Since the 2004 election, I decided to avoid posting about partisan politics, that is, issues attached to candidates or holders of office. I decided to discuss issues as before, but without discussing the personalities behind those issues except, as far as possible, in a non-partisan way.

Until today.

In about 30 minutes I wll leave to attend the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Richard Buerstetta, killed in action in Iraq two weekends ago. He was a 2004 graduate of Franklin High School, where both my sons knew him. He and my eldest son were actually scheduled to go to boot camp at Parris Island, SC, the same day, but a change by their recruiter sent them on different days. Lance Cpl. Buerstetta was a Marine reservist, enrolled in college at Middle Tennessee State University, when his callup came. Without a flicker of hesitation at being yanked from his college courses, he shouldered his seabags and went off to war. “His bags stayed packed,” according to a family member. He died about a month after arriving in Iraq.

Got that? High school graduate. College student. US Marine. Iraq.

This Youtube video of Sen. John F. Kerry laying the most grievous insult upon Lance Cpl. Buerstetta and his peers explains why, as much as I will hold my nose to vote Republican next week, I cannot possibly bring myself to vote at this time for any Democrat.

I dare you, Senator Kerry, to come to Lance Cpl. Buerstetta’s funeral and tell that to his parents. Tell them that their son, high school graduate, college student, was just too uneducated and too stupid to avoid enlisting in an all-volunteer military. You tell them that, Senator, you inexecrable, miserable excuse of a public servant.

Drudge Report carries Sen. John McCain’s response, here in full:

McCain Calls On Kerry To Apologize
Tue Oct 31 2006 11:43:14 ET

Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education. Americans from all backgrounds, well off and less fortunate, with high school diplomas and graduate degrees, take seriously their duty to our country, and risk their lives today to defend the rest of us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

They all deserve our respect and deepest gratitude for their service. The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night. Without them, we wouldn’t live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.

I think McCain is too polite.

Update: MSNBC reports,

A source close to Kerry tells NBC News that he was trying to make a “tough and honest joke” about Bush and that in the process he omitted two words which changed the intended meaning. Per the source, Kerry meant to say that he can’t “overstress the importance of a great education” and that “if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy… You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.” Kerry mistakenly dropped the “getting us” from his initial remarks.

Is Kerry to be believed? First, the record is what the record is; he said what he said. If he truly didn’t mean to insult young Americans and intended his remarks as post-facto amended, then would not a proper gentleman recoil in horror at his won gaffe? Would not a proper gentleman immediately issue an unconditional apology for being such a verbal klutz? And all this before trying to play “what I meant to say”? The Anchoress (via BCB) puts it this way:

There is an art to good politics and there is a rule, too - and it’s a really simple one, but so many politicians can’t follow it, particularly if they have delusions of genius. The Rule goes like this: If you screw up, whether because you’re an idiot, or you’re just having a bad day, or a mic was left on - whatever - and you say something deplorable (even if it just sounds deplorable but you meant it well…) you admit it, you make a joke at your own expense and you apologize - even a half-*** apology will usually do.

So again: would not a proper gentleman, to say nothing of an astute politician, do this? Yes, a proper gentleman or astute politician would - but remember, we’re talking about John Kerry here.

Also, this man’s open contempt for American troops and his overt willingness to flat-out lie about them goes back more than 30 years.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Every word was a deliberate lie. When confronted by CNN’s Judy Woodfruff about this testimony during the 2004 campaign season,

Mr. Kerry tried to weasel out of his appallingly false accusations by saying he was merely quoting cohorts. He blamed his antiwar comrades.

When CNN’s Judy Woodruff asked Mr. Kerry if he had accused “American troops of war crimes,” he said: “No, I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops…. I always fought for the soldiers.” His answer was devious and downright false.

Kerry’s counterattack has no base of credibility, based on his longstanding record of hostility to American troops.

Also see Belmont Club’s post, which kindly links here and that has excellent comments by readers. My favorite: “Tell me something: Wouldn’t you rather be ’stuck in Iraq’ than ’stuck on stupid’…”

My long-term readers may recall that I wrote a little over three years ago that al Qaeda does not have a strategic plan. Strategic goals, yes, an actual plan to get there, no. It was unintentionally proleptic ( I dare not say prophetic) of me to wrote so long before next month’s election,

What we have seen so far is that bin Laden lashes out spasmodically at targets of opportunity. The United States has been the consistent target of the attacks (though not the only one, of course) but bin Laden’s “strategy” (it can hardly be dignified with the term) is based on a delusion that he has explained many times: when hurt, the United States always cuts and runs. In the Isma’il interview, bin Laden said,

We think that the United States is very much weaker than Russia. Based on the reports we received from our brothers who participated in jihad in Somalia, we learned that they saw the weakness, frailty, and cowardice of US troops. Only 80 US troops were killed. Nonetheless, they fled in the heart of darkness, frustrated, after they had caused great commotion about the new world order.

Bin Laden thought that terrorist violence by itself would cause America to continue to retreat, to withdraw from Saudi Arabi and the rest of the Persian Gulf countries, enabling the Muslim ummah to realize their long-suppressed dream of a true Islamic society (bin Laden having a delusion that ordinary Muslim men and women truly thirsted for a Talibanic society for their own countries). Hurt the Americans enough, he said - more than once, on the record, - and they will flee.

Al Qaeda’s political objectives were, and remain, well defined: reestablish the Islamic caliphate of yore. Then extend the caliphate into the middle of Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. After that - these are very long-rage objectives - extend the rule of Islam across the entire globe. It matters not at the moment whether these are realistic goals. Islamists think they are.

