In The Red Zone

Tonight, many of us will celebrate in the time-honored tradition of high spirits and good-fellowship, the arrival of 2005.  One hundred and forty-two years ago this night, people across the continent also welcomed the passing of the old into the new--many of them with a joy they had not believed possible.  These were people of African descent, and they knew that, at the stroke of midnight 1863, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect, technically freeing millions of men and women enslaved by the Confederate States of America.

One month from today, the Iraqi people will--insha'allah--vote in the first free elections ever held in that nation's tortured history.  As with the Emancipation Proclamation, however, "free" is a relative term.  How "free" elections can be in a country where foreign troops must guard voters against paramilitary gunmen who seek to murder democracy is open to debate.  We might, though, exercise some self-restraint and allow some Iraqis a say in this matter.  As the renown trio of bloggers at Iraq the Model expressed in a December 29th post entitled "God Bless All the Lists,"

Iraqis' response to terror was so clear; after the terrorists, or the so-called insurgents, threatened to slaughter anyone who participates in the elections, 7,200 Iraqis rushed to announce their candidacy.  YES, 7,200 Iraqis represented more than 200 different political parties--and I believe this makes the image clearer for the viewer.

Will the Iraqi elections be "free?"  Possibly not by the standards of Jimmy Carter or U.N. officials; certainly not the lights of the anti-war camp who, unthreatened by fascist paramilitaries, reactionary psychopaths and random acts of unspeakable violence, make a fetish of their own moral purity.  But we, who support this war, should not allow they, who do not, let the perfect defeat the good.  What will happen in Iraq on January 30 will not be ideal.  It will not be neat or completely satisfactory.  But after the horrors the Iraqi people have suffered, and continue to endure, it will be good.  Perhaps, like the Emancipation Proclamation, it will be miraculous.

We might further pause to consider what happened nearly 150 years ago.  How, culminating decades of mounting tension, the rebel shelling of Fort Sumter precipitated a war that nearly destroyed the United States, yet led, with the Union's victory, to the 14th Amendment and the legal--if not practical--abolishment of slavery.  We might reflect, as well, on the difficult period of the Reconstruction.   Then, as now, a "foreign" army "occupied" a defeated nation; then, as now, hooded paramilitaries called the Ku Klux Klan "resisted" the occupiers and sought to terrorize people back into slavery; then, as now, the process of freedom met numerous setbacks and failures--and to many, the process is not yet complete.  We might also ponder the fact, contra the arguments of the anti-war camp, democracy can--and has been--imposed on a recalcitrant population at the point of a gun.

The liberation and reconstruction of Iraq is part of a larger conflict against Islamofascism.  Just as, say, the Union drive across Tennessee contributed to the demise of slavery, so too victory in Iraq will help roll back the tide of tribal and religious oppression that has gripped the Middle East (often, unfortunately, with our blessing and assistance.)  This is another way of saying that at the base of this war lie fundamental concepts of freedom and dignity.  Or, to put it more simply, the battle for Iraq's future is a matter of human rights.  It is a moral, as much as a military, conflict.

To discredit America's commitment to Iraq, many leftists liken it to Vietnam, knowing full well the chilling effect memories of the Southeast Asian "quagmire" have on public opinion.  We should contest their rhetoric with analogies to the Civil War, whose no less chilling memories find noble meaning in the moral imperative of the conflict.  The war--never wholly popular in the North--may not have started for the purpose of freeing enslaved peoples, but, guided by Lincoln's vision and eloquence, that's how it ended.

September 11 was our Fort Sumter.  After years of increasingly bold assaults from Islamofascists, that attack drew us into a confusing and uncertain war for issues that only gradually have become clear.  (How many people before 9-11 knew about Wahhabism?  Or truly cared about the despotism of Saddam Hussein?  Or concerned themselves with the status of women in the Middle East?)  Now, we find ourselves engaged, like the North, in a war to drag a large segment of the human race into the modern world.  Refusing to recognize the necessity of this endeavor, our "peace" activist friends posit objections based on Saddam's supposed inability to threaten the U.S., the lack of WMDs, worldwide castigation of the war and the additional suffering it inflicts on the Iraqi people.  All reasonable, valid and in many ways true.  But like the reasonable, valid and truthful arguments leveled against the Civil War--"Lincoln's War"--they fall short as criteria with which to judge the moral necessity of the conflict:  to free enslaved human beings.

December 31, 1862 also witnessed the battle of Stone River, or Murfreesboro.  Fought in western Tennessee, the battle cost 12,906 Union and 11,739 Confederate casualties, the eighth most bloody battle of the Civil War.  But with that victory, the North secured most of Tennessee and moved a step closer--despite future reversals--to defeating the Confederacy.  Most importantly, the Union lives spent in that battle joined with the sacrifice of thousands of others during the course of the war to make New Year's Day, 1863--Emancipation Day--an event whose promise was long delayed, but certain to arrive.  As Martin Luther King declared a century later, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

A month from now, we will witness that arc and see where it will bend.  We can only pray the the Iraqi people rise to the occasion, and meet its call.  It is not a sure thing.  Although the freedom train eventually reaches the station, the passage is difficult and the schedule unclear--and many wait their lives in vain.  Federal troops may not have given a hardtack biscuit for Confederate slaves, but their sacrifices led to the freedom of those African men and women.  From the ashes of the World Trade Center to dusty palm groves of the Sunni Triangle to places yet to come, Americans--soldiers and civilians alike--are making the same sacrifice for the same cause of freedom.  And, God willing, we shall prevail.

Best wishes to everyone for a safe and prosperous New Year. 

Posted by Steven Vincent at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fodder of the Bride

We've all heard of the abominable practice of FGM, or female genital mutilation, but yesterday's Wall Street Journal acquainted us with an additional  horror inflicted upon women in Arab countries:  gavage.  Not the force-feeding of geese, but the intentional fattening of teen-age girls--particularly in the African country of Mauritania--in order to heighten their appeal as prospective brides.  The Journal's Gautam Naik reports the childhood experience of one Mauritanian woman.

When she was 8, her mother began to force-feed her.  [She] was required to consume a gallon of milk and porridge for lunch.  She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk followed by a pre-breakfast feeding at 6 a.m.

If she threw up, her mother forced her to eat the vomit.  Stretch marks appeared on her body and the skin on her upper arm and her thighs tore under the pressure.  If she balked at the feedings, her mother would squeeze her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable.

According to the Journal, Mauritania is--blessedly--the only country where gavage is systematically applied. (So-called "fattening huts," where women beef up before marriage are common in certain African tribal cultures in places like Nigeria)  As the paper explains,

In a land that suffers from a constant shortage of food, plump women are assumed to both wealthy and more likely to bear children.

A 2001 survey of 7,000 adult women carried out by the Mauritanian government (which also countences slavery, we should note) indicated that some 22 percent had been force-fed when young; 15 percent said that their "skin split as a result of over-eating;" 20 percent had their toes or fingers broken to make them eat. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, "most men in Mauritania are slim," the Journal observes.

Interestingly, the paper quotes a 19 year-old Mauritanian law student who is "slender by Western standards."  Her dieting secret?

exposure to Western TV show and magazines convinced her it's healthier to maintain a middling weight.

Television, it seems, is good for something.

Divorce, Egyptian style

From the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram we learn that a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report indicates that women suffer great inequalities under Egypt's divorce laws.  According to Al-Ahram writer Gihan Shahine, the report notes that Egyptian males enjoy

unilateral and unconditional right to divorce.  They do not even need to enter a courtroom in order to end their marriages.

Women, conversely, must either prove harm (supported by witnesses), or forfeit their financial rights in a kuhl, or "no-fault divorce."   Worse, they must take their case to court, navigating a generally hopeless course through complicated procedures and evidentiary requirements that the HRW report calls "inherently discriminatory."  As a result, the reports concludes, women

either remain in an unwanted marriage and possibly endure physical and psychological abuse, or beg their husbands to divorce them, giving up everything they own and cherish in return.

A woman who leaves her husband and files for divorce can find herself the subject of legal harassment from her spouse, in addition to being denied access to government assistance because she is still married.  Even after divorce, the Egyptian government often fails to enforce court rulings on alimony and child support.

One root of the problem is the co-existence of secular statutes and Islamic law called shari'a--which is other way of saying that Egyptian women suffer the lack of  separation between mosque and state.  The Egyptian constitution, for example, contains provisions for gender equality, and the government has signed international treaties observing equal rights.  By the same token, however, Article 60 of the  criminal code states

The provisions of the penal code shall not apply to any deed committed in good faith, pursuant to a right determined by virtue of the shari'a.

Translation:  in certain cases, if you've done something "in good faith" following Islamic law, it's not a crime.  And what are those certain cases where Allah gives you a "Get out of jail free" card?  An Egyptian member of the HRW teams tells Shahine

The government has been very selective in terms of where it requires shari'a to be the root of the law and where it doesn't.  This is, of course, a problem, because most of the places where the government requires shari'a...are those where women bear the main brunt of the effect.

Are we surprised? 

Article 60, the HRW contends, is "used to justify domestic violence," and creates a situation where Egyptian law actually sanctions  the "'disciplining' of 'disobedient' women."  (In case you're concerned about what kind of physical punishment shari'a allows, you'll be relieved to know that it cannot be 1) severe; 2) directed at a woman's face; and 3) aimed at a "fatal blow area.")  As the report quotes one male Cairo poltician, "A man has the right in shari'a to discipline his wife."

Unfortunately, If statistics are any measure, the politician's wife probably agrees.  Noting a 1995 government survey, the HRW comments, "violence is so normalized in Egyptian society" that

nearly 86 percent of the women surveyed thought that husbands were justified in beating their wives under certain circumstances. On average, 70 percent of the women surveyed between the ages of 15 to 49 felt that husbands were justified in beating wives who refused sex. An estimated 70 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 29 surveyed by the National Population Center said that violence was justified if a woman “talked back” to their husbands; 65 percent said a beating was justified for talking to another man; 42 percent for spending too much money; 26 percent for burning dinner; and 50 percent for neglecting the children.

Many women whom HRW interviewed "endorsed domestic violence as a legitimate form of punishment for disobedience."  Perhaps it's time we dust off the old Marxist notion of "false consciousness?"

Finally, the fact that America-based HRW would have the audacity to propose alternatives to Islamic law has enraged many Egyptians--especially since the group recently released a report on, Allah preserve us, homosexuality in Egypt.  According to Shahine, critics have accused HRW of having a "hidden agenda" linked to "U.S. social reform plans for the Middle East (if only; HRW denies this).  Not only that, but many conservative Muslims have denounced the report as--one guess--"anti-Islamic."

Are we surprised?

More:  Jamie Glazov at Frontpage Magazine tackles the volatile issue of feminism and Islam.  Check it out here.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blocked by tour buses disgorging streams of passengers, cars approaching the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra slowed to a halt. Normally unflappable in even the worst traffic, my driver Dhia slapped the dashboard. "What they couldn't do with soldiers in the war, they're doing with religious pilgrims!" he snarled.

"They" were Iranians. One of the untold stories about Iraq are the Shia pilgrims that have poured into the country since its liberation, eager to visit sites sacred to their faith. U.S. officials have long worried that this flood of devotionalists--up to 3,000 a day, by some estimates--provided perfect cover for criminals, terrorists and Iranian agents. This Persian influx has alarmed other countries, as well: in a recent Washington Post interview, Jordan's King Abdullah warned that "one million" Iranians had crossed into Iraq. Perhaps, in part, to allay these fears, on December 22, Iran closed the border, citing "security threats" to pilgrims entering the country. But it doesn't matter now: the armies of Shia faithful have already transformed Iraqi into something no one, a few years ago, could have expected.

During my time in Iraq this year, for example, I watched my Baghdad hotel segregate its bar with an interior wall so not to offend Iranian diners, for whom alcohol is forbidden. Other hotels and restaurants created alcohol sections, or ceased to serve booze altogether. Many hotels simply turned themselves into Iranian-only establishments. (Interestingly, these hotels were generally the safest from terrorist attacks, since Americans and foreigner workers did not congregate there.)

Beyond Baghdad, changes were even starker. Along with tour buses, a common sight in Najaf and Karbala were dozens of guides holding small flags and speaking through portable loudspeakers as they shepherded their charges toward various mosques and shrines. Instead of the all-black abiyas favored by Iraqi women, you saw blue or purple chadors--often decorated with white polka-dot or flower patterns--worn by Iranians. Religious knick-knack sellers addressed you first in Farsi and initially offered change in Iranian rials. At the religious festival of Ashura in Karbala last March, I was surprised to discover that Iranians comprised most of the millions of pilgrims flooding the city.

Sometimes, this invasion worked to my benefit. People assumed I was Iranian--good for disguising an American identity. Once, when buying fruit in Karbala, the grocer treated me rudely--and I spoke to him in English. "Amrikiyya?" he smiled, eyes widening. Evidently, the only people less popular than Yanks were Iranians. And no wonder: along with the normal complaints about tourists, Iraqis grumbled about wealthy Persians buying property in Karbala and Najaf and driving up rents. Hotel rates had tripled.

For the Shia, Iraq is the veritable Holy Land. Six of their twelve holy Imams are buried there. Their third most sacred site (behind Mecca and the Dome of the Rock) is the Tomb of Ali in Najaf (the site, as we recall, of fighting between U.S. Marines and al-Mahdi militiamen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr.) Situated outside the city is the Valley of Peace--an enormous cemetery comprising millions of graves, including Abraham's and Isaac's; people interred in this necropolis, many Shia maintain, enjoy an express pass to Paradise. For its part, Karbala is the resting place of Ali's son, Hussain, and the site of the 7th century battle that split the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.

Pilgrimage is big business. Indeed, some Iraqi's believe that al-Sadr twice seized Najaf this year in part to control the lucrative trade in religious tourism, including the so-called "corpse traffic" into the Valley of Peace. By the same token, though, Sadr's disruption of these enterprises weakened his support amongst Najaf's merchants, leading him to withdraw from the city.

Then there are, as always, the Iranians. Because Saddam ruthlessly suppressed Shiism, the sect's theological center became the north-central Iranian city of Qom. Nowadays, however, Najaf is reasserting itself as the traditional focus of religious learning, as well as a more important pilgrim site. Qom's diminishing status may have incited one of the most spectacular assassinations in Iraq. In August, 2003, a massive car bomb in Najaf killed Ayatollah al Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Many Iraqis whisper that Sadr was "contracted" by his Iranian paymasters to whack Hakim, in large part because SCIRI was running an illegal pilgrim trade--$50 a head--and cutting into the flow of money to Qom. (It's typical of many Iraqis to speak of their spiritual leaders as if they were Mafioso.)

