Army's Best Troops Mutiny

London Daily Telegraph
August 26, 2006

A miserable day for British forces in Iraq was made worse yesterday when a battalion of the Iraqi army's 10th Division in Maysan, deemed by its British trainers to be the most professional in the province, mutinied.

Men from 2nd Bn surrounded their officers and fired shots after learning that they were to be deployed in Baghdad. Discipline was only restored when the order was rescinded.

The Middle East

A Silver Lining Amid Region's Clouds?
By Gerald F. Seib
Wall Street Journal
August 26, 2006

It is an article of faith in the Middle East that every crisis also carries the seeds of opportunity. It is hard to see any such seeds in the current, wall-to-wall mess in the region, but they might be there.

The coming week will bring another flurry of diplomacy, designed to finally put a badly needed international peacekeeping force in place in Lebanon, and to get the wheels rolling on imposing penalties on Iran for its nuclear program.

The United Nations Security Council has approved creation of a peacekeeping force, and France and Italy have agreed to send troops. But diplomats still are trying to resolve nagging questions about its precise size and scope. At the same time, the U.S. will be trying to start serious discussions at the Security Council about imposing economic sanctions on Iran, which has refused to stop its program for enriching uranium into a fuel that could be used to make bombs.

From the American perspective, the goal of all such diplomacy is much broader: To contain the rising influence of Iran by reining in Hezbollah, which serves as a kind of proxy army for its Iranian friends, and by shutting down Iran's nuclear ambition.

But it is starting to occur to some people in Washington that there is an opportunity -- and maybe a need -- to do something much bolder, that would go a lot further toward recasting power in the region. Why not, the argument goes, start to look anew for a comprehensive solution to the ever-festering dispute over Palestine?

It is hard to remember now, but the perennial Palestinian problem is at the heart of the current conflagration. Palestinians' dissatisfaction, with their own stateless plight and with their own feckless leaders, led to the election of an extremist Hamas government to run the Palestinian Authority. Hamas then precipitated a crisis by kidnapping an Israeli soldier. Hezbollah, not to be outdone by Hamas, then kidnapped more Israeli soldiers from its base in southern Lebanon. Israel counterattacked, and off to the races things went.

Start making progress on the Palestinian problem, the argument goes, and you remove the underlying dispute that spawned Hamas -- while robbing Hezbollah of its main calling card among the Arab masses. And if Hezbollah's relevance is diminished, Iran loses its chief tool in the region. Perceptions of America might improve in the region too, if only for the effort being made, and the odds of an Iranian-led Shiite alliance spanning southern Lebanon, Iraq and Iran diminish.

Former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote a recent article laying out this argument, and it has gotten some quiet high-level attention within the Bush administration and in the region. It might seem an odd time to talk Palestinian peace. But some of the alternatives are distinctly unpleasant.

What President Bush should say to us

By Diana West
The Washington Times

Part I: Retool U.S. war
Published August 18, 2006

My fellow Americans.
I come to you now, gravely aware that what I am about to say will radically change the course of what we have, for nearly five long years now, called the war on terror.
For almost as long as I have held this office, I have been leading this war. On my watch, the United States sent troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and drive al Qaeda from the safe haven it used to plan attacks on our country. On my watch, we sent troops into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and break this link in the terrorism food chain. On my watch, the United States spearheaded an ambitious drive to bring democracy to regions of the Middle and Near East as part of an effort to touch brutalized peoples with the salve of freedom and see them recover their free will, forever strengthened by what we in America prize as God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I made this democratization process the centerpiece of my second term, the core of my political strategy against global terrorism, because history has taught us that democracies don't make war, or support terrorist attacks, on one another. I didn't, as one predecessor of mine famously put it, simply want "to make the world safe for democracy." I wanted to make the world -- that part of the world from which terrorism mainly springs -- democratic and therefore safe.
Over the past few years, then, the United States has supported fledgling democracies in Afghanistan,Iraq, and the Palestinian Authority. We have proudly assisted in making free and fair elections possible in these places, and with excellent results -- at least with regard to the freeness and the fairness of the elections. But the fact is, when these peoples have spoken, what we have heard, or should have been hearing, in the expression of their collective will is that the mechanics of democracy alone (one citizen, one vote) do not automatically manufacture democrats -- if by democrats we mean citizens who believe first and foremost in the kind of liberty that guarantees freedom of conscience and equality before the law.
On the contrary, each of these new democracies has produced constitutions that enshrine Islamic law. Because Islamic law, known as "Shariah," does not permit equality between the sexes or among religions, it is anything but what we in American consider "democratic."
Indeed, Shariah law endows Muslims, and Muslim men in particular, with a superior position in society. It also outlaws words and deeds that oppose this, frankly, repressive power structure for being "un-Islamic." From this same Islamic legal tradition comes the mandate for jihad (holy war, usually against non-Muslims) and dhimmitude, the official state of inferiority of non-Muslims under Islam.
With their devotion to Islamic tradition, then, these new democracies have, in effect, peacefully voted themselves into the same doctrinal camp as the many terror groups that violently strike at the non-Muslim world in the name of jihad for the sake of a caliphate -- a Muslim world government ruled according to Shariah.
So be it. What I mean by that is, it is neither in the national interest nor in the national will for the United States of America to attempt to reshape such a culture to conform to our notions of liberty and justice for all. It is neither in the national interest nor in the national will to attempt to reform the belief system that animates this culture to conform to our notions of freedom of worship.
It is, however, in our national interest, and must become a part of our national will, to ensure that Islamic law does not come to our own shores, whether by means of violent jihad terrorism as practiced by the likes of al Qaeda or Hezbollah, or through peaceful patterns of migration, such as those that have already Islamized large parts of Europe.
The shift I am describing-from a pro-democracy offensive to an anti-Shariah defensive -- means a national course correction. Rather than continuing to emphasize the democratization of the Muslim Middle East as our key tool in the war on terror, I will henceforth emphasize the prevention of Shariah from reaching the West as our key tool in the war on terror.
This will entail the immediate adoption of the following steps.
To be continued ...

Part 2: Fighting Shariah
Published August 25, 2006

Last week in this space, I presented the first half of the speech President Bush should give to re-direct the war on terror. Here is the second half:
At home, the line of defense is clear. It is our border. My new strategy calls on us to think of our border as more than just a line on a map. We need to see the border as a cultural line also, a defining line of freedom against proponents of Shariah, which, I cannot emphasize enough, poses a direct threat to our founding principles of liberty and equality. It is that simple. There is a crucial military component to the anti-Shariah defensive, which I will outline momentarily. But without taking civil precautions at the border, even a decisive military victory abroad could be nullified by non-violent means at home.
How? Through largely unregulated immigration of peoples from "Shariah states" — those regions whose governing traditions derive, wholly or in some important part, from the edicts of Islam. If such an influx continues, Islamic law will be accommodated, adopted and even legislated, at least in some jurisdictions, according to majority will. We know this to be true because such a "Shariah shift" is already transforming what sociologists call post-Christian Europe into an increasingly Islamic sphere. If we do not want to see such changes here, we must act. Accordingly, I am asking Congress to amend our laws to bar further Islamic immigration, beginning with immigration from Shariah states.
This, the most crucial domestic component of my anti-Shariah program, will undoubtedly be regarded as the most controversial because it necessitates making a definitive judgment against the laws promulgated by Islam, a religion. This may appear to go against our cherished tradition of religious tolerance, not to mention good manners. But if the laws promulgated by Islam directly threaten freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and religion, women's rights, and key concepts of equality — and they do — it is a sign of intellectual rigor mortis not to say so. And I do say so, but, again, not to launch a transformative military or cultural offensive against Islam, but to initiate the mobilization of a defensive movement to prevent the Islamization of American law and liberty.
And what about Iraq? Thanks to American-led coalition troops, a Ba'athist dictatorship has been dismantled, and Iraq is a parliamentary democracy under a new constitution. It is a matter of increasing significance, however, that this new constitution, ratified by the people of Iraq, enshrines Islamic law above all. This means that when the new Iraq joined the ranks of democratic nations, it simultaneously joined the ranks of Shariah states. This may help explain widespread Iraqi sympathy for Hezbollah, for example, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite terrorist group that not only attacks American and Israeli interests, but also seeks the expansion of Shariah. It also begs the question about long-term American support: How, in the war on terrorism, can we uphold a partner that feels solidarity with terrorists?
We cannot — certainly not as a realistic war strategy to safeguard the liberty of the Free World. Once, I saw the war that began on September 11 as dividing the world between those countries that were with us, and those that were against us. I have now come to define the crisis, both cultural and military, as occurring between the Free World and the Shariah World. The centrality of Shariah in Islam is not something Americans can or should try to change. But it is not something we can ignore, either.
With this centrality in mind, our goals in the Middle East should change from, in effect, promoting Shariah-democracy to preventing the export of Shariah and terrorism to advance Shariah. Accordingly, I have directed our military to formulate a plan to redeploy American troops from Iraq's cities, where they have been operating at great risk to attain stability for the Iraqi government, to bases in the north. From there, they may assist as needed in our mission to neutralize the terrorism — and Shariah — exporting capabilities of freedom's enemies in the region. These would include nuke-seeking Iran and Syria, without whose support Hezbollah would not exist, and Saudi Arabia, from whose coffers comes global jihad.
What we call the war on terror now moves into a more focused phase, which better defines our mission and makes it more attainable. The road ahead is long and difficult, but our next steps are clear.
God bless the United States.