Today, for both Islamists and the US, Iraq is the main battlefield. Whomsever prevails there will gain the intiative for many years to come, perhaps so strongly that the other side will not be able to take it away.

There are two main al Qaeda objectives to its fighting in Iraq.

1. Prevent the establishment of a democratic government and society there.

2. Compel the United States to withdraw its forces, hence its influence, before a democratic government is soundly established.

Obviously, these are two closely-related objectives. What is the threat to Islamism by democracy? Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates since the early 1990s, was killed by Saudi security forces in Riyadh in 2003. He wrote a book published by al Qaeda entitled, The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad. In it Ayyeri wrote, “It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy.” Islamic absolutism, Ayyeri wrote, cannot exist inside a society where the people think they can pass their own laws and makes their own rules.

Because democracy is “seductive,” as Ayyeri put it, its defeat in Iraq is the first imperative in all the world for al Qaeda. More than 18 months ago, al Qaeda’s head man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (now dead) wrote that Iraqi democracy is “suffocation” for Islamist aims. He renounced the idea that America showed signs of withdrawing. The NYT summarized (link no longer online),

The memo says extremists are failing to enlist support inside the country, and have been unable to scare the Americans into leaving. It even laments Iraq’s lack of mountains in which to take refuge. … [The writer] claims to be impressed by the Americans’ resolve. After significant losses, he writes, “America, however, has no intention of leaving, no matter how many wounded nor how bloody it becomes.”

Today’s sectarian violence in Iraq is no surprise. Even without al Qaeda there, millions of Shiites would have felt they had scores to settle. But in the same captured document, Zarqawi explained that sectarian violence would have to be fomented so that democratic sovereignty cannot take root.

“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.”

The greatest violence today in Iraq is between Iraqis, not the result of direct al Qaeda attacks. Inculcating sectarian violence has been enormously successful by al Qaeda and stands today as the greatest threat to a unified, democratic Iraq - so much so that serious talk is being given now to the idea of partitioning the country into near-autonomous provinces, demracated by ethnicity or tribal identity or Muslim denomination or some combination of all. Al Qaeda must be licking its chops at that prospect. It would be much more able to infiltrate and dominate weakened provinces seriatim than try to take on the whole country.

I wondered a few days ago whether al Qaeda’s smart move would be to stop fighting after America’s mid-term election next month. Baathists and sectarians now fighting each other realize, like al Qaeda, that their goals are less attainable as long as powerful US forces remain in the country. They are heartened, opined OpinionJournal, by American domestic political talk of timetables for withdrawals and Iraqi intractability.

The current American panic, by contrast, is precisely what the insurgents intend with their surge of October violence. The Baathists and Sadrists can read the U.S. political calendar, and they’d like nothing better than to feed the perception that the violence is intractable. They want our election to be perceived as a referendum on Iraq that will speed the pace of American withdrawal.

So I wondered whether al Qaeda might decide to sit things out after November, stop stirring the violence pot and hope that the Bush administration starts significant withdrawals well before the 2008 elections. After all, even the US senior commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, tacitly admitted Oct. 24 that the country is embroiled in a civil war: “We’ve seen the nature of the conflict evolving from what was an insurgency against us to a struggle for the division of political and economic power among the Iraqis.” When contending armed groups are fighting over the control of the central government, that’s pretty much the definition of civil war.

It may be, though, that al Qaeda’s religious ideology of armed jihad means that it cannot lay low even if it might be advantageous. It cannot merely engineer the US withdrawal, it must be known to have done so. So it keeps bombing and shooting.

Except now it may have actually developed a strategy to fight America. This strategy is very simple and has excellent potential that is already being realized.

1. Target American news media, not for attack but for propaganda.

2. Through the media, buttress the idea in the minds of American politicians that Iraq is lost and there is no reasonable recourse but to begin withdrawing as soon as possible.

I would submit that al Qaeda is significantly accomplishing this strategy, so obviously so that I need not offer cites. And let it be remembered that now the calls for withdrawal do not come from only one party.

My colleague, John Krenson, explained what is at stake for America in Iraq. I’ll commend his analysis and add that for the US to withdraw before victory would have catastrophic consequences for us. No other enemy - Syria, Iran or North Korea - would give us the slightest credibility. Neither would strategic competitors such as China or Russia. Inside the Middle East, America’s reputation as a nation determined to defend its honor would be irretrievably sullied, this in a culture where honor, shame and perception are of primary importance. The perceived honor of al Qaeda would rise dramatically. The shame imputed to America would not reside solely with us. Cooperative Arab governments would also suffer diminished respect by their own people and the hostile regimes named just now. Resistance to Islamism across the Middle East by government such as Jordan’s and Egypt’s and their peoples would be badly harmed, perhaps even fatally. Such developments would only encourage Iranian and Syrian adventurism, spell violent trouble for Israel and endanger the ruling bodies of Arab governments friendly or neutral toward the United States. Precipitant withdrawal from Iraq would be a prescription for a much more violent world.

What has this to do with November’s elections? Mark Steyn conducted a little mind experiment not long ago.

But suppose the “Anyone But Bush” bumper-sticker set got their way; suppose he and Cheney and Rummy and all the minor supporting warmongers down to yours truly were suddenly vaporized in 20 seconds’ time. What then?

Nothing, that’s what. The jihad’s still there. Kim Jong Il’s still there. The Iranian nukes are still there. The slyer Islamist subversion from south-east Asia to the Balkans to northern England goes on, day after day after day.

Would al Qaeda set down its AK-47s and TNT and take up watercolor? Or would they simply see the disappearance as a sign of Allah’s favor and so redouble their efforts to bring us death and misery?

You know the answer.