Once it resumes, will this this cross-border traffic absorb Iraq into a pan-Shia confederation, as King Abdullah fears? I doubt it. Too many differences between the nations exist: Iraqis are Arabs, Iranians are Persian. Iraqis are not religious fanatics, nor foolish enough to relinquish their government to Iranian mullahs--especially when they see what Khomeini-style leadership has brought to Iran. Lastly, there's Iraqi pride: "Throughout our history," a journalist once told me, "our people have exported religious doctrines. We do not import them."

Chances are, even with the pilgrim trade and Iranian trouble-making, Shia-run Iraq will remain its own player, anchored in the clerical "Quietism" championed by Ayatollah Sistani, in addition to the traditions of its Mesopotamian past. Still, in the not-too-distant future, when Western tourists return to the Land Between the Rivers, it might behoove them to learn not only Arabic, but a little Farsi, too.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't it just make you yearn for the good old days?  Now, lest you think you've linked to James Lileks by mistake, I thought I'd make a point by posting these images of Cap punchin' Adolph's schnozzola (interestingly enough, this comic book came out in February 1941--10 months before Pearl Harbor) and Bugs doing a short-arm inspection of Hermann Goering.  Given that an older generation had no trouble lampooning their fascist enemies, we have to ask ourselves, Where are the similar yucks today? 

Surely you'd think that people who plot terrorist attacks in caves, declare anyone who votes in Iraq's elections to be an "infidel", force women to walk around in polyester bags and chain the imaginations of millions to a code of law and behavior already out of date 10 centuries ago are ripe for ridicule and satire. Yeah, you'd think. But except for Team America, you'd be wrong.

Here's the Koran on the proper Islamic attitude toward those giving the religion a tickle in the ribs:

If you question them, they will say:  "We were only jesting and making merry."  Say:  "Would you mock God, His revelations, and His apostle?  Make no excuses.  You have renounced the faith after embracing it. " (9:65-66)

Whoops.  Since the penalty for leaving the faith--apostasy--is death, no wonder Muslim humor doesn't quite have 'em rolling in the aisles on the Hajj.

Actually, Islamic lore contains a warm tradition of tweaking the religion's collective beard.  Here's one hilarious example.  Seems that fun-loving 7th-century tribal leader and poet Abu Shadier once "satirized" Islam with this side-splitting bit of verse directed at various Muslim bigwigs: 

My spear shall play havoc with the regiments of Khalid, and I trust thereafter to crush Abu Bakr and Umar.

The laughter had barely died down when Abu Shadier was captured and brought in chains to Medina, whereupon the madcap Muslim repented and was spared an agonizing death and eternal damnation.  Allah knows best!

In the inimitable tradition of Abu Shadier are today's folks at the Muslim Youth Web, who assure us that "Humor and joking is permitted in Islam. However it must be done in a good, clean manner."  To show us just how darn funny the Prophet could be, the website directs us to this uproarious anecdote narrated by none other than Islam's "It" gal and Mohammad's favorite child-wife, Aisha:

Some young men from the Quraysh visited Aisha as she was in Mina and they (the audience) were laughing. She said: What makes you laugh? They said: Such and such person stumbled against the rope of the tent and he was about to break his neck or lose his eyes. She said: Don't laugh for I heard Allah's Apostle (peace be upon him) saying: If a Muslim runs a thorn or (gets into trouble) more severe than this, there is assured for him (a higher) rank and his sins are obliterated. [Sahih Muslim, #6237]

(In truth, there is at least one pretty funny site dedicated to satirizing Islam--Islamic Humor Unhinged.  Still, scroll down and read the disclaimer.  While we're at it, does anyone else have sites we could check out?)

As for non-Muslims, our multi-culti mullahs have become so humorless they make Ayatollah Sistani look like Jon Stewart on Comedy Central.  The problem, of course, is that Islamofascism combines two sacred cows (to mix faiths):  religion and ethnicity.  Oh, yeah, and since Osama is probably dragging around a dialysis machine from cave to cave, he's also disabled.  And homeless, too...?

Still, when you have "analysts" like Michael Scheuer, a.k.a. "Anonymous" describing the lanky mass-murderer as a

genuinely pious Muslim; a devoted family man...and an individual of conviction, intellectual honesty, compassion, humility, and physical bravery

it's no wonder we're not seeing too many metaphorical whoopie-cushions slipped under the Saudi's robes  ("Oh, Osama--not in the cave, for Allah's sake!").  We can only look with envy on the World War II generation and such classics as Disney's "Der Fuehrer's Face," to which Sean Fitzpatrick at Logomachon kindly links us. 

As I've written before--and Team America's Trey Parker and Matt Stone clearly understand--laughter is an essential weapon in our war against Islamofascism.  But more than that:  these imams and clerics and sheiks with their grim, self-important puritanism, medieval shari'a code, and bizarre conspiracy theories--Lo! By Aisha's camel!--they are just so damn funny...

UPDATE:  Perhaps this is one reason why we're not lampooning Islamic pretentiousness--and this doesn't come from politically-correct Canada or Berkeley, but Australia.  (Thanks to Cella's Review.)

UPDATE II:  Seems there are humorous Islamic websites out there, at least in a manner of speaking.  Check out Sean Fitzpatrick's comments to this post for a small list.  Meanwhile, an imam, a camel and a halal butcher walk into a bar...

Posted by Steven Vincent at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Recently I received an e-mail from Khalid, a journalist I met in Basra, where he was an up-and-coming reporter for one of the city's largest newspaper.  At the time, he was a very pro-American young man, who, like many Iraqis, felt anxious--but excited--about the future of post-Saddam Iraq.  His correspondence, therefore, came as an unpleasant surprise  I wish I could offer better news, but if I'm going to invite my friends to contribute on this blog, I must present their comments as they write them, negative assessments and all. 

After chastising me for not writing him sooner, Khalid adds,

Steven, I felt exhausted all the time from the stress we suffered.  Sometimes, it seemed we needed a priest to not only to tell about our sins, but how others hurt us and we could never ward off that hurt.

You can't imagine what the situation is like now in Iraq.  The situation is horrible, nebulous, with many clouds on the horizon.  Do you remember when you asked me about the future?  My answer was that things looked very good!  Now, I have to have the courage to say I was totally wrong.  I am very sorry to say that.

There are things that are sometimes lost "in translation"--but Iraq has been lost in occupation.  It is such a bitter irony.  Our country is run by Mafias.  The leaders and parties we know are hauling everything away for their own gain.

Steven, Basra looks like a town in the American West, where gangsters and killers become the only authority and anyone who tries to discover their crimes will be shut-down and presented as a criminal and an outlaw!. 

It is like this:  the gangsters control the government and steal money through many different ways, but most particularly through fictitious contracts.  Their militias wear the uniform of the Iraqi National Guard.  They are loyal only to their party chieftains.

Finally, I could not take it any longer and quit my journalism job.  I'm no longer "on the ground" in Iraq.  I now live in Saudi Arabia and don't know when or if I will return to Basra.

Last spring, my friend Nour and I sat down in Basra's Hamdan Restaurant with Khalid and two other corresondents from his newspaper, where they told me about the difficult problems of carrying out "true" journalism in their country.  Under the passive noses of the British, they complained, criminal gangs had taken control of Iraq's second largest city, earning money through extortion, fuel smuggling and liquor and drug dealing.  Moreover, favoritism, bribery and graft--particularly through the use of phony contracting--was rampant. 

"We can't do our jobs as journalists," one complained.  "If we push too hard on certain issues, we can get in trouble.  Or worse, we can get killed."   When I asked what these "certain issues" were and with whom, he shook his head.  "I'd rather not say."  I didn't press him on the issue, for such was the climate of fear in Basra that to even suggest the existence of problem could result in a gangland-style warrant of execution.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Khalid's story is not the only bad tidings originating from the Land of Ur this Yuletide season.  On December 22, Contrack International announced it was terminating a $325 million agreement it had reached with the U.S. to repair Iraq's roads, bridges, railways and ports.  According to military officials, the Arlington, Virginia-based firm based its decision, in part, on security problems.  As a officer with the Iraq Project and Contracting Office told the WaPo:

The security environment is such that the insurgents threaten the workforce. They are pretty good at leaving death threats on the homes of workers' doors .

In October, paramilitaries attacked Contrack's Baghdad headquarters.  Earlier this year, they kidnapped a Turkish driver employed by the firm, shot him five times in the head, then dumped him beside a Contrack construction site.  Pinned to the man's chest was a sign reading "Collaborator."  (Ted Rall, take note.)

Contrack is the first major U.S. firm to pull out of Iraq.  But don't worry about it's prospects.  On December 26, the company reportedly won a $64 million deal with the U.S. military to build bridges in Afghanistan.

More gloomy news came on December 23 when Iraqna, which provides Baghdad's mobile phone service, announced it was thinking of withdrawing from Iraq as well.  According to the FT, Naguib Sawiris, the chairman of Egypt's Orascom Telecom --and a man estimated to be worth $800 million--declared "I'm not into the business of putting the lives of my people in danger."  It's interesting to note that Orascom owns forty-five percent of Contrack International.

Safety for his employees may not be the only reason Sawiris is threatening to pull out of Iraq.  Relations between Orascom, the U.S. and the Iraqi Interim Government have steadily deteriorated.  One issue has been Orascom's spotty service in Baghdad--a problem Sawiris blames on the American army's use of jamming equipment to hamper the ability of cellphones to detonate IEDs. 

Then, on December 17, Iraqi security forces raided Orascom's Baghdad headquarters, seizing equipment, records and two Egyptian employees accused of aiding the paramilitaries.  Although the men were released two days later, their detention added fuel to the suspicion that Orascom workers have provided the Islamofascists with communications information.  These allegations have dogged Orascom ever since the press revealed last year that the man with a controlling interest in the firm--London-based Iraqi tycoon Nadhmi Auchi--made a fortune selling arms to Saddam and enjoyed close contacts with the regime.  (Incidentally, Auchi is a major investor in BNP Paribas, the French bank which administered proceeds from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program.) 

On December 22, Sawiris further charged that the U.S. and the Iraqis were carrying out a campaign to harass its workers and impede its service on behalf of a competitor--believed to be Kuwait-based Atheer Telecommunications--and a "political figure around whom a lot of controversy has been raised in Iraq" who has heavy investments in the company.  Sawiris would not, however, elaborate on this politician's identity.

I remember last spring, when Iraqna first began erecting its jazzy purple logo across Baghdad, it seemed as if a new kind of flower was blooming around the city.  Advertising is generally synonomous with visual clutter in the U.S., but Iraqna's signs seemed to herald new growth and hope for the Iraqis.  Better yet, the company began hiring local people:  at least one of my friends in the country is--was?--counting on Iraqna to provide her with the economic means to escape the oppressive sexism of her society.  (Foes of globalization, take note.)

But now, where do these developments leave the Iraqi people?  Baghdad blogger Zeyad at Healing Iraq gives an idea with his Christmas Day post.  Along with describing the unusually cold weather and lack of electricity and fuel for heaters (I was in Baghdad during last winter, and can assure you, without heat, life is even more uncomfortable) Zeyad notes that the land lines in his neighborhood go on and off--and not even bribes can coax repairman out to fix them. 

As for mobile phones, "Horrible doesn't even start to describe it."  He notes, however, that while Orascom's service has been bad, the "Atheer network in southern Iraq is more reliable."  The real problem, of course, is that without phone communcation Iraqis can't contact one another in case of emergency, or simply check on the safety of friends and loved ones after a terrorist attack.  Zeyad relates an incident when he was held up at an American checkpoint for hours and couldn't get through on his phone to inform his family.  "When I returned home," he writes, "I found them crazy with fright." 

And this is what this war comes down to, isn't it?  The plutocrats wrangle over turf and profits, the Islamofascists continue to wreak havoc on the country's infrastructure, while Iraqis shiver in the cold and dark, wondering about the fate of their loved ones, unable to make even a phone call to assure themselves that, this day at least, catastrophe has not befallen them.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A late-night post on this, the eve of our second wartime Christmas.  After the buying and the decorating of the tree, the flurry of shopping and wrapping of presents, the eggnog and cards and parties, Warrior Woman and I found time to sit by the glow of a candle-lit creche and reflect on the passing year. And while my wife prefers medieval Christmas music, I go for the Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra style of holiday cheer; so it was this night that the voices of the early Kings of Pop filled our Manhattan apartment. 

One particular CD featured a 1942 recording of Crosby singing "White Christmas" on his radio program. After the final note of Irving Berlin's classic tune, he closes out the show by urging his listeners to remember that

the greatest gift we can give to our soldiers are War Bonds.  They're fighting for the day when Christmas dawns in a world of peace--so let's let them know we're behind them with everything we've got.

It's not the only recording I have like that--another has Der Bingle opening a version of "Silent Night" by telling the listening troops, Next year, pray God, all of you will be singing this at your own fireplaces, around your own trees.  At the end of the song, we hear ringing bells, and Bob Hope comes on. Hear that? he asks.

The bells of Christmas ring out clear and free around the world to you.  Listen to them. Their message is coming from the hearts of 132 million grateful Americans, peace on earth, good will to men--and Merry Christmas to all of you.

Different time, different war, different celebrities.  Still, there's not much one can add to those sentiments.  Despite sixty years and twice the population, what Bing and Bob said to the troops fighting across the globe holds true today, for soldiers ranging from Kabul to Baghdad and beyond.  The bells of Christmas are indeed ringing for these men and women, and a message is coming from the hearts of the American people.  Merry Christmas, God bless, stay safe, come home.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although its efforts have proven maladroit in the past, the United States is determined to provide Iraqis with entertaining "alternative" media to counter the effects of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia.  What follows is a State Department memo, given to this site by an anonymous source, detailing America's latest effort.  WARNING:  this is highly confidential, so those of you who cannot be trusted with state secrets, keep on scrolling.

Barry--

Hope you and the family are okay, and you're doing well after the gall bladder thing.

Just wanted to shoot the team at PDPA [Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs - ed.] an update on Operation Infinite Ratings.  We finally got a favorable ruling from Sheikh Raq-n Raul at the Brentwood Mosque--something about TV sitcoms being permissable as long as they remain "Islamically instructive," which Legal tells me should cover our tuchuses with any fatwa difficulties.