Diplomacy -- For Now

By George Perkovich
Wall Street Journal
August 24, 2006

Iran has said, "No, for now," to the U.N. Security Council's legally binding demand that Tehran suspend enrichment of uranium, as a first step toward resuming negotiations over the future course of its nuclear-energy program and broader relations with the West. Iran's militant leaders are inspired by Hezbollah's gritty fight with the vaunted Israeli army and the U.S. debacle in Iraq. They are emboldened by the sense that Security Council states have enforcement fatigue -- an unwillingness to confront tough guys who ignore international demands.

It's now time for the U.S. to quietly rally defense and foreign ministries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia to develop operational plans for containing and deterring a nuclear-armed Iran. Far from throwing in the towel or abandoning diplomacy in favor of warfare, devising a deterrence and containment strategy now would allay international fears that Washington uses U.N. diplomacy as a prelude to military-delivered regime change. Building international capabilities to contain a nuclear-armed Iran would have the double benefit of putting muscle into the Security Council's effort to dissuade Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability in the first place.

The first step is to convince Iran's leaders that their sovereignty and security will not be threatened if they desist from supporting or conducting violence outside their borders. Iran's leaders -- odious or not -- must know that they do not need nuclear weapons or proxy war for their survival; the regime's survival is best guaranteed by not fighting. The incentive package that France, Germany, the U.K., the U.S., Russia and China have recently offered to negotiate contains most of what is necessary to show Iran it will live better without producing fissile materials. What it lacks is a clear U.S. commitment to live with the government in Tehran, even as we compete with it politically and morally.

If Washington will forswear regime change and the Iranian government still refuses to negotiate terms for conducting an exclusively civilian nuclear program, then Tehran must be convinced it will suffer greatly for threatening its neighbors and Israel, directly or by proxy. The message must be: "The United States and other major powers will work more closely than ever with your neighbors to monitor your activities and establish capabilities to respond forcefully and immediately to any scale of terrorism, subversion or war that you visit on others. If you have nuclear weapons, we won't tolerate your export of violence."

The practical threat from Tehran is an extension of what just happened in Lebanon. With nuclear weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other militant actors would supply more and better weapons to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, and stimulate their campaigns against Israeli and American targets, confident that their nuclear weapons would deter major counterattacks against Iran. Iran's collective leadership -- and the Persian nation -- did not grow old by being suicidal. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is young and zealous, but not completely in charge. Tehran will test the limits of subversion, low-intensity conflict and terrorism, while seeking to avoid a nuclear war with the U.S. or Israel.

Iran's neighbors will be torn between accommodating Tehran's rising power and seeking greater U.S. security cooperation. As during the Lebanon war, Arab governments will not want to provoke Tehran and their own anti-American populations. At the same time, these governments dread the arrogance and subversion they expect from a regionally dominant Iran. The present moment when Iran's nuclear capabilities remain in doubt must be seized to discreetly develop cooperative strategies to contain Tehran's capacity to project power and influence.

This would be easier if Hezbollah were disarmed, and Iranians less emboldened by their military capabilities. Short of that, if Damascus can be induced to stop facilitating Hezbollah's arms supply and training, Iranians will begin to see containment's potential. Washington should explore directly what it would take to induce Syria's cooperation.

Improved cooperation in intelligence-gathering and monitoring of Iranian activities must be a priority. The U.S. and Iran's neighbors should create a surveillance system to monitor all Iranian aircraft movement and potential missile launches. This is needed to clarify when Iran is conducting or supporting aggression outside its borders, and to identify perpetrators and relevant targets for retaliation, which would best be done covertly. Iran's arming of Hezbollah exemplifies activities that must be nipped in the bud, by covert force if necessary.

Iranian officials today bristle at U.S. intelligence-gathering and networking around their borders and among their restive minority communities. They denounce these activities as signs of a U.S. regime-change strategy that, implicitly, justifies Iran's need of nuclear-weapon capability. The U.S. must clarify that as long as Tehran is acting aggressively and seeks or possesses nuclear weapons, the international community has no choice but to gather intelligence vigorously. Similarly, as long as Tehran is developing ballistic missiles configured to carry nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Iran's neighbors are justified in deploying theater ballistic missile defenses. Again, cooperation in deploying such defenses should be as secret as possible to reduce political controversy. A nuclear-armed Iran that advocates wiping another country off the map would leave the U.S. little choice but to destroy Iranian missiles on the ground if Iran ever threatens to enter conflicts involving U.S. friends.

Mandatory international sanctions on investment, arms sales and nuclear cooperation in Iran would greatly augment containment. Such sanctions are possible only under U.N. Security Council authorization. Moscow now blocks sanctions to prevent Tehran from producing materials that could be used in nuclear weapons, and President Vladimir Putin has equivocated about stopping Iranian enrichment of uranium. But Mr. Putin has unequivocally said Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons. The West needs to find his price for clarifying that Moscow will support severe penalties if Iran proceeds to acquire nuclear weapons. This will be easier to do now than after the fact.

The U.S. and its partners should now urge the U.N. Security Council to specify that any state violating Security Council Resolution 1540's prohibition on transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists will be deemed a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which would provide authority for military reprisals. In light of Iran's ongoing defiance of Security Council demands regarding its nuclear activities, there is no justifiable excuse not to send such a warning to Tehran and others in case they break their treaty obligations not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Iranian leaders wish to perpetuate their rule, not sacrifice it. Since their illicit nuclear activities were discovered in 2002, they have acted cautiously when the major powers stood resolutely together. When resistance has been weak, Tehran has acted aggressively. It is not too early to build a framework for deterring Tehran from acting outside its borders.

Mr. Perkovich is vice president and director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Iran Scores In World War

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Washington Times
August 24, 2006

BERN, Switzerland -- Those who gazed into their crystal balls at the end of the 20th century to get a glimpse of coming attractions missed the main event. Islam, whether in the form of young jihadis who live to die killing those who live to live in freedom, or conservative oil sheiks and emirs clinging to divine-right-of-kings privileges by heaping praise on Hezbollah guerrillas, dominates our fear of what the future may bring.

Perception is reality in most parts of the world but nowhere as much as in the Arab world and in the Muslim world beyond. Hezbollah ("Party of God"), listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., is now seen as the clear victor over Israel, the Middle East's only democracy. For Israel to lose 116 soldiers is comparable to the U.S. losing 5,800 in 34 days of warfare (multiply by 50 to get the equivalent population ratio). So far, the U.S. has lost 2,600 in 3-1/2 years in Iraq).

To compound the strategic setback for Israel, the Olmert government failed to achieve any of its objectives. Hezbollah was not flushed out of the territory between Israel's northern border and the Litani River. It still has an Iran-supplied arsenal of some 10,000 hidden rockets after firing 150 a day into Israeli towns, villages and kibbutzim. And Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, 46, has achieved iconic status throughout the Middle East, bridging the Shi'ite-Sunni divide. Flushed with this victory, Iran has told the United States to take a hike and mind its own business about the mullahocracy's nuclear plans.

Israel also lost its trademark of military invincibility. Mobilized reservists complained to the media about faulty planning, poor equipment and haphazard resupply in food and water. Some parched Israeli soldiers took the water canteens from dead Hezbollah guerrillas. Worst of all, substandard intelligence failed to show the extent of Hezbollah's underground infrastructure just beyond the Israeli border. Reservists staged a protest in Jerusalem to demand the resignations of the prime minister, defense minister and chief of staff.

American neoconservatives, led by chief theoretician Richard Perle, now believe the Tony Blair government in Britain and the Bush administration are chickening out of the world war that militant Islam has declared on Judeo-Christian civilization. "It is global in scope," Mr. Perle wrote in the British Sunday Telegraph, "from madrassas in Pakistan, to mosques in London, to 'charities' in America, to banks and boardrooms in the Middle East." In this perspective, Hezbollah's victory against the mighty Israeli Defense Force was a battle lost in the new world war.

For Mr. Perle and the neo-cons, it is a war with a cultural and ideological component "lavishly financed by easy oil money from states like Saudi Arabia that we have long (and foolishly) regarded as 'moderates' and 'friends.' The warriors in this jihad are identified, indoctrinated and recruited by men who manipulate the power of faith to induce a fanaticism whose ultimate expression is the martyrdom of suicide missions. Among them are clerics who have rewarded their welcome into our liberal, open societies by preaching our destruction."

So far Mr. Perle is right with one major error. Saudi Arabia has taken drastic measures to rein in clerical fanatics. Almost 1,000 imams were read the riot act by the royals and warned transgressions would turf them out of their mosques. Pakistan, however, remains a major problem. Flat-Earth clerics continue spewing anti-Western venom and some 12,000 madrassas continue churning out male teenagers who can recite the Koran verbatim, but still liberally sprinkled with hate-filled ideas about the U.S., Israel and India.

Mr. Perle also says in both the United Kingdom and the United States "we have been reluctant -- dangerously so -- to restrict, and in many cases even to monitor, what is said in mosques and social centers of Islamist extremists." That was once the case, but no longer. The only impediment for the FBI and Britain's MI5 has been a shortage of Arabic-speaking undercover agents.

