November 20, 2006
In Gaza, the summer war never ended. Palestinian militants continued their rocket attacks on Israeli border communities, and their weapons buildup and underground development, with frequent interruptions by the Israel Defense Force. After a particularly bloody Israeli intervention on November 8, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal declared that a state of war with Israel had existed since the end of last year.
Hezbollah remains in southern Lebanon, its underground network intact after the Israeli government cringed from committing to the kind of bloody infantry invasion necessary to uproot it, and continues importing arms through Syria from the bosses in Iran. A recent London Times report cites Israeli intelligence that Hezbollah’s Lebanese armaments already are above pre-war levels.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has foresworn preventing Hezbollah’s rearmament, unless requested by the Lebanese government, which announced a useless policy of forbidding only plainly visible Hezbollah weaponry. The previous UNIFIL mission, for any humanitarian good it did, occupied southern Lebanon for the very period in which Hezbollah seized and militarized the region, and if the current UNIFIL mission continues meekly observing as Hezbollah again renders southern Lebanon a war zone, it will have been worse than useless.
Politically, Hezbollah was the de facto government of southern Lebanon before the war; Now it threatens to hijack the Lebanese national government, demanding over-representation in the cabinet amounting to a veto over national policy. The United States took the unusual step recently of warning that Hezbollah, its native Lebanese political allies, and the Iranian and Syrian puppeteers are plotting to topple Lebanon’s fragile democracy.
Any notions that Hezbollah’s ultimate aims are anything other than genocidal should have been dispelled long ago by Hezbollah’s “Secretary General” himself, Hassan Nasrallah: “It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.” Hezbollah’s war against Israel is not for Lebanon’s sake, or defensive.
Israeli discontent with the government’s prosecution of the war, that it declined to finish the job it began, expending lives and national credibility without seriously impeding the enemy, registered in polling practically overnight. Support has swung from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his centrist Kadima-led government toward the rightist Likud Party of Binyamin Netanyahu and smaller right-wing factions like Yisrael Beiteinu, with a current Angus Reid Global Monitor poll finding that a new election would give Likud nearly double Kadima’s seats and make Netanyahu Prime Minister.
Regardless of the party in power, Israeli territorial concessions are over for the foreseeable future. The West Bank withdrawal plan was a casualty of the war, and settlements slated for abandonment only months ago are again building apace.
Withdrawing from southern Lebanon and Gaza did not buy even tolerance for Israel. It served only to move Hezbollah and Hamas that much closer to Israel’s heart. The territories Israel conceded to Lebanon and the Palestinians were converted to militarized zones, forward bases in the war on Israel’s very existence, magazines and launch pads for tens of thousands of anti-civilian rockets.
The Kadima Party which leads the Israeli government was founded in 2005 by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, precisely because Sharon’s own Likud Party refused support for his “disengagement” policy of unilaterally withdrawing Jewish settlements and IDF outposts from Israel’s controversial and vulnerable fringes. Now Olmert’s Kadima government has had to jettison the disengagement policy that was its raison d’etre.
The Israeli government was written a diplomatic blank cheque by the United States to deal with Hezbollah, but ultimately squandered its opportunity with hesitation and half-measures until the clock had run out.
America is heavily invested in the success of the Lebanese government, the position of which was becoming shakier with every day of Israel’s war. Lebanon was one of the great triumphs of the democracy project in the wider Middle East, ending the 30-year Syrian Baathist occupation and gaining an unprecedented freedom in the Cedar Revolution, sparked only weeks after the success of the first Iraqi national election.
The Cedar Revolution and a free and democratic government in Lebanon is just the sort of thing the United States is counting on if its democratization strategy has any hope of prevailing, and the strain which the war was putting on that tenuous government made a compelling argument for America to let Israel know the window for war was closing.
Plus, the United States was coming under pressure to halt Israel’s campaign against Shiite Hezbollah from Shiite allies in Iraq like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose support has been vital to the effort there, and if Israel was not going to finish the job in any event, then there was no reason to continue alienating helpful friends.
So the war was halted. And the terrorists remained entrenched and uncontained, and emboldened by what passes for victory in their world: surviving to fight another day.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
November 26, 2006
October 13, 2006
Dissecting the Iraq Insurgency
First was the war itself, against Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, over officially in six weeks and effectively in three. That much, at least, was a smashing success, but proved to be the relatively easy bit.
Then came the “dead-enders”. Baathist die-hards, Saddam loyalists, Sunni-minority "rejectionists" and militants generally, not vanquished in the war proper. Sunni militants remain a force in Iraq, causing trouble enough to become the target of a Diyala province sweep only days ago.
But sheer demographic inferiority, a small share of Iraq’s oil resources, revulsion at the jihadists’ war on civilians and their imposition of Sharia, and hatred and fear of Iran and its Shiite Trojan horses in Iraq -- coupled with American cultivation of potential Sunni allies -- have been altering the equation. The Baath-connected Islamic Army in Iraq recently released a video proposing negotiations with the United States, presumably for some amnesty-for-peace deal, as well as criticizing its former al Qaeda ally and declaring Iran, not America, to be Iraq’s greatest threat. So there is reason to believe that some Sunni elements of the insurgency want out.
Then there were the jihadists -- mainly foreigners -- especially al Qaeda in Iraq. Osama bin Laden himself called Baghdad the “epicenter of jihad,” and jihadists ceaselessly slaughtered civilians in an effort to foment a civil war to undo the democracy project and leave a power vacuum, as well as established the beginnings of a Sharia “caliphate” in pockets of Iraq they controlled, however temporarily.
That times have been better for Iraq’s al Qaeda legion was confirmed in the September statement by its new leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who came to his position after his predecessor, Zarqawi, was dispatched by two U.S. missiles last summer. The statement acknowledged the loss of 4,000 foreign fighters and issued a desperate-sounding plea for nuclear and biological weapons scientists, flailing for a miracle weapon to salvage their situation: "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases are good places to test your unconventional weapons….”
