This war should have been wrapped up and the soldiers shipped home in one piece long ago, but here we are.
No matter how necessary and overdue the cause, no matter how swift and clean the invasion, and no matter how sizable a downpayment on future security a sustainable democracy in Iraq would be, the post-invasion phases have been too long, too costly, and the patience of the American people is at bottom.
Americans cannot remain unmoved after watching fellow Americans die, a handful at a time, on their news every day for nearly four years, when the cause seems so beyond hope, and when the arguments against the war are pop culture, while the arguments for it are to be found in occasional, ignored speeches, unread opinion journals, and obscure think tanks.
After Americans’ discontent with the status quo was registered in the recent Congressional elections and the timid Iraq Study Group recommendations managed to disappoint everyone, the message was taken that no marginal tweaking of the Iraq policy would suffice anymore.
The problem in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, is security. Without that modicum of security, the nation cannot function and progress. There are political problems, especially governmental collusion with Shiite militias. There is also corruption, especially among the Iraqi police, not disbanded and rebuilt after the war like the Iraqi Army. But the fundamentals are strong: The people have converted to democracy, and the change could even be irreversible. What is needed most is security, and that takes soldiering.
More soldiering is unlikely to be easy or popular, but it is possible. The Washington Times reports that 50,000 extra combat troops are available for deployment to Iraq, and the Commander-in-Chief still has two years and an authorization of force.
It deserves mentioning that Iraq has not followed a straight line from initial success to current despair. The fascists at the heart of so much Mideastern conflict have been captured or killed. Western forces have gone undefeated militarily. The Kurdish north and much of the Shiite south have become functioning free societies. Iraq's economy has somehow managed to thrive. And the Iraqi people have voted massively and enthusiastically in three national elections, even at risk of death, demonstrating that they do in fact want this democracy and need only the security and good-faith leadership to make it work.
The temptation is to imagine that picking up and leaving Iraq, and Afghanistan and the Mideast generally, would be the end of it: No more strife, no more military funerals, no more smouldering rubble and body counts on the news. But retreat by any name would do nothing to end this war. The war will continue with Western troops in the field or back home on their bases.
Jihadists bent on killing Westerners would be free to pursue us elsewhere, including in our own countries. Taliban slave-masters would be free to bludgeon the Afghan people back into their old nightmare. Sunni militants who have known little else but killing Shiites and Kurds would be free to see how far they get against a vengeful 80 percent of the country unrestrained by Western forces and influence. And Shiite Iranian agents would be free to butcher their way toward remaking Iraq as the Greater Islamic Republic of Iran.
Quitting wars prematurely, leaving the enemy to fight another day and neglecting to fix the countries at the source of the trouble, has become something of a new Western tradition, and solves nothing.
Once the Russians had been dispatched in the Soviet-Afghan War, the West abandoned Afghanistan to the Mujahideen who later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda which we fight today. The 1991 Gulf War was halted without excising its source, which left the job to the 2003 war that bleeds on today. The Somalia intervention of the early '90s was aborted at the first upset, and today the country is a battlefield falling into and out of the hands of the al Qaeda-allied Islamic Courts Union, Somalia's own Taliban. Even the troubles with North Korea, not to mention the grinding misery of its people, are the result of the West settling the Korean War with a stalemate leaving the North under the Communist government that today detonates third-rate nukes and fires erratic ballistic missiles.
We are free to continue our new tradition of committing to wars and then abandoning them unfinished, negating the sacrifices of our volunteer soldiers, but by now we ought have no illusions that quitting will bring peace to anyone but the enemy.
If we cannot muster the will for this, when all that is required of us is to maintain moral support for historically small military commitments of our professional fighting forces, then we really are the craven, decadent paper tigers the jihadists think we are.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 26, 2006
Letting Terrorists Fight Another Day
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
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
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
December 17, 2005
The Truth about American Healthcare
One day after school in Grade 4, we received a call from my big sister, attending college in Massachusetts, that she was very ill and had to see a doctor, as a Canadian citizen in the United States. With a child’s imagination and informed only by the horror stories we Canadians tell each other about American health care, I was sick with terror that my sister would die in some clammy Massachusetts hospital, with cold-faced and cross-armed American doctors in white coats sitting and watching as she crumpled onto the floor and gasped her final breaths, a victim of the American health care system. Of course, my sister was just fine.
