Perspectives

9/11: The Heart of the Matter

One year ago on this day, I stood on the New York Presbyterian Hospital deck looking down at the East River. In the weeks prior to the 10th anniversary of that terrible day when evil struck at the heart of America, I had listened to Jack Delaney - who was Director of Emergency Services at New York Presbyterian Hospital on 9/11 - as he shared his experiences of that day and the aftermath. If you missed it the first time, go here and read his first-hand account. Now looking down at the river I felt so small as I watched the boat traffic gently riding the waves on this Sunday morning. I thought back to the Tuesday morning ten years earlier; one of America's darkest days, but also a day where the heart of America shone so brightly.



As I stood quietly watching the ebb and flow of this river, I was so incredibly humbled. I had come to this place on this day at the invitation of some very special Americans. I had come to remember and honour. A few years earlier I had been privileged to interview the mom and dad of Keith Fairben, a Paramedic who died on 9/11, along with his partner Mario Santoro, as they were focused on saving others' lives. First Diane, Keith's mom, and then Ken, Keith's dad, had honoured me by sharing their hearts, the heart of their son with me, and allowing me to tell the world the story of his life.

(Keith and Mario - back to the camera)

Forms of Democratic Representation & Governments

Elections are held in a majority of the world's countries, ranging from Venezuela & Iran to Germany, Russia, & Britain, the United States, but does that mean the people have a true input to the political process?  Not necessarily.  For the most part, the rest of the world has some type of parliamentary system as opposed to the US Congress, and the current government in the US is very different than the intent of the US Constitution. 

In the American system, the people vote for a person, to represent their district, first as a representative of a party against the people selected by other voters for the other parties, and then between those running for that office of various parties and independents with no party affiliation.  Rarely does the political party itself choose the politician that will run for that office, but on occasion it does occur, such as in the special election of the New York 26th District in 2011 which was held when the serving Representative resigned.

In the parliamentary system, the parties choose the politicians who will hold the seats, if the party wins it.  In most parliamentary systems, voters cast a ballot for an individual and for a party.  Whereas, in the United States, the politician getting the most votes, regardless of party or how many parties get how many other votes, gets the seat. In the parliamentary system, a party getting a minimum percentage (usually about 5%) of the vote is given seats in parliament, even if they lost in every district.

Parliaments have various degrees of authority in various systems, ranging from an advisory board to the executive to the selectors of the executive (Prime Minister).  Some have a type of legislative authority and others don't.

"Incident in New Baghdad" & What Really Happened

On 12 July 2007, an Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment embarked on a mission to clear Al-Amin District of New Baghdad of Anti-Iraqi Forces, aka Mehdi Militia, aka Jayish al-Mahdi in order to provide freedom of maneuver to Coalition Forces.  By 10:20 AM, Baghdad time, they had taken significant amounts of SAF (small arms fire) and RPG (rocket propelled grenade) fire, sporadically.  Two AH-64D's were in the area and responded.  What would happen next would inspire a movie, that would be nominated for an Oscar, but not win one.

"Now the war is over and in a lot of ways we're still fighting it. It is my accretion that despite what many leaders of this very government said publicly or otherwise, we won. We won through the blood sweat and tears of the troops on the ground, that refused to give up."  Doc Bailey

To understand the situation, one must realize the Mehdi Militia was led by Moqtada al-Sadr, a relative of Bani al-Sadr, who had mentored the Ayatollah Khomeni.  Moqtada's father had been assassinated, allowing the firebrand mulllah to take the reins of power his father had once held.  Moqtada was at the time, for all intents and purposes, the dictator of a Million Man slum in North Baghdad controlled 100% by his Mehdi Militia. 

Historical Perspective - The 21st Century

As we entered the 21st Century, Saddam had continued to rattle his cage and his sword.  There was a new President to test, and he looked weak given the contentions of the 2000 elections.  It wouldn't be Saddam that tested him, but a plot long in the works from Al-Qaeda.  It came close to cancellation.  It was delayed by a few months.  Had word gotten out that one of the 20 terrorists had gotten arrested, it wouldn't have gone off, but little enough was known of the threat to understand an entirely new and different technique would be tried, and partially succeed.

Americans had been trained to comply with the orders of hi-jackers, to not be the dead hero, but the live survivor.  So, on 9/11/2001, when Islamist Terrorists slaughtered the crews of 4 airplanes, the passengers initially responded in the manner they had been taught to.  They obeyed the orders of the terrorists, expecting to be rescued eventually by Law Enforcement or Better.  They didn't expect they'd be flown into the twin towers in a fiery explosion. 

The towers were built to withstand the impact of an errant 707, so the authorities thought they could deal with the fire and it would be a smaller number of fatalities.  They didn't initially think the towers would fall, but the planes were bigger than what the towers were built to withstand and the planners had not expected the planes to be purposefully crashed into the towers with full tanks of fuel.  The explosion blew off the fire proofing.  The fuel flooded to the depths of the building.  As the fire burned against the unprotected steel, it bent and twisted, under the weight of dozens of floors of concrete above it.  The steel buckled, with thousands of unarmed civilians killed.

A third plane was flown into the Pentagon, which was also designed to withstand an attack, but not of the impact of a 747 loaded with fuel.  The building burned for days, but did not have 50 stories above to cause it to fall into itself.  It would be re-built within a year.  Red-tape and squabbling would delay the re-construction of the World Trade Center for a decade, but the Pentagon was quickly rebuilt.

The terrorists had hoped to murder 250,000 American Civilians on that day.  In that aspect they failed.  The passengers of the fourth plane got word of the attacks.  It broke them of the sheep mentality of obeying the orders of Islamist terrorists, as death was the worst that could befall them, and death was a given if they complied.  They chose to fight, for their lives, and the lives of their fellow Americans. 

"Let's roll!" Todd Beamer shouted as the passengers rushed the terrorists.

America was shocked.  The World was shocked.  And for a moment, Americans were united, determined and resolved.  The question still remained of how we would respond, but there was little doubt we would respond.  And the new President determined it would not be the manner of the past.  It would not be just a few million dollar cruise missiles blowing up mud huts and rocks in a land lost to time.  This time, we would bring the terrorists to justice, or bring justice to them.  The President had been in office long enough to submit a DoD budget, but not long enough to see the budget enacted.  Congress still had to pass it.

On 9/11/01, two teams of the 5th Special Forces Group had been packing up in conclusion of their mission to train our new Uzbekistan allies.  Their mission had just changed.  Their new mission was to prepare for their brothers to arrive, to convince the Uzbek government to allow it, to find a place for their brothers, to help plan the invasion of the Taliban led government of Afghanistan.  Within weeks, a few hundred members had deployed from Fort Campbell, Kentucky through Uzbekistan, and into Afghanistan.  Within 2 months, the Special Forces Troops of 5th SFG(A) had inserted into Afghanistan, linked up with the local opposition to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and had begun raining down explosives on Taliban Government Troops. 

