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Iran Super Thread- Merged

- Does everyone remember when South Africa was 'cut off' from Western aid, trade and technology because of Aparthied?  They came up with a lot of unique defence solutions to inventing or acquiring the stuff they needed.  Necessity is the mother of invention, after all, and where there is a will, there is a way.

- We are seeing that in Iran now.

 
Amazingly, much of this was predicted as far back as the 1950's!

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3051

Malraux On Islam
From the desk of Tiberge on Sun, 2008-03-02 12:52

Nicolas Sarkozy brought up the name of André Malraux in a recent interview with Le Parisien. Malraux was a well-known name in the 1960's in America. Novelist, art critic, adventurer, he became Charles de Gaulle's first minister of culture and it was in that capacity that he met President John F. Kennedy and Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy when they visited France in 1961, and later in 1963 in Washington, when Malraux arranged for the Mona Lisa to be brought to America for a special exhibit. Read the details of those "Camelot" days here.

President Sarkozy was careful not to quote another famous passage by Malraux on Islam that has made the rounds of the French websites many times over. It is posted in French at Armées (along with a picture of Malraux on the cover of Time):

    The outstanding event of our time is the violence of the advance of Islam. Underestimated by most of our contemporaries, the ascendancy of Islam is analogically comparable to the beginnings of communism at the time of Lenin.

    The consequences of this phenomenon are still unpredictable. At the outset of the Marxist revolution, people thought they could stem its tide through partial solutions. Neither Christianity nor organizations such as corporations or labor unions found a solution.

    Likewise today the Western world is hardly prepared to confront the problem of Islam. In theory, the solution does indeed seem extremely difficult. Perhaps it would be possible in practice, if, limiting ourselves to the French aspect of this question, the solution were thought out and applied by a genuine statesman.

    The current known facts of the problem lead one to believe that the various forms of Muslim dictatorship are soon to be established successively throughout the Arab world. When I say "Muslim", I'm thinking less of religious structures than of the temporal structures that flow from Mahomet's doctrine. As of now, the sultan of Morocco is out-dated and Bourguiba will only stay in power by becoming a dictator of sorts. Perhaps partial solutions would have been sufficient to stem the tide of Islam, if they had been applied in time...Now it is too late! The "wretched ones" have nothing to lose. They would rather preserve their wretchedness within the Muslim community. Their fate will probably not change. We have a vision of them that is too Western. To the benefits we claim to be able to bring them, they prefer the future of their race. Black Africa will not remain much longer untouched by this process. All that we can do is to become conscious of the gravity of the phenomenon and to try to slow down its progression.

André Malraux, June 3, 1956


Note: Bourguiba was president of Tunisia until 1987.

Notice that he points to the need for a "genuine statesman". One can only imagine what he would think of Sarkozy. He also limits the spread of Muslim dictatorships to the "Arab world." Possibly in 1956 he did not envisage the spread of Islam into Europe and America (it was almost unthinkable back then). Or possibly he did somehow foresee that the spread of violent Islam in the Arab countries would eventually spill over into France. Which is why he warns of the need to stop its progress.

Malraux was no angel. He led a tumultuous and tragic life, engaged in left-wing politics, but eventually denounced communism. His first marriage ended in divorce, his second wife was killed in an accident as were his two sons, his third marriage also ended. He became addicted to drugs towards the end of his life. But he established a reputation as a man of many talents, a kind of Renaissance figure who did not indulge in false hope or Utopian fantasies. His most famous novel is Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine).
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen is an interesting take on the future of al qaeda and other Islamist movements:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=efcf2cba-cdd5-4e69-8673-995942d308cf&k=53356
Next wave of terrorists could destroy jihadist movement: expert

Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen

Published: Monday, March 10, 2008

Al-Qaeda as we know it is dead, replaced by a leaderless generation of ever-younger homegrown jihadists whose venomous beliefs could poison the movement from within, says a leading al-Qaeda scholar.

Marc Sageman, a medical doctor and Central Intelligence Agency officer turned forensic psychiatrist and noted al-Qaeda researcher, rejects conventional thinking that "al-Qaeda Central" - Osama bin Laden and an estimated 200 high command and hard-core followers holed up in northwest Pakistan - is resurgent.

"Those days are long over, but the social movement they inspired is as strong and dangerous as ever," he writes in the current issue of Foreign Policy, encapsulating his new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century.

A "third wave" of self-recruited "wannabe" radicals, many from middle-class secular families, now forms the core of a dispersed movement, globally connected through Islamist websites that offer a semblance of unity and purpose.

The devolution of al-Qaeda Central has been noted by others. Mr. Sageman, however, says the wannabe movement that has taken its place is inherently self-limiting, since by their very nature, the disconnected groups have no unified goals, strategies or a leader. If the movement's appeal to its young, core membership Muslims diminishes, the threat will recede as well, and it may eventually kill itself off with its own increasingly toxic, blood-thirsty message that even many radicals won't embrace.

The alleged "Toronto 18" terror cell, young men and youths charged with plotting to bomb Toronto landmarks and storm the Parliament Buildings, is a prime example of the new third wave, says Mr. Sageman, who holds a doctorate in sociology.