And American health care is hardly the cruel, scary system I had been led to imagine.
All Americans over 65, and disabled Americans under 65, are provided health care under a federal government program called Medicare. Low-income Americans, especially those with children or disabilities, receive health care through a state and federal program called Medicaid. Uninsured American children, Americans considered “medically needy”, and American women who are pregnant or have female cancer, all have their health care covered by Medicaid. State and federal government employees, including military personnel, and their families receive taxpayer-funded health coverage. Even non-U.S. citizens over 65 who have lived in the country for at least five years receive partial Medicare coverage.
And regardless of coverage or even citizenship, American hospitals are required by stringent federal law to provide necessary medical attention to anyone who requests it, without consideration to payment. The law goes so far in erring on the side of ensuring treatment that it has become the subject of massive abuse by Mexicans who “heal and run”, crossing the border and appearing at American hospitals, receiving care and then disappearing back into Mexico. One small, 14-bed hospital in an Arizona bordertown lost $450,000 last year treating Mexicans who are using the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment Act as a free health care program.
These are not the programs and laws of a nation that does not care for the health of the needy and vulnerable.
Americans between 21 and 65, in good health, and able to provide for their own health care coverage are responsible for insuring themselves, and even those Americans are eligible for billions in tax deductions.
The American health care system does not remotely resemble the uncompassionate, “you get what you pay for” caricature of it drawn by so many Canadians. American health care is a blind spot in Canadian thinking. The reality is that health care in the United States has been largely socialized since the mid-1960s, as in Canada; The difference is that Canadian health care is universally socialized and uniformly governmental, where in the American system socialized coverage is for those who need it and health care is not a government monopoly.
Contrary to popular opinion on both sides of the border, the United States actually devotes more public spending to health care than Canada. U.S. federal, state, and local health care spending this year will total about $891.3 billion U.S., or $2,993 U.S. for every man, woman, and child in America (about $1 trillion Canadian, $3,500 Canadian per person), compared with Canada’s total public health care expenditure this year of $91.4 billion, or $2,832 per person. We could accuse the United States of inefficiency in its public health care spending, but we can hardly accuse it of stinginess with its health care tax dollars when it outspends even us.
The figure of “40 million uninsured Americans” is often cited as an indictment of American health care, but uninsured does not necessarily mean untreated. Under the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment Act, health care is provided to millions without coverage, public or private. A recent Kaiser Foundation study estimated that uninsured Americans received $40.7 billion U.S. in free health care in 2004, and that federal, state, and local governments assumed $34.6 billion – about 85 percent -- of that cost. As the Kaiser Foundation argues, American governments might consider tacking a few extra billion dollars onto that 34.6 and calling it a new taxpayer-funded program to cover the uninsured.
American health care is not what we think it is. We may prefer our system, but we cannot claim a monopoly on compassion in health care in North America.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
And American health care is hardly the cruel, scary system I had been led to imagine.
All Americans over 65, and disabled Americans under 65, are provided health care under a federal government program called Medicare. Low-income Americans, especially those with children or disabilities, receive health care through a state and federal program called Medicaid. Uninsured American children, Americans considered “medically needy”, and American women who are pregnant or have female cancer, all have their health care covered by Medicaid. State and federal government employees, including military personnel, and their families receive taxpayer-funded health coverage. Even non-U.S. citizens over 65 who have lived in the country for at least five years receive partial Medicare coverage.
And regardless of coverage or even citizenship, American hospitals are required by stringent federal law to provide necessary medical attention to anyone who requests it, without consideration to payment. The law goes so far in erring on the side of ensuring treatment that it has become the subject of massive abuse by Mexicans who “heal and run”, crossing the border and appearing at American hospitals, receiving care and then disappearing back into Mexico. One small, 14-bed hospital in an Arizona bordertown lost $450,000 last year treating Mexicans who are using the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment Act as a free health care program.
These are not the programs and laws of a nation that does not care for the health of the needy and vulnerable.
Americans between 21 and 65, in good health, and able to provide for their own health care coverage are responsible for insuring themselves, and even those Americans are eligible for billions in tax deductions.
