The Associated Press today posted a story that is so utterly pointless for its very existence that it boggles the mind. Apparently, some loser Iraqi that used to be a somebody under Saddam Hussein’s viciously murderous government has issued a “tape” whereupon he says that Israel would never have been so bold to have hit Gaza they way it has if Saddam were still in power.

Of course, the very first question that comes to mind is… WHO CARES what some has been cutthroat has to say about Saddam “just hangin’ around” Hussein? The man is dead, D-E-D dead!

I mean, why the heck is this news? It would be like publishing a story in this week’s New York Times about some guy that is saying that all this Obama stuff wouldn’t be happening if Jefferson Davis was still in power. Yes, it would be just as newsworthy as that!

Here is the full (or should I say fool) AP report:

Ex-aide: Hussein would not have allowed Gaza raid (scroll down)

DUBAI - A former aide to Saddam Hussein said in an audio tape aired yesterday that Israel would not have dared to launch its current attack on Gaza if the Iraqi leader was still in power. But Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most senior member of the past regime still at large, said on the recording broadcast by Al Jazeera television that Iraqi insurgents would negotiate with Washington if the administration of President-elect Barack Obama withdrew from Iraq. “The barbaric . . . attack on our [Arab] people in Gaza is the natural result of the absence of Iraq, its national leadership and its leader . . . the martyr Saddam Hussein,” said Ibrahim, a leader of Iraqi insurgents. The authenticity of the recording could not be verified.

Ah, but this supposed “news” does serve one more Old Media purpose, doesn’t it? It gives just one more Jew hater an opportunity to blame Israel for all ills.

Of course it is all based on more gutless and illogical Arab delusion. Even were Saddam “necktie party” Hussein still around and in power in Iraq, Israel would have paid no never mind to what he and the Iraqis would have to say about hitting Gaza. Israel was never in the past known to cower in the presence of Saddam “rubber neck” Hussein. It is beyond logic or sense to imagine that they would this time were Hussein still alive.

The anti-Semitism of the media is beyond belief.

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Jeff “Maximos” Martin replied to my criticism and while I could make a reply over there, I’m doing so here so all you guys will go visit the nice site that they all have there.

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Blogging about the issue has been relatively sparse on my part–largely because the issue is rather depressing to blog about. However, my thoughts on the conflict raging in the Holy Land can be found here for those who are interested.

I write today a response to Jeff Martin’s criticism of Israel with respect to the Catholic just war doctrine. I do think he’s in error, because he gives the facts a cursory glance and omits key details, but that only leads to my main criticism: I think he shows a bias against the Israeli side of the war.

Firstly though, I address the Catholic Church’s just war doctrine. Now let me start off by saying I have no ties with the Catholic Church, nor do I subscribe to its teachings, so for me this is purely an academic exercise. But to me it is clear that the “conditions for legitimate defense” are met by Israel in this case. Point by point:

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In 2006 Israel was plunged into a war with Hezbollah (The Party of God) in Southern Lebanon. However, how many people remember why that conflict started? We all remember how it ended. Israel was left with doubts about its military ability to defend itself for the first time in its history. It ended up not going well at all.

The conflict in Southern Lebanon was started when Hezbollah launched a rocket attack on Northern Israel as a diversion for an anti-tank missile attack against two Israeli Humvees patrolling the border. Two soldiers survived the anti-tank missile attack and were taken prisoner and then spirited back into Lebanon. The deceased remains of those two soldiers were returned to Israel as part of a prisoner exchange after the conflict ended.

However, who here remembers what else happened a month earlier with Hamas in the south? Right now if you watch the news reporting, this is the most forgotten aspect of the current conflict in Gaza.

In June 2006, using a tunnel dug from Gaza across the border into Israel, Hamas soldiers came up from behind Israeli positions and captured Gilad Schalit. That was two years ago, and Gilad Schalit is still alive and is still held prisoner by Hamas in Gaza. The International Red Cross has been denied visitation, but an international envoy from Egypt has been able confirm he was still alive and brought him a new pair of eye glasses sent by his parents. Right now that is all that is known about his fate.

