International Affairs: April 2004 Archives

Almost a year ago I wrote that the conflict in Israel won't stop until the will of the Palestinian people is broken. I quoted a poll of Palestinians taken in September, 2002, which showed that the vast majority of them supported terrorist attacks on Israel.

- 52% oppose peace negotiations with Israel. - 73% are pessimistic of a reaching a peaceful settlement to the conflict. - 66% are opposed to the Oslo agreement. - 80% support the continuation of the al-Aqsa Intifada. - 53% believe that the Intifada will achieve its object. - 65% support suicide bombing operations against Israeli civilians [the poll question specifically mentions civilians].

I wrote that until these numbers change there will be no hope for peace. Well, apparently the number are changing now (no permalink; April 22, 2004).

Hamas, and Palestinian, media continue to hammer away with the need to destroy Israel, and repeat allegations that Jews are trying to take over the world, the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews during World War II was a myth and that the Christian world is making war on the Islamic community and Moslems must fight back. But these stories are less often accepted by their audience. Palestinian opinion surveys (conducted by Palestinians) have been tracking this decline in support for the intifada. As a result of that, the Palestinian pollsters have been physically attacked by terrorist groups. This has further turned off Palestinians.

While popular support for Palestinian terrorists is declining, the terrorists themselves will not go away. Their inability to launch many suicide bomb attacks has not diminished the dedication of the remaining terrorists. But deprived of their much of their leadership and technical experts, there is greater risk that the terrorism will be more frequently turned against “disloyal” Palestinians. When the terrorists cannot strike out, they tend to look for internal enemies. Given the large number of Israeli informers in the Palestinian territories, and increasing number of Palestinians who do not agree with the terrorism tactics, Hamas and other terrorist groups have lots of potential victims close at hand.

Good news for everyone, except terrorists.

The more I think about the refusal of some Iraqi forces to fight domestic enemies the less surprised I am.

Even though Saddam had little trouble finding soldiers to kill their fellow Iraqis, that's not the kind of army we've been building over the past few months. Imagine what would happen if the American military were called upon to put down a violent rebellion in the modern United States.

In the days of the Civil War, army units were mostly constituted of men who were from the same geographic area. Even though the South was part of America, most Union soldiers weren't fighting in their home towns against their own families. In Iraq, however, we've been building a modern, ethnically integrated army with soldiers in each unit from all over the country. That's the best way to structure an army to prevent military coups and the like, but it makes domestic military actions very difficult for the same reasons.

The Iraqis do need to take responsibility for their own welfare, but until there's a common concensus among the population military action may be required to keep the peace -- and modern militaries are purposefully designed to be bad for controlling the domestic population.

Update:
Bill Hobbs asks a great question: "Where is Iraq's Wyatt al-Earp?". A modern army is bad at domestic peacekeeping, but an armed populace that knows where the troublemakers live and is motivated to stop them could do the job. I have a feeling they've got the "armed" part down, it's the motivation that appears to be lacking.

FoxNews has an article with more information on how military contractors (a.k.a., mercenaries) work alongside American armed forces.

With the military having shrunk by one-third since the Cold War, the Pentagon has had to rely increasingly on contractors. Some industry insiders say well-run operations can boost military effectiveness and save money. But, company executives and industry analysts say that the private military business, which has ballooned since the Iraq war, is in need of better regulation. At the same time, after recent murders and kidnappings of security contractors, including an Italian who was executed on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Pentagon to review the use of contractors. ...

Doug Brooks, president of International Peace Operations Association (search), and some in the military bristle at the suggestion that employees of private security companies are only driven by the bottom line.

"No one's going to go over there and risk getting 'Fallujah'd' if you don’t believe in the mission," Brooks said.

The military contractors are "all incredibly professional," Brooks said. That notwithstanding, he added that more regulation would be good for the industry. Currently, military contractors are not identified in a separate area of international law and hardly any countries have addressed these companies in their law codes.

The general consensus seems to be that more regulation and/or more detailed formal arrangements would benefit everyone involved.

"We're not willing to bear the political costs either to expand [the military] or bring in allies, so we're taking the short term, easy way out and turning it over to private entities," said Singer, author of a book on the industry "Corporate Warriors."

The fact that these companies are not regulated either by international law, national law or the Coalition Provisional Authority, troubles Singer. He said it is bad for the contractors because when they go missing or get in trouble, there is no defined role for the military in terms of aiding them. This danger has been highlighted in recent days with the frequent kidnappings.

"They also don’t fall under the code of military justice, and that opens up a legal gray zone that should be worrying to the public." But he was doubtful that any action would be taken soon because "there's been a lack of interest and political will behind it."

The New York Times apparently agrees with the rebels in Iraq.