There are legitimate criticisms of the way the Bush administration has waged the war in Iraq. I’ve made some myself. But Bush and Cheney are Rumsfeld are not the problem America faces. Al Qaeda is. The administration’s critics claim, and some portions of the National Intelligence Estimate say, that the fighting in Iraq has increased al Qaeda recruiting. Probably so - even evildoers “rally ’round the flag.”

If you think al Qaeda’s recruitment and capability for violence is profiting from America’s continued presence in Iraq, just wait until we prematurely withdraw. As Steyn continued, “And one morning we’ll switch on the TV and the smoke and flames will be on this side of the Atlantic… .”

Update: Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek about to make a way forward. The heart of the issue:

All sides in Iraq are preparing for the day the United States leaves. They are already engaged in a power struggle for control of the post-American Iraq. The Kurds have ensured that their autonomous region is governed essentially as a separate country with its own army. The largest Shia parties want to maintain their militias to bolster their own power base, independent of the state. And the Sunnis do not want to wind down the insurgency, for fear that they will be impoverished or killed in the new Iraq. Nobody believes that, after the Americans, this power struggle will be resolved with ballots. So they are all keeping their bullets. …

If the United States were to leave Iraq tomorrow, it is virtually certain that the bloodletting would spread like a virus. …

As long as that is true - and it will be true for a long time to come - al Qaeda’s main goal to prevent democracy in Iraq will be achieved. Zakaria’s piece is long but well worth the read.

I went several days ago to see Clint Eastwood’s new epic about 1945’s battle for Iwo Jima. Or his movie about the flag raising during the battle for Iwo Jima. Or his movie about the war-bonds tour of three of the flag raisers after the flag raising during the battle of Iwo Jima. Or his movie about the American Indian flag raiser making the war-bonds tour after the flag raising during the battle of Iwo Jima, and whose decline into alcoholism is a tragic story in its own right.

Or something like that. Or something like those.

Confused already? Now you know how you’ll feel walking back to your car after the movie.

This movie’s technical merits are excellent beyond all praise, but good luck trying to figure out just what is the story line. I remember what Alfred Hitchcock said decades ago: Before everything else about a movie, you have to have a story. And FOOF doesn;t really have one. Instead, it has three or four, and winds up telling none of them well.

The story(ies) is (are) told almost exclusively through flashbacks. Sometimes what is really a single flashback by one of the characters is split into two scenes in the movie - one key flashback consists of two parts separated by about an hour (maybe more) of running time. And it’s not always clear who is having which flashback. I think Eastwood and the screenwriter chose to make the movie this way because they wanted to focus not so much on the battle itself as the battle’s after-effects on the three men who lived long enough after the flag raising to be pulled back to the States to make a war-bond tour. (Three marines who raised the flag were KIA before they knew they were being hailed as heroes.)

Yet to make the movie chronologically would have made part one a straight-up war movie, followed by more than half the running time of the tour scenes. And frankly, I agree that that would not have worked very well. So I can’t fault Eastwood for using the flashback technique - it lets him keep inserting combat-action scenes throughout the movie so it doesn’t drag along as it would otherwise. But I don’t think it worked out well. I can see why he did it, I just don’t think the how was successful.

The characters also a certain papier-mache feel to them. The only one whose role is really fleshed out is Pfc. Ira Hayes, the Indian Marine at the far left of the pole.

His decline into alcoholism started on the war-bond tour and eventually, as the movie shows, he simply laid down and died in a barnyard some years later. It is a sad story, but it also completely dominates the movie, to the detriment of, well, everything else. The movie’s subtitle could have been, “The Ira Hayes Tragedy, also with the US Marine Corps.” I say this not to diminish either Pfc. Hayes or his sad end but to identify one reason why the movie ultimately was disappointing. It simply never figured out exactly what story it was trying to tell.

Bit players come and go who were very important in the historical battle but who are never even identified by name in the movie. The Marine commander was Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, whose nickname was “Howlin’ Mad.” We see why he was so nicknamed when he throws a screaming fit at some poor bloke on the other end of a telephone line, but the movie never reveals his name or what he was doing. If you don’t already know, you still won’t. Same with Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, afloat offshore, who observed when the first flag was raised atop Mt. Suribachi on the island, “This guarantees a Marine Corps for five hundred years.” An actor delivers the line to the still-anonymous Gen. Smith without clue of just who he was. If you don’t know, you don’t know.

Another nit that comes to mind: the movie portrays a burning, battle-damaged B-29 bomber fly over two protagonists, heading for the island’s airfield while the battle still rages. In fact, such a landing did take place. This bomber’s landing was filmed by a combat-camera crew and its widespread use in newsreels back inthe US gave rise to the false belief that the island was invaded in order to have an emergency landing strip halfway between Honshu, the principal B-29 target island of Japan, and the Marianas, where the bombers were based. Not so. But that’s not the nit, and the movie does not reinforce the notion anyway. The nit is that the real bomber was not burning, as the historical film clearly shows. The bomber was low on fuel. The Marines refueled it and off it flew again. But this is a minor nit, I admit, and it does convey to the audience right away that the landing was an emergency one.

Major kudo: the famous flag raising is accurately represented as the second one. The principals in the movie are mystified why it is so important, just as they were in real life. Iwo vets have said that “the flag raising” to them always meant the first, smaller flag that went up and was replaced with the soon-to-be-famous second, larger flag, ordered raised to prevent Secretary Knox from confiscating the original. The movie faithfully reproduces how Rosenthal almost missed the shot and doesn’t ignore the presence of Marine motion-picture photographer Sgt. William Genaust, who was later KIA, and who filmed the raising of the second flag. To history buffs like me, getting these details right is crucial, and the movie does.