Americans cheered Victory after Victory, as the Taliban fell and then Kabul and Kandahar faster than anyone had dreamed possible.  By the Anniversary of 9/11 in 2002, it appeared that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were defeated in Afghanistan.  They had been killed, captured, or escaped, like cockroaches with the lights on, to melt into the populations of other lands.  We hadn't yet caught Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahari, or Mullah Omar, so there was still work to be done, but our Troops had to go find the fight, and the Taliban were slinking away in the few times we found them.

Pakistan was helping to round them up on their side of the border.  The #3 position in Al-Qaeda was regularly getting killed or captured.  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Zubadiyah, and others were regularly captured.

Both sides of the aisle were "determined" to end terrorists and their state sponsors.  Iraq had one of the longest records of supporting terrorists.  It had been paying $25,000/head for suicide bombers in Israel for decades.  The Fallujah and Nasiriyah Al-Qaeda camps were known and reported about to Congress, but not widely outside of it.  It was just a mundane point with little surprise to those with a real knowledge of the Middle East.  Only on the surface did it seem strange.

When Bush Junior went to Congress for authorization for military action against Iraq, Pelosi, Hillary, Bill Clinton, and Harry Reid attested to the "fact" that this wasn't a ploy, that they knew Saddam had WMD, because they had the same information when Clinton was President.  But while WMD was the most advertised reason, it was only one of dozens of reasons, BOTH sides of the aisle voted to authorize war.  The Egyptians, the British, and others confirmed that Saddam had WMD.  And it was a matter of historical record that he had used them against both the Kurds and the Iranians.  The French and Germans opposed the War, mainly because they had their hand in the cookie jar.  They were selling Saddam weapons, and getting cheap oil on the black market from Saddam.  They knew the evidence would be damning, when we went in.

Whether you wish to believe the politicians, that they believed the authorization for war was political theater, or their original words, that Saddam had to be taken out, one way or the other, they had authorized a war against Iraq.

It took several months for the forces to arrive in Kuwait, prepared for war, and about 3 weeks for the "smaller footprint" force to defeat Saddam's military.  "No plan survives the battlefield intact," but the Iraqis did initially welcome Our Troops.  The war was won at a pace faster than the Generals anticipated or wanted.  There were miscalculations.  The Generals had avoided permanent damage to the Infrastructure and expected they could repair the power grid quickly.  They had not realized that Saddam had failed to maintain it during the decade of sanctions.

The Military planners had anticipated the large scale surrenders they had seen in Desert Storm, which would be convertible to an Iraqi Security Force, quickly.  They had not anticipated that Iraqi soldiers and policemen would melt away into the population, on fears of the de-Ba'athification orders.  The political administration set up in Iraq to oversee the transition to the people of Iraq had failed to learn the lesson of the Cold War; that people had been forced to join the party (Ba'ath or Communist) if they wanted to succeed behind the curtain.

When it came down to it, the transitional governing authority wasn't ready for the rise of criminals and the abandonment of posts of the Police Forces.  Saddam had cast his hopes on surviving in hiding long enough for a guerrilla force to run the Americans out.  Soon, he was captured, but the Al-Qaeda that had slipped out of Afghanistan were slipping through Syria to plan operations in Iraq.  Some had been there all along, such as al-Zarqawi.  He had a long history of terrorism, was already wanted in his homeland of Jordan, and had worked with Al-Qaeda as a trainer in Afghanistan.  When push came to shove, and he needed a little more international support, he made the final pledge, a blood oath to bin Laden, in exchange.

Iran had grown quiet over the last few years, concerned that they were next.  Libya's Qaddaffi had gotten more than a little concerned, considering past grievances.  Qaddaffi decided it was time to give up his own WMD program, before US Troops took them from him.  He upped the ante and started giving up information on Al-Qaeda and its operatives.  He did everything he could to demonstrate he was reformed, and out of the terrorism business.

But Iran noticed the political discord in the United States.  Quietly, it began to agitate the Shi'a against the US.  It wasn't difficult.  The Shi'a remembered that they had been slaughtered by Saddam in the 90's, after they had been encouraged to rise up against him.  They had grievances with the Sunni.  And it was a Sadr that had mentored Khomeni.  Muqtada al-Sadr may have assassinated his own father to gain his own seat of power, but he had established himself as the leader of a Million Man slum, where no other was allowed to give out charity.

Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda and Sadr's Mehdi Militia found common cause in fomenting "sectarian violence" to embarrass the Americans, who had a policy, initially, of staying out of "Green on Green" violence, ie. disputes between locals.  The 2nd War in Iraq had begun, and no one knew it.  It worked well for Iran, as the more they funded and equipped the Mehdi Militia to kill Americans, and the more their allies in Syria slipped Al-Qaeda terrorists in, the more divided the American Politicians became.

The other side of the aisle began to remember how the "defeat" in Viet Nam had brought them to power, and pronounced Iraq a defeat every time they saw a camera.

Eventually, the Shi'a moderate, al-Maliki was forced to choose between giving up power, or embracing the Islamist firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr.  He chose to remain in power, at all costs.  He made alliances with Sadr and his Iranian allies.  Maliki had not won the election, but in a parliamentary election he didn't need to.  He built a coalition, of Shi'a extremists to vote him into power.  He took up common cause with the Iranians, and insisted on US Troop withdrawals, long after Obama started begging him to let them stay.

As Al-Qaeda was defeated in Iraq, it abandoned the field of battle.  It returned to Pakistan, to Afghanistan, and was reborn in Somalia and Yemen.  Osama is dead, but Al-Qaeda is not.  Islamist terrorism is but one means of Islamist oppression.  Political Islamism is another tool in the arsenal to achieve Sharia Law, the oppression of women, and the elimination of Israel.  And it was "political Islamism" that would prove organized and ready to take the reins of power when elections were rushed in Egypt and Tunisia.  Tunisians fled as Islamists returned to write the new Constitution.  The Muslim Brotherhood pushed for earlier votes, not later when Hosni Mubarrak fell.  The sooner the better, for the only organized element on the political landscape.  Egyptians, like Iranians, are not prone to oppressing the people, to forcing segregation of the sexes, to illegalizing the education of women.

If "rights of independent thought" were to be predicated with "as long as it doesn't contradict Islam or the laws of government" as stated in the Iranian Constitution, the Islamists would need to write it.  And if they were going to write it, they would need to hold the elections while they had the organizational advantage.

We had recovered from the defeatist 70's.
And the Rewards of the 80's had carried through the early years of the Bush Admin.
Then came the "Peace filled 90's"

Historical Perspective - The "Peacefilled" 90's

Still, Clinton had decided that if Bush could cash in the "Peace Dividend" by cutting the size of the Military, he should cut it even more. After all, it was an era of peace, right? The Clinton Administration envisioned the Military being used in Peace-Keeping operations, not Wars. Operations like Somalia. It would be a kinder, gentler Military, under UN mandates. So, when the Ground Commander in Somalia said he needed Armored Personnel Carriers and C-130 Gunships, the Clinton Administration denied them on the basis that it would appear too aggressive.