It was the painstaking work of MI5 agents who tracked two dozen British Muslims, almost all of Pakistani origin, which foiled the plot to down 10 U.S. airliners on the same day while flying from London to U.S. cities -- a terrorist tsunami that would have changed the world beyond recognition.

British authorities believe as many as 3,000 veterans of al Qaeda's training camps over the years were born or raised in Britain. U.K. polling data showed almost 200,000 British Muslims approved the July 7, 2005, subway and bus terrorist attacks. A quarter of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims -- or some 450,000 people -- are sympathetic to violent jihad (holy war). A third, or 600,000, said they would rather live under Shariah, or Islamic law, than British law. And an overwhelming majority is convinced the war on terror is a war on Islam.

Disillusioned Muslim youngsters are increasingly attached to the global Muslim community via the Internet -- and are angry at what they consider the anti-Muslim policies of the local government where they live. The estimated 5,000 pro-al Qaeda Web sites include recipes for mixing nail polish remover and hair bleach and detonating the explosive cocktail with the flash unit from a throwaway camera.

The world of on-line jihadism is not something imaginary, theoretical or conceptual -- it is real and it is here. The virtual caliphate's many visionaries, participants and supporters toil toward the day when the removal of secular leaders in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, transforms the electronic caliphate into political reality.

Richard Perle, a former chief executive of Conrad Black's Hollinger Digital company, should know this is where a world war is under way. And the Bush administration should know democracy in Arab countries hastens the advent of what it wishes to avoid. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are exhibits A and B.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

A Plan to Hold Iraq Together

By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Washington Post
Thursday, August 24, 2006; A21

Four months ago, in an opinion piece with Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, I laid out a detailed plan to keep Iraq together, protect America's interests and bring our troops home. Many experts here and in Iraq embraced our ideas. Since then, circumstances in Iraq have made the plan even more on target -- and urgent -- than when we first proposed it.

The new, central reality in Iraq is that violence between Shiites and Sunnis has surpassed the insurgency and foreign terrorists as the main security threat. Our leading civilian and military experts on Iraq -- Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gens. George Casey, Peter Pace and John Abizaid -- have all acknowledged that fact.

In December's elections, 90 percent of the votes went to sectarian lists. Ethnic militias increasingly are the law in Iraq. They have infiltrated the official security forces. Sectarian cleansing has begun in mixed areas, with 200,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes in recent months for fear of sectarian reprisals. Massive unemployment feeds the ranks of sectarian militias and criminal gangs.

No number of troops can solve this problem. The only way to hold Iraq together and create the conditions for our armed forces to responsibly withdraw is to give Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds incentives to pursue their interests peacefully and to forge a sustainable political settlement. Unfortunately, this administration does not have a coherent plan or any discernible strategy for success in Iraq. Its strategy is to prevent defeat and hand the problem off when it leaves office.

Meanwhile, more and more Americans, understandably frustrated, support an immediate withdrawal, even at the risk of trading a dictator for chaos and a civil war that could become a regional war.

Both are bad alternatives. The five-point plan Les Gelb and I laid out offers a better way.

First, the plan calls for maintaining a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis their own regions. The central government would be left in charge of common interests, such as border security and the distribution of oil revenue.

Second, it would bind the Sunnis to the deal by guaranteeing them a proportionate share of oil revenue. Each group would have an incentive to maximize oil production, making oil the glue that binds the country together.

Third, the plan would create a massive jobs program while increasing reconstruction aid -- especially from the oil-rich Gulf states -- but tying it to the protection of minority rights.

Fourth, it would convene an international conference that would produce a regional nonaggression pact and create a Contact Group to enforce regional commitments.

Fifth, it would begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces this year and withdraw most of them by the end of 2007, while maintaining a small follow-on force to keep the neighbors honest and to strike any concentration of terrorists.

This plan is consistent with Iraq's constitution, which already provides for the country's 18 provinces to join together in regions, with their own security forces and control over most day-to-day issues. This plan is the only idea on the table for dealing with the militias, which are likely to retreat to their respective regions instead of engaging in acts of violence. This plan is consistent with a strong central government that has clearly defined responsibilities. Indeed, it provides an agenda for that government, whose mere existence will not end sectarian violence. This plan is not partition -- in fact, it may be the only way to prevent violent partition and preserve a unified Iraq.

To be sure, this plan presents real challenges, especially with regard to large cities with mixed populations. We would maintain Baghdad as a federal city, belonging to no one region. And we would require international peacekeepers for other mixed cities to support local security forces and further protect minorities. The example of Bosnia is illustrative, if not totally analogous. Ten years ago, Bosnia was being torn apart by ethnic cleansing. The United States stepped in decisively with the Dayton Accords to keep the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations. We even allowed Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. With the help of U.S. troops and others, Bosnians have lived a decade in peace. Now they are strengthening their central government and disbanding their separate armies.

At best, the course we're on has no end in sight. At worst, it leads to a terrible civil war and possibly a regional war. This plan offers a way to bring our troops home, protect our security interests and preserve Iraq as a unified country. Those who reject this plan out of hand must answer one simple question: What is your alternative?

The writer is a senator from Delaware and the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Are Bush's critics right?

By Tony Blankley
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published August 23, 2006

We are all aware of the dangerous Middle East conditions the United States faces today after five and a half years of President Bush's leadership. So let's consider what the world might well look like if, in his remaining two and a half years, he were to follow the recommendations of his critics.
First: America out of Iraq by the end of 2007.
We warn the Iraqis to get off their duffs and prepare to be in charge by Dec. 31, 2007. We depart (leaving a couple of divisions in a desert base somewhere in Kuwait — per John Murtha's over the horizon strategy).
The Iraqi military and police are still not able to manage. Full scale civil war breaks out. The Iranians enter to give help to the Shias. The Egyptians, Saudis and other Sunni states lend a hand to help the Iraqi Sunnis. The Kurds declare an independent Kurdistan. The Turks go to war against the Kurds after Kurdish PKK terrorists hit the Turks yet again. The Sunnis try to take a piece of Kurdish oil resources near Kirkuk. The Shia workers, who dominate Saudi's southern oil fields attack Saudi pipelines in solidarity with Iranian Shia led fighting in Iraq.
Kuwait demands our two divisions immediately leave, as it is arousing the hostility of its population. Qatar makes the same demand, for same reason, of our naval base. The United States complies.
Second: President Bush forces Israel to accept Hezbollah's role as a nonterrorist, social services-based political party in Lebanon.
In a special election Hezbollah combines its support amongst Lebanon's Shias (40 percent of population), with voter intimidation to dominate the next government led by President Hassan Nasrallah.
Third: President Bush finally personally "leans on Israel" to negotiate for peace with the Palestinians.
No longer in the sway of the "Jewish lobby," Mr. Bush threatens to cut off Israel from all dollars, military equipment (including spare parts) and diplomatic support. He threatens economic sanctions if Israel doesn't negotiate a peace with Hamas-led Palestinians.
Going beyond President Clinton's peace deal of 2000, which was rejected by Yasser Arafat, Hamas demands Israel return to pre-1967 borders, turn over the Golan Heights to Syria, no West Bank occupation (including in suburbs of Jerusalem), the right of return of the first half million Palestinians to Israel proper and turning over Jerusalem to a United Nations mandate. Israel is compelled to agree.
They sign the agreement that recognizes two states.
On the next day (Nov. 29, 2007 — 60 years to the day from when the first post-U.N. resolution Arab terrorist attack on Jews occurred the day after the U.N. resolution for an independent Israel was passed in 1947) Israel is besieged by terrorists and intensively grouped missile attacks on the north by Hezbollah-run Lebanon, on the south from Gaza and in the center from Janin to Hebron in the new state of the Islamic Republic of Palestine. Syria militarily re-occupies the Golan Heights. U.N.-administered Jerusalem becomes, with U.N. acquiescence, a free passage zone for terrorists into Israel. When the Knesset is bombed by terrorists, Israel declares a defensive, existential three-front war against Lebanon, Syria and the Islamic Republic of Palestine. The war escalates fast toward the edge of Israel's conventional military capacity.
Fourth: The United States takes military option off the table regarding Iranian nuclear negotiations.
After U.S./French/British-proposed feeble U.N. sanctions are blocked by Russia and China, the world community accepts reality of Iranian nuclear aspirations, but expects to be able to deter Iran as we did the Soviets for 50 years, should they ever develop such capacity.
Just as the CIA had been caught unaware by the speed of Soviet, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and North Korean atomic bomb development from the 1940s to the 1990s, in the summer of 2007,the CIA in testimony to the Congress admitted that its five-10 year prediction of Iranian bomb acquisition was off by four-nine years. This testimony followed by a week, Iran's first underground testing of a nuclear device.
President Ahmadinejad threatens to unleash the "fire of Allah," should the United States, Turkey, Egypt or Saudi Arabia further intervene in Iraq. The same "fire of Allah" is threatened at the "Zionist Entity" if she doesn't immediately stop her war against Syria, Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Palestine.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey request immediate publicly acknowledged coverage under the United State's nuclear umbrella — at least until their joint crash program to develop their own nuclear bombs can be accomplished.
The 2008 American presidential campaign revolves around whether to grant such a nuclear guarantee — in the face of Iran's ongoing terrorist/politico/military hegemonic advance toward the Caspian, Mediterranean and Red Seas.
The Democratic candidate for president is blaming President Bush and the Republicans for both: 1) forcing Israel into an untenable "peace," and 2) the precipitous departure from Iraq — both actions of which has left the Middle East ablaze and a hair trigger's touch away from nuclear detonation.
Price of a barrel of crude oil on Election Day 2008 — $250.