Technical merits: the integration of CGI and real filmery is now total and complete. The art directors obviously spent hours poring through photos of movies taken during the real battle. On-screen reproduction of Mt. Suribachi, weapons effects and the landscape (much shot in volcanic Iceland) is flawless.

Make sure you stay for the end credits all the way to the end. They, unlike the movie itself, actually tell the story of the battle and pay a good tribute to all six flag raisers.

BTW, AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, who took the shot, died only last August at age 94. I posted about it here.

Australia’s leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, has declared that some Muslim men jailed for committing gang rape were not entirely at fault.

In a Ramadam sermon in a Sydney mosque, Sheik al-Hilali suggested that … [t]here were women, he said, who ’sway suggestively’ and wore make-up and immodest dress “and then you get a judge without mercy and gives you 65 years. But the problem, but the problem all began with who?” he said, referring to the women victims.

Addressing 500 worshippers on the topic of adultery, Sheik al-Hilali added: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it..whose fault is it - the cats or the uncovered meat?

“The uncovered meat is the problem.”

He went on: “If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (veil), no problem would have occurred.”

Women, he said, were ‘weapons’ used by Satan to control men.

The sheik has since apologized for the remarks, which were assailed by right-thinking Ausssies from Prime Minister Howard on down. “Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Miss Pru Goward said there could be no backtracking over the comments. ‘He could be guilty of incitement to the crime of rape and should be deported,’ she said. ” Read the comments at the bottom of the story; they’s a trip, including a Briton who asks, reasonably enough, just where is the feminists’ outrage?

Update: To their honor, many leading Muslims in Australia are demanding that the sheik resign from his position and even leave the community. Blue Crab Boulevard has the goods.

The enemy’s primary target is our will to win. Do we have it?

I took part recently in a panel debate at the University of California at Santa Cruz in mid-October. The debate format included opening comments and four questions followed by closing comments. The four questions included:

1. Address the original decision to go to war in Iraq.

2 Is Iraq the front line of the War on Terror?

3. Address the costs and benefits of going to war in Iraq.

4. Address our responsibilities going forward in Iraq.

Here is a summary of my thoughts about those topics.

As the elections approach and as the President announces shifts in tactics in Iraq we are at a “gut check” point with our involvement in Iraq. The invasion’s aftermath has not gone according to plan. But we are not losing to the extent as the enemy seems to be successfully portraying us to be. Now is an appropriate time for a significant review of where we’ve been and where we are going with regard to Iraq.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that the Iraq Campaign is part of a Just War. To be certain there have been mistakes in its planning and execution but that does not mean it is the wrong campaign or unjust. If anything it means it is more imperative that we correct those mistakes and win it.

Often we ask ourselves how moral we are when we go to war. In the case of the War on Terror and in the Iraq campaign particularly we can ask ourselves a more challenging question - how moral were we when we didn’t go to war and how moral would we be to lose it?

Generally speaking there are four criteria for determining a Just War. First, is the threat lasting, grave and certain? The whole world believed Saddam had WMD and had used them against his own people. Perhaps we have forgotten that he is the greatest murderer of Muslims in the history of the world. We also know that he had assisted terrorists practically to the very day of our invasion, financing suicide bombings by Palestinains, for example. We know he had connections with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and that Iraq was in danger of becoming the next Afghanistan.

The second condition of Just War is determining that all other means are ineffective. Without a doubt our primary means of deterring Hussein had been the notoriously ineffective UN embargo that only enriched Saddam – and not a few UN officials whose vested interest was to keep the money flowing. We know also from the Iraqi Survey Group that in the years after 1998 - after UN inspectors were kicked out - Saddam was within one week of producing bio-weapons, days to weeks away from producing chemical weapons such as mustard gas, and had given his nuclear scientists a ten-fold raise in salary as a sign of his intention to be back in the WMD business. The post-Gulf War embargo was being undercut by the very nations and officials who were supposed to enforce it. After 12 years the embargo was fatally weak and Saddam was getting stronger merely by biding his time.

The third condition is that there must be a likelihood for success. In fact, there is not only a likelihood for our success in Iraq but we are in large part already successful. Our successes have not come as we expected but when we look through the window of history we can see that we are experiencing success in Iraq, although of course there is very much left to do. Previous wars brought tens of thousands of American military deaths and up to millions of civilian deaths. It is amazing that we can fight a war such as we are fighting in Iraq with comparatively low casualty figures after three years. We fighting and reconstructing simultaneously. It took about four years of full scale combat and an additional decade or more of reconstruction for both the Civil War and World War II and we consider those to be almost undisputed successes and moral wars.

The key to our success in Iraq is our center of gravity - our public will. If we have the will then we will win. If we falter then we will lose. The enemy knows it and therefore our will is their primary target. They are targeting the American and Iraqi will to persevere. As of today, the enemy is being very successful. We have the resources to win. So the important question today is do we have the will to win.

The fourth condition of Just War is proportionality. We often think of this as doing the bare minimum to win. We have spent billions to target the enemy precisely and to reduce civilian casualties. Our enemy targets civilians just as Saddam brutalized his own civilians. The insurgents fear doctors and teachers and road builders more than they do American soldiers. Therefore they attack them. But if we commit a war crime we consider it just that - a crime that is unacceptable.

But there is another side of proportionality: if the violence used cannot be more than is necessary to win, it also must be enough to win. I believe the relevant question today is, “Are doing what it takes to win decisively or are we dragging this thing out to our long term detriment?”

Judeo-Christian natural law tradition holds that war is justified for defensive purposes, pre-emptive purposes and in some cases punitive purposes. That is often forgotten but it is true. The war in Iraq meets all three of these criteria as well as the four conditions of Just War.