The American health care system does not remotely resemble the uncompassionate, “you get what you pay for” caricature of it drawn by so many Canadians. American health care is a blind spot in Canadian thinking. The reality is that health care in the United States has been largely socialized since the mid-1960s, as in Canada; The difference is that Canadian health care is universally socialized and uniformly governmental, where in the American system socialized coverage is for those who need it and health care is not a government monopoly.
Contrary to popular opinion on both sides of the border, the United States actually devotes more public spending to health care than Canada. U.S. federal, state, and local health care spending this year will total about $891.3 billion U.S., or $2,993 U.S. for every man, woman, and child in America (about $1 trillion Canadian, $3,500 Canadian per person), compared with Canada’s total public health care expenditure this year of $91.4 billion, or $2,832 per person. We could accuse the United States of inefficiency in its public health care spending, but we can hardly accuse it of stinginess with its health care tax dollars when it outspends even us.
The figure of “40 million uninsured Americans” is often cited as an indictment of American health care, but uninsured does not necessarily mean untreated. Under the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment Act, health care is provided to millions without coverage, public or private. A recent Kaiser Foundation study estimated that uninsured Americans received $40.7 billion U.S. in free health care in 2004, and that federal, state, and local governments assumed $34.6 billion – about 85 percent -- of that cost. As the Kaiser Foundation argues, American governments might consider tacking a few extra billion dollars onto that 34.6 and calling it a new taxpayer-funded program to cover the uninsured.
American health care is not what we think it is. We may prefer our system, but we cannot claim a monopoly on compassion in health care in North America.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
October 11, 2005
Britain’s Forgotten Iraq War
Exactly 50 years before what we think of as the “first” Iraq War, during some of the darkest days of the Second World War, Britain fought a now-forgotten war in Iraq.
The map of modern Iraq was drawn largely by none other than Winston Churchill, in his capacity as British Colonial Secretary in the 1920s. Iraq had historically been Mesopotamia, and for the best part of four centuries before the First World War was a colony of the Ottoman -- Turkish -- Empire. It was in this period that Iraq’s minority Sunnis came to dominate the country, through Turkey’s preference for Sunnis in imperial administrative positions. After the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in the First World War, Iraq fell to Britain under a League of Nations mandate.
In 1930, Britain granted Iraq independence and Iraq guaranteed Britain "all aid, including the use of railways, rivers, ports and airfields," in case of war, which proved to be only a decade away.
By 1941, a militant anti-British and anti-Jewish nationalism had seized Iraq and the Mid East, fomented by a Nazi-allied Palestinian mufti exiled in Baghdad and by Axis grants and propaganda. In April, with Britain reeling across the Mediterranean, a group of fascist Iraqi military officers led by General Rashid Ali al-Gailani and called “the Golden Square” staged a coup, wrenching Iraq from the British sphere. The Rashid Ali regime, like later Iraqi dictatorships, was Sunni. And one of the four “corners” of this “Golden Square” was an uncle and later also father-in-law of then four year-old Saddam Hussein.
The coup had been urged by the radical cleric granted asylum in Baghdad, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. Al-Husseini was the Osama bin Laden of his day and a Nazi ally. He had led Nazi-financed pogroms in Palestine, armed Muslim radicals, and advocated fascist revolution throughout the Muslim world. For most of the Second World War, he lived in Berlin as a guest of Adolf Hitler, a Nazi radio propagandist for the Middle East, and a recruiter for Balkan Muslim Holocaust units.
As opportunities to assassinate bin Laden in the 1990s were declined by the United States, so it is believed a proposed Jewish assassination of al-Husseini in 1940 was rejected by the British Foreign Office. Today bin Laden is “wanted dead or alive” by the President himself, and later in 1940 an order for al-Husseini’s assassination was approved by Churchill himself. In the event, al-Husseini died of old age in 1974, mentor and uncle of Yassir Arafat.
Rashid Ali, now Prime Minister of Iraq, had attempted to organize anti-British action in Egypt, home to the largest Royal Navy base in the Mid East. He had been in contact with Axis forces in Libya and Greece and with the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon. He had promised Britain’s bases in Iraq to the Axis. And of course Rashid Ali would redirect to the Axis the Iraqi oil that would help fuel the Allied war effort. Prime Minister Churchill planned an Iraq war.