Israel Should Hit Syria First

A preemptive-war policy keeps the enemy from fighting on its own terms.
Max Boot
Los Angeles Times
August 23, 2006

'WE ARE walking with open eyes into our next war."

The pessimism of a senior Israeli official who made that comment on Aug. 13 was striking because he had just finished telling a group of security analysts brought to Israel by the American Jewish Committee that the United Nations-brokered cease-fire had achieved many of Israel's goals. But he had no illusions that this would represent anything more than a temporary halt in the fight between Israel and the Quartet of Evil seeking to dominate the Middle East — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah.

The war wasn't a total loss for Israel. But it was far from a victory. Hezbollah lost more than 500 fighters as well as most of its medium- and long-range missiles and its bunker network in southern Lebanon, while inflicting scant damage on Israel. Israeli intelligence analysts are convinced that Tehran isn't happy about this turn of events because it was holding Hezbollah's rockets in reserve for a possible retaliatory strike if Israel or the U.S. hit Iran's nuclear weapons complex.

But rockets are easily replaced, and Iran and Syria will now undertake a massive effort to make good Hezbollah's losses, and then some.

From the perspective of the Quartet of Evil, this conflict demonstrated the power of their rockets to blunt Israel's military superiority. Antitank missiles inflicted substantial losses on Israeli armor and infantry. A cruise missile badly damaged an Israeli warship that didn't have its defensive systems turned on. And Hezbollah was able to keep firing hundreds of Katyusha rockets a day into northern Israeli right up until the cease-fire.

Israel had managed to defeat the terrorists' previous wonder-weapon, the suicide bomber, by walling off the Gaza Strip and West Bank. But a fence won't stop missiles. Israel will now be loath to retreat any further from the West Bank. Hamas, for its part, will have strong incentive to stockpile rockets in its Gaza redoubt and launch a "third intifada," as suggested by a columnist in the Hamas newspaper Al Risala.

Israel had hoped that this conflict would reestablish its deterrence, but, if anything, the unsatisfactory outcome will only embolden its enemies. The problem is that wars of attrition against fanatical jihadists who do not fear death and who hide among civilians negate to some extent the Israeli Defense Forces' superior firepower. Additionally, Iran, the ultimate source of terrorist money and arms, is too far away for effective Israeli retaliation.

Syria, however, is a weak link in the quartet.

Syria's importance as an advance base for Iran — the two countries concluded a formal alliance on June 16 — cannot be exaggerated. It is the go-between for most of the munitions flowing to Hezbollah. It is the sanctuary of Hamas honcho Khaled Meshaal. It is also, according to Israeli intelligence sources, the home of a new Iranian-Syrian intelligence center that tracks Israeli military movements and relays that information to terrorist proxies.

State Department optimists dream that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad can be weaned from Iran through concessions from the United States and Israel, such as the return of the Golan Heights. But since the early 1990s, the United States has tried repeatedly to strike a deal with Syria and never gotten anywhere. More economic pressure, especially from Europe, would be helpful, but it could probably be offset by increased subsidies from Iran.

History suggests that only force, or the threat of force, can win substantial concessions from Syria. In 1998, Turkey threatened military action unless Syria stopped supporting Kurdish terrorists. Damascus promptly complied. Israel may have no choice but to follow the Turkish example.

Indeed, Shlomo Avineri, a former director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, argues that his country fought the wrong war: Instead of targeting Lebanon, it should have gone after Syria. The Syrian armed forces are less motivated than Hezbollah, and they offer many more targets for Israeli airpower.

It is, of course, hard for a liberal democracy such as Israel to contemplate war if it hasn't been attacked directly — and Syria has been careful to avoid direct attacks on Israel. (It prefers to fight to the last Lebanese.) Israelis naturally prefer peace. But the choice they face isn't between war and peace. It is between war sooner and on their own terms, or war later and on the enemy's terms. Ignoring the threat and hoping that it goes away isn't a serious option. That's the mistake Israel made with Hezbollah over the last six years.

The 'New Middle East' Bush Is Resisting

By Saad Eddin Ibrahim
The Washington Post
Wednesday, August 23, 2006; A15

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. In fact, their policies in support of the actions of their closest regional ally, Israel, have helped midwife the newborn. But it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. For one thing, it will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States. For another, it is going to be a rough birth.

What is happening in the broader Middle East and North Africa can be seen as a boomerang effect that has been playing out slowly since the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001. In the immediate aftermath of those attacks, there was worldwide sympathy for the United States and support for its declared "war on terrorism," including the invasion of Afghanistan. Then the cynical exploitation of this universal goodwill by so-called neoconservatives to advance hegemonic designs was confirmed by the war in Iraq. The Bush administration's dishonest statements about "weapons of mass destruction" diminished whatever credibility the United States might have had as liberator, while disastrous mismanagement of Iraqi affairs after the invasion led to the squandering of a conventional military victory. The country slid into bloody sectarian violence, while official Washington stonewalled and refused to admit mistakes. No wonder the world has progressively turned against America.

Against this declining moral standing, President Bush made something of a comeback in the first year of his second term. He shifted his foreign policy rhetoric from a "war on terrorism" to a war of ideas and a struggle for liberty and democracy. Through much of 2005 it looked as if the Middle East might finally have its long-overdue spring of freedom. Lebanon forged a Cedar Revolution, triggered by the assassination of its popular former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. Egypt held its first multi-candidate presidential election in 50 years. So did Palestine and Iraq, despite harsh conditions of occupation. Qatar and Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf continued their steady evolution into constitutional monarchies. Even Saudi Arabia held its first municipal elections.

But there was more. Hamas mobilized candidates and popular campaigns to win a plurality in Palestinian legislative elections and form a new government. Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt achieved similar electoral successes. And with these developments, a sudden chill fell over Washington and other Western capitals.

Instead of welcoming these particular elected officials into the newly emerging democratic fold, Washington began a cold war on Muslim democrats. Even the tepid pressure on autocratic allies of the United States to democratize in 2005 had all but disappeared by 2006. In fact, tottering Arab autocrats felt they had a new lease on life with the West conveniently cowed by an emerging Islamist political force.

Now the cold war on Islamists has escalated into a shooting war, first against Hamas in Gaza and then against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel is perceived in the region, rightly or wrongly, to be an agent acting on behalf of U.S. interests. Some will admit that there was provocation for Israel to strike at Hamas and Hezbollah following the abduction of three soldiers and attacks on military and civilian targets. But destroying Lebanon with an overkill approach born of a desire for vengeance cannot be morally tolerated or politically justified -- and it will not work.

On July 30 Arab, Muslim and world outrage reached an unprecedented level with the Israeli bombing of a residential building in the Lebanese village of Qana, which killed dozens and wounded hundreds of civilians, most of them children. A similar massacre in Qana in 1996, which Arabs remember painfully well, proved to be the political undoing of then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres. It is too early to predict whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will survive Qana II and the recent war. But Hezbollah will survive, just as it has already outlasted five Israeli prime ministers and three American presidents.

Born in the thick of an earlier Israeli invasion, in 1982, Hezbollah is at once a resistance movement against foreign occupation, a social service provider for the needy of the rural south and the slum-dwellers of Beirut, and a model actor in Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics. Despite access to millions of dollars in resources from within and from regional allies Syria and Iran, its three successive leaders have projected an image of clean governance and a pious personal lifestyle.

In more than four weeks of fighting against the strongest military machine in the region, Hezbollah held its own and won the admiration of millions of Arabs and Muslims. People in the region have compared its steadfastness with the swift defeat of three large Arab armies in the Six-Day War of 1967. Hasan Nasrallah, its current leader, spoke several times to a wide regional audience through his own al-Manar network as well as the more popular al-Jazeera. Nasrallah has become a household name in my own country, Egypt.

According to the preliminary results of a recent public opinion survey of 1,700 Egyptians by the Cairo-based Ibn Khaldun Center, Hezbollah's action garnered 75 percent approval, and Nasrallah led a list of 30 regional public figures ranked by perceived importance. He appears on 82 percent of responses, followed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (73 percent), Khaled Meshal of Hamas (60 percent), Osama bin Laden (52 percent) and Mohammed Mahdi Akef of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (45 percent).

The pattern here is clear, and it is Islamic. And among the few secular public figures who made it into the top 10 are Palestinian Marwan Barghouti (31 percent) and Egypt's Ayman Nour (29 percent), both of whom are prisoners of conscience in Israeli and Egyptian jails, respectively.

None of the current heads of Arab states made the list of the 10 most popular public figures. While subject to future fluctuations, these Egyptian findings suggest the direction in which the region is moving. The Arab people do not respect the ruling regimes, perceiving them to be autocratic, corrupt and inept. They are, at best, ambivalent about the fanatical Islamists of the bin Laden variety. More mainstream Islamists with broad support, developed civic dispositions and services to provide are the most likely actors in building a new Middle East. In fact, they are already doing so through the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, the similarly named PJD in Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and, yes, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

These groups, parties and movements are not inimical to democracy. They have accepted electoral systems and practiced electoral politics, probably too well for Washington's taste. Whether we like it or not, these are the facts. The rest of the Western world must come to grips with the new reality, even if the U.S. president and his secretary of state continue to reject the new offspring of their own policies.