"The individuals we should fear most haven't been trained in terrorist camps, and they don't answer to Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri. They often do not even adhere to the most austere and dogmatic tenets of radical Islam.

"They are young people seeking thrills and a sense of significance and belonging in their lives. And their lack of structure and organizing principles makes them even more terrifying and volatile than their terrorist forebears."

The ease with which they are able to translate their frustrations into acts of terrorism, often on the back of professed solidarity with terrorists halfway around the world whom they have never met, is especially frightening, he writes.

"They seek to belong to a movement larger than themselves, and their violent actions and plans are hatched locally, with advice from others on the web. Their mode of communication also suggests that they will increasingly evade detection. Without links to known terrorists, this new generation is more difficult to discover through traditional intelligence gathering. Of course, their lack of training and experience could limit their effectiveness. But that's cold comfort for their victims."

As a CIA case officer who ran spies in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, Mr. Sageman met many of the Soviet-fighting mujahedeen who later formed al-Qaeda. After 9/11, he collected biographical material on about 150 Islamic radicals to write his influential first book, Understanding Terror Networks. After analysing hundreds of additional biographies, he wrote the just-released Leaderless Jihad.

He found a process of radicalization that commonly begins with a sense of moral outrage at the killings of Muslims, whether it be in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Palestinian intifada or Iraq, as well as the humiliations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

"Feeling marginalized is, of course, no simple springboard to violence. Many people feel they don't belong, but don't aspire to wage violent jihad. What transforms a very small number to become terrorists is mobilization by networks."

Former face-to-face groups that once acted as an echo chamber, amplifying grievances, intensifying bonds to each other, have been largely replaced by forums of online radicalization, "which promote the image of the terrorist hero, link users to the online social movement, give them guidance, and instruct them in tactics. These forums, virtual marketplaces for extremist ideas, have become the 'invisible hand' that organizes terrorist activities worldwide.

"The true leader of this violent social movement is the collective discourse on half a dozen influential forums. They are transforming the terrorist movement, attracting ever younger members and now women, who can participate in the discussions."

Because al-Qaeda Central cannot impose discipline on these anonymous third-wave wannabes, "each disconnected network acts according to its own understanding and capability, but their collective actions do not amount to any unified long-term goal or strategy. These separate groups cannot coalesce into a physical movement, leaving them condemned to remain leaderless, an online aspiration."

That makes them difficult to detect, but also offers "a tantalizing strategy for those who wish to defeat these dangerous individuals: The very seeds of the movement's demise are within the movement itself."

Terrorist acts must be stripped of glory and reduced to common criminality; terrorists who are arrested or killed must not be placed in the limelight; terrorism convictions must be exploited by the authorities, he says.

"There is no glory in being taken to prison in handcuffs. No jihadi website publishes such pictures. Arrested terrorists fade into oblivion; martyrs live on in popular memory."

"This is very much a battle for young Muslims' hearts and minds," especially with the advent of the Internet. The web is "where young Muslims share their hopes, dreams, and grievances. That offers an opportunity to encourage voices that reject violence. Only then will the leaderless jihad expire, poisoned by its own toxic message."

© Ottawa Citizen 2008

So, if the good doctor is correct we have as our enemy ”young people [Canadians] seeking thrills and a sense of significance and belonging in their lives,” who “seek to belong to a movement larger than themselves” and are led by ”the collective discourse on half a dozen influential [dispersed, internet based] forums.

There is, also, a tie into the reports of terrorist camps in the UK. I am 99.9% certain that we have similar camps here in Canada, as, I’m nearly as certain, do our American and Australian friends. We have failed to integrate generations of immigrations into ‘our’ society leaving them rudderless and, de facto, forcing them to create ‘grafted’ versions of the ‘old country’ society here in Canada (and America and Australia and Britain and, and, and ...). Sometimes this was a rather benign (albeit racist) inaction, as with the Chinese in Canada who, by and large, prospered despite and, perhaps even because of the indifference of the mainstream, while ate other times it has been the result of ill-considered action: our post 1970 multi-culturalism policy that explicitly said that ‘our’ culture was not superior to that of the ‘old country’ – suggesting that economics was the only good and valid reason for anyone to have come to Canada and become Canadians. It was, and remains, a stupid idea that, explicitly, denigrates our own country but it remains, along with Stalinist healthcare programmes, part of what makes us better different than our American neighbours.

 
Let us hope that the politicans do not use this new threat as an excuse to extinguish more rights within our own society while attempting to deal with them.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
We have failed to integrate generations of immigrations into ‘our’ society leaving them rudderless and, de facto, forcing them to create ‘grafted’ versions of the ‘old country’ society here in Canada (and America and Australia and Britain and, and, and ...).

I agree with you except for I think a little clarification. We do offer several programs to help immigrants integrate into Canadian life. However those who come here illegally or those who have no desire to integrate will never take advantage of these programs. I don't really see this as a failure on our part but I do think that maybe there is some room for improvement in our immigration policies. Some actions should be taken (as for what exactly, I don't know) or we may find ourselves in a situation similar to that of the Danish.
 