The Pentagon has green-lighted the first series, and the gang in Creative couldn't be more excited.  It's called "My Son the Shia," and the basic premise is this:  Abu Dulaimy, head imam at an ultra-orthodox Wahhabi mosque in Falluja, sends his son Ahmed off to engineering school in Basra, and after two years, Ahmed comes back home with Layla--his beautiful, but ditzy wife.  Problem is, Layla is Shia--and Ahmed has converted in order to marry her, driving Abu crazy!  Think "All in the Family" with Muslims.

In the pilot episode, it's just before Ramadan, and Layla hopes to impress her new in-laws by cooking her sure-fire mazgouf recipe, only she forgets that the Shia start the holiday later than the Sunnis.  Hilarity ensues as old Abu and his four wives try to maintain their fast, while trying to keep the city's religious police from dynamiting their house.  Marketing tested this with Shia viewers in Detroit and the approval rating was off the charts!

In future episodes, Ahmed gets so angry at Abu for telling his Wahhabi congregation that Shiism is a Jewish plot to undermine Islam that he tells the local American commander about the RPG stash hidden under the mosque.  Another has Layla baking cookies to celebrate Mohammad's birthday--Creative tells me the scene where she gets chased down the street by an angry mob threatening to stone her to death is a classic!

Over time we'll introduce characters like Abu's freeloading Bedouin relatives;  Sa'ad, the village drunk--who gets 80 lashes in the town square whenever he goes on a bender--and Abdul and his local insurgents:  think Sgt. Bilko and the gang in stocking masks.  We're also going to break out an American character--Major Bart Reynolds, a bumbling Psy-Ops officer who tries to "get down" with the locals, but speaks only classical Arabic and regularly gets his equipment stolen by Abdul's cut-ups.  (The Pentagon is going out on a limb for us on this one, but Marketing tells me the Iraqis will eat it up.)

You probably heard about the snafus.  True, we had to move production from Baghdad to Burbank after someone e-mailed the production crew an anonymous warning--something about the "gates of Hell" and "endless geysers of blood."  That means SAG headaches and union costs up the wazoo.  Anyway, we're hoping to sign Eddie Olmos for Abu Dulaimy and Whoopi's committed to 15 weeks to play one of his wives.  We're thinking Ashley Simpson for Layla and that guy from American Idol, whatzisname--Clay Aiken--for Ahmed (I know, I know, but make-up can do wonders).

I can't say we haven't had disappointments. Ayatollah Sistani's people have DEFINITELY ruled out a guest appearance for next month's shooting; too busy with the upcoming elections.  Too bad, because we need a fill-in for Layla's father.  Anyone know what Omar Sharif is doing these days?

Also, we got orders from Rumsfeld's boys to scratch the episode where Ahmed and Layla take a trip near the Syrian border and accidentally uncover a buried Electromagnetic Isotope Separator and 150 al-Hussein missiles armed with Botulinum toxin and Bacillus anthracis spores.  Something about an on-going investigation.

We being rolling next week and hope to debut just before Ashura.  When does the festival start again?  I can never figure out that damn lunar calendar.

Hope to see you soon.  Malibu is great this time of year and the wife and kids all miss you.  We'll do lunch.

Happy holidays,

Sid

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whistlin' Dixie

Like most newspapers, the New York Times'  editorials embody the "something must be done" school of analysis.  That is, they urge immediate action on some issue, in an Olympian tone that suggests the tragedy certain to befall if their views are ignored.  By the same token, these 10-point equivalents of an ancient Greek chorus rarely posit constructive advice, offering instead conventionalities and impractical prescriptions that only the dimmest politican has not already considered and either rejected or employed. 

Case in point is yesterday's lead editorial "Grim Realities in Iraq."  Its basic point to the Bush Administration was Don't alienate the Sunnis or you will put the elections at risk.  Now, given that young Sunni men are executing election workers in downtown Baghdad, this is pretty obvious stuff, hardly along the lines of say, advising the White House to drape Laura Bush in hejab in order to win Muslim hearts and minds.  (That day may not be far off, however.)  "There may be time for Washington to try to salvage the election," the Gray Lady rumbles, "but that would require paying much more serious attention to legitimate Sunni grievances and showing an openness to postponing the election for several months."

With voting set five weeks from now, even 43rd Street knows the election train has left the station, with the once-oppressed Kurds and Shia at the throttle.  What's most interesting is the editorials' advice for Bush to attend to "legitimate Sunni grievances."  These, argues the Times, originate in the dismissal of the old Sunni-dominated army, the exclusion of "former" Baathists from government posts and the dearth of "Sunni nationalist politicians" in the interim government.  Lastly, of course, there is the damage the American "counter-insurgency" operations have wreaked on "densely populated towns like Falluja."

This analysis chills me. To understand the implications of the Times' position, imagine this editorial appearing during the Reconstruction of the post-bellum South.  Matters aren't going well:  confusion and uncertainty reigns; democracy seems hanging by a slender thread; masked "guerillas"--the Ku Klux Klan--are terrorizing the population in hopes of re-establishing the fallen Confederacy. What's the advice of the Times, and others with similar views?  Pay more attention to the "grievances" of deposed plantation owners, slave-traders and ex-Southern officers.  Put more pro-slavery leaders in the state legislatures.  Make amends somehow for the damage done to Atlanta, Vicksburg, Nashville.  And, most important, consider telling the millions of blacks that we wish to delay the process of your emancipation so as not to alienate the people who once kept you in bondage.  (The fact that last turn of events actually did occur only highlights the wrongheadness of the editorial.)

Lincoln urged the North to be "magnaminous in victory"--and for the Kurd-Shia-American alliance to grind the Sunni into the mud of defeat is indeed a prescription for catastrophe.  Like most Southerners, who did not own slaves, most Sunnis were not Shia-and-Kurd oppressing Baathists, and the vast majority today wish to see a terrorist-free democracy take hold in the country. 

But delaying elections in order to placate Sunni grievances is another road to disaster, one that also risks creating incentives for the Sunnis to remain a perpetually alienated minority in western Iraq.  Besides, as I noted in the excerpts of ITRZ which recently appeared on the National Review Online, the root of their "grievances" lay beyond the reach of political remedies, involving factors such as tribal honor, abhorrence of shame and an adolescent resentment that seeks to insure the destruction of Iraq itself, rather than see it emerge from Sunni/Baathist domination. 

Recently, Jawad Hashim, a former advisor to Saddam Hussein during the 1970s, told me he remembered the dictator telling him, "If my regime goes down, I will make sure that not a stone of Iraq remains after me."  This mindset is shared by his "guerrilla" followers, the radical imams and drugged-up assassins promulgating their ideology of death.  No appeasement, no addressing "legitimate grievances" beyond the scope of upcoming elections, no placating the resentment of the Sunni terrorists will stop their violence.  At most, it will only delay the arrival of emancipation and justice for all Iraqis.

Allawi to Introduce Myself

With this in mind, it's interesting to watch interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's campaign strategy.  In a recent op-ed, the invaluable Amir Taheri argues that Iraqi attitudes toward Iran have divided the country's political elite into two camps.  One, dominated by the Shia, is attempting to walk a fine line between Tehran and Washington, realizing that once U.S. attention toward Iraq wanes, Iran will exert the greatest effect on Iraqi interests.  Advocates of the other camp see

Iran as Iraq's strategic enemy and hope to counter it with a discourse of pan-Arab nationalism. They deem the United States a tactical ally in helping Iraq rebuild a state, an army and a security service, leaving in place not a democracy but a "lite" version of Arab authoritarian rule.

Allawi falls into this group.  Recenlty, he announced that in November he'd held "a lot of" meetings in Jordan with leaders of the paramilitary gunmen seeking to topple his government.  He'd also held sit-downs with tribal leaders and other Sunni panjandrums in hopes of coaxing their votes for his slate.  He evidently aims to appeal to the Sunnis yearning for a "Saddam-lite" (indeed, many times in the Sunni Triangle, people told me they'd like to see a "new Saddam, only more democratic").  As the New York Times' John Burns noted on December 21, Allawi seeks

to portray himself as an indispensable strong man and a secular antidote to the influence of religious parties...

Allawi is further arguing that

as a former member of the governing Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, he [is] best equppied to defeat the insurgency and to entice its members to work for democracy in Iraq.

In his Jordan meetings with "insurgent" leaders, Burns continues, Allawi

had spoken to them as a former Baathist and a conspirator in the 1968 coup that brought the party, and eventually Mr. Hussein to power.

Indeed, to cement his nationalistic credientials, the Financial Times notes, Allawi has repeated criticisms of the U.S. for driving out "low-ranking" Baathists from power and for disbanding the Sunni-led army.  Lest we suspect the Primine Minister of crypto-fascist leanings, he evidently told reporter Burns that "Baathism is dead, it's finished, it's something like the ex-Soviet bloc."

Interestingly, Allawi is Shia, but he's part of a joint Shia-Sunni slate of candidates that might pose the most serious opposition to the Shia's United Iraqi Alliance slate.  Turning up the heat on Shia candidates, Sunni leaders have suggested that the recent blasts in Najaf and Karbala were carried out by Iranian agents who are using the Shia religious leaders as stalking horses for their own ambitions in Iraq.  (However, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, revealed on Iranian TV that the bombings were actually the work of the U.S. and Israel as a "plot aimed at distracting Iraqis so they miss the election.)

Whatever Allawi's strategy might be, Iraq owes this man a huge debt of gratitude for remaining at the helm of the country during this period of instability and violence.  Personally, I favor the United Iraqi Alliance, because of my interactions with the Shia in Iraq, but also because their victory will bring the kind of justice that America denied blacks after the Civil War.  It's fascinating to note that in their comments--which parallel in many ways those of Allawi and his "nationalist" camp--the brahmins of the New York Times apparently do not agree.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been on the radio a lot lately publicizing ITRZ.  Many of the interviews exhibit a similar echt-American format:  rock music leading out of a station break, a keyed-up (usually male) announcer introducing the book and its author—then usually ten to thirty minutes of quick questions and short, hopefully pithy answers.  The interaction between host and guest is theatrical, stagy, less a conversation than a performance intended to hold the attention of listeners in their kitchens, offices, cars. 

One interview, however, was different.  After rapid-fire questions in a rich baritone, the host of a Midwestern radio station ended the segment in a minor key.  “Steven, I want to ask you something personal,” he said in a subdued tone.  “My son is serving in Iraq and he's stationed in Mosul.  Can you tell me anything about that place?”

Suddenly the dynamic of our conversation changed.  The host was no longer a morning drive-time personality easing his audience through the daily commute, but a concerned father worried about his son in a combat zone.  In that moment, we seemed to cease being on the radio, but rather holding a private discussion.  Equally subdued, I had to tell him that, unfortunately, I never made it to Mosul during my travels through Iraq and thus couldn't provide him with any information.  He thanked me, the technician podded up the rock and roll, the station break came and I was off the air. 

I thought of that interview yesterday as news of U.S. personnel killed in a mess hall in Mosul came over the wires.  I hope for the host’s sake that his son did not number among the casualties. But there are 22 families today who did not have such luck, and hundreds of additional ripples of tragedy are unsettling the surface of wartime America.

Two days after my discussion with the radio host, I found myself interviewing a lawyer for a magazine story about a topic unrelated to Iraq.  As we wrapped up our phone conversation, he mentioned that his son had volunteered for the conflict and was about to ship out.  Soon after that, I began receiving e-mails from people responding to ITRZ or this blog, telling me about their children or spouses who are in Iraq.  Like the radio host and the lawyer, the attitude of these correspondents was identical:  a mixture of patriotic pride, familial concern and unspoken prayer. 

For me, the moment of recognition came a few days ago when I received an e-mail from a woman that included a photograph of her son stationed in Iraq.  To my wife I said, “You know, it’s finally occurred to me:  this is the real deal.  This is war.”  By that I meant, Iraq is not the relatively quick campaign in Afghanistan, the painless (for us) assault on Serbia, the casualty-light liberation of Kuwait.  I would say this is more like Vietnam, but as I remember that conflict, those who were not soldiers either protested U.S. involvement or tried to forget the war even existed.   

No, rather I think of World War II.  Of course, the country mobilized far more citizens then, at a greater cost in blood and treasure.  Today, however, we see thousands of National Guardsmen whom the conflict has plucked from daily life and hurled into a combat zone, leaving behind holes in the social and emotional fabric of American communities.  If only for this reason we cannot, like Vietnam, ignore or forget our soldiers; their safety worries us each time we turn on the news. And the large number of families affected by the conflict reminds us that GIs are not anonymous figures on TV screens or abstract numbers on a casualty list, but sons and daughters and spouses taken from the heart of our nation to obscure and dangerous battlefields. 

I wonder if a Northerner during the Civil War might not also have recognized this moment.  Then, too, sons and fathers went to war in far-off places (most had never left their farms) to fight for a cause that was at once inspiring, ill understood, controversial and, at times, seemingly not worth the cost.  Then, too, strange names like Gettysburg, Antietam and Chickamauga became as familiar as Baghdad, Falluja, Mosul are today.  Then, too, in thousands of homes, people found their prayers had been answered with relief and joy, or sorrow and loss.

This Christmas season, as holiday lights blaze from the eaves and doorways of American houses, they are joined by smaller, more somber lights in darkened windows, burning for men and women who will not return from Iraq.  Relative to other wars, there are not many of these memorials, and God willing, may it remain so. But this should not diminish the enormity of events.  America is engaged in a struggle whose goals are uncertain, even as its demands increase upon communities large and small.  For each family from whose windows the candles shine, payment has been high.  Whether we agree with this conflict or not, let us remember, and thank these people, for their sacrifice.  For them--for us--this is war.  This is the real deal.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jeff Harrell asks me the big questions about Iraq—you can catch it here.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's a rather dispiriting press conference when the President defends Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and criticizes the Iraqi army, but so be it.  The more important issue, at least in the short term, is what Bush termed the Iraqis' "mixed success" in fighting paramilitaries without  U.S. support.  Indeed, other than the peshmerga soldiers of Iraq's 36th Battalion, the Iraqi army has proven dismal in combat.

The problem, in Bush's view, is leadership:  "They've got some generals in place and they've got foot soldiers in place. But the whole command structure necessary to have a viable military is not in place."