The writer is an Egyptian democracy activist and a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. He is currently a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, writing his prison memoirs.

Former Mossad boss steels West for 'third world war'

Terrorist roundups prove only the need for tougher measures, ex-spymaster tells COLIN FREEZE
COLIN FREEZE
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
22/08/06

TORONTO -- Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, many experts feel that the war on terror has reached its climax. Yet a former Israeli spymaster is urging the West to gird for the long haul and take ever-tougher steps to fight terrorism.

"This is a third world war," Efraim Halevy, Mossad director from 1998 to 2002, told The Globe and Mail in an interview yesterday. "International Islamic terror has made its objectives and aims very clear."

Although al-Qaeda-inspired plots have been thwarted this summer in Britain and Canada, Mr. Halevy takes scant comfort in the arrests. He said they simply prove that more vigilance is needed against a threat that is still growing.

"Imagine [the Toronto group] was not penetrated," was his advice to Canadian lawmakers. "Even if a plot has been uncovered, you must treat the threat as if the plot had succeeded."

Mr. Halevy conceded that such a mindset would necessarily lead politicians to consider racial profiling, short-term preventive detentions and other measures that would seem anathema to democratic civil liberties.

"The price is a high price," he conceded. "Socially, politically, internally, internationally, it's a high price to pay. But the alternative is even more horrendous."

His remarks stand in contrast to many of the prevailing opinions in the West. High-profile controversies -- examples include the Guantanamo Bay prison experiment, the U.S-led invasion of Iraq, the so-called extraordinary renditions of terrorism suspects to face imprisonment or torture in foreign states -- have prompted judges, politicians and citizens to call for anti-terrorism measures to be reined in, not expanded.

Even some of Mr. Halevy's contemporaries agree, to a point.

"We don't profile because it's fundamentally stupid," Canadian Security Intelligence Service chief Jim Judd said last week.

"The wartime approach made sense for a while, but as time passes and the situation changes, so must the strategy," Richard Dearlove, the head of Britain's MI6 from 1999 to 2004, told the Atlantic Monthly this month.

But Mr. Halevy lamented that not enough is being done to fight al-Qaeda-style terrorism. Sooner or later, he said, Western democracies will have to realize that.

"This is a third world war. I would disagree entirely with the premise of Dearlove," he said yesterday.

While Israeli civilians have been constantly targeted by attacks, Mr. Halevy observed, countries that have never been attacked refuse to accept the fact that they may be in danger. He finds that even countries that have been hit, such as Britain, tend to become complacent within months of attacks.

Mr. Halevy was in Toronto yesterday to promote his memoir, Man in the Shadows, published earlier this year. In the book, he argues that the threat of international terrorism is growing, leaving Western democracies no choice but to team up and aggressively root out terrorists wherever they can be found.

But he also pointed out that recent years have elevated the status of a group he calls "the professionals," security chiefs who advise politicians, as he did. Their roles are rightly growing ever more important, he said.

A pragmatist, Mr. Halevy met many Arab and Muslim leaders through his work, and said that he would not close the door to talks with Hamas, Hezbollah or even Iran. But he says the threat posed by al-Qaeda's ideology is by far the most sinister one that exists today.

Its goal, he said, "is to disrupt societies of the free world, to cripple the economies of the free world, to force the free world to get out of the hair of the Muslim states, to facilitate the advance of Islam so that ultimately Islam will reach the goal [where] the world as a whole will be the world of Islam."

Yet he fears that many Western democracies, including Canada, will fail to pay adequate attention until they are attacked. Even then, the window for new laws will be short, he said.

"But I can assure that if there were such an event in Canada, for two to three months, the government could get through certain measures it could never get through before," he said.

"The key is, in my opinion, to line up in advance all the measures you think are necessary. Realize you can't get them approved until there is an act. Hope for the better, that there will be no such act, but be ready."

Genocide, Continued

And a U.N. resolution that could stop it
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 22, 2006; A14

SUDAN'S DIPLOMATS have sometimes had the gall to describe the killing in Darfur as a problem of underdevelopment. Poverty creates desperation and violence, they plead; rather than blaming the Sudanese government for the suffering that results, the United States and its allies should show that they care about Africans by offering practical assistance. Well, last week Britain and the United States circulated a U.N. Security Council resolution that would get about 20,000 peacekeeping troops and police officers into Darfur; if such a force were actually deployed, it would represent the greatest step forward for Darfur since the killing started. But Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, seems determined to frustrate this offer of assistance.

The resolution is said to have the support of most members of the Security Council. It was developed in consultation with France, which initially tried to minimize the proposed number of troops but then accepted the Anglo-American position. China, which bends over backward not to offend Sudan's government because of its oil investments in the country, nonetheless has yet to veto any Sudan resolution at the United Nations and would probably go along with this one.

The only outspoken critic of the resolution on the Security Council is Qatar, which is reflecting the collective unwisdom of the Arab League. The Arabs have long opposed a U.N. deployment in Darfur, apparently because they believe in the sovereign right of governments to slaughter civilians. To disguise the brutality of this position, the Arabs have in the past professed a preference for the existing African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, even offering to provide resources to it. But that was just talk. Virtually all the funding for the African Union force has come from Europe and the United States. It will dry up at the end of September, making a U.N. follow-on force vital.

Fortunately, the Arabs' cynical stance need not prevent the resolution from being adopted. But to deploy the proposed force, the United Nations will need cooperation from Sudan's government; it cannot fight its way into Darfur. Mr. Bashir has already accepted a 12,000-member U.N. force in Sudan's south, so he can't claim a principled objection to the presence of U.N. peacekeepers in his country. But he retains an unprincipled determination to keep the United Nations out of Darfur, even though the need for a peacekeeping force is clearer than ever.

The world needs to be clear what Mr. Bashir's position amounts to. As a result of his government's systematic destruction of African villages in Darfur, more than 2 million displaced people there depend on humanitarian relief, but mounting violence that claimed the lives of eight aid workers last month makes the delivery of relief extremely difficult. In these circumstances, barring the entry of peacekeepers is to condemn thousands of displaced civilians to starvation. It is to continue the policy of genocide that has marked this crisis from the outset.

In Lebanon, Even Peace Is a Battle

By CARLOS PASCUAL and MARTIN INDYK
Op-Ed Contributors
The New York Times
August 22, 2006

VICTORY in the latest war in Lebanon will not be won on the battlefield, but in the race between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to rebuild homes and lives. Despite President Bush’s pledge yesterday of an additional $230 million for reconstruction, Hezbollah is far out front. The international community will need to get $1 billion into Lebanon now, raise $2.5 billion more over three years, and stimulate $5 billion in private investment to enable the Lebanese government to demonstrate that it, not Hezbollah, can build a peaceful and prosperous society.

Six principles should guide this reconstruction effort.

The first is speed. An emergency donors’ conference should have already been convened. An international fund needs to be created with procedures for fast, audited disbursement. It is important that there be just one trust fund, with one set of rules for all donors, or more time will be spent on the bureaucracy of spending than on restoring economic activity.

The oil-rich Persian Gulf states should provide the bulk of the resources. They have a huge stake in ensuring that a ruined Lebanon does not now fall into the hands of Iran via its Hezbollah proxy. Iran is already financing Hezbollah’s offer of $10,000 grants to pay for housing, furniture and family needs. Recognizing the challenge, Saudi Arabia pledged $500 million in reconstruction assistance.

But the United States needs to do even more, more quickly. Recall that tiny Kosovo, with half the population Lebanon, absorbed more than $2 billion after the 1999 conflict. Congress should make an emergency appropriation of an additional $500 million. And Israel, although it has its own reconstruction needs, should request that Washington temporarily reallocate some of its annual $2.3 billion in American military assistance to help the Lebanese government.

The second principle is to put the Lebanese government out front. If the “root cause” that President Bush has sought to address is the existence of Hezbollah’s “state within a state,” then the cure is to replace the militant group’s efforts with government programs to meet the needs of the mainly Shiite population of southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Some in Washington may balk at allowing nongovernmental groups to work in municipalities that have elected officials from Hezbollah. But it is exactly Hezbollah’s political success in those areas that shows why the international community must present a visible and effective alternative in all parts of the south.

Doing so will require getting money and programs to the local level, where residents will know what is needed and possible. Aid groups like Mercy Corps, World Vision and Catholic Relief Services — groups whose approaches have been well tested in other war-torn areas — are ready to create family, business and community support programs to help rebuild local economies. But they will need some $100 million immediately from international donors to support these local efforts for the most affected 1.5 million people.

The third principle is to use local capacity. Iraq taught us how not to rebuild: using international contractors that take months to get in place and spend perhaps a third of their budgets protecting themselves. Lebanon has world-class engineers and experience from rebuilding the country after its civil war. Lebanese and Arab contractors who employ local workers should be given priority. Of course, international donors will need to help the Lebanese government design streamlined procurement rules with external auditors. Again, let’s learn from Iraq: payments should be based on results, not on level of effort.

The fourth principle is security. We concur with the urgent calls to deploy an international force in the south. But two other factors are key. One is to train and equip the Lebanese Army — starting with the 15,000 Lebanese troops that will deploy to the south with the international force. Based on experience elsewhere, supporting them will cost at least $20,000 per soldier, about $300 million — about seven times what Mr. Bush proposed. Fortunately, even before this conflict, the Pentagon had studied the modernization needs of the Lebanese military. This plan must be turned into action.