When a successful operation in Mogadishu resulted in fatalities, and a hostage, Clinton couldn't retreat fast enough. The media played up the operation as a tactical defeat, though the Troops on the ground had fought bravely, against overwhelming odds, achieved all of their objectives, decimated the enemy, and left the battlefield on their own terms. The Rangers and Delta Operators had dealt Al-Qaeda its first tactical defeat, without even knowing Al-Qaeda was there. The Politicians in Washington turned it into a strategic defeat, adding to the lessons learned by Osama bin Laden, and his developing strategy.

After the demonstrated resolve of the 80's against Qaddaffi, the state sponsors of terrorism, principally Iran and Libya, had pulled back the reins on the PLO, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. The Communist Terrorists of Europe had melted away. And the IRA had made peace with Britain. Terrorism was on the decline in the 90's.

Historical Perspective - The Bush Senior Years

America was again respected in the World. Americans again had Pride in the Nation. And America elected one of the "most qualified" Presidents to replace him, despite his lack of charisma. Bush Senior was a World War II fighter pilot, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, a Vice-President, and had a host of other things on his resume to demonstrate he could do the job. He soon reaped the rewards of Reagan's Arms Race. In his first year, the Iron Curtain crumbled, to the disbelief of the world. The Berlin Wall fell, the Velvet Revolution succeeded in Czechoslovakia, the Romanians hunted down and hung their brutal Communist Dictator, and the rhetoric of Perestroika and Glasnost overpowered the Soviet Union itself.

Those who had grown up in the Cold War, that remembered the brutal crackdowns of the past, waited with baited breath, expecting another, but the Soviet Army was demoralized, hungry, and tired of substituting anti-freeze for vodka. The floodgates to West Germany were opened by the Czechoslovakians and East Germans packed into their cardboard cars and took the Southern route into the West. The Autobahns of West Germany turned into traffic jams of the oppressed in cars that could barely do 60mph on roads where 120mph was the norm.

Soviet Troops were selling everything for nothing, as the Communists could no longer afford their paychecks. There's more than one report of a Soviet Soldier selling a T-72 for a case of vodka or two. The number one currency in Moscow became Marlboro cigarettes, followed by Levi Jeans, and the US Dollar. A new world of peace was being ushered in.

Bradley Manning: Sex, Lies, & Espionage

So, Bradley Manning's excuse for betraying Our Nation is he's gay:

"The defense revealed that Manning had written to one of his supervisors in Baghdad before his arrest, saying he was suffering from gender-identity disorder. He included a picture of himself dressed as a woman and talked about how it was affecting his ability to do his job and even think clearly."¹

In 1992, he would have been asked by recruiters prior to enlistment if he were or ever had been homosexual.  He would have been asked by Security Clearance investigators the same question.  It would have disqualified him for a clearance and entry into the military.

In 2002, he would not have been asked, but had he told, he would have been removed from the military.  In 2009 & 2010, when he told that he was homosexual, he was supposed to have been removed from the military.  The picture above comes from Manning's FB page and was posted prior to his arrest.  His defense for his crimes is that his homosexuality drove him to commit espionage.  His spymaster's (Julian Assange) defense against sexual assault charges is that his homosexuality prevents him from having (wanted to have) assaulted those women.

Manning's defense specifically asked the investigators if they had looked for the gay defense evidence.

"We already knew before we arrived that Pfc. Manning was a homosexual," Special Agent Toni Graham said.

The State of the War & World

It is understandable that not everyone understands the reason we cover the news we do, or how drug violence in  Mexico, nationalization of grocery stores in Venezuela, "bank robberies" in Baghdad, and protests in Syria or Cairo can possibly related.  Others believe there is a nefarious, secret council that is not only plotting, but implementing a plan to take over the world.  How does the average citizen come to conclusions of what is real, what is connected, and what is overreaching the bounds of reasonable conclusion, i.e. nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

Let's be frank, but not paranoid, there are individuals which conspire to advance their power.  They're often called political parties, and while they will avoid the term conspire, their means are to increase their group and personal power through conspiring together with a common theme and goal.  But to think that political opponents are nothing more than puppets to a small group of secret power mongers would ignore the fact that other groups also vie for that same power.

The world is in fact at a key point in history.  After decades, centuries even, of oppression, the people of the Middle East are rising up and demanding change.  But not every participant in the protests has the same ideals of what government should be.  Not every protest is led by people of the same ideals, and not every person holding a sign understands who they are following.  It is puzzling how the Administration in Washington is choosing whom to back and who to attempt to ignore.

War Should Not be Measured in Dollars...

... but in lives lost and saved.  It can be difficult to calculate the number of lives saved, but an end result of going to war must be lives saved.  The Iraq War can be used as an example.  Under Saddam, across his 30+ years in power, his regime killed an average of 1000 civilians every month.  That statistic does not include those murdered by common criminals, nor troops killed in combat.  It does not include the number tortured by the regime.  It is only the number of civilians killed by the Saddam Government.  ((This is not to say that this is the only factor that should be considered.  National Security Interests must be a factor, but this is one factor that should weigh in.))

At present, we cannot calculate the number of lives saved by US actions in Libya.  We do know that the 30 days of dithering cost thousands of lives.  We can anticipate that if Qaddafi duck prevails, not only will more lives be lost in Libya, but also that he will ramp up international terrorist actions.  We know that he killed hundreds of Americans in the 80's and trained Charles Taylor who killed tens of thousands of Liberian civilians.  Qaddaffi has a history of spreading secular terrorism and tyranny, as did Saddam.

How many lives are saved by US actions in Iraq?  At least 750/month, but one could argue 1000/month or 3000/month.  It is harder to calculate how many US Civilian lives or European lives have been saved, but given that there has been no major attack on US Civilians since 9/11 and Al-Qaeda is mostly defeated in Iraq, one could argue, that number is between 100 and 200/year.  How much are those lives worth?  Are civilian lives worth more?  Are children's lives worth more?  Are women's lives worth more?  How much value does one place on an Iraqi being able to say that Maliki is an idiot without fear of being tortured or killed?

A Success Story

A few weeks back, Nathan Webster launched a site under the WOTN umbrella.  We call it our outreach program.  I set up the site and it has a War On Terror News url, but the site and the content are his.  He has a nice start on readership and is doing great with posting new content on a regular basis from his embedded tours with Troops in Iraq from 2007 to 2009.

More to the point of this success story is that his goal to publish a limited run of his work in a quality book, is now funded.  It is a pictorial history of the surge to success period in Iraq and hopefully this run will turn into a publisher seeing the value of his work towards the history of Iraq and the Troops that made it possible.  This is an initial success but there is still time (about a week and a half) if you'd like to secure a copy of the book that may never get onto bookstore shelves.  It's your choice and there are examples of his work on his site, but a pledge in these last couple of weeks comes with no risk of a broken heart.  Before, the risk was only a broken heart but no risk of lost money.  (Don't blame me if he says something you don't like.  There is no editorial review of his posts.  Those are his words and his articles, alone.)