And if a recent poll is any indication, al Qaeda’s troubles in Iraq have been not only military, but ideological. A Program on International Policy Attitudes poll released September 27 found a near-unanimous 94 percent of Iraqis viewing al Qaeda unfavorably, with 93 percent disapproval for Osama bin Laden. So consider that battle for “hearts and minds” going badly for the international jihad.
Even Iraq’s Sunnis, the most inclined to sympathy for al Qaeda, are turning. 25 of the 31 tribes in the mainly-Sunni Anbar province -- where nightmarish Fallujah, Haditha, and Ramadi are located -- volunteered last month to actually fight al Qaeda and other jihadists, and support the new Iraqi government. Al Qaeda can count only six of the 31 Anbar tribes as allies.
Al Qaeda in Iraq remains a menace, and seems to be changing tactics, but in response to its diminished fortunes.
Which leaves the current, fourth phase of the conflict in Iraq: Shiite militancy. Shiite militants may have been spurred partly to revenge the decades of bloody Sunni tyranny, or the intentional, daily mass-slaughter of Shiite civilians by al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists in Iraq. It may even be that Shiite killers helped polish off some of the other militants, but today it is they -- most prominently the Mahdi Army of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- who constitute arguably the primary source of violence and unrest in Iraq.
Complicating matters is the fact that the Shiite militants have confederates in Iraq’s new government, who at least turn a blind eye to Shiite violence and malfeasance. And to truly introduce a monkey wrench to the works, much of the Shiite militancy is sponsored by the Shiite theocracy in neighbouring Iran. Iran is fighting another proxy war, this one against Iraqi democracy and the “Great and Little Satans”: the English-speaking powers.
American forces in Iraq were long ago reporting that the “Improvised Explosive Devices” threatening them daily were not so “improvised” anymore. They are often machined, manufactured, military-grade bombs, “shaped charges” that force a blast of molten metal through a cone, focusing it enough to penetrate even tanks. More recently, American and British forces have intercepted these devices in transit to Iraq from Iran.
Cash, training, and more advanced weaponry bearing official Iranian armament hallmarks, like anti-tank rockets and surface-to-air missiles, have lately been added to what is known of Iran’s assistance to anyone in Iraq intending havoc and bloodshed, especially the Shiites among them.
But a “senior U.S. military official” in Iraq, speaking to Reuters last month, did optimistically observe that even those Iranian-allied militants are feeling the need to distance themselves from Iran to maintain credibility among the Iraqi people, and added, “by the way, nobody in this country stays bought. You're rented.”
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Then came the “dead-enders”. Baathist die-hards, Saddam loyalists, Sunni-minority "rejectionists" and militants generally, not vanquished in the war proper. Sunni militants remain a force in Iraq, causing trouble enough to become the target of a Diyala province sweep only days ago.
But sheer demographic inferiority, a small share of Iraq’s oil resources, revulsion at the jihadists’ war on civilians and their imposition of Sharia, and hatred and fear of Iran and its Shiite Trojan horses in Iraq -- coupled with American cultivation of potential Sunni allies -- have been altering the equation. The Baath-connected Islamic Army in Iraq recently released a video proposing negotiations with the United States, presumably for some amnesty-for-peace deal, as well as criticizing its former al Qaeda ally and declaring Iran, not America, to be Iraq’s greatest threat. So there is reason to believe that some Sunni elements of the insurgency want out.
Then there were the jihadists -- mainly foreigners -- especially al Qaeda in Iraq. Osama bin Laden himself called Baghdad the “epicenter of jihad,” and jihadists ceaselessly slaughtered civilians in an effort to foment a civil war to undo the democracy project and leave a power vacuum, as well as established the beginnings of a Sharia “caliphate” in pockets of Iraq they controlled, however temporarily.
That times have been better for Iraq’s al Qaeda legion was confirmed in the September statement by its new leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who came to his position after his predecessor, Zarqawi, was dispatched by two U.S. missiles last summer. The statement acknowledged the loss of 4,000 foreign fighters and issued a desperate-sounding plea for nuclear and biological weapons scientists, flailing for a miracle weapon to salvage their situation: "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases are good places to test your unconventional weapons….”
And if a recent poll is any indication, al Qaeda’s troubles in Iraq have been not only military, but ideological. A Program on International Policy Attitudes poll released September 27 found a near-unanimous 94 percent of Iraqis viewing al Qaeda unfavorably, with 93 percent disapproval for Osama bin Laden. So consider that battle for “hearts and minds” going badly for the international jihad.
Even Iraq’s Sunnis, the most inclined to sympathy for al Qaeda, are turning. 25 of the 31 tribes in the mainly-Sunni Anbar province -- where nightmarish Fallujah, Haditha, and Ramadi are located -- volunteered last month to actually fight al Qaeda and other jihadists, and support the new Iraqi government. Al Qaeda can count only six of the 31 Anbar tribes as allies.
Al Qaeda in Iraq remains a menace, and seems to be changing tactics, but in response to its diminished fortunes.
Which leaves the current, fourth phase of the conflict in Iraq: Shiite militancy. Shiite militants may have been spurred partly to revenge the decades of bloody Sunni tyranny, or the intentional, daily mass-slaughter of Shiite civilians by al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists in Iraq. It may even be that Shiite killers helped polish off some of the other militants, but today it is they -- most prominently the Mahdi Army of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- who constitute arguably the primary source of violence and unrest in Iraq.
Complicating matters is the fact that the Shiite militants have confederates in Iraq’s new government, who at least turn a blind eye to Shiite violence and malfeasance. And to truly introduce a monkey wrench to the works, much of the Shiite militancy is sponsored by the Shiite theocracy in neighbouring Iran. Iran is fighting another proxy war, this one against Iraqi democracy and the “Great and Little Satans”: the English-speaking powers.