Another security requirement is to bolster the Lebanese civil police force so it can maintain order in areas now controlled by Hezbollah. The United States does not have much capacity in this area, but the European Union does — and Washington should help pay. The Bush administration should tap two separate special authorities Congress provided in the 2006 budget for up to $300 million in emergency security transfers from the Defense Department budget.

A fifth principle is to make maximum use of the private sector. As they showed in recovering from civil war, the Lebanese are among the most entrepreneurial people on earth. Rather than having the West send huge amounts of food aid that can depress local markets, families should be given cash grants that will allow them to buy food.

Thinking big, donors should tap insurance companies and private banks to help Lebanese businesses. Here there is a positive lesson from Afghanistan, where the United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation has insured businesses for more than $1 billion. Imagine the potential in Lebanon if the United States, the European Union, and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation announced that they would insure $5 billion of new business activity.

And, finally, rescuing Lebanon will require patience and persistence. Among countries that managed to stop wars that were tearing them apart, some 40 percent were at it again within five years. A major reason is that international donors pull out too quickly, before reconstruction takes root.

Yet again, conflict between Israel and Lebanon has wrought immense destruction on both sides. A lasting peace will occur only if the Lebanese people come to see that their government is more capable than Hezbollah of providing them with security, dignity and hope for a normal life.

Carlos Pascual, the vice president for foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, was the State Department’s coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization from 2003 to 2005. Martin Indyk, the director of Brookings’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, was the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs from 1997 to 2000.

The New Arab World

The Arab nation has passed a threshold, a culture of resistance rising in unity
By Hana Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty
08/18/2006

The project for a new Middle East was stillborn and is now buried. There is a democratic renaissance sweeping the Arab world that calls for independence, an Arab Palestine, unity, justice and democracy. It cannot be stopped. The political map of the region is being redrawn, but not by the Americans, nor the Israelis. The success of this renaissance is a gift for us all, pointing as it does towards a renewal of the international order along the lines of justice and the defence of human values. The page has been turned on 50 years of US-Israeli foreign policy. It is a new era. The tide has turned. Only how much destruction the bloodthirsty US-Israeli war machine will be able to inflict before it admits defeat remains to be seen and depends on our ability to resist globally. Arab victory is certain.

The project for a new Middle East was based upon three myths and lies. All were intertwined and originate from the discriminatory assertion at the heart of Occidental imperialism that Arabs are naturally backward. According to the first lie, Arabs are unable to develop democratic movements and naturally support dictatorial, extremist regimes (the definition of which always lies in the mind of Western powers). The “free” world should therefore, like charity, bring democracy to the region. The second lie follows that due to their backwardness, the Arabs cannot defeat Israel and must accept the dispossession its inception forced upon them as a fait accompli. Following successive humiliating Arab defeats (1948, 1967, 1973) while trying to bring an end to the alien Zionist occupation of Palestinian land, the US and its local client regimes tried to force upon the Arab people the belief that Israel is invincible, underlining the logic of normalisation and the second class status of Arabs. The third virulent lie is that nothing unites the Arabs, their backwardness and tribalism leads them to sectarian and feudal forms of organisation.

American empire is exceptional in that contrary to all previous empires it does not herald the promise of universalist values but instead brazenly declares its goal as the propagation of its own interests. The implementation of its strategy serves only the welfare of local, feudal, corrupted warlords, denying even the right to life to local populations. In the space of three years, US occupation and its stooges have attempted — and still attempt — to destroy Iraq both as a state and a nation. In the long tradition of divide to rule, they tried to deprive the Iraqi people of their unifying Arabo-Muslim identity by promoting sectarian forces. It resulted in the rape of the Iraqi nation, the plunder and theft of its resources, and the cold-blooded killing of its citizens. Meanwhile, democratically elected Palestinian representatives are abducted by Israel; the population starved as stated policy, continually subject to military attack. The latest criminal assault on Lebanon exposed the faultlines once and for all. US refusals to call for a ceasefire — to stop the criminal slaughter of Lebanese civilians and the destruction of their infrastructure which lasted four weeks — outraged all Arab people and millions worldwide. We knew it, but now no one can doubt it: US-Israeli plans for the region are the enemy of our people.

The myth of Israel’s invincibility also collapsed along with the justifications of servile Arab regimes for the continued repression of their own people. While entire Arab armies have in the past been defeated within days, Hizbullah proved not only its endurance but also its swift ability to change military tactics in tune with events while retaining its composure and humility in defending Arabs everywhere. The dignity alone that Hizbullah’s triumph has afforded to Arabs is a signal of, and is essential to, the defeat of Zionism. For 30 years Arabs have been assigned to second-class status. In just over 30 days they have thrown off this worthless mantle as though it were nothing. The blow is not just to Zionism. Hizbullah’s military maturity and communications prowess has exposed the cowardliness and impotence of all Arab regimes who pretend to be nationalist but who advocate for, and repress in the name of, normalisation with Zionism. Hizbullah, within days, did more for democracy in the Arab world than Arab regimes achieved in years, the latter forced to retract their recriminations against the former in the face of popular pressure.

In Lebanon the third enduring myth about Arabs being unable to think except along sectarian lines collapsed magnificently. Perhaps the US-Israeli strategists thought it would be easier, following 15 years of civil war for Lebanon to rapidly fall into civil strife. They don’t learn, but struggling people do. Lebanese unity behind Hizbullah — as much as 87 per cent according to polls — destroyed the myth that Arabs can never unite. Likewise after three years of relentless attempts to create civil strife in Iraq by any means, the US occupation has not managed to pitch Iraqis against each other. Never in 4000 years have Iraqis been sectarian. That occupation-linked sectarian militias are fighting each other and killing thousands of civilians is not a sign of sectarianism in Iraq. It is a US-imposed tactic of bringing chaos to decimate the inherent unity of Iraqi and Arabo-Muslim identity. Along with Zionism’s ill-fated misadventure in Lebanon, it failed before the invasion. Rather, there is a growing movement across the region that believes in the skills, maturity, will and ability of the united Arabs to liberate themselves from post-colonial agendas. Never will this movement accept the existence of a state created on their land to serve foreign capitalist interests.

Across generations and regardless of the ideology embraced or the leader embodying the movement, rising Arab struggles adopted the same slogans: independence, unity, Arab Palestine — with people of different faiths living as equal citizens and in peace — and an efficient state. Today, the youth of the nation is eager for real justice and democracy and adopts the same slogans. The servile Arab regimes, already deeply isolated from and fearful of their own people, failed to understand this growing movement of resistance and further alienated themselves — as proven by ignominious statements absolving Zionist aggression. Their fate, along with the US-Israeli project, is cast. Israel’s systematic destruction of Lebanese national infrastructure, which passed without comment from Washington, exposed unequivocally that the US-Zionist project cares nothing for Arab advancement. The War on terror is a war on all forms of resistance to US-styled globalisation and its imposition by military power.

Since the very day the occupation forces came to Iraq and the Iraqi state collapsed, there has been an uprising by all Iraqi movements and organisations; including those defending women, or unemployed youth, human rights organisations, trade unions, professional syndicates, agencies defending environmental issues and the rights of prisoners, and all other cultural and political organisations, side-by-side with provincial and tribal communities and peaceful and armed resistance groups. They have all risen following an unwritten political agenda that symbolises the whole society and derives its legitimacy from the deep sense of belonging to Arab and Islamic tenets. Likewise, the Lebanese civil resistance swift organisation to defend their land and sovereignty, as proven by the south Lebanese’s refugees’ insistence to return despite the presence of unexploded cluster bombs, and the Lebanese peoples’ unequivocal support for Hizbullah regardless of their respective political background, proves the same tendency. The interest of the lower and middle class have merged and will result in a never ending social and if necessary armed struggle to achieve independence, justice and democracy. The youth of the nation, which believes and trusts in the richness of its culture and civilisation will not accept selling short the rights of the country and the nation. It is confident of carrying the technical and intellectual skills to administer its own resources for the benefit of all, without foreign interference in their internal affairs.

Attempts to choke Arab development cannot but fail. The three main currents developed by Arab societies — nationalists, Islamists and leftists — are intrinsically anti-imperialist and therefore opposed to US-Israeli regional designs. For nationalists, retaining control of national resources to serve the general interest is sacrosanct. For leftists, opposing the international chains of imperialism and globalisation is a baseline. For Islamists, resistance to foreign occupation — as written in the Quran — is a duty. Their interest lays currently in achieving unity in the struggle. They are united by their Arabo-Muslim identity. They share common principles and values as follows: the natural resources, material heritage, and the riches of culture and civilisation are the property of the totality of the people. The totality of citizens constitutes the people. The people are the sole source of sovereignty and of constitutional, political and judicial legitimacy. Government is responsible and accountable to all the citizens. Solidarity between citizens — between generations, the able and ill, the elderly and young, the orphan and every human being who finds himself in a state of weakness — should form the basis of any government’s social policy. The general interest is the justification and basis for the operation of the state, with every citizen, free of all forms of discrimination, sharing in the fruits of national wealth and social development. In struggling against military-imperial powers, the Arabs fight in defence of values around which a majority in the world gathers in consensus.