If history is any guide, Bush is correct.  During the Korean War, African-American soldiers served with distinction; two, in fact, received the Congressional Medal of Honor:  William Thompson and Cornelius H. Chaelton (posthumously).  But their unit, the 24th Infantry Regiment, had a less laudable history.  According to renowned war correspondent Joseph Galloway, during the first days of the conflict "entire platoons and companies of the 24th evaporated from their foxholes and had to be rounded up at Regimental or Division Headquarters."  The "bug-out" resulted in negative stereoptyping of black soldiers as being unable and unwilling to fight.  But as Galloway notes, a 1996 Army study of the unit entitled Black Soldier, White Army shows that the regiment's main problems consisted of the general panic which gripped all U.S. forces at the time, combined with racism and low expectations among white commanding officers and "deficiencies in leadership, training and equipment."

Another segregated unit, the all-Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment, also had a troubled record during the war, largely because of "language problems and inept leadership in a few key positions." 

What can we learn from this?  While segregated units fought well in World War I and during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, by the Korean War the best use of minority soldiers was to integrate them in the American army.  (This was the view of Eighth Army commander Matthew Ridgeway, who replaced Douglas MacArthur in 1951.)   Integration proved successful in proving black soldiers' fighting mettle and laying to rest many of the pernicious stereotypes that afflicted them.

Today, Iraqi forces dealing with U.S. troops do not suffer from racism or--one presumes--shortages of equipment.  Instead, their problem seems to be the leadership they are receiving from Iraqi commanders.  The solution may be to coordinate the operations of Iraqi troops even closer with their American counterparts.  This idea was recently broached in a New York Times op-ed piece by Andrew Borene, a law student and Iraqi War vet.  Borene argues that the Marine Corps should expand its "combined-action program" that dates back to the Vietnam War. 

The concept behind the program is that if American and foreign troops operate together, each will gain knowledge from the other as to the best way to counter an insurgency. 

American soldiers, Borene observers, "were expected to live in the [Vietnamese] villages they were assigned to defend" and this in turn gave them valuable familiarity with the people. 

This helped to humanize the American presence and reduced the passive support many civilians had been giving to Vietcong guerillas.  For many, their respect for (or fear of) the communists guerillas waned, and they broke their silence about intelligence leads.

In Iraq, the First Marine Division has begun utilizing this program "to aid poorly trained Iraqi National Guard and police forces."  In results that correspond to the general improvement of African-American troops in an integrated army,

reports from the military and the news media suggest that the Iraqis in the combined-action program perform better in combat, have higher morale and are considerably more reliable than their regular Iraqi military counterparts.

It's not surprising.  When soldiers of even the most disparate backgrounds share the same food, experiences and danger, they tend to bond together as brothers-in-arms, leading to a virtuous cycle where the best and bravest set the example for all the rest.

UPDATE:  Reader Brian H. alerts us to an interesting article about Arab deficiencies in modern warfare.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cleared for Takeoff

 The skies have gotten friendlier for women--at least for one Saudi Arabian.  This photograph, by Ali Jarekji of the Reuters news service, introduces us to a young woman who--well, let's let the London Times' Michael Theodoulou tell the story, if nothing else than to enjoy his mordant lede:

Hanadi Hindi will not be allowed to drive to the airport, but when she gets there she will be able to fly jet aircraft.

The 26-year-old Saudi is to become the kingdom’s first accredited woman pilot after signing a contract with the fleet of Prince al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire Saudi businessman and nephew of King Fahd.

According to Theodoulous, Forbes magazine rates the reform-minded Prince as the world's fourth-richest man, with a net worth of over $21 billion.  Perhaps he could place some of that lucre at the service of his Kingdom's 4.7 million women--who make up more than half the number of Saudi university graduates, although only 5.5 percent of them are employed.  Meanwhile, our good Wahhabi ally bans women from driving, voting or traveling except when accompanied by a male relative. 

Apparently, Captain Hindi still has some flight instruction to finish in Jordan, after which she'll be taking wing sometime in the middle of next year.  What I want to know is, how are they going to fit a male relative in those crowded cockpits?

Berlin's Bartered Brides

With the prospect of Turkey's membership in the European Union--and the shockwaves of Theo van Gogh's murder still roiling the continent--many observers are taking a fresh and unsentimental look at certain age-old traditions common in the Muslim world.  Case in point, Richard Bernstein's December 19 article in the New York Times about "Jasmin," a Turkish girl in Berlin hiding from people who seek to murder her.

She is 18 years old, living in a shelter whose address cannot be disclosed, having...escaped from her Turkish-born parents.  The reason, she said, was that they were threatening to kill her unless she agreed to marry a man from Turkey whom she had never met.

"I had a German passport, and that made me very valuable," she told Bernstein, who continues,

She said her would-be betrothed in Turkey was wealthy and therefore able to pay a big price for a bride by which he could gain a German passport and German residency. 

Bernstein quotes a former commissioner for foreign affairs who argues that the number of girls fleeing arranged marriages in the country is a small percentage of Deutschland's overall Turkish population.  But Jasmin and social service workers disagree, claiming that "oppression and control of ethnic Turkish girls are widespread, perhaps even dominant."  Worse, Turkish men prefer arranged marriages over unions with German women. 

"The attitude of families is that a girl from Turkey will be innocent and pure and will just stay home and have babies," Jasmin said.  "Turkish girls who grew up in Turkey don't know German laws, so they don't know how to protect themselves, even if things go badly."

Fortunately, Bernstein observes, many Germans are rethinking multiculturalism--or "multi-kulti" as they call it.  In Jasmin's case, her German employer refused to turn her over to her parents, but instead found her sanctuary in a shelter which since 1986 has assisted 1,000 girls fleeing arranged marriages.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you who complain that the MSM does not report positive stories about Iraq, Arthur Chrenkoff's invaluable two-week listing of good news from the Land Between the Rivers is up.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NOTE:  Nothing I, or anyone, can say about this issue can equal the AP photographs circulating around the world today [December 20].  Criminal thugs pulling election workers out of their car in Baghdad traffic and executing them in the street.  What we see in this atrocity are not "insurgents" "resisting" foreign occupation, but fascists attempting to subvert and destroy the birth of democracy. 

For a deeper and more eloquent analysis of the significance of these photographs go to Belmont Club.

The second war to liberate Iraq has begun, pitting election campaigns against terrorist campaigns.  While we hope and expect politics to win, its enemies are exacting a bloody cost from the Iraqi people. 

Today, two car bombs exploded an hour apart in the Shia-dominated cities of Najaf and Karbala.  According to the AP, the blast in Najaf occurred amidst a funeral procession in Maidan Square, killing forty-nine and wounding 90.  The attack in Karbala, 45 miles northwest, took place near the city's bus station:  13 dead, 30 injured.  This was the second terrorist attack to strike Karbala this week.  On December 15--the opening day of the election campaign--a blast struck the Imam Hussain mosque, killing seven.

In Baghdad today, 30 gunmen armed with grenades and machine-guns ambushed a car carrying five employees of the Election Commission of Iraq, killing three.

Let us pause to consider these events.  Here is a country struggling to stage the first democratic elections in its 3,000 year history.  Meanwhile, paramilitary death-squads are attempting to delay, de-legitimize and destroy the process, even as they prod the country toward civil war.  The values millions of people profess to hold dear--democracy, peace, stability, tolerance, women's rights--are at risk.  And yet the world remains largely silent.

In the 1930s, men volunteered for units like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in order to fight Fascism in Spain.  Today, their tenured sons and daughters sit in comfortable academic seminars where they denounce the "empire" and its nefarious designs on the planet.  (See my "The Empire and Laurie Brand" in the archives.)  Or they create websites like "Iraq Body Count," which tallies the number of civilian deaths--without, however, discriminating between those killed by U.S. troops, fascist paramilitaries, disease, crime or tribal disputes.  Judging by its home page image of a Stealth Bomber dropping its payload, every death is America's fault. 

At least Iraq Body Count is acknowledging and registering the dead; the rest of the world just turns away.  As the New York Times' Thomas Friedman noted last week, the European Union, NATO, the Arab League - all stand to gain from stability in Iraq, yet none are contributing much in the way of manpower or resources to assure that outcome.  The columnist writes,

"We in Iraq have a lot of disappointment with many of our neighbors," Ghazi al-Yawar, Iraq's interim president, told me the other day while he was visiting Washington. Al-Yawar described Iraq's neighbors as sitting on a fence "dangling their legs and munching on pistachios," while "the forces of darkness" try to rip Iraq to shreds. "We do not understand why a vicious suicide bomber who claims the lives of innocent civilians is a terrorist in one country and in Iraq he becomes a freedom fighter," added al-Yawar, a bright and decent man.

As for the U.N.'s treatment of the Iraqis--let us pass over the Oil for Food program scandal and Kofi Annan's description of their liberation as "illegal.  Rather, let us contemplate on the fact the organization plans to send 25 election monitors (perhaps a few more), far less than the 300 it dispatched to East Timor in 1999. 

Why?  According to the Daily Kos, the reason the world ignores Iraq is because

No one, but no one, trusts the Bush Administration on anything.  BushCo is malevolent, untrustworthy and incompetent.  Consider for a moment the risks involved in cooperating with BushCo.  They remain as high as ever.  Especially in the surroundings of a controversial election that is sure to fuel considerable violence.  And what are the potential rewards?  A successful election in Iraq?  And this guarantees what exactly? 

In other words, it's all Bush's fault.  It doesn't matter how many brave Iraqis die in an attempt to move their country to a better place, it doesn't matter that their enemies are the same type of creatures who operated the killing fields of Cambodia, the gulags of the Soviet Union, the concentration camps of Nazi Germany--who have, in every generation throughout history, found the light of human freedom too painful to withstand and so sought to darken it forever.  No, it's Bush's fault.

God knows the current administration has done much to earn such opprobrium.  But I wonder if there aren't other factors at work in the world's seeming apathy to the Iraqis.  Europe calculates that its advantage lies, as always, in letting the U.S. do the heavy-lifting security work while its ministers stand on the sidelines carping at American policies.  The Arab League is too obsessed with anti-Semitism to act in any constructive manner.  And the Left?  Their multicultural, anti-capitalist, anti-globalization impulses have put them in tacit sympathy with the very forces which retard progress in Iraq, in the world and throughout history: tribalism. 

When a group of Islamofascists killed 300 people in Madrid's train stations, Spaniards declared the event was their "9-11."  When a single Muslim extremists killed one man--Theo van Gogh--the Dutch claimed that event was their 9-11.  By that estimation, the Iraqi people suffer the equivalent of numerous 9-11s every week.  Where is the world's sympathy, its outrage, its offers of assistance?  Nous sommes tous Americains, Le Monde famously declared after the real 9-11.  Nous sommes tous Irakiens?  The answer is, distressingly, no.

ADDITIONAL INFO:  Jeff Harrell at shapeofdays.typepad.com alerts me to iraqelect.com.  For more information about the elections (plus a great tutorial on the fascist paramilitaries), go to Iraqi Bloggers Central.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've heard it a thousand times:  if we act like the terrorists, then the terrorists win.  And though this may be clichéd, it's true:  Islamists use every abuse they can extract from Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo Bay and homeland calls to limit Muslims' freedom as proof that the United States has embarked on a crusade against Islam.  Unfortunately, many Americans seem intent on proving them correct.  According to USA Today, a nationwide survey of 715 people carried out by Cornell University found

44% favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans...The survey showed that 27% of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government.  Twenty-two percent favor racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats.  And 29% thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

Now, I'm not sure that allowing feds to listen in on some Wahhabi imam exhorting his congregation to attack American interests--or to insure that zakat does not end up in the coffers of Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front--constitutes "restricting" Muslim liberties.  But requiring American citizens to register where they live?  I can already hear Osama chortling from his Waziristani bat-cave.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the poll discovered that "people who paid more attention to television news" were more likely to endorse measures to abridge the liberties of Muslim-Americans.  And giving credence to the Michael Moorian view of Red State America,

Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Maybe these God-fearing patriots should ask themselves a question:  How can we ask our troops to sacrifice themselves in Iraq if we betray the values they're fighting for back home? 

UPDATE:  via Andrew Sullivan, Eugene Volkoh underscores my suspicion that the pollsters expanded the definition of "restricting civil liberties" in order to make a catchy headline.  But the fact that 29 percent of respondees favor Muslim-Americans registering their location with the feds remains deeply disturbing.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wall Street Journal reviews ITRZ--check it out in the "Week-end" section (registration required).  Also, the fifth and last installment of Chapter Four is up on National Review Online.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the Vietnam War, many activists sought to poison support for the conflict by denouncing veterans as “baby killers,” as if every grunt were one of Kerry’s “Winter Soldiers.”  Like other excess of the time, the taunting of traumatized young men returning from a war zone backfired, tainting the legacy of the anti-war movement.

How well they’ve learned.  Today, many opposed to the war in Iraq adopt the opposite approach—they “support” our troops, remind us of the sacrifices made by our fighting men and women.  The mainstream media keeps a running tally of fatalities (with a morose fascination of the 1000^th death), ABC News’ Nightline recites the names of the dead, while Michael Moore sells books comprised of correspondence from soldiers who feel betrayed by Bush.  It is an effective tactic, one that tries to set the Right’s support for the war in conflict with its propensity to lionize America’s warriors.  And depending on the context, it can be sincere, meaningful or—too often—deeply cynical.

This photograph shows a young woman holding her five month old baby.  The father of that child has never seen his daughter, nor will he.  Last April, First Lt. Doyle Hufstedler, 25, of Abilene, Texas, died when an IED near Habbaniyah destroyed his vehicle.  The photograph illustrated a recent Scripps Howard News Service story highlighting the fact that 900 children have lost a parent in our current conflict, including six mothers, leaving behind 10 children.  As we look at the joy on Leslie Hufstedler’s face, we admire her courage—grateful that it relieves us of experiencing the true depth of her pain. 

What the image doesn’t—and can’t—convey is why her husband died, for what purpose.  Photography—the visual media in general—is ill-suited for conveying the abstract thoughts and concepts that provide context for images.  The once-living soldier’s face, the flag-draped coffin, the brave war widow make us feel profound worlds of grief, but beyond that grief there is no narrative, no meaning.  Like a fetish, the image constantly returns attention to itself.

Opponents of the war know this.  They seek to decouple the conflict in Iraq from a larger narrative that might provide meaning to soldiers’ deaths.  Lacking their own narrative (during Vietnam, they claimed participation in global anti-imperialism; today, they are reduced to “No Blood for Oil”), they focus on images of sorrow and loss with accusatory, prosecutorial, intent.  See?  These are the costs of your war.  They are right, of course.  And thousands of grieving Americans, for whom no concept of duty or pro patria or “democratizing the Middle East” justifies their loss, agree.