American forces in Iraq were long ago reporting that the “Improvised Explosive Devices” threatening them daily were not so “improvised” anymore. They are often machined, manufactured, military-grade bombs, “shaped charges” that force a blast of molten metal through a cone, focusing it enough to penetrate even tanks. More recently, American and British forces have intercepted these devices in transit to Iraq from Iran.
Cash, training, and more advanced weaponry bearing official Iranian armament hallmarks, like anti-tank rockets and surface-to-air missiles, have lately been added to what is known of Iran’s assistance to anyone in Iraq intending havoc and bloodshed, especially the Shiites among them.
But a “senior U.S. military official” in Iraq, speaking to Reuters last month, did optimistically observe that even those Iranian-allied militants are feeling the need to distance themselves from Iran to maintain credibility among the Iraqi people, and added, “by the way, nobody in this country stays bought. You're rented.”
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
August 4, 2006
The Next War, Part II
Six years ago, bowing to the United Nations, Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Lebanon’s Israeli border region was then militarized by Iran’s Hezbollah, openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction. For the most part, Hezbollah in Lebanon did not transgress Israel’s border until July 12, the date by which Iran was required to respond to the international diplomatic proposal for resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. On that day, Iran said nothing on the diplomatic package, but Hezbollah launched its simultaneous rocket attack and kidnapping raid against Israel, killing six Israeli soldiers and capturing two. Hezbollah’s July 12 attack may have been Iran’s answer to diplomacy.
The current Mideast war is now limited to Israeli and Hezbollah forces in a corner of the Levant, but it is another chapter in the larger story of Iran’s confrontation with the West. Hezbollah’s relationship with Iran is such that its deliberate provocation of July 12 is unlikely to be some spontaneous and independent action. Assuming it did direct the provocation, Iran’s interests in engaging Israel through Hezbollah may have been to distract the West from the nuclear issue, to assert the Iranian sphere as the new champion of the fight against Israel, to probe Israeli and Western capabilities and resolve, or to provoke a conflict that might ultimately give it a pretext to obliterate Israel.
Calling Israel’s war a “disproportionate response” to the kidnapping of a couple soldiers is superficial and facile. The Hezbollah incursion tripped the wire on an apparently long-planned Israeli rollback of Hezbollah’s militarization of southern Lebanon, intended to degrade Hezbollah’s offensive military capability.
Hezbollah had amassed 10,000-13,000 rockets intended for the Israeli people, just across the border from Israel, acting as the terrorist hand of an Iranian regime declaring daily its intent to eradicate the Jewish state and exterminate the Jewish people.
A disproportionate response to a couple of kidnapped soldiers? Yes. But a proportionate response to a massing of the offensive forces of a mortal enemy.
As Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy, Israel is in effect America’s.
A conventional wisdom has been forming that the United States cannot undertake further military action, having “overreached” on Iraq, the argument goes.
But if America is “bogged down,” it is on the democracy-building front, not the military front. The United States Armed Forces led the smashing of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in a scant three weeks, and if it has not yet contained the insurgents, it has certainly gone undefeated in battle against them.
If, heaven forbid, the democracy project did become irretrievably lost, then America would be no less likely to act militarily; Rather, it is likely that future American military action would be minus the Good Samaritan work of rebuilding and democratizing, and that happens to be the prevailing American thinking on the use of force against Iran.
In fact, Americans’ patience for the democratization strategy, in the face of the costs and international vilification, is wearing very thin. There is no reason to believe that the alternative, in a world of enemies actively pursuing America’s demise, would be some sort of passive non-interventionism: Sitting and watching as enemies arm and attack. An alternative with ever-multiplying advocates is the “Rubble doesn’t make trouble” doctrine. Punitive and deterrent strikes, and strikes to degrade potential threats, without the burdensome rebuilding and democratizing efforts that America would only be condemned for, anyway: “This time we won’t stick around to fix your godforsaken country.” And who would be able to blame them?
The spectrum of military options on Iran, from most to least likely, may go something like the following: Limited strikes against Iran’s first lines of defense plus its nuclear production, probably only intended to set the nuclear program back temporarily; Strikes to derail Iran’s nuclear production and its military capabilities generally; Attacks to degrade Iranian nuclear and military power plus “decapitation strikes” against the Iranian leadership, and aid to a coalition of domestic opposition in hopes of forming a new secular democratic government; And, the least likely, a full-scale invasion to destroy Iran’s nuclear potential and armed forces entirely, overthrow the regime, and establish a new democracy.
There are compelling reasons enough to avoid even limited military action -- let alone all-out war -- in Iran especially, and a healthy appreciation of them will spur an earnest pursuit of more diplomatic options. But if, after all the diplomatic efforts, Western intelligence confirms that Iran is on the point of acquiring the bomb, or if, for reasons best known to themselves, the Iranian leadership decides to strike a first blow, then all bets are off.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, NS and Tulsa, OK
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
The current Mideast war is now limited to Israeli and Hezbollah forces in a corner of the Levant, but it is another chapter in the larger story of Iran’s confrontation with the West. Hezbollah’s relationship with Iran is such that its deliberate provocation of July 12 is unlikely to be some spontaneous and independent action. Assuming it did direct the provocation, Iran’s interests in engaging Israel through Hezbollah may have been to distract the West from the nuclear issue, to assert the Iranian sphere as the new champion of the fight against Israel, to probe Israeli and Western capabilities and resolve, or to provoke a conflict that might ultimately give it a pretext to obliterate Israel.
Calling Israel’s war a “disproportionate response” to the kidnapping of a couple soldiers is superficial and facile. The Hezbollah incursion tripped the wire on an apparently long-planned Israeli rollback of Hezbollah’s militarization of southern Lebanon, intended to degrade Hezbollah’s offensive military capability.