What US-Israeli neo-imperialists have to offer is not only contrary to the interests of the Arab people, it is immoral. Never in history has a single political agenda — US-Zionist imperial dominion — been opposed by so many, in all countries, and across all continents. The Arab liberation struggle stands at the forefront of this global rejection and is the centre of an historic battle not between civilisations but for civilisation. Thus it is Israel, not the Arab nation, which stands in violation of rafts of UN resolutions, daily committing new atrocities in Gaza or the West Bank at the same time as it bombs residential areas in Beirut in violation of international humanitarian law — the baseline of civil protection against state terrorism. It is the United States that presides over a situation in Baghdad whereby government-supported death squads sweep and terrorise whole neighbourhoods and in the month of July alone more than 1800 corpses appeared strewn around the city, hundreds marked with signs of sadistic torture. To prevail in this context marks not only a victory for all Arabs, but all peoples in the human struggle towards freedom and justice. When in the centre of the storm Arabs fight with their lives for a better world they challenge the same neoliberal and neoconservative elite classes that waves of anti-globalisation activists, civil society movements, and democracy and human rights advocates worldwide oppose.

Resistance is a matter of situation. Not all should or can carry arms. Tel Aviv and Washington are desperate. The edifice of their military superiority and moral authority is shattered. Not even chemical weapons, which Israel uses freely in Gaza and Lebanon as the US used in Tel Afar, Ramadi and Fallujah, can bring the Arab people and its ever-widening culture of resistance to its knees. Empire is already buried. Short of annihilating every Arab to the last woman, child and man, US-Israeli plans are already defeated. But there is no room for complacency. Now is the time for the people of this world to endorse and support the Arab struggle globally.

Every advocate of an alternative world should play a part in supporting the transformation that the renaissance of Arab struggles heralds. Whereas brute force has too often decided history, in the new world there will be no peace without justice, and no justice without the right of return for every displaced Palestinian; the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the occupation from Iraq, along with the cancellation of all laws, treaties and agreements passed since the illegal invasion of the country; respect of Lebanese sovereignty and the condemnation and prosecution of Israel for the numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity it has perpetrated in Lebanon and in Gaza; that all Arab states and people which have been aggressed should receive fair reparations and compensations for the human and material loses they’ve endured; that all political prisoners should be set free immediately. Until these requirements are met, global civil disobedience is not only justified, it is a moral duty.

The writer is a member of the Executive Committee of The BRussells Tribunal (www.brusselstribunal.org). 20 August 2006.

US extends credit line to Israel

Bush administration agrees to extend by three-year loan guarantees for Israel given to Israel in 2003; Israel has used USD 4.9 billion of a total USD 9 billion
Ynetnews, Israel
Aug 20, 2006

The Bush administration has agreed to an Israel demand that a loan guarantee deal be extended by an additional three years, until 2011.

The Congress needs to approve the move.

Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson said the administration's conceding to Israel's request underscores Washington's faith in Israeli economy.

In 2003, the United States approved a USD 9 billion aid package to Israel in the form of loan guarantees which allow Israel to borrow money on the international market for low interest rates.

Israel has used less than half of the fund leaving USD 4.6 billion in available cash.

Finance Minister Director General Yossi Bachar discussed the extension of the loan period with US Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmit.

Hirchson praised the Administration for expressing faith in Israel's economy.

Bachar will leave for New York on Wednesday where he will present to officials and investors the Israeli government's fiscal plans after the war in the north.

Killing Won’t Win This War

By TERENCE J. DALY
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
August 21, 2006

THREE years into the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, everyone from slicksleeved privates fighting for survival in Ramadi to the echelons above reality at the Pentagon still believes that eliminating insurgents will eliminate the insurgency. They are wrong.

There is a difference between killing insurgents and fighting an insurgency. In three years, the Sunni insurgency has grown from nothing into a force that threatens our national objective of establishing and maintaining a free, independent and united Iraq. During that time, we have fought insurgents with airstrikes, artillery, the courage and tactical excellence of our forces, and new technology worth billions of dollars. We are further from our goal than we were when we started.

Counterinsurgency is about gaining control of the population, not killing or detaining enemy fighters. A properly planned counterinsurgency campaign moves the population, by stages, from reluctant acceptance of the counterinsurgent force to, ideally, full support.

American soldiers deride “winning hearts and minds” as the equivalent of sitting around a campfire singing “Kumbaya.” But in fact it is a sophisticated, multifaceted, even ruthless struggle to wrest control of a population from cunning and often brutal foes. The counterinsurgent must be ready and able to kill insurgents — lots of them — but as a means, not an end.

Counterinsurgency is work better suited to a police force than a military one. Military forces — by tradition, organization, equipment and training — are best at killing people and breaking things. Police organizations, on the other hand, operate with minimum force. They know their job can’t be done from miles away by technology. They are accustomed to face-to-face contact with their adversaries, and they know how to draw street-level information and support from the populace. The police don’t threaten the governments they work under, because they don’t have the firepower to stage coups.

The United States needs a professional police organization specifically for creating and keeping public order in cooperation with American or foreign troops during international peacekeeping operations. It must be able to help the military control indigenous populations in failing states like Haiti or during insurgencies like the one in Falluja.

The force should include light armored cavalry and air cavalry paramilitary patrol units to deal with armed guerillas, as well as linguistically trained and culturally attuned experts for developing and running informants. It should be skilled and professional at screening and debriefing detainees, and at conducting public information and psychological operations. It must be completely transportable by air and accustomed to working effectively with American and local military forces.

Bureaucratic ownership of this force will doubtless be controversial. Because the mission of international peacekeeping entails dealing mostly with civilians, the force would ideally be a civilian organization. But no civilian department is currently structured in a way that seems suitable.

At least initially, the force would most likely fall under the Department of Defense. The establishing legislation should include a fire wall, however, to guard against the tendency of paramilitary units to evolve into pure warriors with berets, boots and bangles.

Crucial to the success of this force is that the American people thoroughly discuss and understand the organization and its mission. Only by having this discussion can we avoid the example of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, which combined the Vietnamese National Police with American advisers to root the Viet Cong shadow government out of rural villages. The Phoenix Program was highly effective; because it was supposed to be secret, however, the program was not explained to the American people, and it became impossible to refute charges of torture and assassination. Without the support of the American people, the program lost momentum and died.

The legislation establishing the police force should firmly anchor it in respect for human rights. Its mission will be to advance American ideals of justice and freedom under the law, and it must do so by example as well as word. That will be both difficult and critical in a place like Iraq, where it would have to wrest control of the population from insurgents who regard beheading hostages with chain saws as acceptable.

Stringent population control measures like curfews, random searches, mandatory presentation of identity documents, searches of businesses and residences without warrants and preventive detention would be standing operating procedure. For such measures to be acceptable to the public, they must be based on solid legal ground and enforced fairly, transparently and impartially.

The police are used to functioning within legal restraints. Our armed forces, however, are used to obeying only the laws of war and the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice. Soldiers and marines are trained to respond to force with massive force. To expect them to switch overnight to using force only as permitted by a foreign legal code, enforced and reviewed by foreign magistrates and judges, is quite unrealistic. It could also threaten their survival the next time they have to fight a conventional enemy.

Forcing the round peg of our military, which has no equal in speed, firepower, maneuver and shock action, into the square hole of international law enforcement and population control isn’t working. We need a peacekeeping force to complement our war-fighters, and we need to start building it now.

Terence J. Daly is a retired military intelligence officer and counterinsurgency specialist who served in Vietnam as a province-level adviser.

Arab Allies Of US Push To Revive Talks

Boston Globe
August 20, 2006

CAIRO -- Worried the Lebanon war has given a boost to Iran and militants in the region, three US allies in the Mideast are spearheading an Arab effort to present a plan for reviving the stalled peace process and talks with Israel. Details remain sketchy, and Israel has expressed skepticism, saying it doubts any plan the trio put forward will take its security needs into account. But the effort by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan is a clear sign of their worries about tensions and Iran's influence. The United States has not talked about a wider peace effort in the wake of the Lebanon fighting, instead focusing on ensuring the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah is reined in.

And Now, Islamism Trumps Arabism

By Michael Slackman
New York Times
August 20, 2006

CAIRO--SHE grew up in Cairo with the privileges that go to the daughter of a military officer, attended a university and landed a job in marketing. He grew up in a poor village of dusty unpaved roads, where young men work long hours in a brick factory while dreaming of getting a government job that would pay $90 a month.

But Jihan Mahmoud, 24, from the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, and Madah Ali Muhammad, 23, from a village in the Nile Delta, have come to the exact same conclusion about what they and their country need: a strong Islamic political movement.

“I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak,” Ms. Mahmoud said, referring to the president of Egypt. “That is why I am proud to be a Muslim.”

The war in Lebanon, and the widespread conviction among Arabs that Hezbollah won that war by bloodying Israel, has fostered and validated those kinds of feelings across Egypt and the region. In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.

“The victory that Hezbollah achieved in Lebanon will have earthshaking regional consequences that will have an impact much beyond the borders of Lebanon itself,” Yasser Abuhilalah of Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily, wrote in Tuesday’s issue.

“The resistance celebrates the victory,” read the front-page headline in Al Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt.

Hezbollah’s perceived triumph has propelled, and been propelled by, a wave already washing over the region. Political Islam was widely seen as the antidote to the failures of Arab nationalism, Communism, socialism and, most recently, what is seen as the false promise of American-style democracy. It was that wave that helped the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood win 88 seats in Egypt’s Parliament last December despite the government’s violent efforts to stop voters from getting to the polls. It was that wave that swept Hamas into power in the Palestinian government in January, shocking Hamas itself.