And yet I wonder what effect the Left’s politicization of grief will have on our soldiers and, more importantly, suffering families.  Politics are by nature one-sided, and to use America’s sorrow as an attack on the Bush Administration is to transform that sorrow into an instrument of outrage.  When the guns fall silent, and the protesters move to other causes, outrage, too, fades away.  Leaving the bereaved with--what?

The Gettysburg Address, Sir Edward Lutyens’ monument at Ypres, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial at Washington did not seek to diminish the war which claimed so many lives.  Instead, they sought to represent the tragedy of the soldiers' sacrifice, and in so doing connect us with something profound and deep in the human soul.  Political outrage, in contrast, reduces that connection to sloganeering.  When, after the Iraq War is over, we revisit Fahrenheit 9-11, will we still feel the anguish of Lila Lipscomb—the Bush supporter whose son was killed in Iraq—or will her grief seem tarnished, cheapened by the filmmaker's mendacious agenda? 

I have no real problems with the Scripps article, or with its use of Laurie Hufstedler’s photograph.  (The “People” magazine-ation of this war, however, is troubling). Rather, I have difficulties with what the website Daily Kos did with it.  “Another facet of Bush’s legacy,” Markos Moulitsas Zuniga posted over a link to the article and photographs accompanying it.  Yes, yes, j’accuse.  But the photograph is more than that.  It represents a widow's sorrow, softened by the promise of continued life.  To reduce that image to ideology is parochial, crude.  Zuniga’s lapse, of course, is minor (Michael Moore’s less so) and yet it represents, I think, the effects of much of the Left’s ”concern” for the troops:  tragedy exploited for political ends, grief diminished by ideology. 

Doyle Hufstedler died in a war that many of the people reading these words support:  To us, his death is honorable and tragic—and, because of that honor and tragedy, meaningful.  It is important that we keep these notions of honor and meaning alive in our thoughts and the in public discourse.  As Lincoln articulated in the Gettysburg address, how we judge a war’s purpose, in the end, determines whether we view our soldiers’ sacrifices as tragic and meaningful—or wasted and outrageous. 

UPDATE:  Blackfive lets us know the kind of response our soldiers are receiving today.  Indeed, this is not Vietnam.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've asked my friends and acquaintances in Iraq to e-mail me stories and anecdotes about their lives.  This is a short post from Zena, a housewife and mother of three.  She tells us what it's like to attempt to fill one's car with gasoline in today's Baghdad.

The queue for petrol runs fives around the block.  There was one station here whose owners always observed "respect" for the female population of Baghdad who own and drive cars.  As in most Muslim countries, Iraq doesn't allow men and women to queue side by side together, so to our advantage, we women usually get ushered to the front of the line and fill up in less than five minutes.

But what happened?  The pressure was so intense among men waiting in line for hours, that they forgot the Islamic principle on which this understanding was founded and refused us entry to fill up.  I pleaded and explained that I have as much right to fill up my car as anyone else, and I don't mind waiting an hour so, but I will not sleep in the street overnight.  It didn't matter.  I was sadly turned away.  So what could I do but queue up at six that morning and hope they will let me in?  At the same gas station, we were told to line up in one street, and then after an hour told to go to the other street to line up.  But this caused all the people at the end of the first line to become the front of the second line, and at this point, you guessed it, I just gave up and went home.

Like the Iraqis say, "We live on a sea of oil.  How can this happen?"  How indeed?

Posted by Steven Vincent at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finding its way south of the equator, In the Red Zone caught the attention of Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, who was kind enough to review the book--and has now added to his graciousness by interviewing its author. 

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conservatives demanding Kofi Annan's head on a barrel of Basran Light Crude are outraged by President Bush's apparent support for the embattled U.N. chief.  Others, such as uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds speculates that the White House's seeming volte face indicates that W. either supports the U.N. chief or figures that a discredited Secretary General will prove ineffective in opposing U.S. interests.  But there may be an additional element that affects Bush's calculations:  the U.N. is turning the heat up on Uncle Sam's own oil scandal.

This week, the U.N.'s International Monetary Advisory Board (IAMB) released a report charging the U.S.-backed Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) with mismanaging the Iraqi economy.  The auditor's report accuses officials of, among other things, improperly "metering"--or measuring--oil production, losing track of oil resources, allowing smugglers to steal oil, "bartering" oil at below-market value rates, giving out non-competitive contracts and insufficiently controlling spending at Iraqi ministries.  It is the latest in a series of reports from the IAMB and other organizations that have cast doubts on the CPA's stewardship of the Iraqi people's wealth.

The money in question belonged to the Development Fund of Iraq, some $20.6 billion comprised of oil proceeds, Oil-for-Food money and frozen assets of the former regime.  While the IAMB concludes that all "known [emphasis original] oil proceeds, reported frozen assets and transfers from the Oil-for-Food Program have been properly and transparently accounted for," its reports raises two basic questions.  how much more money could the CPA have drawn from Iraq's oil resources had it applied stricter metering, accounting and security measures; and what exactly did administrators spend $20.6 billion on? 

December 10's Financial Times asserts that "hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues may have been squandered," and notes that the CPA's inspector-general is "investigating 27 cases of alleged corruption by CPA officials."  Numerous payouts involved non-competitive contracts, such as a $1.4 billion deal with Halliburton to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure.  According to a report issued by the Open Society Institute financed by George Soros, "73 percent in dollar value of all contracts awarded using Iraqi funds" were not competitively bid.

As revealed in the FT's article, the CPA went on a spending spree two months before it handed sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government in June.  For example, nearly $1.8 billion went to Kurdish authorities who are now apparently in talks--assisted by Washington lobbyists connected to the GOP--to send part of that money to Switzerland.  An additional $1.8 billion went to various Iraqi ministries, while over $1 billion went to projects which were already funded by Congressional appropriations.

Ironically, those appropriations are one reason with the CPA opened the DFI checkbook.  Legislators placed so many guards against waste or misuse on the $18.4 billion Congress earmarked for Iraq's reconstruction, that administrators in Baghdad frequently found themselves ensnared in red tape.  Moreover, the FT notes, those taxpayer funds evidently fell under the control of the Pentagon, which "was reluctant to let them spend the money."  Indeed, CPA officials I spoke to in Iraq constantly complained that they couldn't move Congressional funds "into the field" because of oversight rules, such as demanding multiple bidders for even low-level projects.  "How can we find more than one Iraqi construction firm to repair a school or a hospital?" one told me.  "It's like the Pentagon has a 10,000-mile screwdriver and is trying to fine-tune everything we do with the money," another said.  In the end, it simply proved more expeditious for the CPA to use the less-scrutinized DFI account.

It's difficult to know what to think of this.  On one hand, neither the IAMB or any other agency so far has charged any person or group with embezzlement or fraud.  Then, too, the understaffed CPA was operating in a chaotic environment, in a country with no functioning banking system, where emergency situations often called for measures not in accordance with standard accounting practices.  But we are talking about monies desperately need by the Iraqi people, whose current safety and future stability lie in our hands.  It is a painful to think that millions, perhaps billions, of dollars vanished into accounting black holes when child malnutrition, unemployment, gas and electric shortages and sanitation and drainage problems afflict the country.

But there's another dimension to why the CPA felt compelled to raid DFI monies, rather than spend U.S. funds.  Of the $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress, only around one-third has been earmarked for projects, with just over $1.2 billion spent.  Senator Byrd could blow that much on West Virginia pork-barrel projects over the course of an afternoon; why is it so difficult in Iraq?  In some ways, the delay is analogous to the controversy over unarmored Humvees:  America, a country blessed with enormous wealth, seems unable to provide enough resources where they are needed most--the reconstruction of Iraq. 

We should remember, too, that despite their tactical disadvantages, the paramilitary gunmen in Iraq lack no shortage of weapons, nor do they have the same oversight restrictions on the $500 million in "unaccounted funds" from Saddam's regime, the untold amounts flowing from Saudi sources through Syria, or the $2.6 billion Saddam is said to have shipped to Damascus.  This doesn't excuse the CPA's spendthrift ways with Iraqi money, of course--just as the U.S. must abide by rules of combat, so too, it must observe rules of accounting.  The irony, however, is frustrating:  in fighting black-masked killers lurking in back alleyways, American forces must also contend with the green-eyeshade men sitting in highrise office towers.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The key to winning the War on Terror--whether in Iraq, Ridyah or the American homeland--is women.  Liberated women will sweep away the claptrap of religious fascism faster than you can say Scheherazade and relegate the mullahs of every denomination to the status of soap-box preachers.  And across dar-al-Islam today, we see the issue of women's rights beginning to shake the self-conception of Muslim world with a force unheralded since Napoleon sailed into the harbor of Alexandria.  Adding our voices to the revolution is one small way we can help bring about a release of new energies across the Middle East and beyond. 

With that in mind, I thought we'd periodically examine topics pertaining to women in the Middle East.  Starting with this small, but interesting bit of good news (tip of the hat to Professor Roth) from the BBC.  Over the last month the Beeb has featured on-line voices from Iraq, including Sarab al-Delaymi, a Baghdad housewife, who recently wrote

Women in Baghdad are traditionally more open than women in the provinces, but we've recently started to notice the emergence of a new type of more emancipated women in the provinces. Many women are becoming more engaged and active in political debate and some of them even occupy high administrative and political positions. This makes me and others hopeful of a better future.

Indeed.

(Unfortunately, not all observations from the Beeb's participants are so upbeat.  But scroll down and read what Sarab has to say about schools and teachers' salaries.)

The Beeb also informs us of a radical event occurring in Egypt.  Seems medical doctor and  sociologist Nawal Saadawi has announced her intention to enter next year's presidential elections, making her the first woman to run for the top post.  Although her candidacy has no legal standing, Saadawi intends it as an consciousness-raising act. "I am going to stand in the presidential election, not to win but to get the Egyptian people moving in favour of a reform of the constitution and to oppose corruption and"--adding the obligatory coda--"American colonialism."  (Interestingly, Saadawi's anti-colonial ire did not prevent her in the 1990s from fleeing with her family to the Great Satan when religious fundamentalist threatened her life.  After teaching at Duke University and Washington State University, she returned to Egypt in 1996.)

Ms. Saadawi is a controversial figure in the Land of the Nile: author of 27 books--mostly about women's issues--and a political prisoner under Sadat, in 2001 she gave an interview in which she denounced the veil and polygamy, accused religious leaders of being more concerned with sex than Allah and posited the shocking theory that the Hajj contained paganistic elements.  Her comments blew the turbans off Egypt's religious establishment, who charged her with sexual licentiousness in inciting women to immoral behavior, declared her beyond the bounds of Islam and ordered the state to annul her 37 year marriage.  Authorities eventually dropped the case, largely due to pressure from international observers. 

More seriously, human rights observers have criticized Pakistan's first-ever legislation against karo kari, or the horrendous practice of "honor killings." which take the lives of hundreds of Pakistani women each year.  On first glance the bill--passed the Congress but awaiting President Musharraf's signature--is strong, prescribing a minimum of ten year imprisonment and a maximum of the death penalty for murdering women deemed to have "shamed" a family.  But it also allows killers to escape justice through qisas--convincing victims' families to pardon perpetrators--or by paying compensation, called dyat.  Critics note that qisas and dyat favor the rich and powerful who can intimidate families through social or economic pressure.   

Why the loopholes?  In 1990, Pakistan amended sections of its criminal code to reflect the so-called Qisas and Dyat Ordinances of Islamic law.  According to Pakistan's Daily Star, any legislation that seeks to abrogate or work around the Ordinance will "most likely be successfully challenged in a court of law as being repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah."  Indeed, Pakistan judges have already ruled that the Qisas and Dyat Ordinance cannot be by-passed because they are "part and parcel of Islamic common law."  Take a deep breath and repeat after me, separation of mosque and state..separation of mosque and state...

Women's rights in Islam (and not only Islam) is huge, of course, and I've only presented a merest skimming of the news.  If anyone has any tips or issues they'd like this site to raise, please let me know.  Until next time, let us ponder the words of the Holy Koran:

He created you from one being, then from that being He made its mate. (39.6) 

Posted by Steven Vincent at 05:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy Holidays from PETA

"For 249,000 lambs, eight million pigs and 750 million chickens, there will be no presents under the tree, no warm family gatherings, no happy new year," PETA TV informs the viewer, as images of cuddly--and no doubt doomed--creatures bound across the screen.  The message from the animal rights activists is, of course, to "go vegetarian" this holiday season.

Well, all right.  My own animal rights activist, Warrior Woman, tells me not to criticize PETA's position on this point, and I won't.  But I wonder, what is PETA's stance on  the Hajj?  The tenth day of the holy pilgrimage to Mecca is the Day of Sacrifice, or Eid al-Adha, one of Islam's biggest holidays.  Here, the faithful sacrifice a lamb, goat or other animal in order to commemorate Abraham's substitution of a ram for his son Isaac (or Ishmael, as some Muslims believe).  According to England's Channel Four news, Muslims during each Hajj slaughter some 700,000 sheep and 8,000 cattle or camels.  Some slaughterhouses handle 50,000 animals a day, with more than 28,000 butchers working for three days.

The religious directives for Udhiyah, or sacrifice, mandate that the minimum age for a sheep is either six months or a year old; one year for a goat, two for a cow and five for a camel (a female is prefered); no chickens or rabbits.  Muslims consider it Sunna--or in accordance with the actions of Mohammad--to keep one-third of the meat and donate one-third to the poor.  Since 1983, reports Channel Four, "the meat of 8.8 million heads of sheep, camels and cows has been distributed among the poor in Islamic countries including Bangladesh, Sudan, Senegal and Somalia."  The remaining third is given to friends and neighbors, making Eid al-Adha a joyous occasion for everyone. 

Well, almost everyone.  Zena, my Baghdadi housewife friend, was raised a Sunni in the U.K.  Whenever she or her siblings asked why their father had to slit the throat of a cute little lamb or goat, her parents answered "because Ali demands it."  Translation:  the Shia made them do it.  Said Zena, "All my life, I identified Shiism with killing little animals."  And people complain that Santa is a straight, white male who oppresses the workers.