Now, why would this man be forgotten, especially by his own government? Yes, he is forgotten by his own government. In an article from the Jerusalem Post the current Israeli government has not even mention Sergeant Schalit in their cease fire terms in this current conflict! What kind of outrage would follow in this country had he been a US Service member who had his status confirmed by an Egyptian envoy as alive and well? There would be an outcry that would be deafening.

So far in Israel, there is a news paper story and a letter to the government pointing out their omission. It is a very big omission too. I think Israel needs to require Sgt Schalit’s return as a non negotiable condition for a cease fire. The opportunity to obtain his release will never be so good again.

The indispensable Bill Roggio reports on the State of Jihad for 2008.

Iraq smells like roses. The counterinsurgency doctrine written by Petraeus and implemented by Odierno succeeded in turning around a situation that seemed hopeless two years ago. Green Zone control was turned over to Iraq this week. Al Qaeda has been crushed. Muqtada al Sadr is still going to Ayatollah school in Iran, while the Sadrist forces have been restrained by Iraq government forces. The peace is fragile, but should be in the capabilities of Iraq to maintain.

Pakistan smells like a chemical fire. Musharraf left office to be replaced by an elected president. Almost all the Pashtun tribal areas in the FATA and NWFP are under Taliban and al Qaeda control, and the Taliban insurgency is spreading to neighboring provinces. The Taliban insurgency has had ties to Pakistani intelligence forces (especially the ISI, or Inter-Service Intelligence agency) since it was founded, and this shows no sign of abating. With ISI complicity, an al Qaeda affiliated group conducted the Mumbai massacre. This has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war and will likely lead to India attacking terror camps in Pakistani controlled parts of Kashmir, while NATO and US forces attack al Qaeda redoubts in the Taliban controlled parts of Pakistan. This will not stabilize Pakistan, which is quickly deteriorating toward failed state status, in which a state is no longer able to enforce its laws within its borders. Jihad attacks against other countries are very popular with the people of Pakistan. When prosperous older men marry up to four wives, who is left to marry the young men and what will those unmoored young men do to regain their sense of honor and belonging? Even if it doesn’t turn into a failed state the large number of unmarried, militant young men who buy into the ideology of Jihad promises danger from Pakistan.

Afghanistan has the heavy smell of an imminent storm. The main supply line goes through the Taliban controlled parts of Pakistan and convoys are regularly attacked. Al Qaeda and Taliban killers have safe bases and camps across the border in Pakistan and Iran, run the heroin smuggling gangs in Afghanistan, and are gaining political control in some provinces. The Taliban and al Qaeda continue to kill Afghan citizens, though their attacks on NATO forces have been mostly ineffective. This is not to say they are pussycats. They are still ruthless killers. It is not for nothing that Pashtun tribesmen have long been known as the world’s finest light infantrymen. Suicide bombing, once unthinkable, has come to Afghanistan. The counterinsurgency doctrine that was so successful with Iraq’s tribes will have to be adapted to the Afghan tribes, and then the Karzai’s government may expand its authority outside of Kabul.

India woke up and smelled the coffee this year. The Mumbai attacks shut down a major city for almost three days and made obvious the virulent hatred that powers the Jihad, as well as the incompetence of the Indian security forces. India and Pakistan have been brought to the brink of war by this attack, which was at the hands of Lashkar e Taiba with the assistance of Pakistan’s ISI.

Somalia smells like a flaming lake of human excrement from Dante’s Inferno. A few years ago it had become a full-on terrorist state, until Ethiopian troops rolled in and drove the al Qaeda allied As Shabaab out of Mogadishu. Now As Shabaab has requested full AQ affiliate status, Somalia has become a destination for the preachers and recruiters of Jihad. As pirates operate freely from its ports, Somalia is poised for another descent into total chaos.

Iran continues to smell like gunpowder. The state sponsor of global terror nears the finish line in its nuclear weapon development program. The rest of the world has no plan to do anything about it, and will do nothing. Iran continues to threaten to destroy Israel and the US. Iran lost in Iraq when the Sadrist forces were defeated. Iran’s Shiite proxy Hezbollah gained a place in the government of Lebanon, while its Sunni proxy in Israel, Hamas, took control of Gaza.