Churchill’s Mid Eastern Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Archibald Wavell, was hostile to the idea of opening an additional front and not ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’ in Iraq, echoing the more cautious critics of 2003. Wavell and his forces were already occupied in Greece, Crete, and East Africa, but Churchill was Prime Minister and ordered an invasion. Like 2003 and unlike 1991, the object would be regime change.
If the 2003 Iraq War is thought of as effectively unilateral despite the 16-nation invasion force and 49-nation diplomatic coalition, the 1941 war was unilateral in a more literal way. In May of 1941, America would not enter the Second World War directly for another seven months. France was then part-enemy, with Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon collaborating actively with the Axis. And the Soviet Union would not be an ally until the German invasion of Russia the following month. Turkey offered to mediate between the new Iraqi regime and Britain, but Churchill understood Rashid Ali to be an inveterate fascist and declared, “There can be no question of negotiation….” Britain would invade Iraq alone, with some Indian and Arab Imperial reinforcements and Iraqi levies and militiamen.
The war itself, as in 1991 and 2003, lasted about a month.
By May 2, over 9,000 Iraqi troops occupied a plateau beside the British airbase at Habbaniya. The British decided to preempt their would-be besiegers, plus the 60-plane Iraqi Air Force outside Baghdad, and launched an air assault at sunrise. As in 1991 and 2003, air power would be decisive. In five days, the British airmen at Habbaniya flew 584 sorties with their 78 outdated biplanes, 8 Wellington bombers, and a couple of Hurricane fighters, and by May 7 the Iraqi Air Force lay in ruins and the besiegers had abandoned Habbaniya. As today, some of the more die-hard Iraqi fighters fell back to Fallujah, but were ultimately flushed out by British forces by May 19.
Fending off Iraqi attackers along the Euphrates River and German and Italian air force contingents dispatched to Iraq, British forces advanced on Baghdad, surrounding it on May 28. The British fed Rashid Ali false intelligence of overwhelming British strength which spurred him to flee, and on June 1 re-established the previous pro-British regime of Nuri as-Said.
On June 2, anti-Jewish riots erupted with all the attendant looting, etc. Unlike 2003, the British adopted a particularly draconian curfew policy, 187 curfew-breakers were killed on sight, and the riots ended, but not before hundreds of Iraqi Jews were slaughtered and thousands injured by Iraqis inflamed by Nazi and jihadist propaganda.
As today, Syria and Iran figured heavily in events in neighboring Iraq. Days after Britain’s victory in Iraq, British and Free French forces attacked the Vichy French colonial government of Syria and Lebanon, and in July established British rule for the duration of the war, to preclude those nations becoming an Axis foothold in the region. In August, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran and by September replaced the Nazi-sympathizing Shah with an Ally-supporter, guaranteeing Iran’s oil to the Allies and ensuring a physical link between British assets and the Soviet Union.
While the ultimate objective in 1941 was “to get a friendly Government set up in Baghdad,” today the mission is the sweeping democratic reformation of the country, in the hope that this will be a more permanent “fix”, the first of further “democratic dominoes” in the Middle East, and the final English-speaking military intervention in Iraq.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Halifax Chronicle-Herald
The map of modern Iraq was drawn largely by none other than Winston Churchill, in his capacity as British Colonial Secretary in the 1920s. Iraq had historically been Mesopotamia, and for the best part of four centuries before the First World War was a colony of the Ottoman -- Turkish -- Empire. It was in this period that Iraq’s minority Sunnis came to dominate the country, through Turkey’s preference for Sunnis in imperial administrative positions. After the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in the First World War, Iraq fell to Britain under a League of Nations mandate.
In 1930, Britain granted Iraq independence and Iraq guaranteed Britain "all aid, including the use of railways, rivers, ports and airfields," in case of war, which proved to be only a decade away.
By 1941, a militant anti-British and anti-Jewish nationalism had seized Iraq and the Mid East, fomented by a Nazi-allied Palestinian mufti exiled in Baghdad and by Axis grants and propaganda. In April, with Britain reeling across the Mediterranean, a group of fascist Iraqi military officers led by General Rashid Ali al-Gailani and called “the Golden Square” staged a coup, wrenching Iraq from the British sphere. The Rashid Ali regime, like later Iraqi dictatorships, was Sunni. And one of the four “corners” of this “Golden Square” was an uncle and later also father-in-law of then four year-old Saddam Hussein.