We were going to have to confront Saddam at some point. How long were we willing wait for an al-Qaeda-Iraqi alliance? How much stronger were we going to allow Saddam to become? How many more Iraqis were we going to allow to be brutalized and how many more terror attacks were we going to accept? Peace is not merely the absence of war. Peace is respect for others, security and hope. Aquinas taught us that war can be a necessary tool to restore or to establish a true peace of respect, hope and security when there is a peace that is so corrupt and brutal that it is a false peace. We have got a lot to do but the bottom line is we are doing what is needed to be done and the question today is how do we finish it successfully.

Why We Are There

The original decision to go into Iraq was multifaceted and not as one-dimensionally focused on WMD as many would like to errantly remember it being. True that WMD was a critical part of the decision. The intelligence serves of every European nation as well as our own believed that WMD and WMD programs were in Iraq. We all knew that not only had Saddam used them but that he could also make them available to others. We have evidence that he trained al-Qaeda in the use of poison gas in Afghanistan. Whether he moved them out of the country when he had two years to realize our intentions or whether he had otherwise gotten rid of them does not negate the fact that he also had the infrastructure to be back in the WMD business fairly quickly as cited above from the Iraqi Survey Group.

But there were other important strategic reasons for the Iraq campaign in the War on Terror. Among these were the prevention of an emerging and strengthening relationship with al-Qaeda based on what we now know had been a developing relationship with the Taliban. The key factor here was not waiting for an effective terror relationship to fully manifest itself for us to then have to respond to - the key was preventing another al-Qaeda sanctuary and support system from developing to begin with. Iraq had the resources and the motives.

Another strategic factor was the long term approach of bringing liberty to the Middle East. We are more secure - and indigenous populations are more secure - when we bring our enemies the gift of democracy. This has been proven in Europe, in Asia, and in the former Communist world. And we are seeing success today in our current war. There has been a ripple effect of democracy - often at local levels - throughout the Middle East and Central Asia since 2003 in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, etc. We are more secure and the world is more secure when there is liberty. We are by no means there yet in the Middle East and Central Asia but the foundation is being laid and we are far closer to it than we were five years ago. That was a central strategic reason of our going there.

The Front Lines

If there is such a thing as a front line in the asymmetric modern warfare of today, Iraq could be it. Iraq is now the primary battlefield because the enemy has chosen to fight it out there as Osama bin Laden himself has claimed.

Iraq is a far preferable battlefield than other alternatives for a number of reasons. It is not the United States. Better to take the fight to the enemy than it is to allow them to fight us here or in Europe.

Iraq is a more preferable battleground than Afghanistan. Advantages of fighting a more intense war in Iraq than in Afghanistan are the terrain, the presence of nearby allies and bases, and a culture that is more westernized, relatively speaking. A war of this magnitude in Afghanistan would be far more difficult. It can be strongly argued that the war in Iraq has had a positive impact on our fight in Afghanistan simply because it has - or at least had - pulled enemy manpower and resources away from Afghanistan and to Iraq.

A primary problem in the battle for Afghanistan is the sanctuary over the border in Pakistan’s mountains - a border that is far more difficult to close than the borders of Iraq. There was a resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan at the time of our launch into Iraq in 2003 (though most have forgotten that). Had it not been for Iraq the resurgence we are seeing in Afghanistan now may have come much sooner and may have delayed or even prevented the elections and reconstruction we have experienced in Afghanistan in the last two to three years. It is possible if not likely that we had those elections and that we have accomplished what we have accomplished in Afghanistan because the front lines have been in Iraq and not in Afghanistan.

Cost/Benefit

The costs of US involvement in Iraq are lives and treasure. But the real cost would be failure. That would be our long term survival and resumed brutal oppression of Iraqis. Let’s look at the benefits which are so often overlooked:

- Constitution written and multiple elections in Iraq with turnout of eligible voters nearly twice than in the US. We stay home from threat of rain; Iraqis go vote under threat of bombs and bullets.

- Opening of over 3,400 public schools with 80,000 children attending better schools than before

- Sewage service to 5.1 million more Iraqis than before, 200 water treatment plants up to modern standards.

- Internet subscribers up from 5,000 to more than 196,000. There were no independent TV stations before; there are at least independent now, and Iraq has gone from zero independent newspapers or magazines to more than 100 now. Same for radio, zero to at least 72 now.

- To punish the Shiites after the Gulf War nearly 90% of the Iraqi marshlands were dried up by Hussein, burning reed beds and poisoning the remaining waters, displacing 500,000 Iraqi citizens. As of 2005 nearly 50 percent of the marshland has been reflooded and the population is returning; - all the seeds of security and hope.

- Relative security in all but a few provinces mostly in the Sunni Triangle and recently in Baghdad itself.

Let’s also review the ripple effect successes of our involvement in Iraq:

- Elections at various levels in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Egypt - many including women.

- Muammar Qaddafi’s WMD are now at the US Dept. of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and diplomatic relations with Libya are being restored. We know that the Taliban and al-Qaeda as of 1999 saw Libya as a potential supplier and ally. Now it is not.

- And not least, no terror attack on US soil or US interests outside the battle zones. We have been fighting on their turf. That’s a benefit.

What next?

Our current responsibility in Iraq is one thing - to win. Even if you disagree with our being there, the fact is we are there and so we need to finish the job on our terms and the terms of the elected Iraqi government. If we capitulate in Iraq it will be a disaster and only embolden the terrorists. Withdrawal is an illusion. The terrorists have already shown they will fight us here and make no mistake that they will if we don’t have them preoccupied somewhere else until defeated once and for all.