And this is not a WOTN success story, but a Nathan Webster success story.  All we've done is give him a little publicity and a place to tell his part of the story that is Iraq.  He did all the real work.  He embedded.  He took the pictures and he wrote the stories that went with the pictures.  He set up the kickstarter account and it was his friends and the Troops that pledged the money to get the book published, along with the money he put up.

So what's my angle?  I'm not getting any commissions on this project.  But I do get the joy of seeing a Veteran and Embedded Photo Journalist that is doing it right, succeed in telling his story, or rather the Soldiers of whom he captured in pictures, securing Freedom for us and for Iraqis.  It costs me nothing but I do get the warm fuzzy at seeing him succeed, and knowing that this part of history is one step closer to being available to the world, and that in the short term it is available to interested parties as a potentially exclusive piece of history, with his autograph gracing it.

Introducing Nathan S Webster, Photographer

via waronterrornews.typepad.com/cgtwa/

"Just a few hundred yards from the Tigris River, the mission took place during a hot morning, probably 110 degrees by 8 a.m. Iraq soldiers searched an unused compound close to the dirt river road, while Vergo positioned his two men in one corner. They all stayed out of the creeping sun."
"Sometimes there's a cool breeze, out by the river,” Pfc. Walter Grochwina says to the other, Pfc. Nick Knickerbocker, as both kneel and sweat in the dirt and dust.

“Haven't felt a breeze today,” Knickerbocker says."

Read the rest at "Can't Give This War Away," the newest addition to the WOTN outreach program.  Nathan Webster is a photographer, a Desert Storm Veteran, and embedded with the US Army in Iraq from 2007-2009.  He is currently attempting to attain sufficient pledges of financial backing to print a limited number of books of his work.  It won't take much to get the initial printing done, and it will put it on the road to adding a great book about Our Troops on Coffee Tables across America.  Check him out and take a look at his work. Remember to subscribe to his email subscription, so that you will know when his stories come out.  But don't blame me if he gives different opinions of things.  I don't limit his speech.

The Abused

“The Abused”
©2007-2008 ARM, All Rights Reserved (republished 2011)

 LTC(ret) Grossman, PhD and psychologist has taken the study of killing, both criminal and legal, and PTSD further than any.  He coined the phrase killology and has a website with the same name http://killology.com .  He gives the analogy which I often repeat: that there are 3 types of people: wolves, sheep and guard dogs.  I’ve added the shepherds, which are the politicians and religious leaders that the sheep follow.  Wolves are the criminals and terrorists which prey on the sheep.  The sheep are your average citizens which cannot or do not protect themselves.  Their lives are concerned with eating and following along with the crowd.  The guard dogs look very much like the wolves but are those that risk their lives to keep the wolves at bay.  The sheep don’t like seeing the guard dog because it reminds them that danger does exist and forces them to move to safer areas to better protect them.

In 2007, in answering a question about ‘war strategy’ which implied that our soldiers were predatory rather than protective and caring, I realized how closely the Iraqi and Afghani people relate to many women I’ve met.  It actually may explain in the context of the above why these particular women pull away from me.

A woman, child or dog that has lived its life in an abusive situation has trouble trusting those that are similar to the abuser.  The wolf and the guard dog, the predator and the protector look very much the same.  While I have the same ability as the criminal to cause destruction and pain, mine is used against those that cause it rather than against those that have been abused.  While I’ve recognized for a long time that women have these unhealthy histories were unlikely to get involved with me, it was only that day that I came up with a why.  I could be wrong, but it’s the only reason I’ve ever come up with.

When is Violence the Answer?

The pacifist crowd is quite curious.  While they would have us believe that "violence is never the answer," a great deal of violence is committed in the name of pacifism.  The unreported attacks on Miltary Recruiting Offices, University Laboratories, and even home construction by groups espousing pacifism or animal rights is a prime example not only of the violence of pacifists, but the MSM cover-up of their less savory cousins.  More often, the pacifist elitists attempt to incite violence through aggressive rhetoric.  This is demonstrated in a recent post at This Ain't Hell.

Does anybody remember the outrage about Muslims being murdered in Bosnia?  Does anyone remember the outrage that the world stood by and watched the slaughter of Darfur?  Who stood up when Iran was raping and murdering Persians in the streets and in college dorms?  Tyrants do not care that foreign citizens are outraged or that diplomats publicly protest their atrocities.  They notice a bit more when their ports are blocked or sanctions are enforced, but as Saddam and Castro proved, the sanctions may effect their people, but not the largesse of the tyrant.  And if a tyrant is willing to abuse his own people, why would he care that they suffer a bit more so he can thumb his nose at the butting in of the world body?

Veteran On Trial in Abu Dhabi

Imagine, you're on the way home from life in a combat zone, traveling through a foreign country, when security pulls you aside and sends you to jail.  The charge is transporting weapons paraphernalia.  It's not a weapon.  It's not ammunition.  It's pistol grips.

Imagine it's your son.  Sound like a movie?  It's not.  It's the real story of Nick Moody.  Kristina Divine has been on it since the beginning and there is something you can do to help.

The Truth About WikiLeak's "New" Civilian Deaths in Iraq

Julian Assange is claiming that his spies have reported thousands of more civilian deaths than previously reported in the Iraq War.  What he doesn't say is how many of those were killed by Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Special Groups, the Mehdi Militia, assassins, and criminals.  He implies that the civilians were killed by Coalition Troops.  Many have stated outright disbelief in the Wikileaks claims, but don't analyze his language.  To get to the truth, which Assange purposely distorts, I examined the best independent source for data on Iraq: The Brookings Institute. 

Here's the Assange claim:

 At 1:11, he claims that 109,000 Iraqis have been killed.  Later he claims that number includes 15,000 brand new reported deaths.  He correctly points out that most were killed in individual attacks, that fewer were killed in multiple fatality bombings.  To hear him tell it, you might believe the Coalition was on a mad shooting spree and then covered it up.  Neither would be true.  H/T to Yankee Mom

LTG Kelly, USMC: We are at War with a Determined, Evil Enemy

SEMPER FI SOCIETY OF ST LOUIS SPEECH BY LT GEN KELLY on 13 NOV 2010

Nine years ago two of the four commercial aircraft took off from Boston, Newark, and Washington. Took off fully loaded with men, women and children—all innocent, and all soon to die. These aircraft were targeted at the World Trade Towers in New York, the Pentagon, and likely the Capitol in Washington, D.C… Three found their mark. No American alive old enough to remember will ever forget exactly where they were, exactly what they were doing, and exactly who they were with at the moment they watched the aircraft dive into the World Trade Towers on what was, until then, a beautiful morning in New York City. Within the hour 3,000 blameless human beings would be vaporized, incinerated, or crushed in the most agonizing ways imaginable. The most wretched among them—over 200—driven mad by heat, hopelessness, and utter desperation leapt to their deaths from 1,000 feet above Lower Manhattan. We soon learned hundreds more were murdered at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania farmer’s field.