Hezbollah had amassed 10,000-13,000 rockets intended for the Israeli people, just across the border from Israel, acting as the terrorist hand of an Iranian regime declaring daily its intent to eradicate the Jewish state and exterminate the Jewish people.
A disproportionate response to a couple of kidnapped soldiers? Yes. But a proportionate response to a massing of the offensive forces of a mortal enemy.
As Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy, Israel is in effect America’s.
A conventional wisdom has been forming that the United States cannot undertake further military action, having “overreached” on Iraq, the argument goes.
But if America is “bogged down,” it is on the democracy-building front, not the military front. The United States Armed Forces led the smashing of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in a scant three weeks, and if it has not yet contained the insurgents, it has certainly gone undefeated in battle against them.
If, heaven forbid, the democracy project did become irretrievably lost, then America would be no less likely to act militarily; Rather, it is likely that future American military action would be minus the Good Samaritan work of rebuilding and democratizing, and that happens to be the prevailing American thinking on the use of force against Iran.
In fact, Americans’ patience for the democratization strategy, in the face of the costs and international vilification, is wearing very thin. There is no reason to believe that the alternative, in a world of enemies actively pursuing America’s demise, would be some sort of passive non-interventionism: Sitting and watching as enemies arm and attack. An alternative with ever-multiplying advocates is the “Rubble doesn’t make trouble” doctrine. Punitive and deterrent strikes, and strikes to degrade potential threats, without the burdensome rebuilding and democratizing efforts that America would only be condemned for, anyway: “This time we won’t stick around to fix your godforsaken country.” And who would be able to blame them?
The spectrum of military options on Iran, from most to least likely, may go something like the following: Limited strikes against Iran’s first lines of defense plus its nuclear production, probably only intended to set the nuclear program back temporarily; Strikes to derail Iran’s nuclear production and its military capabilities generally; Attacks to degrade Iranian nuclear and military power plus “decapitation strikes” against the Iranian leadership, and aid to a coalition of domestic opposition in hopes of forming a new secular democratic government; And, the least likely, a full-scale invasion to destroy Iran’s nuclear potential and armed forces entirely, overthrow the regime, and establish a new democracy.
There are compelling reasons enough to avoid even limited military action -- let alone all-out war -- in Iran especially, and a healthy appreciation of them will spur an earnest pursuit of more diplomatic options. But if, after all the diplomatic efforts, Western intelligence confirms that Iran is on the point of acquiring the bomb, or if, for reasons best known to themselves, the Iranian leadership decides to strike a first blow, then all bets are off.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, NS and Tulsa, OK
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
July 22, 2006
The Next War
With one and a half years left in the war against Germany, Winston Churchill remarked to Harold MacMillan, “Germany is finished, though it may take some time to clean up the mess. The real problem is Russia.” To hijack the great man’s formulation: Afghanistan and Iraq are finished, though it is taking some time to clean up the mess, and the problems now are Iran and Syria.
The thinking on which the Afghan and Iraq Wars was based was never, “Afghanistan, then Iraq, then stop.” It entailed kicking the Syrian Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad out of Lebanon, then out of Syria itself, finally confronting the Libyan regime that founded state-sponsored Islamic terrorism, and somehow undoing the Iranian theocracy that gave radical Islam its own state and armed forces, with North Korea as a troublesome sideshow to be contained and prevented from becoming the arsenal of Islamic terrorism.
Syria did for the most part leave Lebanon after the “Cedar Revolution” uprising of the Lebanese people, following the first Iraqi elections in the winter of 2005. Libya reformed itself -- or made a start toward reforming itself – a year earlier, after Libyan dictator Mohammar Gadhaffi saw Saddam Hussein pulled by U.S. forces from a dirt hole. But that still left Syria and Iran.
There was hope that toppling the first one or two dominoes might render further military action unnecessary, as the people of other Mid Eastern nations followed Afghans and Iraqis in building the sort of free societies unlikely to cause us harm. But that has gone only as far as Libya and Lebanon, plus some half-steps in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.
The thinking was that the West had no hope of a secure future unless the entire Mid East was overhauled, “1945-style.” Like fighting a mosquito plague by draining the swamp they breed in, rather than just swatting at the things when they buzz past our ears. It was wildly ambitious, and it seemed for some time that the practical application of it could go only to “Step Two”: Iraq.
And maybe Iraq is where the Western drive to reform the region will end. But one wonders if, in view of the flaunting provocation of recent remarks and actions, the new Iran-Syria Axis might ultimately provoke a Western counterstrike that would have the effect of continuing the mission left off after Iraq.
This war is not ready for the history books yet.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and Tulsa, Oklahoma
The thinking on which the Afghan and Iraq Wars was based was never, “Afghanistan, then Iraq, then stop.” It entailed kicking the Syrian Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad out of Lebanon, then out of Syria itself, finally confronting the Libyan regime that founded state-sponsored Islamic terrorism, and somehow undoing the Iranian theocracy that gave radical Islam its own state and armed forces, with North Korea as a troublesome sideshow to be contained and prevented from becoming the arsenal of Islamic terrorism.
Syria did for the most part leave Lebanon after the “Cedar Revolution” uprising of the Lebanese people, following the first Iraqi elections in the winter of 2005. Libya reformed itself -- or made a start toward reforming itself – a year earlier, after Libyan dictator Mohammar Gadhaffi saw Saddam Hussein pulled by U.S. forces from a dirt hole. But that still left Syria and Iran.
There was hope that toppling the first one or two dominoes might render further military action unnecessary, as the people of other Mid Eastern nations followed Afghans and Iraqis in building the sort of free societies unlikely to cause us harm. But that has gone only as far as Libya and Lebanon, plus some half-steps in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.
The thinking was that the West had no hope of a secure future unless the entire Mid East was overhauled, “1945-style.” Like fighting a mosquito plague by draining the swamp they breed in, rather than just swatting at the things when they buzz past our ears. It was wildly ambitious, and it seemed for some time that the practical application of it could go only to “Step Two”: Iraq.