The coup had been urged by the radical cleric granted asylum in Baghdad, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. Al-Husseini was the Osama bin Laden of his day and a Nazi ally. He had led Nazi-financed pogroms in Palestine, armed Muslim radicals, and advocated fascist revolution throughout the Muslim world. For most of the Second World War, he lived in Berlin as a guest of Adolf Hitler, a Nazi radio propagandist for the Middle East, and a recruiter for Balkan Muslim Holocaust units.
As opportunities to assassinate bin Laden in the 1990s were declined by the United States, so it is believed a proposed Jewish assassination of al-Husseini in 1940 was rejected by the British Foreign Office. Today bin Laden is “wanted dead or alive” by the President himself, and later in 1940 an order for al-Husseini’s assassination was approved by Churchill himself. In the event, al-Husseini died of old age in 1974, mentor and uncle of Yassir Arafat.
Rashid Ali, now Prime Minister of Iraq, had attempted to organize anti-British action in Egypt, home to the largest Royal Navy base in the Mid East. He had been in contact with Axis forces in Libya and Greece and with the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon. He had promised Britain’s bases in Iraq to the Axis. And of course Rashid Ali would redirect to the Axis the Iraqi oil that would help fuel the Allied war effort. Prime Minister Churchill planned an Iraq war.
Churchill’s Mid Eastern Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Archibald Wavell, was hostile to the idea of opening an additional front and not ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’ in Iraq, echoing the more cautious critics of 2003. Wavell and his forces were already occupied in Greece, Crete, and East Africa, but Churchill was Prime Minister and ordered an invasion. Like 2003 and unlike 1991, the object would be regime change.
If the 2003 Iraq War is thought of as effectively unilateral despite the 16-nation invasion force and 49-nation diplomatic coalition, the 1941 war was unilateral in a more literal way. In May of 1941, America would not enter the Second World War directly for another seven months. France was then part-enemy, with Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon collaborating actively with the Axis. And the Soviet Union would not be an ally until the German invasion of Russia the following month. Turkey offered to mediate between the new Iraqi regime and Britain, but Churchill understood Rashid Ali to be an inveterate fascist and declared, “There can be no question of negotiation….” Britain would invade Iraq alone, with some Indian and Arab Imperial reinforcements and Iraqi levies and militiamen.
The war itself, as in 1991 and 2003, lasted about a month.
By May 2, over 9,000 Iraqi troops occupied a plateau beside the British airbase at Habbaniya. The British decided to preempt their would-be besiegers, plus the 60-plane Iraqi Air Force outside Baghdad, and launched an air assault at sunrise. As in 1991 and 2003, air power would be decisive. In five days, the British airmen at Habbaniya flew 584 sorties with their 78 outdated biplanes, 8 Wellington bombers, and a couple of Hurricane fighters, and by May 7 the Iraqi Air Force lay in ruins and the besiegers had abandoned Habbaniya. As today, some of the more die-hard Iraqi fighters fell back to Fallujah, but were ultimately flushed out by British forces by May 19.
Fending off Iraqi attackers along the Euphrates River and German and Italian air force contingents dispatched to Iraq, British forces advanced on Baghdad, surrounding it on May 28. The British fed Rashid Ali false intelligence of overwhelming British strength which spurred him to flee, and on June 1 re-established the previous pro-British regime of Nuri as-Said.
On June 2, anti-Jewish riots erupted with all the attendant looting, etc. Unlike 2003, the British adopted a particularly draconian curfew policy, 187 curfew-breakers were killed on sight, and the riots ended, but not before hundreds of Iraqi Jews were slaughtered and thousands injured by Iraqis inflamed by Nazi and jihadist propaganda.
As today, Syria and Iran figured heavily in events in neighboring Iraq. Days after Britain’s victory in Iraq, British and Free French forces attacked the Vichy French colonial government of Syria and Lebanon, and in July established British rule for the duration of the war, to preclude those nations becoming an Axis foothold in the region. In August, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran and by September replaced the Nazi-sympathizing Shah with an Ally-supporter, guaranteeing Iran’s oil to the Allies and ensuring a physical link between British assets and the Soviet Union.
