successful, today Iraq’s Christian community is almost entirely devastated. Most of them have fled to Jordan and Syria, many seeking a path to safety amongst other Christians in the West.

This has also led to the devastation of two of Iraq’s oldest idigenous communities, the Assyrians and Chaldeans, who are both primarily Christian communities now.

See also John Burgess’s piece on the exodus of Christians from the Middle East generally, especially the Palestinian lands.

An experienced Middle-East reporter of the Albany Times Union offers, ” 15 rules for understanding the Middle East.”

They are all so incisive and read-worthy (and short) that I’ll not bother to excerpt them. But if you wonder what’s going wrong (from our perspective) in Iraq and the ME generally, this is a primero primer.

Hat tip: The Braden Files, the best little-read blog out there (then again, he posts only twice per month or so).

Many links at Jules Crittenden’s post of the execution, “Drink Up,” including a link to Sky News’ video of the moments immediately preceding Saddam’s last drop.

Just over a year ago I posted an essay on this site regarding the execution of Tookie Williams. I treated that execution from the perspective of a military man and an ordained Catholic deacon. While acknowledging that there are times when the death penalty may be morally justifiable based on traditional and contemporary Catholic theology, I found that the execution of Tookie Williams could not be justified.

Today I experience the same struggle regarding the execution of Saddam Hussein. Today, using the same theological methodology, I find his execution morally justified.

The Church has traditionally left the question of capital punishment as a moral decision - that is, there is not an absolutist position as there is with, for example, abortion. Even as the contemporary Church has been “tightening the noose” on the moral justification of the death penalty (pardon the analogy) it has still not declared an authoritative absolutist position (I realize this matters not to many non-Catholics, but it is important to Catholics and it does carry a certain amount of weight politically in the world). Cardinal Renato Martino, a former Vatican envoy to the UN and top prelate for justice issues, has condemned the execution of Saddam; that’s his opinion and perhaps he accurately reflects the opinion of others in the Vatican, perhaps the Pope himself. Martino has also been known to make past ridiculous and irresponsible positions particularly with regard to Iraq.

But a case for the morality of Saddam’s execution can be made. As I wrote before:

For Catholics, we turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is a summary of how we apply the teachings of Christ through His revelation - Scripture and Tradition - to our modern world today. It is indeed faith seeking understanding. In the current edition of the Catechism, promulgated in the 1980s, the Church states in paragraph 2266 “…the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.”

The Catholic Church has taught for centuries that humans have a right for legitimate defense. That is the basis for just war, self-defense as well as for capital punishment. War, self-defense and the death penalty are justified when they are the only reasonable means left for security - be it the security of the individual in the case of the home invader, the security of the community from the murderer or the security of the nation from terrorists. One may kill in order to protect, which is distinct from murder.

And yet the late Pope John Paul II is well known for his preaching against capital punishment. For his reasoning we have only to look at paragraph 2267 of the Catechism “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”

That paragraph is the basis for the Catholic Church’s well documented and forceful current teaching against capital punishment in the world and particularly in the West today - that indeed we do not need capital punishment to protect ourselves since we have the capacity to secure society from the worst human threats among us once we have captured them. Herein lies the true argument: do we have that capacity?

I would argue that many societies do not, particularly in the Third World. We cannot self-righteously take away a critical means for their self-defense when they lack the sophistication of a proper and secure penal system. This was the condition throughout the world not long ago and still in many parts of the world today. It is very likely the condition for countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq as they must secure themselves from terrorists still at large and even from those captured. Some argue it is still the condition today in the West and even here in the US with the unlimited opportunities for appeals and technicalities in having proper convictions overturned. Some would argue then that we have not developed a mature and secure enough system and environment to render capital punishment unnecessary.

Iraq does not have the capacity to protect itself from Saddam for the long term. Yes, the Baathists are likely rendered ineffective, yes the Sunnis are now a minority that is for the most part currently not a threat; yes the US has effectively jailed Saddam with little to no risk of his escape. But one day we might leave. Even if we don’t leave, one day he would be turned over to Iraqis. A life sentence in the third world is far more meaningless than many would argue it is even in America. Bribes can do things in the Middle East that are often not possible here (for example no one can seriously contemplate a release of the Unabomber or Eric Rudolph due to a bribe - or any reason for that matter).

However small, there is the chance Saddam Hussein could go free. The weight of that possibility has continued to weigh heavy on the minds of Iraqis who still fear him even while incarcerated. The psychological impact of his continued existence and the three ring circus of his court case can arguably be said to have harmed our credibility and that of the various Iraqi governments of the last three years (interim and elected) resulting in more deaths during the current fight. For the long term bloodless means are insufficient for legitimate defense from Saddam. For the good of Iraq and for the good of the cause of freedom and peace in the Middle East, Saddam’s execution has had to happen. As the only reliable recourse available, for their protection - and for ours - the moral case for the execution of Saddam Hussein can legitimately be made.

In, “Are sheiks the key to success in Iraq?” I summarized some arguments for and against using the tribal sheiks in Iraq to defeat the various insurgencies. Now Time magazine snapshots the successes - and the concerns - of the alliance between a US Marine commander in al Anbar and a powerful sheik there.

“Turning Iraq’s Tribes Against Al-Qaeda,” tells of one, “Sheikh Abdel Sittar Baziya, head of the Abu Risha tribe and a founder of the movement the Sahawat Al Anbar, or Awakening Council, an alliance pledged to fighting Al_Qaeda in Al Anbar province.” Sittar made his bones after the invasion as the head of a highway-banditry ring. He was arrested three times by American forces. He allied with al Qaeda for a time but turned against them when they tried to horn in on his highway-robbery rackets. He says he now opposes al Qaeda for religious and ideological reasons. But he’s also, for now anyway, a valuable ally of US forces in returning law and order to al Anbar. But, says US Col. Sean Mcfarland, “”Tribes are like countries . They don’t have friends, they have interests. Right now we’re both to them. Down the road, would they fight us if we overstayed out welcome? They might very well.”