And maybe Iraq is where the Western drive to reform the region will end. But one wonders if, in view of the flaunting provocation of recent remarks and actions, the new Iran-Syria Axis might ultimately provoke a Western counterstrike that would have the effect of continuing the mission left off after Iraq.
This war is not ready for the history books yet.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and Tulsa, Oklahoma
July 3, 2006
America's Economic Miracle
On April 3, 2000, the judge in the Microsoft anti-trust case ruled against the goose that laid the golden egg and in favor of breaking it up, Microsoft shares lost $80 billion U.S., and the NASDAQ fell 349 points. The ridiculously over-inflated technology stock bubble on which the late-1990s economic boom was built, had popped. By the end of the year, over half the NASDAQ’s former value had vanished.
Nine months later came the worst-ever attack on American soil, targeting America’s civilians, commerce, and government. One million Americans were out of work within just three months.
A few months and one war after that, corporate accounting scandals rattled already-shaken investor confidence. And all the while, America’s illegal alien population was swelling by 40 percent to 12 million, straining public services and cramming employment rolls.
Another war followed, along with all the stock market uncertainty and national strain that entails, and this was a war that would refuse to be dispatched conveniently.
Then the price of gas exploded, heaping yet another wet blanket on economic activity and increasing inflationary pressure. And as oil spiraled upward last fall, America was bombarded by the worst hurricane season in living memory. One of America’s major cities was practically washed away, and an entire region was shut down to varying degrees for months, a region that also happened to be central to America’s oil production, refining, and importing.
And yet here we are, after America has been besieged on all sides for over six years, with a 4.6 percent unemployment rate that is better even than the 5.7 percent average for the “booming” 1990s; 11 consecutive quarters of GDP growth; per capita disposable income higher by 8 percent -- $2,500 U.S. -- than before 9/11; the biggest boom in new home construction since the 19th Century; and the richest Treasury haul in American history, now measured in multiple trillions.
In under three years, the U.S. economy has created more jobs – 5.3 million -- than there are people in Finland.
The entire economic output of Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland together is equal to only the growth in America’s GDP last year of $674 billion U.S.
This is not to say that the economic mood is nearly so buoyant. A recent Gallup poll found a dismal 24 percent of respondents viewing the economy positively. High gas prices presumably depress economic optimism, discontent over Iraq or illegal aliens, etc. may be a drag on public perceptions across the board, and partisan acrimony could make it difficult for a good portion of the population to acknowledge national success, economic and otherwise.
And then there is the news. Most American news outfits seem to treat good economic news like national secrets, while blabbing actual national secrets in their top stories. Over 21 days in April and May, the three traditional television networks ran 183 news stories on the high gas price, to only four on the low unemployment rate, and two on the growth in GDP.
Despite the unusually low unemployment and indefatigable GDP growth, etc., the American people remain discouraged about their economy. But they keep to the grindstone, producing, innovating, creating, and working an economic miracle.
There are in fact things to be discouraged about.
Oil-driven inflation has been threatening to pinch economic activity and necessitate more interest rate hikes, which drains cash from stocks and deters potential borrowers for big-ticket purchases like new homes.
Wage growth has been lagging behind growth in jobs, particularly as higher unemployment had made workers cheaper. But as unemployed Americans become rare, wages are responding, increasing by 3.8 percent from a year ago.
America’s unfathomably expensive federal budget – now $2.57 trillion U.S. – is in deficit, running to -$412 billion U.S. last year. Congress and the President have spent like drunken sailors, increasing even non-defense “discretionary” expenditure by a dizzying 49 percent since 2001. Still, U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP is lower today than it was in the balanced-budget 1990s, and the deficit is now projected to decline by 27 percent this year, as the rising economy generates a tidal wave of tax revenue. Anyway, since when have wartime budgets been in the black?
And the United States imports more than it exports, by $726 billion U.S. in 2005. But with far and away the largest domestic market on earth, America is not export-dependent. America’s economy is built on the American consumer; exports are only the icing on the cake.
With exports making up 40 percent of Canada’s economy, and 85 percent of those going to the United States, at least a third of our prosperity stems directly from America’s. We would all be much worse off if America did not produce so very much wealth, and thankfully it seems America can make money even with the world crashing down around it.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Nine months later came the worst-ever attack on American soil, targeting America’s civilians, commerce, and government. One million Americans were out of work within just three months.
A few months and one war after that, corporate accounting scandals rattled already-shaken investor confidence. And all the while, America’s illegal alien population was swelling by 40 percent to 12 million, straining public services and cramming employment rolls.
Another war followed, along with all the stock market uncertainty and national strain that entails, and this was a war that would refuse to be dispatched conveniently.
Then the price of gas exploded, heaping yet another wet blanket on economic activity and increasing inflationary pressure. And as oil spiraled upward last fall, America was bombarded by the worst hurricane season in living memory. One of America’s major cities was practically washed away, and an entire region was shut down to varying degrees for months, a region that also happened to be central to America’s oil production, refining, and importing.
And yet here we are, after America has been besieged on all sides for over six years, with a 4.6 percent unemployment rate that is better even than the 5.7 percent average for the “booming” 1990s; 11 consecutive quarters of GDP growth; per capita disposable income higher by 8 percent -- $2,500 U.S. -- than before 9/11; the biggest boom in new home construction since the 19th Century; and the richest Treasury haul in American history, now measured in multiple trillions.
In under three years, the U.S. economy has created more jobs – 5.3 million -- than there are people in Finland.
The entire economic output of Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland together is equal to only the growth in America’s GDP last year of $674 billion U.S.