While the ultimate objective in 1941 was “to get a friendly Government set up in Baghdad,” today the mission is the sweeping democratic reformation of the country, in the hope that this will be a more permanent “fix”, the first of further “democratic dominoes” in the Middle East, and the final English-speaking military intervention in Iraq.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Halifax Chronicle-Herald
September 12, 2005
Apologists for Ba'athists and Slave Masters
If we are going to be on the record historically as opposing this Iraq War, then at least let us not also be recorded as Ba’athist apologists. We are slipping toward re-casting Saddam Hussein as some misunderstood moderate and imagining that the effort to democratize Iraq is "subjecting the Iraqi people to suffering far greater than anything Saddam could dish out." But lost among the daily news of Baghdad car bombings was a recent report by the free Iraqi government that to date, 300,000 of Saddam Hussein’s victims have been uncovered in 290 Iraqi mass graves.
WMD stockpiles or no, Saddam Hussein had invaded two neighbouring countries and attacked two others with ballistic missiles, was attacking U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the no-fly zone he had accepted, had expelled UN weapons inspectors he had agreed to allow, had violated 17 Resolutions of the UN Security Council, had used chemical weapons repeatedly over five years killing 30,000, had produced biological weapons and developed nuclear weapons, had jailed, tortured, amputated, and executed untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, had created four million refugees, had expelled 100,000 minorities from oil-rich areas and replaced them with Arabs, had destroyed 2,000 Kurdish villages and the wetlands of Iraq’s Marsh Arabs, had imposed religious restrictions on Iraq’s majority Shiites, had abused the UN Oil-For-Food program causing mass malnutrition, had ordered the assassination of a former U.S. President and a Kuwaiti Emir, was openly sponsoring Palestinian suicide bombers, and so on. How much more would Saddam Hussein have had to do before we all agreed he had to go?
And if Saddam Hussein had to go, then how if not by force from outside Iraq? It was thought that a domestic revolt against Hussein in his weakened position immediately following the Gulf War would effect a positive regime change from within Iraq, but even then, Hussein crushed the revolt utterly and brutally. UN Security Council Resolutions demanding better behaviour from Hussein's regime were no more than words on papers. Economic sanctions were further depriving the Iraqi people while doing nothing to weaken Hussein's regime, as the UN Oil-For-Food program was grossly abused for the benefit of Hussein and his Western supporters. Intermittent aerial bombings through the 1990s were half-measures which left Hussein untouched in his bunkers. And Hussein was unusually skilled at disposing of any conceivable political challengers, and his heir-apparent sons were generally considered to be more psychopathic than even their father. It took the Iraq War to finally end 35 years of malevolent Ba’athist rule in Iraq.
We have been here before. A century and a half ago, it took the U.S. Civil War to finally free America’s slaves, but we Maritimers opposed that war, damned the abolitionists, and excused the slavery.
In his 1998 book In Armageddon’s Shadow, Greg Marquis writes, "By 1861, Maritimers were not unfamiliar with pro-slavery opinions, and as the Civil War progressed many who opposed the institution in theory began to make excuses for it in practice." "…a New Brunswicker who had lived in the South went so far as to argue that the slaves were comfortable, happy, and loyal…."
When President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in late 1862, "the Novascotian reminded readers that Washington had not gone to war to liberate the slaves."
"Maritime critics of the North delighted in listing…the inadequacies of ‘coloured’ troops in Union service." And "the Novascotian described the New Orleans area in 1864, where thousands of [liberated slaves] had perished from disease and starvation since [Union] occupation. This supposedly proved that the African was unfit for self-government."
Opposition to the Civil War was not without compelling points. By the war’s end the combined death toll was a cataclysmic 558,000. The Lincoln Administration had enacted undemocratic emergency measures such as the suspension of habeas corpus. And the international consensus led by the great powers such as Britain and France was unofficially but decidedly anti-Union. But all this could not undo the earth-shaking achievements of the U.S. Civil War, that it freed the slaves, reunified a nation that would go on to lead the world, and served as a model for future liberation.