Yemen smells like Pakistan, or worse. As Roggio reports, “After Pakistan, Yemen is considered to be one of the largest havens for al Qaeda. Many powerful elements within Yemen’s government support al Qaeda’s presence. Thousands of Yemeni fighters returned from Iraq since mid-2007. Many have served in militias sponsored by the government to fight opposition groups. Yemen routinely frees jailed al Qaeda members.” The country where the USS Cole was bombed elected in August a bin Laden loyalist as its president.

Syrian terrorists and terror sites have been susceptible to counter-terror raids this year. It smells like napalm in the morning, small victories. The US raided an Al Qaeda camp in Syria this year. Someone blew up Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mugniyah. And an Israel bomber run destroyed a nuclear laboratory site that Syria had built in secret with assistance from North Korea.

Al Qaeda affiliates in Phillipines and Indonesia have been driven underground this year. They may not smell like roses, but how about ripe bananas?

Read the report for analysis on Algeria and Israel.

* * *

Where US forces are able to work with a mostly friendly government and keep a low media profile, for example Phillipines, Indonesia and Algeria, the tide of Jihad can be turned back. Where the US cannot operate, such as Yemen and the Pakistani tribal regions, the Jihad threat grows very dangerous. Where the media throngs to cover military actions in the most sensationalist way possible, Jihad gains its greatest victories. al Qaeda’s global Jihad cannot win militarily against military opposition but only against those who cannot or will not fight it, such as in Pakistan and Yemen. AQ does not plan to win militarily against the “Crusaders” and “Byzantines,” as they call us, but in the media, by spreading anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda via the useful fools of the multi-culturalist, morale massacring world media, who giddily believe the worst of any major country and romanticize the most savage behavior as long as the story is served with a side of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon.

US Civilian military leadership needs to keep its head in the fight, for political distractions are part of the enemy’s strategy. The pattern for military victory has been demonstrated in Iraq, and the long term strategy is to reinvigorate our moral strength by going back to our roots as a people. The Obama administration shows signs of keeping the winning military strategy, but it is the left’s programs of the last 100 years that have separated us from our roots, and it is the conservative, classical liberal tradition in America that will restore us to them.

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Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

–Charles Krauthammer.

Pretty good take on the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are ramped up in away that has not been seen since 2006 and maybe before that. The IDF’s current military operations against Hamas are offering all the conditions for a much larger picture in terms of military action and a political statement in the region. With well over several hundred air sorties missions flown and that many targets engaged; plus, the IDF has deployed the Mediterranean’s strongest navy off of the Gaza strip in support, which conducted more than 50 attacks on Thursday. Hamas has no defense against a modern military and especially against a country with the will to use it. Lessons were learned against Hizballah during 2006’s bloody and inconclusive stalemate that proved to legitimize the extremist party and strengthen them politically, which led to increased support from Syria and Iran. The Israeli leadership is hoping this conflict leads to a game changer in Gaza and will eliminate Hamas as threat to their security and destroy them politically in Gaza.

“[North Korea would] not merely turn everything into a sea of fire but reduce everything treacherous and antireunification to debris and build an independent reunified country on it.”

North Korean armed forces minister Kim Il Chol, threatening a massive retaliation should South Korea and the United States attack his country.

Their rhetoric sure has changed since President Bush and SecState Rice unilaterally took them off the state sponsors of terrorism list, didn’t it?

Never fear, though; while making concessions like that (and others), Rice knew all along that “”only an idiot would trust the DPRK.”

If the United States is going to achieve a surge-style victory in Afghanistan, it cannot depend on what was once its most reliable ally for help. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and many U.S. commanders on the ground have expressed doubts that Britain has the political will to fight.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s move to withdraw British troops from southern Iraq and his demonstrated lack of will to deploy extra troops to Afghanistan in the numbers required by NATO commander Gen. John Craddock has the Americans believing that the PM has given in to a strong anti-war sentiment among Britons. Craddock specifically needs more British troops in the Afghan province of Helmland, where the Taliban are mounting a strong insurgency. Instead of the 3,000 additional British troops that were planned for, Brown so far has only committed to send 300.