This is not to say that the economic mood is nearly so buoyant. A recent Gallup poll found a dismal 24 percent of respondents viewing the economy positively. High gas prices presumably depress economic optimism, discontent over Iraq or illegal aliens, etc. may be a drag on public perceptions across the board, and partisan acrimony could make it difficult for a good portion of the population to acknowledge national success, economic and otherwise.
And then there is the news. Most American news outfits seem to treat good economic news like national secrets, while blabbing actual national secrets in their top stories. Over 21 days in April and May, the three traditional television networks ran 183 news stories on the high gas price, to only four on the low unemployment rate, and two on the growth in GDP.
Despite the unusually low unemployment and indefatigable GDP growth, etc., the American people remain discouraged about their economy. But they keep to the grindstone, producing, innovating, creating, and working an economic miracle.
There are in fact things to be discouraged about.
Oil-driven inflation has been threatening to pinch economic activity and necessitate more interest rate hikes, which drains cash from stocks and deters potential borrowers for big-ticket purchases like new homes.
Wage growth has been lagging behind growth in jobs, particularly as higher unemployment had made workers cheaper. But as unemployed Americans become rare, wages are responding, increasing by 3.8 percent from a year ago.
America’s unfathomably expensive federal budget – now $2.57 trillion U.S. – is in deficit, running to -$412 billion U.S. last year. Congress and the President have spent like drunken sailors, increasing even non-defense “discretionary” expenditure by a dizzying 49 percent since 2001. Still, U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP is lower today than it was in the balanced-budget 1990s, and the deficit is now projected to decline by 27 percent this year, as the rising economy generates a tidal wave of tax revenue. Anyway, since when have wartime budgets been in the black?
And the United States imports more than it exports, by $726 billion U.S. in 2005. But with far and away the largest domestic market on earth, America is not export-dependent. America’s economy is built on the American consumer; exports are only the icing on the cake.
With exports making up 40 percent of Canada’s economy, and 85 percent of those going to the United States, at least a third of our prosperity stems directly from America’s. We would all be much worse off if America did not produce so very much wealth, and thankfully it seems America can make money even with the world crashing down around it.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 24, 2006
If Push Comes to Shove on Iran
Two and a half years of European Union negotiating and United Nations monitoring have availed nothing but to buy Iran the time it needed to develop its nuclear program. Sanctions would be a good-faith effort to resolve the Iranian matter peacefully, but they may have little effect on a determined nation flush with oil money and ruled by democratically-unaccountable theocrats, assuming the UN Security Council could agree on and enforce a sanctions resolution in the first place. So, absent some drastic intervention, Iran seems on course to be a nuclear Islamist theocracy, and sooner than later.
Iran is often said to have one of the most anti-Western governments, but one of the most pro-Western populations, in the Muslim world, and Iran-watchers frequently report that the Iranian people are ripe for a democratic revolution. Efforts to support would-be democratic reformers in Iran could conceivably nudge along a new Iranian revolution which would render the question of a nuclear-armed Iranian government close to moot. The U.S. government is now pursuing such a policy, but it would seem to require more time than Iranian President Ahmadinejad's accelerated-Armageddon scenario will allow.
So what if push comes to shove on Iran?
Iran has apparently learned from some of Iraq's mistakes. An Iraqi nuclear program housed in a single, above-ground plant at Osirak was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981. Iran instead has spread its nuclear production over numerous sites, some in populous areas to maximize the risk of civilian casualties in any attempt to destroy then, some buried to maximize their invulnerability to air strikes .
Military intelligence on the true state of Iran's nuclear development, the locations and vulnerabilities of its nuclear plants and air defenses, possible Iranian retaliations, etc. would be absolutely crucial, and U.S. and Western intelligence today is far from confidence-inspiring. But the United States has been reforming its intelligence services, and American forces have been just over the border from Iran, in Afghanistan and Iraq, for several years now and may well have been able to gather a reliable level of intelligence on this case.
Israel could be the dragon-slayer. It incapacitated Iraq's nuclear program in the 1981 strike and undeniably has an interest in the Iranian situation, namely its continued existence. But Iran may be too big a job for Israel alone, and Iran is not a problem for Israel alone.
Americans do not exactly relish the prospect of undertaking yet another invasion, occupation, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency, let alone in a nation more populous than both Afghanistan and Iraq combined. A more limited military intervention may be another matter.
At the very least, Iran might be contained somewhat by a missile defense wall. Those American forces surrounding Iran might deploy anti-ballistic missile systems to detect and destroy any Iranian missile launches. In fact, a U.S.-Israeli BMD system is already operational and calibrated for the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile which is capable of reaching Israel. But the margins are exceedingly narrow. Iran for instance claims the ability to mass-produce Shahab-3s, and very many lobbed simultaneously could overwhelm Israel's defenses. For even one nuclear warhead to meet its mark would be catastrophic for a nation as tiny as Israel.
A military option might include air strikes, special forces operations , or both. American forces are on Iran's eastern border in Afghanistan, on its western border in Iraq, and to its south-west in Kuwait. The United States has airbases in half a dozen countries in the region, and could fly sorties against Iran directly from bases in Europe and the United States itself. And a missile-armed U.S. aircraft carrier group is on hand in the Persian Gulf.
Air strikes may be an unnecessarily blunt instrument if American ground forces could slip across the border and more discreetly sabotage Iran's nuclear facilities, and the Pentagon has in recent years been concentrating on precisely the sort of special operations forces that such a mission would demand.
If America did strike Iran, Iran would presumably strike back, or at least try. Iran might attack or block Persian Gulf oil shipping, it might launch ballistic missile, conventional military, or terrorist attacks against Israel and American forces in the region, and it might activate terrorist agents in Israel and America. Already Iran is supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and elements of the insurgency in Iraq, with impunity. A military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might also target some of Iran's capacity to retaliate, and further action might be threatened in hopes of deterring retaliation.