Likewise, whatever else may be said of this Iraq War, it has rescued Iraq and the world from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athism and sparked the most Middle East reform in generations. America, Britain, Australia, Poland, and the other Allies truly have made the world a better place by dismantling Hussein’s regime and establishing a democracy in its wake, and if we will not be counted among the Allies then let us at least be counted among the grateful.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
WMD stockpiles or no, Saddam Hussein had invaded two neighbouring countries and attacked two others with ballistic missiles, was attacking U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the no-fly zone he had accepted, had expelled UN weapons inspectors he had agreed to allow, had violated 17 Resolutions of the UN Security Council, had used chemical weapons repeatedly over five years killing 30,000, had produced biological weapons and developed nuclear weapons, had jailed, tortured, amputated, and executed untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, had created four million refugees, had expelled 100,000 minorities from oil-rich areas and replaced them with Arabs, had destroyed 2,000 Kurdish villages and the wetlands of Iraq’s Marsh Arabs, had imposed religious restrictions on Iraq’s majority Shiites, had abused the UN Oil-For-Food program causing mass malnutrition, had ordered the assassination of a former U.S. President and a Kuwaiti Emir, was openly sponsoring Palestinian suicide bombers, and so on. How much more would Saddam Hussein have had to do before we all agreed he had to go?
And if Saddam Hussein had to go, then how if not by force from outside Iraq? It was thought that a domestic revolt against Hussein in his weakened position immediately following the Gulf War would effect a positive regime change from within Iraq, but even then, Hussein crushed the revolt utterly and brutally. UN Security Council Resolutions demanding better behaviour from Hussein's regime were no more than words on papers. Economic sanctions were further depriving the Iraqi people while doing nothing to weaken Hussein's regime, as the UN Oil-For-Food program was grossly abused for the benefit of Hussein and his Western supporters. Intermittent aerial bombings through the 1990s were half-measures which left Hussein untouched in his bunkers. And Hussein was unusually skilled at disposing of any conceivable political challengers, and his heir-apparent sons were generally considered to be more psychopathic than even their father. It took the Iraq War to finally end 35 years of malevolent Ba’athist rule in Iraq.
We have been here before. A century and a half ago, it took the U.S. Civil War to finally free America’s slaves, but we Maritimers opposed that war, damned the abolitionists, and excused the slavery.
In his 1998 book In Armageddon’s Shadow, Greg Marquis writes, "By 1861, Maritimers were not unfamiliar with pro-slavery opinions, and as the Civil War progressed many who opposed the institution in theory began to make excuses for it in practice." "…a New Brunswicker who had lived in the South went so far as to argue that the slaves were comfortable, happy, and loyal…."
When President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in late 1862, "the Novascotian reminded readers that Washington had not gone to war to liberate the slaves."
"Maritime critics of the North delighted in listing…the inadequacies of ‘coloured’ troops in Union service." And "the Novascotian described the New Orleans area in 1864, where thousands of [liberated slaves] had perished from disease and starvation since [Union] occupation. This supposedly proved that the African was unfit for self-government."
Opposition to the Civil War was not without compelling points. By the war’s end the combined death toll was a cataclysmic 558,000. The Lincoln Administration had enacted undemocratic emergency measures such as the suspension of habeas corpus. And the international consensus led by the great powers such as Britain and France was unofficially but decidedly anti-Union. But all this could not undo the earth-shaking achievements of the U.S. Civil War, that it freed the slaves, reunified a nation that would go on to lead the world, and served as a model for future liberation.
Likewise, whatever else may be said of this Iraq War, it has rescued Iraq and the world from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athism and sparked the most Middle East reform in generations. America, Britain, Australia, Poland, and the other Allies truly have made the world a better place by dismantling Hussein’s regime and establishing a democracy in its wake, and if we will not be counted among the Allies then let us at least be counted among the grateful.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
June 3, 2005
Captain Norm's Second World War -- and Nova Scotia's
We
Nova Scotians are accustomed to conceiving the Second World War as
something that happened someplace far away, in Europe and Asia
and the Mideast, but with our participation in the war and our
protrusion into the Atlantic, the war’s edges sometimes extended to
our shores.