“We need an umbrella,” said Mona Mahmoud, 40, Jihan’s older sister. “In the 60’s, Arabism was the umbrella. We had a cause. Now we lack an umbrella. We feel lost in space. We need to be affiliated to something. Usually in our part of the world, because of what religion means to us, we immediately resort to it.”

The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity. People in Egypt still talk painfully about the loss to Israel in 1967, a loss that was the beginning of the end of pan-Arabism as an ideology to unite the region and define its people.

Hezbollah’s perceived victory has highlighted, and to many people here validated, the rise of another unifying ideology, a kind of Arab-Islamic nationalism. On the street it has even seemed to erase divisions between Islamic sects, like Sunni and Shiite. At the moment, the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, is widely viewed as a pan-Arab Islamic hero.

“The losers are going to be the Arab regimes, U.S.A. and Israel,” said Dr. Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “The secular resistance movements are gone. Now there are the Islamists coming in. So the new nationalism is going to be religious nationalism, and one of the main reasons is dignity. People want their dignity back.”

The terms Islamic nationalism and pan-Islamism have a negative connotation in the West, where they are associated with fundamentalism and terrorism. But that is increasingly not the case in Egypt. Under the dual pressures of foreign military attacks in the region and a government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate, Islamic groups are seen by many people as incorruptible, disciplined, efficient and caring. A victory for Hezbollah in Lebanon is by extension a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

“People will say Hezbollah achieved a very good thing, so why should we mistrust the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Hassan Naffa, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

There is a wide diversity of views and agendas under the pan-Islamic-Arab umbrella. But as is often the case in politically aligned movements, those differences are easily papered over when that movement is in the opposition.

“Hezbollah is a resistance movement that has given us a solution,” said Yomana Samaha, a radio talk-show host in Cairo who identified herself as secular and a supporter of separating religion and government. But when asked if she would vote for a Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt, she said “Yeah, why not?”

It was an answer she seemed reluctant — but relieved — to state.

“If they have a solution,” she repeated, “why not?”

A solution to what?

“Loss of dignity,” said Mona Mahmoud, who is her friend.

Concepts of individual and collective identity are fluid here. During the British occupation of Egypt, a rise in Egyptian nationalism helped lead to independence in the early 1900’s. After the revolution of 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser led the country and the region to seek unity under the banner of Arabism. That was a theme trumpeted by leaders from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya to Hafez al-Assad in Syria to Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

But according to many political scientists and intellectuals, the glue of pan-Arabism began to weaken in Egypt after defeat in the Arab-Israel War of 1967, a decline that quickened through the 1970’s and into the 1980’s.

“People think that this defeat was a punishment from God because we drifted far from the teachings of Islam,” said Gamal Badawi, an Egyptian historian.

Since then there has been a steady and visible change in many Egyptians’ relationship to political Islam. It is not that Egyptians are suddenly more religious, political analysts said. This has always been a religious country. It is that they are more apt to define themselves by their faith. On the streets, that is most evident in the number of women — an overwhelming majority — who cover their heads with Islamic headscarves, a sign not just of individual conviction but also of peer pressure.

“The failure of pan-Arabism, the lack of democracy, and corruption — this drives people to an extent of despair where they start to find the solution in religion,” said Gamal el-Ghitany, editor of Akhbar al-Adab, a literary magazine distributed in Egypt.

Echoing that view, Diaa Rashwan, an expert in Islamic movements and analyst with the government-financed Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said, “People have come to identify themselves more as Muslims during the last five years in response to the U.S.-led ‘war on terrorism’ which Egyptians frequently feel is a discriminatory campaign targeting Muslims and Islam worldwide.”

But it is not just outside pressures that have pressed so many people of this nation, and this region, toward that view. The events that helped shape Mr. Muhammad’s world view from his Delta village illustrate the way the government of Egypt also plays a role.

Last December Mr. Muhammad’s uncle, Mustafa Abdel Salam, 61, was shot in the head and killed by the Egyptian police as he was going to pray at a mosque, according to witnesses, including Mr. Muhammad and other villagers. The killing occurred on the last day of voting in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, a months-long process that was marred by police officers who were ordered to block voters from getting to the polls in many districts. The government grew concerned after candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood began winning in record numbers. While the brotherhood is banned, candidates affiliated with the organization ran as independents.

The government says that the police did not fire live ammunition at citizens, but many people were killed and doctors and witnesses — including Western diplomats — said that the police did fire live rounds into people trying to vote. After the election was over and Mr. Abdel Salam was buried, the brotherhood-affiliated candidate visited the family to offer his condolences and help. The winning candidate, from the governing National Democratic Party, did not visit.

Mr. Muhammad said that the whole experience strengthened his conviction that “Islam is the solution” — a phrase that is the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood. “Our voice is not heard,” said Mr. Muhammad. “It is only the authorities who have a say. The smallest thing, like we go to vote, and we get beaten. So I will hold on to my religion, and that’s it.”

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Egypt for this article, and Souad Mekhennet from Amman, Jordan.

Five Years After 9-11, Fear Finally Strikes Out

By Frank Rich
New York Times
August 20, 2006

THE results are in for the White House’s latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans’ fearing fear itself is over.

In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot — Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew — George W. Bush’s approval rating remains stuck in the 30’s, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency. While the new Middle East promised by Condi Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order we’ve lived with since 9/11 can be found everywhere: in Americans’ unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians’ and pundits’ hysterical overreaction to Joe Lieberman’s defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.”

It’s not as if the White House didn’t pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in “24.” But Mr. Bush’s Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of “Top Gun.” By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on “The Daily Show.” June’s scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a “full ground war” and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots.

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat — though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair’s vacation — is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn’t stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday’s talk shows. “It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out,” he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn’t figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.

No matter what the threat at hand, he can’t get his story straight. When he said last weekend that the foiling of the London plot revealed a Qaeda in disarray because “it’s been five years since they’ve been capable of putting together something of this sort,” he didn’t seem to realize that he was flatly contradicting the Ashcroft-Gonzales claims for the gravity of all the Qaeda plots they’ve boasted of stopping in those five years. As recently as last October, Mr. Bush himself announced a list of 10 grisly foiled plots, including one he later described as a Qaeda plan “already set in motion” to fly a hijacked plane “into the tallest building on the West Coast.”

Dick Cheney’s credibility is also nil: he will always be the man who told us that Iraqis would greet our troops as liberators and that the insurgency was in its last throes in May 2005. His latest and predictable effort to exploit terrorism for election-year fear-mongering — arguing that Ned Lamont’s dissent on Iraq gave comfort to “Al Qaeda types” — has no traction because the public has long since untangled the administration’s bogus linkage between the Iraq war and Al Qaeda. That’s why, of all the poll findings last week, the most revealing was one in the CBS survey: While the percentage of Americans who chose terrorism as our “most important problem” increased in the immediate aftermath of the London plot, terrorism still came in second, at only 17 percent, to Iraq, at 28 percent.

The administration’s constant refrain that Iraq is the “central front” in the war on terror is not only false but has now also backfired politically: only 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism. As its fifth anniversary arrives, 9/11 itself has been dwarfed by the mayhem in Iraq, where more civilians are now killed per month than died in the attack on America. The box-office returns of “World Trade Center” are a cultural sign of just how much America has moved on. For all the debate about whether it was “too soon” for such a Hollywood movie, it did better in the Northeast, where such concerns were most prevalent, than in the rest of the country, where, like “United 93,” it may have arrived too late. Despite wild acclaim from conservatives and an accompanying e-mail campaign, “World Trade Center” couldn’t outdraw “Step Up,” a teen romance starring a former Abercrombie & Fitch model and playing on 500 fewer screens.

Mr. Lamont’s victory in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial primary has been as overhyped as Mr. Stone’s movie. As a bellwether of national politics, one August primary in one very blue state is nearly meaningless. Mr. Lieberman’s star began to wane in Connecticut well before Iraq became a defining issue. His approval rating at home, as measured by the Quinnipiac poll, had fallen from 80 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in July 2003, and that was before his kamikaze presidential bid turned “Joementum” into a national joke.

The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician’s opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn’t easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman’s loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont’s victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont’s pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11.

That’s just another version of the Cheney-Lieberman argument, and it’s hogwash. Most of the 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq also want to win the war against Al Qaeda and its metastasizing allies: that’s one major reason they don’t want America bogged down in Iraq. Mr. Lamont’s public statements put him in that camp as well, which is why those smearing him resort to the cheap trick of citing his leftist great-uncle (the socialist Corliss Lamont) while failing to mention that his father was a Republican who served in the Nixon administration. (Mr. Lieberman, ever bipartisan, has accused Mr. Lamont of being both a closet Republican and a radical.)

These commentators are no more adept at reading the long-term implications of the Connecticut primary than they were at seeing through blatant White House propaganda about Saddam’s mushroom clouds. Their generalizations about the blogosphere are overheated; the shrillest left-wing voices on the Internet are no more representative of the whole than those of the far right. This country remains a country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and (if you listen to Chuck Hagel and George Will, among other non-neoconservatives) even the center right.

As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It’s hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who’ve presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.