E.R. Campbell is speaking about something far different from the inane government programs we see today. What is required is a very powerful and all encompassing movement similar to what existed in the United States (at least until the beginning of the "Progressive era" in the late 1920's) which sought every means possible to not integrate new arrivals but to assimilate them.

The civic nationalist movement documented in Samuel Huntington's book "Who are we?" recounts how not just public schools but every institution from churches to social clubs to private enterprise provided positive and negative reinforcement of the "American Creed". Night school classes to teach English were a popular and inexpensive innovation favored by industry looking for a work force which could clearly communicate. American patriotic tales were a favorite means of teaching English.....you get the idea.

Since Canada, Australia and the United States are nations peopled by settlers (i.e. large groups who arrived with common values and goals), and continued to allow the arrival of immigrants (i.e. small groups who were willing to adopt these values), creating a form of Civic Nationalism was easy and effective in the past.

Our problem today is "we" are facing an onslaught of settlers rather than immigrants, and they are creating enclaves within our own nations (read Wesley Down Under's reports on the Muslim situation in Australia, or consider the huge influx of Hispanic people's in the United States, where there are large urban districts in places like Miami or Los Angeles where everything from media to day to day conversation is entirely in Spanish, or the Pakistani enclaves growing in the UK, or even the huge Indian and Chinese enclaves in Vancouver). For the most part, this isn't an end of the world situation, Hispanic Barrios or Indian neighbourhoods in Vancouver are no physical threat to us, but some enclaves do harbour violent and radical groups who do oppose our values, and the presence of any exclusionary enclaves do provide potential breeding grounds for this behaviour.

The only way to diffuse this situation is to embrace or re embrace the idea of civic nationalism, retell the national myths and make them a part of everyone who lives and works in this country, and politely show the door to people who are unwilling to adapt to our ways.
 
The only way to diffuse this situation is to embrace or re embrace the idea of civic nationalism, retell the national myths and make them a part of everyone who lives and works in this country, and politely show the door to people who are unwilling to adapt to our ways.

Our problem is a lack of a National Myth.  We have at least two and more likely multiple traditional myths, when you include the natives.  We haven't been well served by them.  They are all mutually exclusive.  Haida don't get along with Tlingit.  Dogrib fight with Eskimo.  Blackfoot and Assiniboine.  Algonquin and Iroquois.  French and Engish.  Scots and Irish.  Protestants and Catholics.

Nor have we been well served by the modern Trudeaunian non-myth of a people without history.

We need to find a new Myth.  One that resonates with all. 

IIRC John A MacDonald said Canada was a land cursed with too much geography and too little history.  He was only partly right.  Every individual in Canada brings their own myths, their own history, with them.  We are as cursed with history as any country. 

Ignoring history, as that perennial teenager Trudeau promoted doesn't solve things.  We need to find an acceptable history.  The old histories were written to generate followers for leaders and to cut them out from the rest of the herd of humanity.  They were designed to establish and strengthen differences.

We now have a State of peoples from many nations all of whom know themselves to be unique, different and often superior.

We need a history that finds the common ground - seeing as how everybody can't be Scots.

The good news is that merely studying all the national myths and histories quickly demonstrates how much common ground there is - at least in terms of problems.  There is often much common ground in terms of failed solutions.

Disagreement comes when trying to describe succesful solutions.  Often one person's paradise is another's drudgery.

 
We need to find a new Myth.  One that resonates with all. 

I think this is why we have UN peacekeepers on our money.
In the Canada I was brought up in, the United Empire loyalist tradition was slowly  displaced and deemed to be non-PC.  Nothing could replace it exept a new Trudeau-esq Canadian self image that has also grown some warts.

What to do?
 
Some multicultural or even acultural attributes that might animate an acceptable Canadian myth include being, in no particular order:

Robust – able to tame or exist in a harsh land – stop whining about the snow, folks! This was part of pur 19th and early to mid 20th century national myth – think of lumberjacks (No! Not the Monty Python one!) and ‘voyageurs,’ ‘les raftsmen’ and the March West, and, and, and ...

Prudent – fiscally conservative, able to manage despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fate and international finance; this was part of our 19th and early to mid 20th century national myth – think dour (Montreal) Scots bankers and Hudson’s Bay factors

Brave – traditionally and still willing to share the dangerous burden on securing and keeping the peace for ourselves, our children, our friends and neighbours and those less fortunate than us; this was part of our early to mid 20th century national myth – think Parrdeberg, Vimy the Battle of the Atlantic and Kapyong

Generous – within prudent limits, willing to share our bounty with one another, our children, our friends and neighbours and those less fortunate than us; this is part of our late 20th/early 21st century national myth – but it is myth with little basis in fact

Trustworthy – in business and in politics and diplomacy; this was part of our mid 20th century national myth, but it was smashed in 1970 with Trudeau’s foreign policy and a national neglect of monetary policy

These are attributes to which any immigrant should want to subscribe and pass on to her children. They make Canada ‘better’ – qualitatively and quantitatively – than the ‘old country.’