The
evening of May 30 in 1942 was such a time. The SS Liverpool
Packet --
formerly the Sonia --
was passing Seal Island off Nova Scotia en route from New York to a
Newfoundland air base, laden with massive power generators, vehicles,
tires, etc. The Packet’s captain
was Nova Scotia’s own "Captain Norm", hero of the First
World War.
Captain
Norman Emmons Smith -- born in 1880 at Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia and
at sea by the age of 12 -- had captained munitions ships in the First
World War, managing an impossible 42 Atlantic crossings. Variously
nicknamed "Captain Norm", "Dynamite", and
"Iceberg", he was as near invincible as any mariner in Nova
Scotia’s maritime history.
Captain
Norm’s ship Ruby on
its return from a delivery to France caught the eye of a German
U-boat. Spotting torpedoes swimming for his broadside, Captain Norm
swung Ruby around
end-to, shrinking the target, and the torpedoes passed narrowly
without detonating. The German submarine then surfaced and "shot
away" Ruby’s
smokestack and mast, but Ruby outran
the sub and made it back to port above-water.
On
December 4 of 1917 Captain Norm had departed Halifax Harbour for
Europe carrying a cargo of TNT; it was all of two days later that
another munitions ship, the Mont
Blanc,
collided and caught fire in the harbour, and the resultant Halifax
Explosion killed 2,000 and constituted the greatest manmade explosion
before the Hiroshima bomb.
On
the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Captain Norm had
enlisted as a captain in the Merchant Marine once more, aged 59. He
was given command of the Belle
Isle,
establishing and supplying weather and radio stations on Greenland
whose advance forecasting for Allied operations in Europe was
life-and-death: Allied counter-intelligence saw to it that Germany
couldn't know the where of the D-Day landings, and as to the when,
Germany was confounded by a forecast from Greenland of a break in a
storm, for the 6th of June. Captain Norm crossed the Atlantic in the
second war as he had in the first, and not infrequently without
convoy protection, as when his ship was slower than the slowest
allowed in convoy.
Captain
Norm was in the middle of a solo supply run that evening of May 30 in
'42. His 3,000 ton Liverpool
Packet was
making its top speed: 8 knots. At 8:45, the Packet was
a dozen miles off Seal Island and only 30 miles from Captain Norm’s
native Woods Harbour when an undetected German U-boat slammed a
torpedo into its broadside. The torpedo tore through the entire
engineroom, killing the two firemen instantly and blasting such a
hole as to render the Packet unsalvageable.
Inside of five minutes, the Packet would
be altogether underwater. The lifeboat was launched and some of the
men scrambled aboard, while others jumped and swam clear of the
sinking ship and its deadly drag.
After
the Packet’s
survivors had been collected in the lifeboat, the German sub
surfaced. Its crew emerged and trained their guns on the Packet men,
half-dressed but no less dangerous. The German captain demanded to
know Captain Norm’s destination and cargo. Captain Norm was
uncommonly bold and brave even by the standards of a courageous age,
but with neither weapons nor ship and responsible for 17 now-helpless
crewmen whom the Germans might kill as easily as not, he gave up the
information, which blessedly was not critical military intelligence.
The U-boat then disappeared and the lifeboat rowed for land.
Before
they had got far, the Packet’s
survivors heard calls for help from what turned out to be the first
mate. He had been thrown by a secondary explosion some 25 yards, and made a life-preserver of the lid of a wood crate. That 19th
survivor was crammed into the lifeboat and it restarted for shore.
The Liverpool
Packet hadn't
been the first ship to be torpedoed just off Nova Scotia in the
Second World War, and it wouldn't be the last. Not three weeks
earlier, the Kitty’s
Brook had
been torpedoed about 40 miles off Lockeport. Two ships in three days
were torpedoed off Neils Harbour that October: the Waterton,
about 40 miles off, and the Caribou,
about 50. The Caribou attack
was particularly heinous, that ship being a passenger ferry and its
losses numbering 137. A couple years later in 1944 the Watuka was
torpedoed 35 miles off Little Harbour, and the Nipawan
Park was
torpedoed about 30 miles off that same point as late as January of
'45, just months before war’s end.
As
for Captain Norm, he carried on at sea for two years after the war,
which he outlived by 24 years. From the Arctic to the Mediterranean,
in two world wars, the only torpedo to sink Captain Norm came 30
miles from his Nova Scotia hometown.
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