Iranian Terrorism in Iraq

I've pointed out many times that the Iranian government is doing all in their power to undermine the greatest threat to their tyranny and terror as they can.  But it's good to hear from others:

"On top of these two challenges, we have the Iranian influence to combat.  Our neighbors to the east are intent on destroying this attempt at democracy, and infiltrate and support terrorists at every opportunity.  The Judiciary continues to be a success story, and it remains strongly independent and resistant to executive branch influence.  As a side note, we got our first death sentence in a Coalition case this week; one of the Al Qaida terrorists who participated in the beheading of Nick Berg. " March 30, 2006, LTC Joseph Myers

I could easily quote his whole email here, but that would be disrespectful to the owner of that page. 

The point of the matter is that the LTC is saying then the same things I've been saying for some time here, that the world of "journalism" is not fulfilling their duties, that we are facing a brutal enemy, and that we are and have been winning for some time, despite what the news tells you.

The Colonels write a blast from the past, from a time when our next elected Commander in Chief was declaring our inevitable defeat, from when the media was attacking our Troops, from when the American people believed Code Stinkos and had just elected The Party to rule.

War on Terror News©2007-2008, ARM, all rights reserved.

Modern History of Iraq

 War on Terror News©2008-2010, ARM, all rights reserved,

So here is that history article I promised you!  Well, I had to write this next and post it first, since this article grew so long before I could even get to 20^th Century Iraq.  Part of my expanded library is “The Iraq War” by Robert H. Scales, MG(ret).  I had the opportunity to meet this man a few years backs and he could have been an NBA star.  The man is huge.  

 

I also had the advantage in this as I knew exactly who he was at about the same time his book (which I did not know about) was going to print and I could see the confusion in his face as I seemed very out of place.  He was sure he should know me and he has a reputation of remembering everyone he encounters but he could not place me because it was our only encounter.  I reveled in all of this, even though I have tremendous respect for his reputation and that grows with the reading of his book.  We shook hands after my salute and the encounter was over.

In his book, he enlightens me on a part of Middle East history on which I was deficient.  Frankly, I’ve found other accounts of early 20^th century history on the region less than enlightening.

 

I’ve mentioned the Ottoman Turks before and at the beginning of the 20^th Century, they were one of the 7 powers of Europe.  They ruled Arabia as well as Syria, Turkey and many other parts of the islamic world.  Not surprisingly, they got entangled in WWI which destroyed their status, just as it did many others.  It seems that they took up the side of Germany, Austria, and Italy against Serbia, Russia, England, and France.

They demonstrated their military capabilities against the Brits early in the war, when the British decided to open a route to their ally Russia.  It didn’t go so well for our allies and soon Russia fell not to Germany but to Communism. 

But still the war was on and it pitted the English against the Turks in the Middle East.  The next battles were for Baghdad which also proved less than successful initially.  Eventually though, they took Baghdad and other parts of modern Iraq.  Then they launched their attacks into Palestine (a region, not nation) which then included modern day Israel and Jordan.  By 1918, the Brits controlled Damascus (capital of present day Syria) and by that fall the Turks admitted defeat and saved what they could of their former empire, i.e. modern day Turkey.

 

 

Meanwhile back in the safety of Europe, a couple of bureaucrats were drawing lines on maps of the Middle East, dividing up the spoils of war: the former Ottoman Empire between the French and the Brits.  The French got modern day Syria and Lebanon, while the Brits kept Palestine and the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra.

The Brits were in a bit of a pickle.  Not only did they not really want this hot potato but they had also promised their local allies as made famous by Lawrence of Arabia self-rule.  Their primary concern was that the French not get control (though in the long run, that may have been better though they would have screwed it up even worse.)  While the land had plenty of oil, it had little else and oil really wasn’t all that valuable to them at that time.

Many of today’s conflicts are born out of this next historical act.  For some reason the British and French mapmakers sat far from the places for which they were drawing national boundaries.  They took into account the terrain but not the local politics.  In this case, the Brit sat in his office and saw a vast desert to the west and a lot of flat land going south all the way to the gulf.  It made for a simple terrain based set of lines on the map.

Meanwhile, the Brit diplomats had decided Faisal would be rewarded for his alliance and given the throne to this new nation.  Why wouldn’t a monarchy create a monarchy?  But there were some problems.  Faisal was a Sunni and when combining the Baghdad province with the Basra province, he was a bit outnumbered by the Shi’a which he was to rule over.  To change the ratios, the Brits threw in the Mosul province to the North which contained the Kurds, which while Sunni, didn’t happen to be Arabs.  Well if you’re drawing lines on a map in London, you can’t know about all these little nuances and Faisal was happy to have more territory and subjects.

 

 

 

The nation of Iraq was born out of three provinces.  In 2007, we occasionally heard a proposal that they be divided back up into those three, but the Sunnis (non-Kurd ones) don’t like that idea because the Kurds have the oil.  The Shi’a don’t like it because they have the numbers.  The Turks, Iranians and Syrians don’t like it because they have their own Kurd problems and a Kurdish Nation would only exacerbate the problem.  The rest of the world doesn’t like it because the above parties would likely absorb the new nations or form their own puppet governments.  It seems only the Kurds like the idea.

It seems all the players want to gain and maintain as much power as they can grab.  While many accuse the US of imperialism, we have the most altruistic goals.  Just like the Brits in 1920’s, we don’t want to hold on to this hot potato any longer than we have to.  Hence we have put tremendous diplomatic pressure on the new government to kiss and make up with all parties involved and to share the oil revenues of the Kurds with all the others.

As of 1932, as per the august international body, the League of Nations (the predecessor to the UN), the Iraqis had a brand new nation and a brand new king to go with it at a time when monarchies were on the decline and communism was on the rise.  Two Syrians had just come up with the Ba’ath political and government ideology in Paris, which they would bring to Damascus Syria) in 1941.

Following WWII, the Cold War was on.  Both sides of it attempted to influence the Middle East, because oil was important in the world now.  The US did this primarily by means of financial and military aid while the Soviets used home grown rebels and coups.  In 1958, an Iraqi General led a coup with Communist Party support. They massacred the royal family, including Faisal’s grandson which was the new young king at the time.  The Soviets had a foothold of influence.

Saddam Hussein himself led a Ba’athist assassination team aimed at killing General (and President) Qassem.  This attempt failed but in 1963, the Ba’athist’s did manage to win and to kill Qassem in the process.  They showed his body on television and proceeded to commit mass murder and purges across the country.  But their lack of solid control resulted in a counter coup by the Communists and the Ba’athists were again out of power.