As to what we should do in Iraq, there are several things. First, we should stop this nonsensical talk about withdrawal and timetables. It emboldens and encourages the terrorists. Instead we need to unify around victory and perseverance - and that needs to be reflected in the language that we use. Appearing to be defeatist can only help lead us to defeat.

We need to seal Iraq’s borders to stop the flow of insurgents and materials. We need, as much as possible, to identify and expel Iranian agents from Iraq. We need to finish the militia problem as we have done for the most part in Afghanistan - this is critical, perhaps the most critical thing we must do.

We need to speed up the court proceedings and be done with Saddam Hussein once and for all. He continues to be a psychological noose around the Iraqi people - keeping them fearful and losing confidence in the new government. The sooner he is brought to justice the better. It will be the lifting of a huge weight and would have made a significant difference if done much earlier.

There is talk of positioning US soldiers on bases within Iraq to provide security from outside threats while we turn over internal security to the Iraqis. It seems to me to be too soon to turn over much to the Iraqis. It is likely we need to increase the number of US troops. If this is the case, then let’s quit beating around the bush and let’s get to it. My own National Guard unit is one that would likely be called up and my bags are packed and ready to go.

My own experience in Afghanistan - and the experience of history in Germany and Japan and Reconstruction in the American South - indicates that you have to have troops on the ground for a long period of time to get things done and to build trust with the locals. Patrols once each month thru a village or focusing on one area while others go un-addressed at all do not work.

One thing for the long term that we must do is to increase the size of the US military in general. We have lost our deterrence capability as events these past six months in particular show (Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Venezuela, et al). The only way to deter such threats is through our strength. We can still transform - a large military does not mean all heavy divisions - but it means manpower that is trained and ready to respond quickly. Transformation doesn’t mean tiny either. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran recently called the West weak, He obviously thinks that our diplomacy has no teeth behind it. With the tempo of our wartime operations and the breadth and seriousness of other looming threats we need a bigger stick so our words will mean something.

To Sum It Up

The bottom line going forward is that this war is a war of wills and perception as much as anything else. Whoever has the most confidence and is most committed to winning will emerge as the victor in this war. The oft-referred to Phase IV of Iraqi Freedom was flawed from the start. But even though not going as quickly and smoothly as planned we have experienced success.

In November of 2003 our first Ramadan in Iraq went better than expected. My soldiers today who were there then still are surprised by that. In December 2003 we had a major success in Afghanistan with the national assembly, the Loya Jirga, and the approved constitution. That had a spillover effect psychologically in Iraq. Also in December 2003, we more importantly captured Saddam after having killed his sons. His perceived invincibility among Iraqis was demolished.

In early 2004 Gaddafi gave up his WMD and switched sides. If he had waited one more year I doubt he would have made that decision - our momentum in Iraq was his tipping point, momentum that was going strongly our way, both on the ground in Iraq and in world opinion.

Then in the spring of 2004 the Abu Ghraib scandal hit. The media obsession with it provided streams of propaganda for al-Jazeera. Shortly afterward was our first attempt to take control of Fallujah. Our poor plan to take it made us appear weak and indecisive. Then came the Madrid bombing - the Spanish capitulation was meaningless tactically but strategically it was the best thing that could have happened for al-Qaeda and the Baathists and Iranians. All this happened within just a month or two.

When the momentum had been going so strongly our way our own poor decisions, our allies’ lack of will and our media hysteria and guilt complex ran wild turned that momentum on a dime. It has been sliding ever since. We have had other victories to build momentum such as the elections but we always seem to find a way to undercut it or fail to exploit it. A unified nation around a unified message of nothing short of victory, as in World War II, is what it takes to win. Full commitment from all sides - in words, resources and action - will change the momentum back in our favor. Trying to win based on a “quick as we can, cheap as we can” attitude is flawed. It is time for that to change. It must change.

My town of Franklin, Tenn., suffered the loss of a Marine who graduated from high school here in 2004. Lance Cpl. Richard A. Buerstetta, 20, was killed in action Sunday in the al Anbar province in Iraq by an IED. Also killed, probably in the same blast (not yet confirmed by the Marine Corps) was Lance Cpl. Tyler R. Overstreet, 22, of Gallatin, Tenn., just north of Nashville. Both men were Marine reservists of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment.

Lance Cpl. Buerstetta’s high school is only two miles from my home. Both my sons graduated from that school. Funeral arrangements for both Marines are incomplete. Marine officials said it would take a few days for the remains to be transported here. Lance Cpl. Overstreet left behind a son born two days after he deployed to Iraq about a month ago. Lance Cpl. Buerstetta is survived by his parents, I don’t know whether he had siblings. The Tennessean’s story is here. It’s a sad day in the Nashville area. A soldier from Springfield, Tenn. was also was also killed in action over the weekend. Please keep all these families in your prayers.

I caught part of the president’s press conference this morning and a thought struck me when he renounced, again, the idea of setting a timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. It’s an idea I’ve denounced myself: “Setting a timetable for withdrawal only notifies al Qaeda of the date of their triumph.”

So I started wondering this morning why the terrorists in Iraq seem not to understand that time-mandated withdrawal from Iraq is practically central to opponents of President Bush specifically and the Republicans generally. And surely they have to realize that there is probably no one who would more like to start drawing down US forces from Iraq than President Bush himself, especially if he can make meanignful reductions before the two parties have their 2008 conventions.

So, imagining myself as an al Qaeda strategist, I would be asking the terrorist leadership why they are stepping up the violence now. Okay, dumb question: they want to influence the 2006 elections.

The Baathists and Sadrists can read the U.S. political calendar, and they’d like nothing better than to feed the perception that the violence is intractable. They want our election to be perceived as a referendum on Iraq that will speed the pace of American withdrawal.