The Bush Administration has thus far given no indication that military action is in the offing, beyond the obligatory "all options are on the table" statements. But as Arizona Senator John McCain recently put it, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Iran is often said to have one of the most anti-Western governments, but one of the most pro-Western populations, in the Muslim world, and Iran-watchers frequently report that the Iranian people are ripe for a democratic revolution. Efforts to support would-be democratic reformers in Iran could conceivably nudge along a new Iranian revolution which would render the question of a nuclear-armed Iranian government close to moot. The U.S. government is now pursuing such a policy, but it would seem to require more time than Iranian President Ahmadinejad's accelerated-Armageddon scenario will allow.
So what if push comes to shove on Iran?
Iran has apparently learned from some of Iraq's mistakes. An Iraqi nuclear program housed in a single, above-ground plant at Osirak was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981. Iran instead has spread its nuclear production over numerous sites, some in populous areas to maximize the risk of civilian casualties in any attempt to destroy then, some buried to maximize their invulnerability to air strikes .
Military intelligence on the true state of Iran's nuclear development, the locations and vulnerabilities of its nuclear plants and air defenses, possible Iranian retaliations, etc. would be absolutely crucial, and U.S. and Western intelligence today is far from confidence-inspiring. But the United States has been reforming its intelligence services, and American forces have been just over the border from Iran, in Afghanistan and Iraq, for several years now and may well have been able to gather a reliable level of intelligence on this case.
Israel could be the dragon-slayer. It incapacitated Iraq's nuclear program in the 1981 strike and undeniably has an interest in the Iranian situation, namely its continued existence. But Iran may be too big a job for Israel alone, and Iran is not a problem for Israel alone.
Americans do not exactly relish the prospect of undertaking yet another invasion, occupation, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency, let alone in a nation more populous than both Afghanistan and Iraq combined. A more limited military intervention may be another matter.
At the very least, Iran might be contained somewhat by a missile defense wall. Those American forces surrounding Iran might deploy anti-ballistic missile systems to detect and destroy any Iranian missile launches. In fact, a U.S.-Israeli BMD system is already operational and calibrated for the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile which is capable of reaching Israel. But the margins are exceedingly narrow. Iran for instance claims the ability to mass-produce Shahab-3s, and very many lobbed simultaneously could overwhelm Israel's defenses. For even one nuclear warhead to meet its mark would be catastrophic for a nation as tiny as Israel.
A military option might include air strikes, special forces operations , or both. American forces are on Iran's eastern border in Afghanistan, on its western border in Iraq, and to its south-west in Kuwait. The United States has airbases in half a dozen countries in the region, and could fly sorties against Iran directly from bases in Europe and the United States itself. And a missile-armed U.S. aircraft carrier group is on hand in the Persian Gulf.
Air strikes may be an unnecessarily blunt instrument if American ground forces could slip across the border and more discreetly sabotage Iran's nuclear facilities, and the Pentagon has in recent years been concentrating on precisely the sort of special operations forces that such a mission would demand.
If America did strike Iran, Iran would presumably strike back, or at least try. Iran might attack or block Persian Gulf oil shipping, it might launch ballistic missile, conventional military, or terrorist attacks against Israel and American forces in the region, and it might activate terrorist agents in Israel and America. Already Iran is supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and elements of the insurgency in Iraq, with impunity. A military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might also target some of Iran's capacity to retaliate, and further action might be threatened in hopes of deterring retaliation.
The Bush Administration has thus far given no indication that military action is in the offing, beyond the obligatory "all options are on the table" statements. But as Arizona Senator John McCain recently put it, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
February 9, 2006
The New Home of Nazism
The resemblance in psychopathic pronouncements between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler is not entirely coincidental. Homicidal hatreds and fascism were exported to the Middle East by European Nazis in the 1930s and ’40s.
Even before the Second World War, Nazi propaganda was planted in the Mid Eastern press and broadcast across the region on Arabic-language German radio. Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf
was translated into Arabic. The Middle East was bombarded with Nazi thinking.
Nazism so permeated Middle Eastern culture that by the late 1930s it had found its way into the popular music: "No more Monsieur, no more Mister. In Heaven Allah, on earth Hitler."
Radical political parties throughout the Middle East were modeled to varying degrees on the Nazi party, including the Ba’ath Party of Saddam Hussein and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Syrian Ba’athist founder Sami al-Joundi recounted: "We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading their books and sources of their thought.”
Especially after the Axis victories early in the war, governments across the Middle East began aligning with Hitler.
A 1941 coup by four Nazi-allied Iraqi fascists (one of whom would be uncle, foster father, father-in-law, and mentor to Saddam Hussein) nearly placed Iraq at the disposal of the Axis, but for an expeditious British military intervention.
Iran’s Nazi sympathies were strong enough that in 1935 Shah Reza Pahlavi renamed his nation from Persia to Iran – Farsi for “Aryan” – in an acknowledgement of Nazi racial theory that Persia was the cradle of the Aryan race. After welcoming Nazi agents into the country and diverting some of its oil to the Axis war effort, Britain and the Soviet Union ousted the Nazi-cozy regime for a more Allies-friendly one in 1941.
The French “ mandates” of Syria and Lebanon became Axis allies when the Nazi-collaborationist regime of Vichy France inherited them and made them the base of Nazism in the region, until a 1941 British and Free French invasion established British control for the duration of the war.
Turkey signed a “Treaty of Friendship” with Nazi Germany in 1941 and helped supply Germany’s war production throughout the conflict.
And future Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat both belonged to Egypt’s Nazi Party clone, Misr al-Fatah, and spied for and conspired with Nazi forces against the British in 1942. Sadat was so ardent an admirer of Hitler that he wrote an open letter addressed “My dear Hitler,” eight years after Hitler’s death, fawning , “Even if you appear to have been defeated, in reality you are the victor.”
Of all the Middle East’s importers of Nazism, none was more consequential than the so-called “ Hitler’s Mufti”, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini.