Back to the topic: According to the article I posted earlier today leaders like Osama bin Laden and his friends and cohorts, may, like the tough, brave, trustworthy Canadian of 20th century myth, have been supplanted by a new, weaker, unstable team of followers. Perhaps this new generation can, as I have suggested would be desirable, be turned, inwards, to do battle with apostate Muslims and corrupt, money-grubbing, Western teat-sucking Arab regimes. If we are a little bit smart and a little bit lucky we might be able to manage a couple of generations of internecine warfare amongst the people of the Islamic Crescent – at least of the part that stretches from Morocco across North Africa, through Egypt and Arabia and throughout West and South West Asia.

Meanwhile we could work at restoring our national myth to something which all Canadians, regardless of race or creed, will see as worthy of themselves.
 
More on Iran's nuclear program:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031003097_pf.html

U.N. Alleges Nuclear Work By Iran's Civilian Scientists

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 11, 2008; A01

Iranian nuclear engineer Mohsen Fakhrizadeh lectures weekly on physics at Tehran's Imam Hossein University. Yet for more than a decade, according to documents attracting interest among Western governments, he also ran secret programs aimed at acquiring sensitive nuclear technology for his government.

Experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly invited Fakhrizadeh to tea and a chat about Iran's nuclear work. But for two years, the government in Tehran has barred any contact with the scientist, who U.S. officials say recently moved to a new lab in a heavily guarded compound also off-limits to U.N. inspectors.

The exact nature of his research -- past and present -- remains a mystery, as does the work of other key Iranian scientists whose names appear in documents detailing what U.N. officials say is a years-long, clandestine effort to expand the country's nuclear capability. The documents, which were provided to the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear agency, in recent months by two countries other than the United States, partly match information in a stolen Iranian laptop turned over by Washington.

IAEA officials say these documents identify Fakhrizadeh and other civilian scientists as central figures in a secret nuclear research program that operated as recently as 2003. So far, however, Iran is refusing to shed light on their work or allow U.N. officials to question them. After being presented with copies of some of the new documents, Tehran denied that some of the scientists exist.

"When the allegations are raised, Iran simply dismisses them," said a Western diplomatic official familiar with the agency's dealings with Iran. "It insists that the documents are mostly fakes."

The standoff over interview requests has cast a shadow over a five-year U.N. effort to excavate the truth about Iran's nuclear past. In that search, Western anxieties have been compounded by Tehran's reluctance to clarify the history of its interest in technologies that could be used for either nuclear power or weapons.

A similar set of uncertainties helped provoke the U.S. war with Iraq, which the Bush administration justified partly by positing that Baghdad was deliberately concealing nuclear weapons research from U.N. inspectors. The outcome of that invasion suggests caution, however, since U.S. troops were unable to find any convincing evidence of banned weapons work, and deposed Iraqi officials said they had been secretive to conceal from regional opponents that they had ended such work, not continued it.

In Iran's case, U.N. officials say, the new evidence does not prove that the scientists carried out plans to build a nuclear device, but shows that Fakhrizadeh and other scientists struggled to master associated technologies. Several of the scientists, including Fakhrizadeh, appear to have moved freely between military and civilian research venues.

The documents purport to show advanced research into a variety of nuclear-related technologies, including uranium ore processing, warhead modification and the precision-firing of high explosives of the type used to detonate a nuclear device. Other documents point to attempts by civilian scientists to purchase sensitive equipment of the kind Iran would eventually use in its uranium enrichment plants.

Some of the new documents came from inside Iran, according to European officials familiar with them. None specifically include the word "nuclear," and IAEA officials say there is no evidence that any of the plans advanced beyond the paper stage.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a major opposition group that claims to have informants inside Iran's government, contends in materials provided to The Washington Post that nuclear weapons design work persists and has migrated to universities and schools. But U.S. and U.N. officials say they cannot corroborate the group's claim.

Instead, U.S. intelligence officials have said that Iran worked on weapons design in the past but halted the research in 2003. But government officials and weapons experts acknowledge concerns over Iran's refusal to answer questions or explain what key scientists are doing now.

"It's not the first time we've seen individuals who seem to wear white hats but are working on very different projects behind the scenes," said Leonard Spector, a former Energy Department nonproliferation official who is now deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He noted that other countries, particularly Pakistan, have used civilian scientists as cover for secret nuclear research.

Although the IAEA has not publicly described the contents of the new documents, the U.N. Security Council adopted new sanctions against Iran last week, in part because of what European leaders described as Tehran's "abysmal" performance in answering the IAEA's questions about past nuclear research.

"As long as Iran's choice remains one of non-cooperation, we for our part will remain determined to demonstrate the costs and consequences of that choice," British Ambassador Simon Smith said in a statement last week on behalf of Britain, Germany and France, which have taken the lead in trying to persuade Iran to stop making enriched uranium, a critical ingredient used in both nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

Calls placed to Iran's U.N. mission in New York were not returned.

Fakhrizadeh is prominent in several of the documents, according to two officials who have seen them. A personnel chart listed him as the senior authority overseeing all the research projects. Another paper, purportedly signed by Fakhrizadeh, establishes spending guidelines for the research programs, while a third sets rules for communication among scientists, suggesting, for example, that researchers avoid putting their names on correspondence that might eventually become public, according to a Europe-based diplomat who viewed the documents.

