Section: War

Read on.

John Kerry's plans for Iraq are based on increasing the amount of international forces in that country, and the flawed assumption that countries like France and Germany are willing to help with significant numbers of troops to replace American troops on the ground. This plan has already been shown to be utterly naive, but what would Iraq be like had John Kerry gotten his way to begin with?

One could easily see an Iraq that would be very much like Bosnia and Kosovo - and that's not a good thing.

Given his background as both a clandestine agent and as a congressman chairing the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter Goss is an excellent choice to serve as Director of Central Intelligence. The issue is going to be whether he will have sufficient authority to effect reforms, augment human intelligence capabilities, and return the CIA to the glory days of the OSS--the CIA's predecessor, which actively recruited from all walks of life, and drew immensely talented people into the service of the country. That, more than any change at the top, will determine whether or not CIA will remain relevant.

John Kerry has written about his plans for Iraq and, unsurprisingly, they are based in a worldview that is hopelessly mired in the pre-September 11 world. Kerry's foreign policy is a policy based on utter naïvete and wishful thinking and demonstrates Kerry's utter fecklessness in the war on terrorism.

But his chosen fig leaves will. Read on.

Read on.

In case you've not been paying attention, the Sadrist revolt in Iraq is back in full swing. Cherub-faced paranoiac mullah Moqtada al-Sadr used the months since the May truce to rest, re-equip and re-arm with Iranian help. And he used them to recruit, having lost a few thousand of his fanatics in the spring battles: survival being victory when it comes to fighting Americans, he was able to present himself as a winner to the credulous masses. Now, once more, they are out for mayhem in the streets of south and central Iraq, joining Fallujah's shameful example in demonstrating that there is never an upside to strategic or operational restraint with violent Islamists. They are fighting the Americans (and getting slaughtered by the hundreds). They are fighting the British. They are fighting the Italians. And they are, take note, fighting the Iraqis. For once, I agree with Juan Cole: this has all the feel of an endgame. Certainly Iyad Allawi's administration is making noises about the iron fist:

Iraqi officials said Thursday that they were not interested in trying to make deals with Sadr.

"We are not going to negotiate," Interior Minister Falah Nakib said at an afternoon news conference in Baghdad. "We are going to fight this militia. We have enough power and strength to kick those people out."

Asked whether he had a message for Sadr, Nakib replied, "Don't kill yourself."

Why, you ask, is this on Red State, and what has it to do with American politics? Read on.

This, we must admit to ourselves at least, as citizens of a republic who in theory govern ourselves, is a pretty serviceable description of the behavior of our governing class in the face of the threat of Islamic terrorism. There is no boldness from our bureaucrats; they are enervated. A consuming fear of being charged with discrimination or intolerance stultifies initiative; it disarms learned instinct; it is the remorseless enemy of the detective’s intuition, the investigator’s hunch, the citizen’s nagging unease. We all know the stories about the body searches of grandmothers at airports (this because airlines still face fines for any disproportionate scrutiny of certain ethnicities); these are but a prominent symptom of a deeper disease. When the political and administrative leadership of society have by and large declared that they will not act against their own sense of propriety and decorum; in a word, that they will allow people to die for political correctness — when this paralysis has struck (and it has with us), then there is no sense in mincing words: we are losing the will to defend ourselves.

What the president has said today begins to go in that direction, begins to do some constructive things, but many of the details are left out, many of the tough calls are deferred.... Unless this president steps up and engages the tough questions and shows sustained leadership to get his own agency heads and the Republican leadership of Congress in line in support of serious intelligence reform, my view is that this is talk and not action.

And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them “The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generations does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females”; say this to them and they sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them “Murder your mother,” and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same.

Abdul Rashid, an African American Muslim, lamented how religious divisions were fanning the flames of terrorism and wondered what Kerry would do differently. Before answering, Kerry picked up Rashid's 6-month-old son, Hasim, who grabbed Kerry's face and then stubbornly tugged at the senator's microphone. Kerry playfully wrestled with the baby's hand for a few minutes, set him down, struck a sober tone and implored the crowd to read the bipartisan commission's report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Only then will they fully understand how the war on terror transcends traditional weaponry and warfare and touches deeply on religious and ethnic divisions worldwide, he said.

"I would have long ago reached out to the clerics, imams and mullahs, to leaders of other religions, to the true leaders of Islam to isolate radical Islamic extremists instead of having the extremists isolate the United States of America," he said.

(Answers: Yes, yes, and I have a secret plan.)

Read on.

Chapter Two, pages 47-70
THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM

This chapter is mostly a historical backgrounder detailing the rise of the al Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden himself. The Report does not deliver on many details hitherto unknown to the public, but it does make some revealing clarifications and explanations.

Read on.

Chapter One, pages 1-46
"WE HAVE SOME PLANES"

The first chapter opens with a series of harrowing accounts of the known events prior to the hijackings and on board the doomed aircraft.

Read on.

After reading some of the reactions from around the sphere, it's clear that the report really is a Mirror of Erised in pdf form - most people don't see the truth, but what their hearts desire (If your name is Michael Moore, and you desire to blame a neofascist Texas Cowboy pal of the Saudis, you already see goose-stepping oil-loving BusHitler everywhere). But a more balanced view actually shows that the conventional wisdom holds up: the Commission finds the greatest fault not with the big-name leaders, but with the agencies and bureaucrats who were ill-prepared and lax in their response.

Tacitus will have a comprehensive look at the first quarter of the report later today. But in the meantime, here are a few thoughts on my part.