Al-Husseini led his first of several pogroms against the Jews in Palestine in 1920. In 1933 he began petitioning the new Hitler regime for a Nazi-Islamic alliance, and five years later the Third Reich started subsidizing his activities.
In 1939, he moved to Iraq, where he advocated and partly orchestrated the pro-Nazi fascist revolution of 1941 . After that collapsed until the last days of the war in Europe, he lived in Berlin as a guest of Adolf Hitler and Hitler’s “Arab Fuhrer”.
He was the Third Reich’s radio propagandist for the Middle East, from which pulpit he exhorted Muslims to “Kill the Jews wherever you find them.”
He recruited Muslims for three Waffen-SS divisions, notably the 20,000-man Hanjar Division, largely responsible for the killing of a horrific 750,000 Christian Serbs, 60,000 Jews, and 26,000 Gypsies.
Al-Husseini was, according to Nuremberg Trial testimony, “one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan.”
After the war, he escaped to Egypt, a free man and Middle Eastern hero, and proceeded to invite Nazi officers to take asylum in the Mid East as military trainers. He called for the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and ordered the 1951 assassination of moderate Jordanian King Abdullah.
And when Amin al-Husseini died in 1974, it was as mentor to his “nephew”, one of the founders of Muslim terrorism, Yasser Arafat.
The War on Terror is in a sense tending to some unfinished business from the Second World War. The ideas that were repudiated in that war in Europe are now being confronted in their new home in the Middle East.
And if the hatreds and fascism of the Middle East were reinforced, if not introduced, by the West, then there is hope that Western democracy can be successfully transplanted to the Mid East as well.
But if Nazism helps explain the origins of Islamic fascism, it may also help predict where it will end. Homicidal anti-Semitism coupled with doomsday arsenal-building, like we are seeing in Iran today, is not a chapter of history we can afford to repeat.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Even before the Second World War, Nazi propaganda was planted in the Mid Eastern press and broadcast across the region on Arabic-language German radio. Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf
was translated into Arabic. The Middle East was bombarded with Nazi thinking.
Nazism so permeated Middle Eastern culture that by the late 1930s it had found its way into the popular music: "No more Monsieur, no more Mister. In Heaven Allah, on earth Hitler."
Radical political parties throughout the Middle East were modeled to varying degrees on the Nazi party, including the Ba’ath Party of Saddam Hussein and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Syrian Ba’athist founder Sami al-Joundi recounted: "We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading their books and sources of their thought.”
Especially after the Axis victories early in the war, governments across the Middle East began aligning with Hitler.
A 1941 coup by four Nazi-allied Iraqi fascists (one of whom would be uncle, foster father, father-in-law, and mentor to Saddam Hussein) nearly placed Iraq at the disposal of the Axis, but for an expeditious British military intervention.
Iran’s Nazi sympathies were strong enough that in 1935 Shah Reza Pahlavi renamed his nation from Persia to Iran – Farsi for “Aryan” – in an acknowledgement of Nazi racial theory that Persia was the cradle of the Aryan race. After welcoming Nazi agents into the country and diverting some of its oil to the Axis war effort, Britain and the Soviet Union ousted the Nazi-cozy regime for a more Allies-friendly one in 1941.
The French “ mandates” of Syria and Lebanon became Axis allies when the Nazi-collaborationist regime of Vichy France inherited them and made them the base of Nazism in the region, until a 1941 British and Free French invasion established British control for the duration of the war.
Turkey signed a “Treaty of Friendship” with Nazi Germany in 1941 and helped supply Germany’s war production throughout the conflict.
And future Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat both belonged to Egypt’s Nazi Party clone, Misr al-Fatah, and spied for and conspired with Nazi forces against the British in 1942. Sadat was so ardent an admirer of Hitler that he wrote an open letter addressed “My dear Hitler,” eight years after Hitler’s death, fawning , “Even if you appear to have been defeated, in reality you are the victor.”
Of all the Middle East’s importers of Nazism, none was more consequential than the so-called “ Hitler’s Mufti”, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini.
Al-Husseini led his first of several pogroms against the Jews in Palestine in 1920. In 1933 he began petitioning the new Hitler regime for a Nazi-Islamic alliance, and five years later the Third Reich started subsidizing his activities.
In 1939, he moved to Iraq, where he advocated and partly orchestrated the pro-Nazi fascist revolution of 1941 . After that collapsed until the last days of the war in Europe, he lived in Berlin as a guest of Adolf Hitler and Hitler’s “Arab Fuhrer”.
He was the Third Reich’s radio propagandist for the Middle East, from which pulpit he exhorted Muslims to “Kill the Jews wherever you find them.”
He recruited Muslims for three Waffen-SS divisions, notably the 20,000-man Hanjar Division, largely responsible for the killing of a horrific 750,000 Christian Serbs, 60,000 Jews, and 26,000 Gypsies.
Al-Husseini was, according to Nuremberg Trial testimony, “one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan.”
After the war, he escaped to Egypt, a free man and Middle Eastern hero, and proceeded to invite Nazi officers to take asylum in the Mid East as military trainers. He called for the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and ordered the 1951 assassination of moderate Jordanian King Abdullah.
And when Amin al-Husseini died in 1974, it was as mentor to his “nephew”, one of the founders of Muslim terrorism, Yasser Arafat.
The War on Terror is in a sense tending to some unfinished business from the Second World War. The ideas that were repudiated in that war in Europe are now being confronted in their new home in the Middle East.
And if the hatreds and fascism of the Middle East were reinforced, if not introduced, by the West, then there is hope that Western democracy can be successfully transplanted to the Mid East as well.
But if Nazism helps explain the origins of Islamic fascism, it may also help predict where it will end. Homicidal anti-Semitism coupled with doomsday arsenal-building, like we are seeing in Iran today, is not a chapter of history we can afford to repeat.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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