Fakhrizadeh, 47, who became a Revolutionary Guard Corps member after the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, is a former leader of the Physics Research Center, which U.N. officials say was heavily involved in drawing up plans and acquiring parts for Iran's first uranium enrichment plant. He was among eight Iranians placed under international travel and financial restrictions under the terms of a U.N. resolution adopted last year because of his alleged ties to "nuclear or ballistic missile" research, U.N. records show.

According to the Iranian opposition group, in addition to holding the university post, Fakhrizadeh recently was appointed the director of a new Center for Readiness and New Defense Technology, which is in Tehran and is under direct military command. Several of his deputies have been reassigned to nuclear departments at ostensibly civilian schools such as Shahid Beheshti University, also in Tehran.

"Fakhrizadeh is a key person, but he is not the only player," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the opposition group's foreign affairs committee.
 
The mythology of iraq will also be very interesting to future historians:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjYyN2JhMmQyMDdkN2Y4MmNkMGZkMzU1M2Y2ZWJlYmI=&w=Mg==

Mirror, Mirror ...
Looking at Iraq.

By Victor Davis Hanson

By now everyone sees what he wishes in Iraq — a disaster of many proportions, a necessary war that will still be won. Liberals who used to demand that we promote democracy abroad are fierce critics of Iraqi democracy; conservatives, who want an iron hand dealing with a hostile Middle East, support spending hundreds of billions of dollars in rebuilding Iraqi society.

So it will be left to historians, as has been true in the case of the far-more-costly Korean and Vietnam wars, to adjudicate the final verdict.

Meanwhile, the war in Iraq has entered yet another manifestation. The fickle American public and its media have switched and flipped on the war as much as they have on Hillary Clinton’s chances — in the last two months she’s been a shoo-in, a has-been, a comeback kid, a loser, and now a contender.

In late 2003, Iraq transmogrified suddenly, from an overwhelmingly popular and brilliant three-week war to remove a genocidal Saddam Hussein, into a bitterly divisive effort of four years to defeat an insurgency that threatened to topple the postwar elected government.

Now, despite the obligatory throat-clearing epithets used by journalists and politicians — “the worst,” “nightmare,” “disaster,” “fiasco,” “catastrophe,” “quagmire” — Iraq is beginning to be seen as something that just might work after all, as the violence subsides and a stable constitutional government hangs on.

Once promised to be the singular issue of the current presidential campaign, the war has receded to background noise of the primaries. An ascendant Barack Obama pounded home the fact that, unlike Senator Clinton, he never supported the removal of Saddam Hussein and always wanted to get Americans out of there as fast as he could; it may well prove that a more circumspect Obama soon won’t want to mention the war and, as hinted by aides, wouldn’t jerk the troops out should he be the next president.

Rarely in American history has a war been so often spun, praised, renounced, disowned, and finally neglected. And the result is that a number of questions remain not just unanswered, but unasked. We have not been hit since 9/11, despite the dire predictions from almost everyone of serial attacks to come. Today if a Marine recruitment center is bombed, we automatically assume the terrorist to represent a domestic anti-war group, not al-Qaeda — a perverse conjecture impossible to have imagined in autumn 2001.

In response to that calm, the communis opinio is that we hyped the threat, needlessly went to war, mortgaged the Constitution — just collate the rhetoric from the Obama and Clinton campaigns — when there was never much of a post-9/11 threat from a rag-tag bunch of jihadists in the first place.

What is never discussed is how many Islamists flocked to Iraq, determined to defeat the U.S. military — and never got out alive. Or, more bluntly, how many jihadists did the U.S. Army and Marines kill in Iraq rather than in Manhattan?

And what was the effect of that defeat not only on the jihadists, but also on those who were watching carefully to see whether the terrorists should be joined in victory or abandoned in defeat? Who really took his eye off the ball — the United States by going into Iraq, as alleged, or Osama bin Laden and his jihadist lieutenants by diverting thousands there to their deaths, as is never mentioned?

When the war started, contrary to the current rhetoric, Osama bin Laden was popular in the Middle East, and the tactic of suicide bombing had won a sizable following. But after the war was fought, and despite years of anti-American rhetoric, bin Laden has never polled lower while support for suicide murdering in the Muslim Middle East continues to decline.

In 2001, the Arab street apparently thought, for all the macabre nature of suicide bombing, that it at least had brought the United States to its knees and such a takedown was considered a good thing; in the latter reflection of 2007 and 2008, it worried that such a tactic brought the United States military to its region, and guaranteed the defeat of jihadists along with any who joined them.

Iraq, as no one ever imagined, ended up as a landscape in which the United States and al-Qaeda would battle for the hearts and minds of the Arab world on the world stage. And in Anbar Province, the jihadists are losing — losing militarily and losing the support of the local Sunni population. Again, whereas the conventional wisdom holds that we have radicalized an entire generation of young Muslims, it may turn out instead that we have convinced a generation that it is not wise after 9/11 to wage war against the United States. In any case, there is no other constitutional Arab government in the Middle East that actively hunts down and kills al-Qaeda terrorists.

When the insurgency took off in late 2003, Europe immediately triangulated against the United States, courted the Arab world, and hoped to deflect jihadists by loudly proclaiming they were vehemently against the war in Iraq. This is in itself was quite remarkable, since the entire recent expansion of the European Union to the south and east had been predicated only on a partnership agreement with the United States to extend NATO membership — alone ensuring these weak new European affiliates American military protection.