So let us carry that intention a little farther. This month is already the worst month in Iraq in a year, regarding US casualties. Let us assume, for argument’s sake, that voters next month decide a change in the Congress is necessary. We need not assume that the Democrats actually take control of either house, but that thay gain enough seats to put a real scare into the Republican members and the rest of their party.

If I were an al Qaeda strategist, that would be my cue to taper down my violent actions over the next three or four months and then, beginning in spring 2007, start to lay low. I’d fill time with political reorganization, training, equipping, recruiting and other reconstituting efforts. By the fall of 2007, the Busha administration will use the lowered level of terrorism as a signal that pacification is coming along well and gratefully start pulling down US forces. By the spring of 2008, US force levels in Iraq could well be down to 50,000 or even fewer.

Then I’d strike and strike hard. The administration’s claims of victory would be revealed as hollow, another example of wishful thinking. Iraq, critics would say, is unwinnable. With the presidential elections looming soon, the president would be as lame a duck as ever quacked. The administration could well be paralyzed. Then, from al Qaeda’s perspective, it might not even matter which party gains the Oval Office, for Iraq would be seen by either party as a tar baby that won’t ever become unstuck. If anything, increased violence then would accelerate withdrawal of remaining American forces.

Naturally, such a strategy is not without risk. Al Qaeda is far from the only armed group resisting the central government, and some Baathist revanchists are actually fighting al Qaeda from time to time. Sectarian militias are waging open war against each other. Organized crime groups also kill and kidnap and rob. These groups will continue to stress the Iraqi government and US commanders no matter what al Qaeda does. The training and professionalism of Iraqi army and police may continue to improve until they really can replace large numbers of US troops, and the perception that al Qaeda has been beaten may cause many Iraqis to rally round their flag. The Iraqi people in all their various divisions might become more unified and more willing to rat out suspected terrorists.

But such a strategery might be attractive for groups other than al Qaeda, too. Right now the only thing between them and their victory, however they conceive it, is 130,000 Americans. As long as Goerge W. Bush is in office, those troops aren’t going away as long as the violence remains high. It should be glaringly obvious to militiamen, Baathists and Islamists alike, that they will not prevail in any meaningful way until large numbers of Americans go home. So why not hunker down and let it happen? Yes, it’s risky from their point of view, but so is continuing the violence in the way are are doing so. Everything in political-military endeavors is risky.

If I was a terrorist strategist, I’d be thinking about this real hard.

Update: Hmm… are things going well or not in Iraq today, overall? Two diametric assessments from OpinionJournal. One, linked above, says that progress in there is much better than given credit and will continue to improve (link again) and that Iraqri Security Forces are improving daily and steadily.

The other assessment, a long email by an intelligence NCO in Iraq now, says that things are actually so bleak, and the ISF so bad, that the US should, “Reassert direct administration, put 400,000 to 500,000 American troops on the ground, disband most of the current Iraqi police and retrain and reindoctrinate the Iraqi army … .”

Myself, I lean more toward the NCO’s assessment than the former, although the former’s essay does seem to show that not everything is going to heck in a handbasket there. There are some good things happening. But not enough, and not where it counts the most.

Strategy Page points out that for al Qaeda simply to obtain a Russian nuclear warhead would be no simple thing, but keeping it in wotrking order could be even more difficult.

The Nature of the the Enemy:

Al Qaeda and some Islamic extremist groups have stated that their ultimate goal is to restore a caliphate encompassing all former and current Muslim lands. The totalitarian state would impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law, curbing freedom of speech and religion, and women’s and minority rights.

Though maps vary, the plan would extend the caliphate into the middle of Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. After the historic caliphate is established, some plans show long-term efforts for it to encompass the entire globe.

This from a one-page pamphlet emailed me from US Central Command’s public-affairs office. The full text is:

DETAILS OF THWARTED “DIRTY” BOMB PLOT EMERGE

At an October 12, 2006 hearing in a London courthouse, British citizen Dhiren Barot pleaded guilty to plotting a series of bombings of major financial institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States — including the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Several of the attacks were designed to employ limousines packed with gas cylinders. Barot also sought to use radioactive “dirty” bombs to, in the words of the prosecutor, “kill as many innocent people as possible.” Seven other men are awaiting trial in connection to the planned bombings.

EXTREMISTS SEEK BROADER USE OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MEDIA TO INFLUENCE U.S. PUBLIC OPINION

In another demonstration of terrorists’ interest in influencing American public opinion, a document recently posted on extremist websites describes a plan “to invade the U.S. media.” The document, written by the Global Islamic Media Front, the communications arm of al Qaeda, states its priorities as translating al Qaeda speeches, interviews and other messages into English and disseminating them to American newspapers, forums, television channels, prominent opinion makers and research groups.

“People of jihad have to create a media war that goes parallel to the military war,” the document states. “They should not be short on anything because we see the effect the media has on the nation and people in supporting or denouncing it.” The Global Islamic Media Front also calls for members to learn to read and write English in order to help spread extremist messages, “which are intended for the American people” [and they are succeeding - DS].

“People of jihad have to create a media war that goes parallel to the military war. They should not be short on anything because we see the effect the media has on the nation and people in supporting or denouncing.”
– Global Islamic Media Front, August 14, 2006

ISLAMIC EXTREMIST GOAL: RESTORING THE HISTORIC CALIPHATE

Al Qaeda and some Islamic extremist groups have stated that their ultimate goal is to restore a caliphate encompassing all former and current Muslim lands. The totalitarian state would impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law, curbing freedom of speech and religion, and women’s and minority rights.