The humiliation the Iraqis suffered as a result of the 6 Day War in 1967 was the final straw for the Communists however.  Even though the Iraqis showed up late for the battle, they were equally embarrassed by the mass surrendering of the “glorious” Arab armies to the tiny country of Israel.  The mid level officers threw their full weight behind the only alternatives to Communists and the Ba’athists took control of Iraq in 1968. 

 

The new President of Iraq, Hassan al-Bakr made the most sadistic man he knew the chief of the secret police.  This time they were a bit slower to institute purges but they started by hanging several Jews and a few other “Zionist” spies in Liberation Square and promised there would be more, thousands more as they rooted out all the western and Zionist spies.  Saddam did his job of torture, murder and tyranny well and he enjoyed it.

Saddam proved to be brutal and effective in methods of torture and execution while systematically putting people of loyalty in the key positions of Iraq including in all the intelligence services until by 1979 he told al-Bakr to step down and install himself as President.  His first act was to call the Ba’ath Party together, and under threat of a family massacre, one of the members outlined a coup plan within Saddam’s own party.  Saddam called out the guilty parties one by one and had them escorted outside. 

With all of the less loyal members falsely accused of treason, he gave the rest of the party membership the opportunity to prove their loyalty.  They could volunteer for the execution party.  The message was clear, even within the brutal party, the choice was kill Saddam’s opponents or be killed by those that didn’t wish to be killed.  He had complete control from the top of his party down to the vendor on the street.  All dissenters were killed.

The nice things about a coup are that they don’t necessarily involve all that much bloodshed, but Saddam went on a campaign of atrocity to overcome that, and it leaves the nations infrastructure and military in tact.  Contrast that to a full fledged revolution and there are some obvious benefits to taking over a government this way.  For those using the “I wish the politicians would fight it out instead of our soldiers fighting wars” crowd, it’s called a coup.  You should get behind this method if you really believe your argument.

Meanwhile, Iran had finally got our attention.  Iran (then Persia) had been our ally in the Middle East for decades.  We had a very good relationship with the Shah (their version of a king) but reality was that he wasn’t all that good of a leader.  The Shah had long depended on advice from the United States as to how to best govern.  Unfortunately for him, the nicest guy we ever elected President didn’t believe in meddling in the affairs of others. 

So when the Shah needed advice on how to handle those idealistic students, the ole Peanut farmer was just too nice to tell him not to kill the dissidents.  He was too nice to suggest that perhaps the Shah should hold some elections.  The fact was that the US President pretty much ignored Iran all the way up until the Shah was the victim of an Iranian coup while he was off in the hospital.  Well, the good ole boy must have felt a little bad about that because he decided to give the man a place to live here in the US, which angered the islamists that had taken power.

That’s when they decided to get our attention.  They overran our embassy and took our diplomats and businessmen hostage.  Only slightly less embarrassing than the fact that the Ayatollah didn’t release them until the nice guy was in his last hour of office and the cowboy was about to take the reins, was the fact that his demand that the rescue operation share glory amongst all services ended up causing disaster between elements that had never really talked that much.  This little detail brought about massive changes in the way the US military operated, but at the cost of a lot of lives in the Iranian desert.

They had our attention and we had lost our best islamic ally in the Middle East.  The young anti-communist leader in Iraq wasn’t looking as bad as he could have.  He accepted aid from the Soviets and bought their weapons but he was anti-communist, anti-Iranian and unfortunately anti-Israel as well.  He was a very bloody tyrant but who wasn’t in the Middle East.  He also wasn’t all that high up on our list of interesting people that we wanted to shake hands with, until a few years later.

Blood and torture were his pastimes.  His heroes included Stalin, Hitler and Al Capone.  The Ba’athist party motto of “hate everyone all the way to the grave” was well suited to him.  He taught his sons his arts and they did things more evil than even he could dream to the degree that he was embarrased, privately.  But they were family.  He took over a country rich with money from the booming oil business and he looked around for a place to start his quest for the pan-Arabic empire.  He noted that the bloody revolution in Iran had weakened their military and figured it would make for an easy expansion.

He failed to realize that Iran had 3x the people that he did and while pretty much hated by everyone by that time, it still had the armaments sold to the Shah and the Soviets were more than happy to make money off selling weapons to both sides.  The French were happy to buy influence and earn a pretty penny off upgrading any weapon system Saddam wanted to buy with all that oil money.  He bought the best he could get his hands on.

At the same time, Iran was looking to expand their Islamist Caliphate and Saddam's Iraq looked to be in disarray.  Mahmoud Ahdiminijihadist and others were sent behind Iraqi lines to start a revolution there.

The French meanwhile started selling him nuclear technology.  They used the excuse that it would even the odds against Israel which the world knew but Israel refused to admit had their own nuclear weapons.  He began using chemical and biological weapons on both his own people, the Kurds and his enemy, the Iranians.  Everyone turned a blind eye to his atrocities because he was fighting one of the worst the world had to offer, Iran.

Many in the Arab world loaned him money to fight the islamist threat in Iran.  No one wanted radical Shi’a Iran to win and some were just as happy to see the basic stalemate between the two.  Eight years of war bankrupted Iraq and Saddam needed to find a new way to get out of debt. 

Many of my readers will remember this period of time, when most of the islamic world was embroiled in the Cold War where both sides dared not take their eyes off the other.  The main interest either side had in the Middle East was steeped in maintaining an open path to the oil to buy.  Neither side had any serious dreams of actually holding that land for themselves.  Both sides were willing to look the other way if a tyrant would pledge alliance against the other.  There were Armies and allied armies of millions, both sides armed with nukes, looking for proxies to do battle with the other, to try to get the other side to blink long enough to score some real points.

Syria and Iran learned how to play the game of war through proxy from the two Superpowers and Lebanon and Palestine became the hottest places on earth while Berlin became a stone cold city of spies.  And Vienna became the neutral city of spies.

But the Cold War was ending and Iraq was near bankruptcy, so he decided to go on down to the rich little emirate of Kuwait, eliminate a creditor and take the Emir’s gold and wealth.  It was the perfect solution for a maniacal tyrant like Saddam.  He was accustomed to the times of the Cold War and believed the United States had no will to stop him.

He also looked to Viet Nam and assumed the US would pull out if he could just kill a few Americans if they did decide to try to stop him.  We built up a coalition of over a million soldiers and most of the world, including his old ally Syria, though Jordan “remained neutral” while selling him some weapons and ammo.  Meanwhile, he bragged that both his shepherds and his French anti-air defenses would see our Stealth Fighters.  When both failed at the task, he had his Generals in charge of the Air Force and Air Defenses forces executed.

Wars cannot be won by air alone and particularly not in the Middle East, but he thought his ground forces would perform better than his air defenses did.  He was still holding on to the idea that America would retreat with a few casualties.  We expected higher casualties in the ground war too.  We expected it to cost thousands of lives a day.  We were going up against “battle hardened seasoned soldiers” of the 4^th largest Army in the world on their turf with the best the Soviets would sell them.