Irony abounds: Since 2003, Europe — not the United States — has experienced a series of attacks, and near-constant threats, ranging from bombed subways and rail stations to Islamic demands to censor cartoons, operas, films, and papal exegeses.


It is in Europe, not in post-Iraq Kansas, where a Turkish prime minister announces to Muslim expatriate residents that they must remain forever Turks and assimilation is a crime; it is in post-Iraq Europe, not Los Angeles, where politicians and churchmen talk of the inevitability of Sharia law; and it is in post-Iraq Europe, not the United States, where honor killings and Islamic rioting are common occurrences.

Why? A number of reasons, but despite all the misrepresentation and propaganda, the message has filtered through the Middle East that the United States will go after and punish jihadists — but also, alone of the Western nations, it will risk its own blood and treasure to work with Arab nations to find some alternative to the extremes of dictatorship and theocracy. Europe, in contrast to its utopian rhetoric, will trade with and profit from, but most surely never challenge, a Middle Eastern thug.

Iraq is purportedly a mess left to the next president. In fact, by January 2009 it may well be far less a strategic problem than was Saddam Hussein’s regime, the no-fly zones, Oil for Food, and the punishing UN embargoes. And the next president may well see a stabilized country in which periodic steady American withdrawals, not an insurgency, are the norm — and far fewer jihadists with far fewer supporters worldwide.

George Bush will be blamed for getting us into Iraq and staying there — he’s already seen some of the lowest poll ratings since Harry Truman or Richard Nixon. The next president will be praised for beginning to withdraw troops in 2009 on a schedule established in late 2008. After all, if a pundit’s column these days has a headline blaring “A Plan for a Way Out” or “Quagmire,” we automatically assume a way to unlock the Democratic primary mess, not leave Iraq. In the first ten days of March, before the most recent losses, there was one American combat fatality among 160,000 troops at war.

Iraqi was always an optional war, one that could either do great harm to our national interest and security or offer great advantage to the United States and the region, depending on its costs and the ultimate outcome. Between 2005 and 2006, public support for the war was mostly lost — trisection of the country and American withdrawal were considered our options. In 2008 there is instead a real chance that the original aims of the war — establishing a constitutional government, defeating terrorism militarily, and convincing the Arab population to reject terrorism — are at last possible.

It is the nature of this strange war that we know far more about who failed and what went wrong, far less about who succeeded and what went right. We believe that the dividends of the war — a constitutional government in Iraq and a stunning defeat of radical Islamic jihadists — happened by accident, while the 4,000 dead are the responsibility of our leaders, not the tenacity of the enemy or the costs of waging war in general. The more that the violence subsides and the costs wind down, the more Americans in a near recession will complain of the expense. The more the Iraqis finally begin to exercise responsible political power, the more Americans will lament there is no way to translate tactical victory into long-term strategic advantage.

Iraq, you see, long ago has become a mirror in which we all see only what we want.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjYyN2JhMmQyMDdkN2Y4MmNkMGZkMzU1M2Y2ZWJlYmI=
 
Since the purported motivation of the Jihadis is religion, this should cause some ripples, especially among the second and third tier supporters who are motivated by Jihadi propaganda. (Since the true Root Causetm is power and control over others, this will have little effect on the first tier, except perhaps to spur them on before their support bleeds away)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120640588050061101.html?mod=todays_columnists

How al Qaeda Will Perish
March 25, 2008; Page A22

Do minors require their parents' consent to become suicide bombers? Believe it or not, this is the subject of an illuminating and bitter debate among the leading theoreticians of global jihad, with consequences that could be far-reaching.

On March 6, Al-Sahab, the media arm of al Qaeda, released a 46-minute video statement titled "They Lied: Now Is the Time to Fight." The speaker is Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu-al-Yazid, 52, an Egyptian who runs al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan, and the speech is in most respects the usual mix of earthly grievances, heavenly promises and militant exhortations. It's also an urgent call for recruits.

"We call on the fathers and mothers not to become a barrier between their children and paradise," says Abu-Al-Yazid. "If they disagree who should first join the jihad to go to paradise, let them compete, meaning the fathers and the children. . . . Also, we say to the Muslim wives, do not be a barrier between your husbands and paradise." Elsewhere in the message, he makes a "special call to the scholars and students seeking knowledge. . . . The jihad arenas are in dire need of your knowledge and the doors are open before you to bring about the virtue of teaching and jihad."

These particular appeals are no accident. Last year, imprisoned Egyptian radical Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, a.k.a. "Dr. Fadl," published "The Document of Right Guidance for Jihad Activity in Egypt and the World." It is a systematic refutation of al Qaeda's theology and methods, which is all the more extraordinary considering the source. Sayyed Imam, 57, was the first "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, many of whose members (including his longtime associate Ayman al-Zawahiri) later merged with Osama bin Laden and his minions to become al Qaeda. His 1988 book, "Foundations of Preparation for Holy War," is widely considered the bible of Salafist jihadis.