Many Muslims decry Udhiyah and claim that neither the Koran nor the Hadiths mandate it.  In this way, they're doing more to protect animals from Islamic traditions than America's self-appointed guardians of the winged, pawed and hoofed.  Evidently, PETA feels the only animals worth activist efforts are those killed for Western holidays.  A search on their website for "Eid al-Adha" turns up only a single page on islamveg.com.  A search for "Hajj" also turns up one entry: something entitled "They Shall Not Hurt or Destroy" on a site called, ironically enough, jesusveg.com.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The National Review Online is kindly excerpting passages from "The 'Resistance'" --or Chapter Four of In the Red Zone.  If you're curious about my take on those ever-charming folks in the Sunni Triangle, or want a quick refresher, go here.  If nothing else, it will remind you of the moral imbecility of Michael "Minutemen" Moore and  Ted "Collaborators" Rall.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Assuming the January elections take place with a reasonable degree of legitimacy--and barring untoward events--Iraq's new leader will almost certainly be Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.  Who is he?  What does he stand for?  Is he a moderate, a Muslim fundamentalist or, as some fear, a stalking horse for Iranian expansionism?  The picture we have of him is vague and contradictory and bears some analysis.

Born around 1953 (the date is uncertain), Hakim is head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.  Formed in 1982 by his brother Mohammad Bakr al-Hakim, SCIRI originally was an Iranian-based group of Iraqi Shia dedicated to overthrowing Saddam.  Abdul Hakim directed SCIRI's military wing, the Badr Brigade, which boasted from 5,000 to 10,000 men trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards--but whose fighting capabilities proved overrated against Saddam's troops in 1991.  When In August 2003, a car bomb detonating outside the Mosque of Ali in Najaf killed Mohammad, Abdul assumed SCIRI's leadership.

Despite their Iranian ties, both SCIRI and Hakim have walked a fine line between Washington and Tehran.  In winter 2003, for example, Iran--over U.S. protests--dispatched 5,000 SCIRI fighters into Kurdistan in part to extend its influence over northern Iraq.  According to The Secret History of the War in Iraq, by Yussef Bodansky, that February, Abdul declared that his Badr Brigade "is dependent on Iranian policy.  We abide by the decisions of the Iranian government."  He also declared that "Even if the regime in Baghdad is toppled, we will continue our resistance."  During the invasion, the Brigade obeyed Tehran's injunction not to assist Coalition forces against Saddam.

Still, SCIRI's contacts with Washington date back at least to 1993--and during the invasion, Mohammad Hakim cautioned his followers not to fight U.S. or British troops.  He also allowed Abdul to serve on the American-appointed Governing Council.  Indeed, SCIRI's moderate, or neutral, attitude toward the Coalition "occupiers" is a major reason for the relative calm of Shia-dominated southern Iraq.

Officially, at least, SCIRI still endorses Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of Velayat-e-Faqih, or rule by religious clerics.  SCIRI publications often laud Khomeini, as did many SCIRI members I met in Baghdad and Basra.  Over time, though, the group has evolved into a social service network, filling in gaps left by Saddam's fall and Coalition neglect.  The Badr Brigade, for example, rechristened itself the "Badr Organization for Development and Reconstruction." and in May 2003, a spokesman denied that SCIRI advocated an "Iranian style theocracy."  Observers expect that Hakim and his organization will continue to be influenced by Ayatollah Sistani's "Quietist" views, which oppose religious activism. 

Like most Shia leaders, Hakim has kept his cards close to his chest.  Nevertheless, he has indicated some positions.  Last February, he told PBS' Frontline,

We don't want an Islamic government.  We want a constitutional government that preserves the rights of everyone...To respect Islam is one thing, and to establish an Islamic government is something else.

Another issue is Hakim's position on federalism--or, to put it another way,.the Kurdish question.  The Kurds fiercely defend their semi-independent status, want little to do with the Shia conception of shari'a, or Islamic law, and have the best Iraq fighters to protect, or assert, their desires.  Hakim appears to waffle on this issue.  Speaking to Turkey's foreign minister last January, he opposed federalism based on an ethnic basis in favor of "a geography-based federal system;" at the same time, thought, he remained vague if Iraqi's new constitution would enshrine Kurdish rights.  Speaking to Iranian journalist last July, he stated that SCIRI believes "so long as a federal system would solve the problem of the Iraqi Kurds, it will be okay."  What "okay" means will come clear next December, when Iraq's new parliament draws up a permanent constitution.  How moderate Hakim truly is, whether his vision of Iraq includes granting rights to non-Arab, non-Shia minorities and how independent he is from Tehran--all this waits to be revealed. 

UPDATE:  Providing a solider's-eye view of Mohammad al-Hakim--and Iraq in general--is The Adventures of Chester.  Check out what he has to say here.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Readers of In the Red Zone know that New York artist--and my friend--Steve Mumford did much to inspire my trips to Iraq.  Now you can see why. Todays' New York Times (registration required) profiles Steve and offers selections of his front-line drawings and watercolors.  After checking out the article, go to Steve's "Baghdad Journal" on artnet.com for a fascinating, utterly original view of Iraq and the challenges faced by our troops.  Better yet, it's illustrated.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those of us for whom college means fading memories of all-night study crams and Hendrix jams often puzzle at the attitudes of many academics toward the war.  The U.S. is fighting an enemy whose goals are antithetical to ideals embraced by most intellectuals, yet many express hostility to America (there are exceptions, see "Books to Baghdad" below).  Last November, a window opened on this mindset, thanks to Laurie Brand's address to the Middle East Studies Association, a self-described "non-political" group comprised of academics from prestigious universities and institutions around the world.

As deftly profiled by Martin Kramer's Sandstorm, out-going MESA president Brand is a well-credentialed professor of international relations at USC, an expert on Palestinian issues and a strident critic of America.  That's the same America, Sandstorm notes, that has awarded the good professor numerous career-enhancing grants, awards, state-sponsored lecture tours and four  Fulbright scholarships.

Speaking, appropriately enough, in San Francisco, Brand entitled her address "Scholarship in the Shadow of Empire."  Her ostensible subject was the undeniably important issue of how the U.S. government "uses academic/scientific inquiry," especially during wartime.  "How should we define the concept of citizen/scholar?" she queried.  As her talk progressed, however, she grew increasingly bitter toward the U.S., eventually warning that "academic freedom...is under siege by those insisting that we toe a particular ideological or political line."  She offered no examples of actual coercion or threats.

We'll pass over her denunciations of the "deplorable" conflict in Iraq and the "Manichean" war on terror.  What's more interesting is her constant description of the U.S. as "the empire."  "What else but 'empire' describes the awesome thing America is becoming?" she quotes a friend; "What should our relationship as scholars be to the state, now the empire?" she asks.  Of course, she and her MESA audience know what "empire" means--not a Rome-like defender of civilization against tribal barbarians, but (queue the Darth Vader theme) an evil empire that persecutes the pure of heart and righteous of soul.

Brand's address reveals her own Manichean world-view, similar to that reflected by many intellectuals.  They view "academic/scientific" knowledge as something pure that must be protected from--not offered in assistance to--the profane necessities of government.  ("Studies of democratization, political Islam and terrorism serve as the...intellectual underpinning of the newest march to battle," cautions Brand.)  Moreover, as guardians of knowledge, these scholar-priests must maintain the moral high ground by declining participation in the often queasy compromises of real world politics.  To her credit, Brand admits that accepting taxpayer money "implicates" academics in the "broader imperial/political system"--but her mea culpa rings false, betrayed by the fact that, in her lexicon, scholars receive benign-sounding "government funding"--but resist "the empire."

Canadian columnist David Warren once described post-modernism as "Christianity without Christ."  In the anti-Americanism evinced by these academics (along with the entertainment/media/political overclass and most, it seems, of continental Europe) one senses what Gibbon critiqued as the early Christian's other-worldliness and disengagement from Rome's responsibilities in the world--but, in today's case, without the moral and ethical anchor of the man Jesus.  Instead, these Leftists exhibit an amorphous, free-floating desire to escape the thorny issues of power and governance in return for clean hands, a tidy conscience and comfortable personal lives.

What explains this self-righteous alienation?  Brand offers a clue.  She quotes a 2002 Ron Susskind interview in which a senior Bush adviser says, "We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality...We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."  Continuing on, she notes,

What has become increasingly clear is that it matters little if one has extensive regional, language and political expertise, if one's conclusions do not match those of the administration of the empire.

That's the most galling part, it seems.  To Brand's brand of scholars, the empire is mean, manipulative and coercive.  Even worse--it doesn't care about them.

UPDATE:  Just to put in my two cents worth on the current Juan Cole flap (so glad I'm not alone in my irritation with him!), I should add that while Laurie Brand is the out-going president of MESA, the in-coming is none other than the good professor himself.  Someone might warn the scholars' association that in Cole's case:  being "informed " is not necessarily knowing.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Faced with overwhelming and increasingly sophisticated American military power and--perhaps most important--a unified Shia political slate, Sunni intransigence toward Iraq's elections continues to weaken.  According to the AP's Mariam Fam, the Iraqi Islamic Party --the Sunnis' premier political organization (which, as you'll recall, withdrew from the government last month in protest over the re-liberation of Falluja) has "quietly" submitted a list of 275 candidates.  Leaders told Fam that they wanted to "reserve the right to vote if the election is not postponed."  Translated:  the U.S., Shias and Kurds have called their bluff to sit out the January vote--a fact that is beginning to dawn upon the mutinous mullahs and sheiks of the Sunni Triangle. 

Most of them, at any rate.  The Association of Muslim Scholars--which claims to represent three thousand mosques and advocates resistance to the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq--supports delaying elections, in large part, they claim, because of the security situation.  And indeed, like hooded Klansmen stalking the post-bellum south, masked paramilitaries continue their terrorist activities, murdering police officers, National Guardsmen, government workers and other members of the true Iraqi resistance.  Their insistence on holding the country hostage to vague, unrealizable or--given the Sunnis' chance of success in an actual civil war--suicidal demands has puzzled observers.  Why won't their leaders come to the negotiating table?  What do the Sunnis want?

In his December 6 dispatch, the New York Times' John Burns provides a clue.  Describing the Marines' recent operations south of Baghdad, he notes that the targets are "two tribal families, the Janabis and the Kargoulis."   Burns writes,

Under Mr. [sic] Hussein, the Janabi and the Kargoulis were richly rewarded.  Their area was the base for Republican Guard units, munitions factories, weapons research establishments and battlefield testing grounds, as well as a host of new industrial plants and depots.

After "Mr." Hussein's downfall and the consequent loss of Baathist largess, Burns notes, "the Janabis and Kargoulis families became stalwarts of the resistance."  Are we surprised?

Out of this union of two families--or rather, tribes--emerged a leader, Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, believed today to direct the paramilitary forces in central Iraq.  He enjoys a large power base:  estimates of the Janabi's tribal habitation range from 400,000 to one million people.  The tribe's legitimate business include construction, textile and food processing companies.  Among their illegitimate businesses number weapons dealing, black market currency exchange, extortion, carjacking and the kidnapping of foreigners for eventual sale to foreign jihadists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--who, many say, is responsible for raising the tribe, and its chieftain, to prominence. 

With so much lucre at stake, no wonder the Sunnis have taken up arms.  No wonder, too, that they dread the prospect of a central--and reasonably honest--government wresting control of their black market enterprises.  As I've argued before, beneath its rhetoric of nationalism and jihad, the fascist counter-revolution in Iraq is steeped in an archaic, irrational and self-defeating resentment against America--the only force on earth that could destroy the Sunnis' tribal system of patronage and bring its criminal enforcers to justice.  What do these Sunni leaders want?  What all gangsters desire:  money, power, a firm grip over a terrified population and the murder of every honest cop who stands in their way.

UPDATE:  According to the AP, two additional Sunni parties are fielding slates of candidates:  the Constitutional Monarchy Movement and the Coalition of Iraqi National Unity.  The first group, as its name implies, seeks the restoration of Iraq's monarchy.  The second, comprised of numerous anti-Saddam militias, has had close links with the U.S. and has in the past provided manpower to guard oil pipelines in northern Iraq.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri issued their 1998 fatwa proclaiming that every Muslim had an "individual duty" to kill Americans, they justified their declaration on the premise that "crusader armies" are "spreading in [the Holy Land] like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations."  In other words, Al Qaeda's chieftains argued that because dar-al-Islam was under attack by America and her allies, the situation merited all-out war against the Yankee infidel.  The qualification is important:  according to the Koran, jihad is only for defensive purposes:

Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those who are attacked, because they have been wronged. (22:39)

Salafists have used the "defending Islam" concept to justify terrorist attacks from Mogadishu to Manhattan, Madrid to Mosul.  Lately, however, that notion of "defensive action" has expanded to avenge perceived assaults on Muslim culture--as we first saw with the Rushdie affair and, more recently, the murder of Theo van Gogh.

Which brings us to the "radical Moroccan pizza courier."  No, that's not a character out of South Park, but, according to a December 10th article on Expatica, a website for English expats in the Netherlands, it refers to a pizza deliverer who was allegedly scoping out Amsterdam's infamous Red Light district for a terrorist attack.  Tipped off by anonymous e-mails, Dutch officials arrested a 20 year-old Moroccan identified as Bilal L., otherwise known as Abu Qataadah.

According to Amsterdam's De Telegraaf newspaper, which broke the story last Friday, Bilal L. allegedly hung out with Syrian terrorist Redouan al-Issa, reported head of the Islamist network Hofstadgroep (Main City Group).  Al-Issa, it seems, gave Koranic lessons to Main City member Mohammad B., the suspected killer of Theo van Gogh.  (Strangely enough, one of van Gogh's movies, Najib and Julia, dealt with a love affair between a Moroccan pizza deliverer and a Dutch woman.)  The anonymous e-mails warned that al-Issa planned to attack the Red Light district, in addition to the Dutch Parliament, and that Bilal L. had purchased equipment for the operation. As Expatica explains, the "Muslim extremists were allegedly furious at the lack of morals in the prostitution zone."

Well, welcome to Amsterdam, boys.  More seriously, though, if Dutch authorities are correct, then al-Issa's aborted attack on sex-workers dramatically widens the "defensive action" justification for jihad.  To Main City Group, at least, it matters not if an outrage perpetrated by unbelievers has a connection with Islam at all--if Netherland's mutawwa'in find it offends their morality, it deserves destruction.  Logically, this potential jihad-list can now include anything that Western cultures do that affronts Muslim sensibilities--which is another way of saying just about anything we do.  Drink alcohol?  Walk about with your "finery" exposed?  Fly the American flag?  Watch Desperate Housewives?  All you canine owners, beware, Mohammad hated dogs...

Posted by Steven Vincent at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ABC News is reporting a truly disheartening account of the plight of many women in post-Taliban Afghanistan who are going to gruesome lengths to avoid being sold into marriage.  (Buying and selling human beings:  isn't that a definition of slavery?)