I’ll admit I thought I was going into the "next Viet Nam" when I crossed the border into Iraq that night.  It didn’t get any better when tired from a lack of sleep and an excess of adrenaline for a prolonged period of time left me and my battlebuddy asleep at the wheel.  When using blackout drive, you can’t see the vehicle ahead if it’s 100 feet in front of you and during one of our frequent stops, they moved while we nodded off.

We were two scared E4’s driving as fast as we could through a desert known to be mined and believed to be full of battle hardened Iraqis on the first night of ground operations of a war we expected to last years.  Fortunately we linked back up with the convoy somehow.  He hated to be called “top” but somehow the 1^st Sergeant found us. 

And you have to remember, in those days “night vision goggles” gave you a nice green picture of snow and a fuzzy picture of anything within a few feet with no perception of whether it was inches or yards.  They were so uncommon that we were lucky to have two sets per platoon and they sure as hell were too expensive to give to a couple of E4’s.

We didn’t stop advancing for the next 5 days.  We entered Kuwait from Iraq at the same time that BBC short wave radio announced the war was over.  We kept going until we found us a nice spot on the border to wait for the Iraqi counter attack.  In those 4 days of the ground war, I went from being a non-smoker to a chain smoker.  Haven’t quit but once since, for 8 months, but it wasn’t worth it.  No one likes a quitter.  They’re irritable.

We annihilated the enemy so completely that Bush was afraid of a public backlash.  He decided to end the war quickly before the pictures of the “Highway of Death” made it to press.  Nevermind that it was 7 miles of stolen vehicles driven by Iraqi soldiers and full of stolen loot from Kuwait.  Nevermind that those stolen vehicles were destroyed but there weren’t so many Iraqi soldiers killed in the process.  The press would ignore all that or so he thought.

So anyway, we came away from Iraq knowing full well that before we started, Saddam had chemical, biological and was working on nuclear weapons.  He had already stated that Iraq would be on par in power with the US, China, and the Soviet Union.  He was the ‘great islamic hope’ at least in his own fantasy world.  As part of the cease fire, he agreed to weapons inspections and to destroy all of that. 

Swarzkopf made one great mistake in this war.  He didn’t make Saddam come to the cease fire table and sign the papers of defeat himself.  Swarzkopf didn’t want to totally strip Saddam of honor and let him send his Generals to sign them instead.  Saddam executed these ‘defeatist’ Generals and claimed victory since the US had “backed off from attacking Iraq proper.”  In the Arab mind, that meant victory for the retreated and surrendered Iraqi military.  We gave him back about 300,000 Iraqi EPWs.  They had surrendered to any American they could find, including a case where a platoon of Iraqis surrendered to a single Blackhawk helicopter armed only with a few .38 caliber pistols.

Bush Sr however lost the backing of the people as a result of Tianamen Square.  He waited 3 days for the polls to tell him what the people thought he should do.  We don’t vote for leaders to be wishy-washy.  We want decisiveness.  Meanwhile, Saddam continually threw up walls and shell games in front of the UN weapons inspectors while re-confirming his victory over the Americans as evidenced by outlasting the US president that failed to take him out of power.

Saddam was an incredibly intelligent yet paranoid and brutal egotistical maniac.  A common problem with people like him, particularly when they have their own little country to run is that they believe their own bs and have plenty of people to tell them just how smart they are.  Because they believe themselves so clever they often ignore the advice of smarter people in their company on the subjects they pay them to know.  I.e. Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam all had Generals executed that disagreed with their military prowess, which resulted in two of them being removed from power by a foreign military and the third got lucky by siding with Britain and the US against Hitler.

We elected our own egotistical genius to replace Bush Sr.  His concept was to continue the policy of containment against Saddam rather than face him head on.  He figured it worked against the Soviets and could work against Saddam.  (It took us 50 years and several wars in places like Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, and Afghanistan to end the Cold War in a massive arms build up that the Soviet economy could not sustain.)

The Containment Policy meant embargos and sanctions but Saddam figured that the UN and Clinton would get a soft heart and end those policies that have always failed when the world saw that only the common people were starving and Saddam continued to live in largesse.  The Oil for Food program was corrupt on every level, as well as the black market in and out of Iraq and Saddam’s sons, along with Kofi Annan's son, and the French and Germans, were the primary beneficiaries.

After Saddam attempted to assassinate Bush Sr with a car bomb in Kuwait, Clinton launched a cruise missile attack against the Intelligence Agency Headquarters that planned the attack, at night.  It killed only the civilian janitors and NONE of the military or intelligence agents that actually planned it.  Saddam was emboldened.  He knew Clinton would never actually force his hand and that the UN would eventually back down.

At that time he was offering $10,000 to anyone that killed a UN humanitarian worker in the Kurdish areas or to the family of a suicide bomber in Palestine.  He upped the reward to $25,000.  At least two renowned terrorists with a successful resume were living in Baghdad.  The one that survived Operation Iraqi Freedom-1 was al-Zarqawi, later to be the #1 commander of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and later still to be killed by US forces.

Though unsuccessful, Saddam maintained orders to shoot down any US aircraft enforcing the no fly zone in Northern Iraq.  Our technology kept our pilots safe, even if puckered butts and kept his ADA in piles of rubble, so he moved them inside of schools and to the tops of historical monuments and archaeological sites. Clinton decided to launch a few cruise missiles on precisely the same day he was being impeached by Congress, in response to Saddam again moving the Iraqi Republican Guard towards Kuwait, again.  The whole world saw it as a wag the dog scenario, most particularly Saddam and he continued to prevent weapons inspectors from doing their job. 

He continued killing and torturing Iraqi civilians and his sons continued kidnapping, raping and feeding women to the lions, literally.  His atrocities, bravado and speeches only grew stronger.  His policy, as was his life, was confrontation, particularly in the face of a policy of containment. In poker, the one that calls the bluff wins.  He had his military shoot at UN weapons inspectors.  I can’t say they were just bad shots nor can I say they shot high on purpose but the weapons inspectors retreated unharmed.  He showed all the signs of having WMD, which we had incontrovertible proof he had prior to Desert Storm.  In fact in numerous speeches, Saddam stated he was willing to use WMD against Israel.

The Egyptians, Jordanians, and British all agreed with US Intelligence that he had WMD.  The French who had sold him the Nuclear technology in the 80’s said they would never support another invasion of Iraq, even if he did have them.  They were already selling him weapons and had made several other business deals for a post sanctions (as well as during sanctions) Iraq.  They knew they would be found out if we went in.  Oh and by the way, it was Jacques Chirac that had sold Nuclear technology to him the first time.