Though maps vary, the plan would extend the caliphate into the middle of Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. After the historic caliphate is established, some plans show long-term efforts for it to encompass the entire globe.

“These [9/11] attacks… [were] a step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the Righteous Islamic Caliphate, God willing.”
– Purported Bin Laden Audio Message, February 14, 2003

Dinesh D’Souza writes,

A group of leading atheists is puzzled by the continued existence and vitality of religion.

What an interesting thing for atheists to ponder. In the modern day one either has to accept some kind of deistic understanding of the origin of the universe or an evolutionary understanding that excludes any sort of deity from contributing to the origin of the universe and all contained therein. I am not saying that one must either be religious or non-religious, for the dichotomy is true even for adherents of non-deistic or nature religions. Either deity (or deities) had a hand in existence itself, or it/they did not.

So why would a deity-denying atheist be puzzled that religion is thriving? If evolution as they describe it is true, then religion is itself a product thereof. Not only that, but Judaism is an evolutionary product, so is Christianity, so is Islam, so is Buddhism, so is Shamanisn, so is … well, you get the idea.

And so is the theory of evolution itself. And astrology. And tarot-card reading. And medical science. And faith healing. And everything else. So why do materialists single out religion as a particularly puzzling thing to exist? Why religion and not, say, athletics or stamp collecting or consumption of alcohol?

Dinesh reports,

As biologist Richard Dawkins puts it in his new book “The God Delusion,” faith is a form of irrationality, what he terms a “virus of the mind.”
[The list of other things that could be so characterized is very long, is it not?]

Philosopher Daniel Dennett compares belief in God to belief in the Easter Bunny.
[Or even, perhaps, belief in Daniel Dennett. Has it occurred to Dennett that no one other than small children, and those only in Western culture, actually believes the Easter Bunny exists, while billions of mature adults in all kinds of cultures do believe in God or some kind of deity? So in what way are the two beliefs the same?]

Sam Harris, author of “The End of Faith” and now “Letter to a Christian Nation,” professes amazement that hundreds of millions of people worldwide profess religious beliefs when there is no rational evidence for any of those beliefs.
[I bet no one can define “rational evidence” for religiosity to Harris’ satisfaction except Harris himself. I guarantee he has prima facie excluded from rationality anything that would support religious belief. And “The End of Faith” seems a bit of an arrogant title since, as Dinesh points out, religious faith of one kind or another is not waning.]

Biologist E.O. Wilson says there must be some evolutionary explanation for the universality and pervasiveness of religious belief.
[Bing bada-bing! And if so, would Wilson agree that “the universality and pervasiveness of religious belief” is a “virus of the mind”? How can that be when atheism and religion are both alike the product of evolution? On what basis can Wilson, Dawkins or any other atheist make such claims since they cannot, by definition, appeal to any kind of transcendent authority? Can evolution explain why religious people are more influential in their societies than atheists? And why has religiosity survived more strongly than atheism if there is really nothing out there?

This last point is addressed by Dinesh, too:

My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no purpose to life or the universe, indeed whose only moral drive seems to be sneering at their fellow human beings who do have a sense of purpose. Here is where the biological expertise of Dawkins and his friends could prove illuminating. Maybe they can turn their Darwinian lens on themselves and help us understand how atheism, like the human tailbone and the panda’s thumb, somehow survived as an evolutionary leftover of our primitive past.

Dawkins, Wilson et. al. are what I call evangelistic atheists, not content with enjoying their own religion as they see fit but dogmatically trying to convert others to their belief.

Well, fine. There is no stronger defender of the free marketplace of ideas than I. But I hope they understand that they have no right to do so.

Let me say that again so you know I am intentional: If atheists are to take their own beliefs to their logical end, they must agree that they have no right to promulgate their belief. They have no right to challenge me about my religion. They have no right to speak up in my community, no right to live in my community, indeed, no right even to life itself. They have no rights at all, in fact.

If atheists are true to their own creed, they must admit that the entire concept of human rights crumbles to dust according to that same creed. Dawkins, Wilson et. al. have no “right” to denounce religion, they just have the ability or power to do so. If persons are not “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights” (in the words of a famous Enlightenment rationalist), then “rights” is nothing but a flatus vocis. The concept of rights then really means nothing but “who wins.” So by their lights, atheists are able to speak out (in America, anyway, not in Saudi Arabia) and attempt to persuade others only because the rest of us let them. But why should we let them? Why don’t we religious people simply persecute atheists out of existence?

I think atheists would reply that to do so would be contrary to our own creed (well, not contrary to Islamism, but I’ll not go there today). And they would be correct. But so what? An atheist also holds that there is nothing behind religious creeds, that there is no content to them. Since religious beliefs are simply the product of evolution, they may be changed or discarded as we might wish. So could not we religious people simply say, “Sorry, persecuting atheists is no longer against our religion?” If you think not, why not?

And don’t throw the US Constitution at me: the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights is nothing more than an agreement among religious people to let atheists be. But, as I’ve just said, we can change our minds. And heck, the whole document is nothing but a product of evolution and therefore worth no more than any other political manifesto.

Can anyone refute this argument without an appeal to transcendence? I think not. The reason America’s religious people don’t denounce their creeds - and Lord knows (oops, a virus of the mind crept it), we have a hard enough time living up to them at all - is that we (Jews and Christians, anyway) really do believe there is a God who is not only a God of mercy and compassion but also of moral law and judgement.

So, regarding rationality for any system of beliefs, how does atheism have a superior claim, except in the minds of its adherents? Any “rational” system of law or morals that atheists may devise may be rebutted by an equally rational system that countermands it.

As for me, I affirm the rights of atheists to be the same rights as mine because, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.” So said this fellow.