Now he has recanted his former views. "The alternative" to violent jihadism, he says in an interview with the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat (translated by Memri), "is not to kill civilians, foreigners and tourists, destroy property and commit aggression against the lives and property of those who are inviolable under the pretext of jihad. All of this is forbidden."

Sayyed Imam is emphatic on the subject of the moral obligations of the would-be jihadist. "One who lacks the resources [to fight jihad] is forbidden to acquire money through forbidden means, like [burglary]," he says, adding that "Allah does not accept martyrdom as atonement for a mujahid's debts." As for a child's obligations toward his parents, he adds that "it is not permitted to go out to fight jihad without the permission of both parents . . . because acting rightly with one's parents is an individual obligation, and they have rights over their sons."

"This has become pandemic in our times," he adds in a pointedly non-theological aside. "We find parents who only learn that their son has gone to fight jihad after his picture is published in the newspapers as a fatality or a prisoner."

These "Revisions," as Sayyed Imam's book is widely known in Arab intellectual circles, elicited a harsh and immediate response from unreconstructed jihadists. "What kind of guidance does the 'Document' offer?" asked al Qaeda commander Abu Yahyha Al-Libi in a March 9 Internet posting. "Is it guidance that tells the mujahadeen and the Muslims: 'Restrain yourselves and [allow] us [Arab regimes] to shed your blood'?"
[Ayman Al-Zawahiri]

Even more sarcastic was Zawahiri himself. "Do they now have fax machines in Egyptian jail cells?" he asked. "I wonder if they're connected to the same line as the electric-shock machines." Zawahiri then penned a 215-page rebuttal to Sayyed Imam, whom he accuses of serving "the interests of the Crusader-Zionist alliance with the Arab leaders."

The gravamen of the hardliners' case against Sayyed Imam is that he has capitulated (either through force or persuasion) to the demands of his captors, and has become, in effect, their stooge. The suspicion seems partly borne out by Sayyed Imam's conspicuous renunciation of any desire to overthrow the Egyptian regime. One Turkish commentator, Dogu Ergil, notes that "in prison many jihadist inmates were encouraged by the Interior Ministry and security apparatus to engage in religious dialogue with clerics from al-Azhar," a Sunni religious university overseen by the state. Mr. Ergil calls this part of a deliberate "counter-radicalization program" by the Egyptian government.

But whatever Sayyed Imam's motives, it is the neuralgic response by his erstwhile fellow travelers that matters most. There really is a broad rethink sweeping the Muslim world about the practical utility -- and moral defensibility -- of terrorism, particularly since al Qaeda began targeting fellow Sunni Muslims, as it did with the 2005 suicide bombings of three hotels in Amman, Jordan. Al Qaeda knows this. Osama bin Laden is no longer quite the folk hero he was in 2001. Reports of al Qaeda's torture chambers in Iraq have also percolated through Arab consciousness, replacing, to some extent, the images of Abu Ghraib. Even among Saudis, a recent survey by Terror Free Tomorrow finds that "less than one in ten Saudis have a favorable opinion of Al Qaeda, and 88 percent approve the Saudi military and police pursuing Al Qaeda fighters."

No less significant is that the rejection of al Qaeda is not a liberal phenomenon, in the sense that it represents a more tolerant mindset or a better opinion of the U.S. On the contrary, this is a revolt of the elders, whether among the tribal chiefs of Anbar province or Islamist godfathers like Sayyed Imam. They have seen through (or punctured) the al Qaeda mythology of standing for an older, supposedly truer form of Islam. Rather, they have come to know al Qaeda as fundamentally a radical movement -- the antithesis of the traditional social order represented by the local sovereign, the religious establishment, the head of the clan and, not least, the father who expects to know the whereabouts of his children.

It would be a delightful irony if militant Islam were ultimately undone by a conservative, Thermidor-style reaction. That may not be the kind of progress most of us imagined or hoped for. But it is progress of a kind.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com
 
What is the motivation of the Chinese government on this?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/02/wiran102.xml

China reveals Iran's nuclear secrets to UN

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:46pm BST 03/04/2008

China has betrayed one its closest allies by providing the United Nations with intelligence on Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear technology, diplomats have revealed.

Concern over Tehran's secretive research programme has increased in recent weeks after officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, discovered that Iran had obtained information on how to manufacture nuclear-armed weapons.

China reveals Iran's nuclear secrets to UN inspectors

Beijing is believed to have decided to assist the inspectors after documents seized from Iranian officials included blueprints for "shaping" uranium metal into warheads, the testing of high explosives used to detonate radioactive material and the procurement of dual-use technology.

Much of the new material was presented to the governors of the Vienna-based IAEA in February. That meeting is said to have triggered China's change of heart.

Diplomats described Beijing's decision to provide material related to Iran to the IAEA as a potentially significant breakthrough.

Chinese designs for centrifuges that refine uranium into a "weaponised" state have been found in Iran but these are thought to have come through a network controlled by the disgraced Pakistani scientist AQ Khan.

John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, said suspicions over the leakage of technology from China to Iran had long centred on uranium enrichment technology and their bilateral ballistic missile trade.

A spokesman for the IAEA said it did not comment on intelligence it received from its members.