 

 

The Russians and Germans had their own deals in Iraq, also breaking the sanctions.  Hence they weren’t thrilled that Bush wanted to go back in, which not only would cost them business but also provide proof that they were breaking the rules.  Meanwhile, Saddam continued to kill thousands of his own citizens as well as threaten his neighbors and the US verbally and with actual bullets and missiles.  He believed that the current price of American retreat was 18, as demonstrated in Somalia.

OBL and 9/11 finally gave America some resolve and Bush Jr decided it was time to remove the tyrant that continually threatened us, his neighbors and killed his own citizens.  Some intelligence, some of which was later disproven demonstrated that Saddam was trying to contact OBL.  Later intelligence, proven by Troops on the Ground, demonstrated he had set up two terrorist camps for Al-Qaeda, one in Fallujah and one in Nasiriyah. Everything pointed to Saddam being close to having WMD, if he didn’t already have it.  And an AQ armed with WMD would be a bad day in NYC.

Now we have a fledgling democracy to protect long enough to stand on its own feet, while it has neighbors that are scared that democracy may take hold in the Middle East and that they will lose their power over their own tyrannical dictatorships.  They continue their policies of keeping Iraq in turmoil to prevent each other from having too much influence as well as to keep the biggest threat to tyranny, democracy from being successful on their own borders.

But as our daily Iraq News demonstrated, the Iraqi people are tired of being the pawns in a chess game between Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah (aka JAM aka Iran, and Syria.)  They were ready to help the American and Iraqi militaries protect them from islamists that constantly target average everyday muslims trying to go to mosques, markets, and funerals.  They were simply leary of US commitment to stay in Iraq long enough to see democracy bloom.

Current events in Iraq, run centuries deep, with a tangled regional as well as global ties.

 

It is a tangled web in the Middle East and yes, it is vital to US interests that we get Iraq worked out, that the Iraqi politicians work out their differences and share oil revenues and continue to establish a working stable, democracy that in no way is a puppet of the US government nor from which we steal oil nor of the tyrannical regimes in the area but is an ally against terrorism and tyrants alike. 

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, US Troops defeated Saddam's Military, the Fedayeen (guerilla remnants), the Mehdi Militia (Iranian supported Shi'a Islamists of Muqtada al-Sadr), Hezbollah (Iranian sponsored spinter of Mehdi Militia), and Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQiM, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia), while developing a fledgling democracy, rebuilding decades of ignored infrastructure.

As of 2010, there is still an Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah presence in Iraq and many Iraqis believe PM al-Maliki is a puppet of Iran, evidenced by his alignment with al-Sistani and al-Sadr.  Many Iraqis claim that Iranians have been illegally given Iraqi citizenship and government positions as a result.

 

 

http://waronterrornews.typepad.com

 

KYE: Shady Allies & Strangely Allied Enemies in MidEast

 

Sometimes, we have a tendency to oversimplify the enemies and threats we face.  “Terrorists” are the enemy but is it Sunni terrorists or Shi’a terrorists?  Which are the good guys and which are the bad guys?  And are the Ba’athists Sunni or Shi’a?  Aren’t we against monarchies?  Aren’t our anti-Iranian policies really an anti-islamic policy?

 

 

 

Well, most of my articles have focused on only a few of our enemies: The Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Iran.  I’ve made a few mentions of Ba’athists and I’ve defended the monarchy of Saudi Arabia.  But what is it that ties these enemies together and what is it that allies us with a monarch?  I’ve struggled to identify why we should support who in the world myself.  The sad fact is that many times, we must simply support the lesser of many evils.

 

 

As much as it would be preferable to lump all of our enemies together and call them all terrorists, islamists, facists, or communists, such an oversimplification would lead to failure to overcome the threat.

 

 

 

 

KYE-202: Regional Entanglements

Recently, I’ve seen some suggestions that the US should step back and allow the regional powers of the Mid-East help Iraq settle their own problems.  Surely the people of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia have more of a vested interest as well as a better cultural understanding to do this, don’t they?

Well, no, they don’t.  In fact it is in their interest to keep Iraq weak and in conflict.  For one, if democracy takes hold in Iraq, their own populations may desire the same freedoms, economic success and luxuries that they would see across the border in Iraq.  For another, the Iraqi people are traditional enemies of some of these countries.  Further they are religious enemies of others.

Let’s look at the most obvious player first: Iran.  It is a very theocratic government that rules its people under Sharia law.  Women must cover their hair.  Honor killings are part of life.  (An honor killing is when a male family member kills a woman for sex with a man other than her husband, whether or not she is married.  It can be for a lesser offense.)   Iranians are primarily Shi’a and non-Arab.  As Persians, they are regarded as lesser muslims, despite the Koran specifying that all muslims are equal.

KYE-301: Al Qaeda IN Iraq

09 Aug 2007: From time to time I have stated that Al-Qaeda IS in Iraq and that it is foreigner based.  I have pointed out that in the Brookings Institute report, an Army Major stated ‘we can estimate that approximately 100% of suicide bombers are foreigners.’  I have pointed out that the original leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq was Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian that was living in Baghdad at the time of the invasion.

According to recently released US Intelligence, I (or rather that Army Major) may have been wrong about the suicide bombers, but frankly he could still be correct because there is another trend in Iraq.  Zarqawi back in 2004 expressed his frustration with his Iraqi recruits.  He said on the internet and in complaints to the Al-Qaeda leadership (i.e. Bin Ladin and al-Zawahari) that the Iraqis were cowards because they weren’t willing to blow themselves up.

 

KYE-201: Islamist Lust for Iraq

(2007) Why is Iraq so important to Al-Qaeda?

As many of us have realized, historical glories and misdeeds are often used by politicians and radicals to rally the people to commit to new wars and atrocities.  The wars in the former Yugoslavia truly highlighted how deep people will dig to find a reason to hate and kill.  It was quite common for the warring sides to quote acts from the 11^th century as grounds for their 20^th century atrocities.

In the 21^st century, the regional powers of the Middle East have a profound interest in keeping their huge neighbor of Iraq in a weakened state, not only to prevent it from becoming a new empire of the Middle East, but also to prevent a democracy from taking hold and succeeding.  The latter would then erode the level of satisfaction that their own people have under their current forms of government.  This includes our allies but moreso our enemies.

Know Your Enemy 101

 
From 2007: I often express my frustration with ungrateful American (as well as British and Canadian) civilians who are anti-War and think we can placate the enemy. I often ask them to at least educate themselves on who the enemy is before they undermine support for our mission. That enemy is Al-Qaeda, primarily, and multiple smaller terrorist groups and cells, most of which have an association with Al-Qaeda but many of which instead have an association with Iran (Hezbollah) or are more independent.

Someone made an interesting point the other day. She said most people simply 'want to go about their daily lives in peace.' She was absolutely right. Most Iraqis and most Afghanis do just want to go about their daily lives and struggles to survive. 90% of the world simply wishes to go about their daily lives of struggling to make ends meet. However, she was 100% wrong in her implication that we were targeting this majority.