But even as Afghan females are finally enjoying basic human rights, such as the right to an education, to work and to vote.  Afghanistan remains a profoundly conservative Muslim nation.

Cultural transformation--including age-old honor-bound codes of conduct--still shackle and oppress women, especially those living outside Kabul.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of news reports about suicides by self-immolation among Afghan women.  Although nationwide statistics are hard to come by, hospitals and aid agencies in cities like Kabul and Herat in western Afghanistan have recorded a number of female burn cases.

Forced into marriages--often with older, richer men--and faced with a life of endless exploitation and drudgery, an untold number of Afghan females are dousing themselves with kerosene used in cooking stoves and setting themselves on fire.

The piece then quotes a Western aid worker with the World Medical Association: 

"There is an absolute level of despair, that you will never be able to make a choice about your life and that really there is no way out, and knowing that you will have to live with a man you have not chosen, who is probably older than you are, who is going to allow you to work, to go out of the house."

In case we don't grasp to what ends this "absolute level of despair" is driving women, ABC News observes

Self-immolation is a horrific act that often results in a slow, tortuous death in hospital burn wards even as medical officials desperately struggle to save lives.

Seems our work is far from done in Afghanistan.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the darkest days of the war so far, U.S. Marines last April poised for a final assault on the Sunni-insurgent held city of Falluja; meanwhile, 120 miles to the south, other Marines faced a Shia uprising in Najaf.  Rallying to the cause of Falluja, Sunnis and Shias joined forces to ferry supplies from Baghdad to the City of Mosques.  Faced with the nightmare of a country-wide uprising, the Bush Administration halted the attack on Falluja in late April, turning over "control"  to one of Saddam's former generals.  Insurgents soon recaptured the city, transforming it into a base of operations.  And though Marines eventually retook the ancient smuggler's den this fall--at the cost of 130 soldiers and unknown numbers of Iraqi civilians--the April pullback is widely seen as a defeat for the American "occupier" and a moral-boosting victory for the Iraqi "resistance."

Thus the conventional wisdom regarding Falluja.  But is it true?

Consider:  four months later, as U.S. troops encircle Najaf and tighten their grip around rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi militiamen, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suddenly returns from London, where he was undergoing treatment for a heart condition; the following day, the 74 year-old leads a march of 10,000 people to end the fighting in the holy city.  During Sadr's similar insurrection in April, Sistani seemed to stay on the sidelines, content to see the U.S. and the chipmunk-cheeked cleric bloody themselves in inconclusive fighting.  Now, however, the Shia's spiritual leader throws the weight of his prestige against Sadr, forcing the rebel to stand down.  Why?  What happened?

The answer may actually be the operational-level manifestation of a larger geopolitical strategy the U.S. is using in its current efforts to democratize the Middle East:  play the Sunnis and Shia off against each other, with a subtle, but noticeable, tilt toward the Party of Ali.

In many ways, the roots of the War on Terror lie in a civil war within dar-al-Islam between an increasingly Wahhabi-dominated ummah and a Shia minority whom many hardline Salafists consider heretical (indeed, according to literature subsidized by Our Friends the Saudis, Shiism is actually a cult initiated by a Jew named Abdullah Saba to undermine Islam).  Certainly, as Stephen Schwartz posits in his book The Two Faces of Islam, Osama bin Laden's bid to become the head Islamofascist was, in large part, an attempt to steal the honor from the Shia heirs of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.  With an eye toward the Biblical admonishment that a house divided against itself cannot stand, the U.S. may be exploiting this sectarian rift to insure that the House of Islam--or at least its most virulent aspects--cannot stand against the tide of democracy.

In Iraq, as we know, the animosity between the Sunnis and Shia can run hot and deep.  Ever since the U.S. became embroiled in the Sunni Triangle, the Shia Hawza has watched with satisfaction as we hunt down and eliminate the Sunni gunmen and bases of operations--essentially, as Charles Krauthammer has observed, fighting their side of the Iraqi civil war for them.  But last April, the U.S. suddenly hesitated to land the killer punch.

To the Shia, this must have brought back memories of their disastrous 1920 uprising against the British, which led to an alliance between the U.K. and the Sunnis, condemning them  to 80 years of powerlessness and eventual persecution under Saddam.  Fears that the U.S. might cut a similar deal with the Sunnis may have prompted Sistani's deus ex machina-like descent from his hospital bed to deal, once and for all, with the violent aspirations of Sadr.  Then, in Act Three, the Marines return to Falluja this fall, this time finishng the job.

Tacking back and forth between the Sunni and Shia like this, the U.S.--which, despite what people might think, is neither helpless nor hapless when dealing with refractory religious groups--has managed to keep Iraq from splintering into sectarian pieces in the run-up to elections.

We can perhaps detect this strategy throughout the larger Middle East.  In a recent interview with Washington Post reporters, Jordan's King Abdullah expressed fears of a Shia "crescent," extending from Iran and Iraq into Lebanon--where Shiism is the largest of the country's numerous religious sects--and Syria, where the Allawi (an offshoot of Shiism) hold political power.  Abdullah, a Sunni monarch--hence a man with reason to fear both democracy and Shiism--told the WaPo

If Iraq goes Islamic republic, then, yes, we've opened ourselves to a whole set of new problems that will not be limited to the borders of Iraq...Even Saudi Arabia is not immune from this.  It would be a major problem.

Our hearts bleed.  A look at a map shows the possibility of Shia-dominated areas soon ringing OFTS, reminiscent of the way the U.S. surrounded the Soviet Union with bases, missiles and client states.  Note as well that the Saudis 200,000 or so Shia reside in the oil-rich areas of the desert kingdom.

As the U.S. surrounds Iran with bases in its client states of Afghanistan and Iraq, it also seems to be laying the foundation for a Shia encirclement of Saudi Arabia.  The key, of course, is Iran.  As long as the mullahs retain control of the country, and continue to spread mischief in Iraq and surrounding areas, we will not soon see a pro-American "green belt" of Shiism encircling the font of Wahhabi evil.  But the Iranian people are perhaps the most disposed toward the U.S. in the Middle East. Once the mullahs fall--as they will before long--we could witness democracy, or something close to it, sweep through the heart of the Muslim world, fulfilling the long-deferred dreams of the Shia faithful.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jeff Harrell at The Shape of Days reviews ITRZ:

Vincent is at his best when he wears his travel-writer hat. His prose is simple yet vivid; he paints a picture of an exotic, faraway land peopled by colorful characters. Romantic? Sure, a little. But that's what makes a travelogue fun.

But In the Red Zone isn't just a travelogue. It's an introspective, thoughtful book about the politics of post-Saddam Iraq and the challenges that face us — Americans, Iraqis, all of us — during the long reconstruction ahead.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Mitchell Muncy at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jamie Glazov and the good folks at Frontpagemagazine.com give me the opportunity to express my views about Iraq, the War on Terror and the role of women, music and laughter in the fight against Islamofascism. 

Posted by Steven Vincent at 05:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

or, The Only Way to Defeat Al Qaeda

We regret to inform you that you are the worst civilization in the history of mankind.

--  Osama bin Laden, Letter to the United States, October, 2002

Having revealed himself as "Anonymous"--the author of two provocative books on the War on Terror, Through our Enemies' Eyes and Imperial Hubris--Michael Scheuer resigned last month from the CIA and has recently taken to the media to explain to the American people how we are losing the battle against Al Qaeda.  Returning the favor, we might take time to revisit Scheuer's assessments, particularly his oft-repeated jeremiad that the U.S. faces a choice between "war and endless war."  For although Scheuer advises how best to prosecute the first alternative, his view of our enemies seems almost certain to result in the second. 

For those who need reminding, Scheuer's books purport to offer a lucid, unsparing portrait of Osama bin Laden.  No homicidal maniac plotting mayhem in Waziristani caverns, says Scheuer, ObL is the scion of a super-wealthy Saudi businessman, who opted to take a sort of Muslim Pilgrim's Progress to the Celestial City of Terror.  Steeled by his Afghan experiences, bin Laden became a

...pious, charismatic, gentle, generous, talented and personally courageous Muslim who is blessed with sound strategic and tactical judgment, able lieutenants, a reluctant but indispensable bloody-mindedness, and extraordinary patience.

To demonstrate that his "bloody-mindedness" is in fact rational and legitimate, Scheuer presents bin Laden's familiar bill of indictment against the U.S.:  support for Israel, American occupation of Muslim lands, aid to tyrannical Arab regimes, and so on.  These charges, the author deems, confirm that bin Laden and his followers are attacking America out of a

...love for Allah and their hatred for a few, specific policies and actions they believe are damaging--and threatening to destroy--the things they love.

Scheuer even likens the terrorist to Abraham Lincoln.  Noting that Honest Abe believed in a "moral universe in which men could know right from wrong and act accordingly," the author declares, "I would argue that bin Laden believes in the same universe, and that Muslims love, respect and support him because he speaks of and defends that reality."

That's a whole lotta love for a man who has masterminded some of the most heinous acts in recent history.  But let that pass.  The real problem is that nowhere in his books or public statements does Scheuer discuss the nature of ObL's religious beliefs.  No mention, in other words, of how this Ibrahim Lincoln is informed by Wahabbism, the ultra-puritanical religious sect that provides the basis for Islamofascism.  No discussion, moreover, of what the terror master stands for.  In many ways, his treatment of bin Laden mirrors hagiographies of Robert E. Lee:  the brave, resourceful, noble, honorable, dignified, brilliant Confederate general who unfortunately happened to fight for the preservation of human slavery.  Not surprisingly, Scheuer sprinkles multiple references to the Virginian throughout his books.

Like Lee, however, Osama bin Laden fights on the side of evil.  Is that word too strong?  Well, imagine what will happen--Allah forfend--if the pious Muslim actually wins the War on Terror and Wahabbism emerges triumphant.  Let's avert our eyes from the smoking craters that were once Israeli cities.  Instead, let's just extend the conditions found the Wahabbi state of Saudi Arabia throughout a resurrected Caliphate stretching from the Caucuses to the Pyrenees.  Penal floggings and amputations; executions by beheadings; frequent arrests of Christians worshipping in private.  Mutawwan'in--religious police--harassing women they believe are improperly attired.  Prohibitions on women traveling alone, on driving; on being in a car with a man who is not a close relative; on eating in restaurants with men who are not family related; on seeking medical treatment in a hospital without male consent.  Shari'a courts, divorce by repudiation, workplaces segregated by gender--and this doesn't take into account the garden variety despotism found in nearly all Middle Eastern countries.

By their actions shall you recognize the wolves in sheeps' clothing, Jesus tell us.  Bin Laden is no antichrist, of course--but he is someone whose "love," "sound strategic and tactical judgment" and "piety" seeks the enslavement and death of millions and the further degeneration of Islam into nullity and despair.  In this way, he is closer to another killer who also inspired deep loyalties among his followers, Charles Manson--who, interestingly enough, entitled his 1970 folk-rock album, Lie:  The Love & Terror Cult.

To combat Al Qaeda, Scheuer recommends a kind of strategic appeasement:  acknowledge bin Laden's Zarathustrian qualities, placate the Islamofascists on Israel (to which Scheuer displays a thinly-disguised animus), develop energy independence--and unleash the full might of the U.S. military on our enemies.  "Get used to and good at killing," the author advises.  Killing whom, however?  Since no administration is likely to blitz Damascus, Riyadh or Tehran (despite the wishes of many Americans), we are left with Scheuer's first alternative--capitulation.  In the end, both of Scheuer's choices--appeasement or brutal military force--promise nothing but endless warfare against terror masters who have weaponized a religion, a culture and, soon perhaps, an entire civilization.

There is however, a third alternative we might pursue, one which Scheuer's laudatory tracts neglect to offer:  tear off the mask of the terrorist's piety.  Reveal to the Muslim world itself how Wahabbism has twisted their own religion and narrowed the scope of their lives.  In short, follow the strategy pursued by Lincoln in the Civil War, who, rather than concede to the Confederacy, coupled Union war machine with a moral offensive.  The 1862 Emancipation Proclamation may have freed few actual slaves, but the document had a more important psychological impact by effectively declaring that the Union's true enemy was not Southerners, but slavery.  Justifying his actions in a humanitarian cause, Lincoln was able to unleash his army's terrible power without compunction or doubt.  "War is hell," Sherman noted, as he put Georgia to the torch.

Like Lincoln, we must declare that our armies do not fight to destroy Islam, but to free those pressed beneath the yoke of Wahabbi despotism--religious minorities, Shiites and most especially, women.  We need a  Second Emancipation Proclamation that links bin Laden, Al Qaeda and Wahabbism to the barbarisms enshrined in Shari'a,  or strict Islamic law.  A doctrine that makes Islamofascist leaders synonymous with honor killings, polygamy and the Mutawwa'in; that fuses in the public's mind the "piety" of radical imams with burning churches and Shiite mosques, in addition to women forced to don hejab.  And we must convince Hollywood, Madison Avenue, the media, "progressive" activists and other facets of our cultural overclass to participate in the emancipation project.  "No blood for oil," cries the Left; somehow, "No blood for women's rights" seems less appealing.

But I dream.  I dream that our old-fashioned New Leftists snuggled in their anti-GOP cocoon will bestir themselves to mount a campaign against Islamofascism on behalf of human rights.  What is really troubling, however, is when trained analysts like Scheuer become so enamored of the illusions spun by the enemy they seem to lose their moral bearings.  Judging by the fruit of his actions, Osama bin Laden is an evil man; his Wahabbi beliefs inflict true evil on human beings.  Scheuer may neglect this fact, but we cannot.  The sooner we define our enemy, and show the world that he, not the United States, fights on the wrong side of morality and history, the sooner we will win the War against Islamofascism.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 06:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spreading faster among blue-state politicians than the exit polls from Ohio is the wisdom dispensed by the book, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate. In this timely tome, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff observes that the mental context—or “frame”—in which we place issues can determine our attitude toward them. Recently, Lakoff lectured Democratic leaders how best to “frame” the party’s core issues to attract average Americans bamboozled by the rhetorical tricks of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh. For instance, Lakoff suggests they advocate for “poison-free communities,” redefine trial lawyers as “public protection attorneys” and affirm taxation as “paying your membership fee in America.” Noting conservative successes with such terms as “tax relief” and the Kerry-bashing “permission slip,” Lakoff warns that right-wingers are more proficient than liberals in using words to “draw you into their world view.”