Gen. Craddock told the Sunday Times:

“I don’t think 300 more, if you are talking about Helmand province, will do the trick. We’ve got to hold down there until we’ve got some Afghan street forces who can take over,” Craddock said.

The last time the U.S. put its trust in the British to secure a province was in Iraq, and the results there were extremely disappointing to the Americans. The primary British mission in Iraq was to keep the peace in the province of Basra.

But according to the Times’ Michael Portillo, Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair deferred to public opinion at home and quickly reduced British troop strength in an effort avoid casualties among their numbers. The result was that British forces lost control of Basra, leaving the local population at the mercy of insurgents and warring militias, including forces under the control of Moqtada al-Sadr.

An additional reason for the British failure, in Portillo’s opinion, was hubris:

In the early days in Iraq we bragged that our forces could deploy in berets and soft-sided vehicles while US forces roared through Baghdad in heavily armoured convoys. British leaders sneered at the Americans’ failure to win hearts and minds because of their lack of experience in counterinsurgency.

Pride has certainly come before a fall. British commanders underestimated both the enemy’s effectiveness and the Americans’ ability to adapt.

The difference, says Portillo was at the very top of the U.S. and British chains of command:

If a fair-minded account of the Iraq war is written, credit should go to President Bush for rejecting two years ago the report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that called for force reductions. He defied conventional wisdom and ordered a troop surge instead. It has been an extraordinary success and, unlike Britain, the Americans will not withdraw in defeat. During debates in Washington, British forces’ ignominious withdrawal to barracks was cited to argue that the United States could not contemplate being humbled in a similar way. In the end Bush was not a quitter. Blair “cut and ran”.

The final humility for Britain in Iraq was that Iraqi forces, with American support, routed al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and chased them out of Basra. A justifiably proud Iraqi General Mohammed Jawad Humeidi boasted that his troops fought valiantly for a week before getting any help from the British. Gen. Humeidi added insult to injury with his observation that for five years the al-Sadr’s forces had “ruled Basra without being punished or held to account.”

In Portillo’s opinion, the unpopularity of the war in Britain is no excuse:

Our mission was to provide security for the Iraqi people, and in that the US and Maliki’s government have recently had marked success and we have failed. The fault does not lie with our fighters. They have been extremely brave and as effective as their orders and their equipment would allow.

It raises questions about the stamina of our nation and the resolve of our political class. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that Britain, with nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers and the latest generation of fighter-bombers, is incapable of securing a medium-size conurbation. Making Basra safe was an essential part of the overall strategy; having committed ourselves to our allies we let them down.

Indeed, George Bush has paid the price of his resolve with low approval ratings and a media which not only criticizes him, but mocks him as well. But Bush, unlike Blair and Brown, has at least the spark of the spirit of Sir Winston Churchill in him. A distant blood relative of the great statesman who led Britain to victory in World War II, Bush inherited Churchill’s bulldog determination to prevail. In a return to his old school Harrow in 1941, Churchill said in a speech:

“This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

The lesson was not lost on Bush, who observed upon receiving (ironically as a gift from Blair) a bust of Churchill, “He is a constant reminder of what a great leader is like.”

Hated by the left for the war in Iraq and criticized by the right for his failure to reign in federal spending and the size of government, George W. Bush never faltered in his pursuit of victory in Iraq and the right of self-determination for its people.

And now, with Bush’s days in the White House winding down, America’s commanders in Afghanistan are surely wondering what sort of commitment they will have to work with from their incoming commander in chief. And with the need for more international troops to protect the local population while the Afghan army has a chance to be expanded and trained, as was the Army of Iraq, they worry that they may already know the answer to the question, “Do the British have the stomach for Afghanistan?”

Meanwhile, in the parish churchyard in Bladon, Oxfordshire, Sir Winston Churchill must surely be turning slowly in his grave. He died in 1965, but his bulldog spirit had lived on, first in Margaret Thatcher, then, after laying dormant for a while, in George W. Bush. As Sir Winston’s father was British and his mother an American, this is not remarkable. But when the president retires to Texas next month, that spirit must rest again until some other leader with Churchill’s great resolve arises. On which side of the Atlantic Ocean will it again be seen? Given the mood of the British, I believe that it will be reawakened in the home of the brave and the land of the free.

- JP

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