Beijing has long-established ties with Iran's clerical regime and has emerged as one of the country's biggest customers for oil and gas.

It has allied itself with Tehran's attempts to prevent the IAEA referring Iran to the UN Security Council, which can impose sanctions.

China has not used its veto powers to block US and British sponsored sanctions but it has ensured the measures were watered down.
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The council has levied three rounds of financial sanctions on Iran in an attempt to force the country to declare all its nuclear activities.

IAEA weapons inspectors report that Iran has not provided full co-operation.

An American intelligence assessment judged it likely that Iran stopped efforts to produce a nuclear weapon in 2003 but there are strong fears it has resumed the work under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, said this week that he believed that Iran is still developing a nuclear bomb.

Meanwhile, Israel has accused Iran of setting up listening stations in Syria to eavesdrop on its military communications network.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
 
Thucydides said:
What is the motivation of the Chinese government on this?

This could very well answer Mr. Campbell's question earlier in the thread on whether the PRC or the SCO views Iran as more of a threat:

E.R. Campbell said:
That's a very interesting point.

I must ask some Chinese acquaintances what they think about Iran in or versus SCO.

As discussed before, maintaining stability-both internal and external- is the CCP's foremost current priority, which includes stability of the region where the PRC draws a fraction of its oil to drive its growing economy. Furthermore, this is not the first time the PRC has betrayed an ally, since the PRC invaded Vietnam in 1979 (though they did that more for the reason that Hanoi was siding with Beijing's rival Moscow with the current schism in the communist world at the time between the two most powerful Communist countries in the Cold War) and even tempoarily cut an oil/gas pipeline leading into North Korea during one of Kim Jong Il's most recent saber-rattling episodes that came with a missile launch earlier in this decade; they wanted to show the DPRK leader who had him on a leash if things got out of hand, IIRC.

No doubt that the People's Daily/Renmin Ribao or Xinhua may tout this latest action by China in the UN as a "selfless" goodwill gesture for the world community for PR purposes.  ::)
 
CougarDaddy said:
...
No doubt that the People's Daily/Renmin Ribao or Xinhua may tout this latest action by China in the UN as a "selfless" goodwill gesture for the world community for PR purposes.  ::)

I have no doubt they will but we must all remember that the Chinese are grown ups; they act, always and exclusively in their own best interests. Now, now and again, their own best interests and the best interests of others coincide; when they do the Chinese will act in a way that benefits others, too.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I have no doubt they will but we must all remember that the Chinese are grown ups; they act, always and exclusively in their own best interests. Now, now and again, their own best interests and the best interests of others coincide; when they do the Chinese will act in a way that benefits others, too.

Edward, I'm afraid that I can't share your optimism when it comes to assessing the maturity of the CCP.  It, like every other human agency, is formed from individuals and each one of them is at least as likely to pursue their own agenda as the collective agenda.  If for no other reason than a belief that the individual is uniquely qualified to lead the collective some one will always seek to work their way to the top and create factions, or parties, within the party.

I do agree, entirely, with your comment "they act, always and exclusively in their own best interests" but I question whether or not we can rely on the collective to continually adopt a coherent course of policy....Or, on occasion, do we see the external manifestation of internal faction fights when policy suddenly takes an unusual bounce.

I would also point out that I would rather that vehicles sharing the road with me travelled parallel to my line of travel.  Coincidence, or intersection, is not likely to be beneficial to my health.

Cheers, Chris.
 
Kirkhill said:
I would also point out that I would rather that vehicles sharing the road with me travelled parallel to my line of travel.  Coincidence, or intersection, is not likely to be beneficial to my health.

Well vehicles travelling behind you in the same direction are not likely to be a threat. Unless one of them is being chased by the RCMP in a car chase. ;D

If I can recall correctly, a ship is the more common metaphor for national interest than a car when it comes to propaganda posters in Bolshevik-era Russia or early Maoist China, with Lenin or Mao depicted as the "Great Helmsman". In the same sense, no one wants a miscalculation of the other nation's self-interests to lead to a collision course in the same way that RMS Queen Mary rammed and sank HMS Curacao by accident.



 
Quds Force involvement in Iraq is a provocation and should merit a response that Iran will understand.The result of inaction is Iranian control of Basra, which isnt an option in my opinion.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3690010.ece

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.

Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.

Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”

US defence chiefs are concerned that the troop surge has overstretched the military. Admiral Mike McMullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned that the army and marines were at risk of crossing an “invisible red line” if the burden on forces remained. He said deployments of 15 months had to be reduced to a year “as fast as possible”.

Petraeus is likely to announce that combat tours will be reduced from 15 months to 12 months.

The number of US troops in Iraq is set to fall from 160,000 to 140,000 by July, but Petraeus is expected to recommend an indefinite pause in further troop cuts.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric, has called for 1m people to march on Baghdad on Wednesday – the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital – when Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, will be briefing Congress.

A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.” Another Iraqi source described the US general as “furious” that al-Maliki moved against the militias into Basra without consultation and had to rely on US forces to bail him out.

Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire.

“When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,” he said.

Additional reporting: Hala Jaber
 
Quite honestly I'm revising my thinking of recent - and I have decided that yes Iran would look good paved as a parking lot...
 
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