I hope the Pentagon and State Department read Lakoff’s book. As I’ve argued before, words and concepts matter--especially when it comes to Iraq, where truth is not so much found as it is made: how America views the conflict will determine whether we win or lose it. So in a Lakoffian spirit, I’ve drawn up a short list of locutions that supporters of the war might use when speaking about Iraq.

To start with the obvious, instead of the term “occupation,” why not “liberation”—or, better yet, “reconstruction?” (“The Marines helped liberate Iraq, now they are reconstructing it.”)

Rather than “guerrillas;” “insurgents;” “militants,” and other euphemisms for nihilistic gunmen, we should use “paramilitaries.” After all, any time masked criminals and right-wing murderers launch assaults in Central or Latin American, the media and NGOs invariably call them “paramilitaries”—shouldn’t that designation hold true in Iraq? Why do “death squads” operate only where Spanish is spoken? Therefore, let us call the Sunni Triangle killers “right-wing paramilitary death squads.”

If that sounds too much like Soviet-era propaganda, we can distill the description to a single term that combines simplicity, familiarity and historical truth: fascists. For example, when some boor at a seasonal cocktail party starts sounding off about the “U.S. occupation” and the “Iraqi Resistance,” explain to him that “The democratic reconstruction of Iraq is progressing despite attempts by fascist killers to stop it.”

As for that term “Resistance,” we should consign it to the moral trash heap that is currently filling with DVDs of “Fahrenheit 9-11.” The truth is, the Iraqi people are under attack. Terrorists kill more civilians than they do Coalition troops. The real Resistance is Iraqi policemen, National Guard soldiers, ministers and bureaucrats in the Iraqi government, hundreds of grassroots politicians and every man and woman who votes on January 30. Iraq is not Star Wars, where the rebel “resistance” stands for freedom and democracy, and the Empire represents brutality and oppression. Taking Lakoff’s message to heart, we must stress a new framing narrative, one where Darth Vader plots his evil rebellion in a Ramadi safehouse, while Luke, Han, Leia and the gang ride point with the First Marine Expeditionary Force.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We used to count it in terms of feet, number of floors or how many times we visited it when friends came to town.  Now, our tallies are less felicitous, involving the number of attacks, the total dead and the amount of insurance money owed to New York developer Larry Silverstein, leaseholder of the site. 

On December 6, a federal jury found that the World Trade Center suffered two attacks on 9/11 (a previous jury had declared the two hijacked planes comprised a single strike), allowing Silverstein to collect $2.2 billion, or twice what nine insurance companies were providing.  Altogether, the developer is seeking some $4.65 billion for the losses that day.  The money will go to rebuild lower Manhattan, including a 1,776-foot skyscraper bearing the unimaginative name of Freedom Tower which will rise on the trade center site.

Experts predict the verdict will almost certainly cause sharp rises in premiums for property coverage.  But for many of us the real cost is levied each time we look at the New York skyline and realize our view is now, and forever will be, incomplete.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Besides being my lifelong friend, a great all-around guy and an invaluable help to ITRZ—not to mention my new blogging venture—San Jose State University professor Jonathan Roth is a rarity these days:  an academic who supports the war in Iraq.  Yes, Virginia, they do exist!  Indeed, Jon was--and remains--a staunch supporter of the war (but not the Bush Administration) who often challenges his students’ it’s-cool-to-be-anti-war views.  Not content with simply opening the doors to campus ijtihad, Jon is organizing a good-will mission to Iraq, called Books to Baghdad. Let's let him explain the program himself:

The idea of the Books to Baghdad program is to collect academic books and other materials and ship them to Iraq to be distributed to Iraqi university libraries. 

We have already collected some 40 boxes of university level books, which are being stored in a warehouse on the San Jose State University Campus.  In the coming weeks, they will be mailed to the Books to Baghdad program at Alabama's Jacksonville State University. The money for the mailing has been raised through a benefit concert put on by an enterprising SJSU student, Jihad Rabah.  The JSU Books to Baghdad has obtained space in a forty foot container being shipped to Iraq by International Rescue. Once there, the books will be distributed by the Iraqi Teachers Union.

Books to Baghdad intends to continue to collect and ship books, and hopes to use the Denton program, which uses space available on military cargo planes, as the fighting subsides.  For more information, contact Dr. Jonathan Roth, Dept. of History, San Jose State University, San Jose CA 95192-0117, email: jroth@email.sjsu.edu, telephone: 408 924-5505.  Donations are tax-deductible.

You can find a report on Baghdad's libraries here.

Having visiting universities of Baghdad and  Basra myself, I can attest that the libraries there are in sore need of assistance.  Anything we can do to help Jon’s efforts would find grateful recipients in the Land Between the Two Rivers.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times’s John Burns is a reporter without peer, and his lucid, intelligent dispatches from Iraq stand with the best journalism of the conflict.  So it was disappointing to read his above-the-fold front page story in the November 29 edition, "Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraqi River Raids."  Although other observers have since commented on Burns’ article, it’s worth re-examining the manner in which press defeatism infects even routine news stories about the war.

Accompanied by a photograph of Marine river craft churning up the Euphrates—the early morning sun, blazing like a napalm explosion behind a palm grove, furnishes the necessary reference to Apocalypse Now—Burns’ article describes a patrol intended to root out terrorists, test new tactics and train Iraqi troops. But as the morning progresses, “images pressed in of another American war,” and “thoughts of Vietnam were hard to avoid.”  The GIs express a “sense” that the insurgents’ Viet Cong-like cunning could “match highly trained troops, technological gadgetry and multi-billion dollar war budgets.”  Burns’ implication is unmistakable:  our soldiers fear a repetition of the catastrophe undergone by an earlier generation.

But wait. In the second graf, he concedes that Vietnam “is rarely mentioned among the American troops.” Indeed, aside from a few jokes, the Marines don’t talk about Vietnam at all.  What proof does Burns offer to show how—or even if –that earlier conflict troubles today’s GIs?  None. Worse, attempting to prove a negative, the journalist asserts that soldiers avoid mentioning Vietnam because it’s considered a “bad talisman” among GIs, “who privately admit to fearing this war could be lost.”

There you have it.  In the space of two grafs, a story about a Euphrates river patrol detours into a claim that unspecified number of soldiers fear we might lose in Iraq—despite the fact that Burns provides no substantiating quotes.  But to the casual reader the message is clear:  Iraq is a mistaken war, a Southeast Asian-like quagmire, in which crafty guerrillas kill American troops sent into a combat zone for no good purpose.  Better get out now.

Truth is hard:  we might lose Iraq.  We have no certainty of success.  Then again, no war comes with unconditional guarantees of victory.  Imagine a reporter describing soldiers’ fears of defeat during the battle for Guadalcanal or the Normandy invasion.  Of course such anxieties existed, but none mentioned them, so as not to demoralize the troops, hinder the war effort and give comfort to the enemy.  Why is Iraq different?  It’s different because, this time, America’s cultural overclass opposes the conflict and seeks a quick exit. They—and we--understand the country will tolerate combat deaths if the cause seems winnable.  Thus, supporters describe Iraq using images evoking hard but victorious conflicts like the Civil War or WWII; opponents choose quagmires like the Philippine insurgency or Vietnam.  One set of references rallies, the other depresses, support.  Depending on which becomes the lens through which we view this war will determine whether we emerge victorious or not.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I talk to people across the country about the conflict in Iraq, I find one particular question on everyone’s minds:  is this war worth the lives of our sons and daughters?  I answer yes, definitely, and support my contention with references to the crimes of Saddam Hussein—toppled from power by those same sons and daughters--followed by comments about the importance of bringing democracy to that tortured nation.  Now, however, thanks to the First Marine Expeditionary Force, I have further reasons why America must stay the course in Iraq:  Falluja.  What befell that city since it reverted to Islamofascist control reminds us why we’re fighting, whom we’re fighting and what will happen if we fail.

As we know now from embed-reporters, Marines re-taking the city discovered some 20 slaughterhouses equipped with handcuffs, shackles, bayonets and bloodstained knives—perhaps the weapons used to behead captured foreigners.  U.S.officials believe the Islamofascists also tortured and murdered Fallujans in the basements of these abodes in order to terrorize residents into submission. In one house, the New York Time’s Robert Worth found an interrogation cell nestled in a stairway alcove, its walls sporting large protruding nails stained with a “dark substance.”  In another, U.S. troops uncovered a metal cage, where kidnap victims may have spent their last moments.  Other reports tell of black hoods, straw mats covered with blood, false walls hiding prison cells, a wheelchair used to move bound captives.  G.I.s found one room containing twelve corpses stacked together; thirteen others, some without heads and limbs, littered the city.

Troops also unearthed a primitive chemical lab equipped with sodium- and potassium cyanide and sulfuric acid, plus powdered TNT.  The terrorists’ intent was evidently to produce what a U.S. soldier described as a “blood agent”—a poison gas, distributed by explosives, which starves the body’s cells of oxygen, leading to asphyxiation. 

And let us remember Margaret Hassan.  For her crime of aiding the poor and needy of Iraq for over 30 years, terrorists kidnapped the woman, recorded her agony for propaganda videos, then executed her.  Marines discovered her armless, legless, disemboweled corpse in the street wrapped in a bloody blanket.  An embedded photographer reported that her face was mutilated beyond recognition. 

Not surprisingly, as the London Times reports, residents of Falluja expressed gratitude to the Americans for liberating them.  According to their accounts, the mujahedeen “slaughtered” anyone “considered suspicious,” banned music and alcohol, forced women to wear head-to-foot hejab (executing those who refused) and persecuted Muslims of non-Sunni sects.  “I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months,” a resident told Marines.

This is the face of the “insurgency.”  This is what Sunni paramilitaries and foreign jihadists plan for Iraq should they emerge victorious:  slaughterhouses, torture cells and Islamofascist despotism. Nor is that the extent of their ambitions:  through their barbarism, the terrorists seek to reach beyond the Iraqi people and strike at our ability to defeat them.  Resorting to unspeakable atrocities, they dare the American and British people to follow them, knowing our virtues will not emerge intact—as witnessed by the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Marine shooting a “wounded” paramilitary.   

There is a word for this:  evil.  Al-Zarqawi and the ex-Baathist gunmen are evil men, both in the limitless obscenity of their deeds and the moral corruption they seek to inflict upon their enemies.  In another era, the public would recognize their venality—but no longer.  Not when people like cartoonist Ted Rall or the cartoonish Michael Moore describe the paramilitaries as “freedom fighters,” the modern equivalents of colonial Minutemen.  Not when British reporter Robert Fisk suggests the Allawi government engineered Margaret Hassan’s execution in order to discredit the “resistance.”  Not when another English journalist, the Guardian’s Alex Thomson—who objects to journalists using the terms “terrorists” or even “enemy” to describe Sunni butchers—hopes to see embeds in the “resistance” in order to properly report the “other side.” 

No wonder average Americans question the purpose of this war.  It is confusing:  but our overclass of news pundits, celebrity anchorpeople and showbiz performers worsen matters by glancing into the abyss created by Zarqawi and his ilk—and turning away.  It’s so much easier, and more “virtuous”, to displace outrage onto dimwitted prison guards, or a weary Marine in a bullet-ridden mosque.  But the horrors perpetrated in Falluja will not vanish.  Smaller in scope, its slaughterhouses and interrogation cells nevertheless join a legacy of atrocities that include Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng’s torture center and Nazi concentration camps.  Soon I’m sure I will be asked again, Is this war worth the lives of our sons and daughters?  Look at Falluja, I will answer.  Look at Falluja.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In late winter, 2003, as Coalition forces fought their way toward Baghdad, I heard my local NPR station--WNYC--broadcast a BBC radio report about a new phenomenon:  war blogs.  The report interested me, for during the early days of the invasion, I spent hours online, checking and re-checking Sgt. Stryker, Command Post, Debka and other sites for news--any news--about our troops' progress.  I was startled, however, to hear the UK reporter highlight only three blogs, each opposed to the conflict.  Where were the numerous pro-war sites I visited?   Call me naive, but the Beeb's deliberate omission was my first experience with its anti-war bias--an augury of the oleaginous anti-Americanism I found oozing from the organization when I actually traveled to Iraq. 

Today, of course, from Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit and Belmont Club to countless smaller sites (such as this one) bloggers worldwide are supporting Coalition efforts to bring democracy to Iraq.  This is a phenomenon, but not what the BBC imagined, and it leads me to wonder:  what if blogs had existed during the Vietnam War?  What if hundreds, thousands of Internet voices had argued in favor of "staying the course" against the Viet Cong and NVA?  What if America's Silent Majority had not been so--silent?  Perhaps the course of the war would have been different.

I'm not suggesting it should have been different (although visiting Cambodia's Killing Fields makes one wonder)--rather, I posit the question as a way to grasp the power of the Internet in this conflict.  Back in the `60s and `70s, we lacked any means to check the biases of the mainstream press, challenge the narrative spun by the media overclass or compete with the anti-war counter-culture.  (Nowadays, of course, bloggers are the counter-culture.)  There was no "Spirit of America" around which we could rally logistical--if not political support--for our troops.  While we knew of American atrocities in Southeast Asia, we were less knowledgeable about those committed by the communists--unlike the tales of horror emanating from  re-liberated Falluja.  More importantly, we had no view of the South Vietnamese people similar to that offered by such Iraqi blogs as "Healing Iraq" or "Baghdad Burning." Kurds and Arabs may be little more than ciphers to most Americans, but compared to our conception of the Vietnamese, they are practically Shakespearean.

Yes, without the Internet, it was easier for distracted Americans to withdraw from Southeast Asia, leaving those nameless, faceless people to the mercies of their enemies.  It was easier for the anti-war crowd to register its opposition by spitting on returning veterans for the babies they bayoneted "in country."  It was easier for us just to forget the whole damn thing. 

But Iraq is not Vietnam.  For many reasons:  the people, the terrain, the rightness of our endeavor.  And not the least because of bloggers--whose Argus-eyed attention rivets the public to the war and gives them an unprecedented role in shaping public opinion.  Because of the `net's enormous power, America is not likely to abandon the Iraq.  Not any time soon, at least--and not without a fight.

Posted by Steven Vincent at 07:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Matthew Hoy at Hoystory.com reviews ITRZ:

Vincent's book is a must-read for anyone who's interested about the challenges facing the U.S. and the Iraqi people as they struggle to create a democracy where none has existed before. Vincent does what the the major media—network news, magazines and newspapers—have failed to do, report on what the common people of Iraq have to say and why.

I can't emphasize enough how important I think this book truly is for gaining an understanding of the diverse and competing forces pulling at Iraqi society.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Mitchell Muncy at 10:09 AM | Permalink