A group of armed Iraqi insurgents, their faces masked, claimed on Saturday to be holding 30 foreigners hostage and threatened to kill them unless the United States halted its offensive in Falluja, the Sunni city west of Baghdad.

In a film from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that was shown repeatedly on Arabic television, a masked man representing the group said: "We have Japanese, Bulgarian, Israeli, American, Spanish and Korean hostages. Their numbers are 30."

He added: "If America doesn't lift its blockade of Falluja, their heads will be cut off."

The tape did not show any hostages, however, and it was not possible to confirm that such a group was being held. But several foreigners are known to be missing, putting intense pressure on Japan and other American allies.

It's disgusting, but not surprising, to see the NYT pushing the rebels' agenda by insisting that the recent kidnappings in Iraq have a strong possibility of influencing Coalition action. Until Spain's recent capitulation I would have said there was no chance that any country would retreat in the face of such threats, but apparently now the terrorists think they can successfully blackmail their enemies by killing a handful of civilians. Thanks Spain.

There's absolutely no chance the CPA is going to withdraw from Fallujah or Iraq just because a few hostages have been taken. There is, of course, "intense pressure" that our operations in Iraq go well and as smoothly as possible, but very little of it has anything to do with the hostage situation. The NYT isn't full of idiots and the reporters know these simple facts, but because the paper has it's own foreign policy agenda it's decided to spin the news to support it.

Meanwhile, it's good to see that al Sistani -- the most politically powerful Shi'ite in Iraq -- is finally acting to quell the violence. He was tolerating it (if not supporting it?) for his own purposes, but he doesn't want the fighting to get beyond his control.

In Kuwait, an associate of Iraq's leading Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, denounced the kidnapping of the Japanese as a terrorist act and demanded their immediate release, Reuters reported. The associate, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Mohri, said in a sermon at Friday Prayer that was carried by newspapers on Saturday, "This ugly picture hurts Islam and Muslims as it gives a bad impression about our Islamic religion."

Ya think?

Donald Sensing points to an American Digest excerpt from a USAID report titled "Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves". There are some graphic stories of people who survived mass executions, many of whom returned home to find that the rest of their family had been murdered.

Some will say, "But we didn't go to Iraq to save the Iraqis!" which is partially true. "What about all the other oppressed people around the world? Are we going to save them all? Or only the ones with oil?" Be patient. There's a new world order arising, and it may gradually bring about freedom and liberty for everyone. One step at a time.

StrategyPage reports (April 8th, 2004) that German diplomats are coming to America to convince Congress not to close our military bases in Germany. Good luck. We have long memories: watch what happens when you screw us over.

We should cut the size of our European forces down considerably, and as SP notes we can move our bases east (probably to the Czech Republic). Europe isn't likely to break out into open war again soon (*crosses fingers*), and our troops don't need to sit there twiddling their thumbs. In fact, we don't need so many soldiers stationed outside the United States at all anymore -- all we need are weapons caches scattered around the globe. We can fly troops in on a moment's notice (much more easily than we could circa WW2, when many of these bases were established), and it's cheaper to keep them at home as much as possible. The troops are happier, and training is much easier.

From what (little) I know of Japanese culture, hostage-taking and threats aren't likely to weaken Japan's resolve.

Iraqi militants are today threatening to burn three foreign hostages to death unless their country quits the US-led coalition.

Two Japanese men and one woman are being held by a previously unknown group which has vowed to kill them if Japanese soldiers do not leave Iraq.

Perhaps my brother can give us more insight on the situation, since he's studied Japan extensively.

Update:
Nicholas writes:

Prime Minister Koizumi fought hard to get Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) into Iraq, and for him to back down in the face of direct threats to three individual lives would be a great loss of face, as it would be for any national leader. More than that, by backing out he would be bringing shame to the nation, a gesture that would be unacceptable to any politician in hope of retaining popular support. And although Koizumi is elected by the Parliament, his PR strategy and wide-spread popularity in Japan are the roots of much of his power. So, he would not do something that would bring shame to so many, for it would undermine the major source of his influence.

Also, it is important to remember that there are several possible reasons that any individual member of the Japanese Parliament might want the SDF in Iraq. First and most persuasively, the Japanese economy is quite dependent on favorable and cooperative relations with the US. Withdrawing the SDF from Iraq for the sake of three lives would certainly harm US-Japan relations, though not irrevocably of course.

Second, for politicians who personally support an amendment to Article IX of the Japanese constitution to allow the development and deployment of a national military rather than simply a Self-Defense Force, pulling the SDF out of Iraq in response to a relatively small, though gruesome, threat would greatly undermine the political strength of the pro-military position. That is, sending the SDF to Iraq was a great DOMESTIC political victory for those Japanese who support the development of a full-fledged Japanese military, and to remove the SDF because of this would show an awful lack of resolve that would turn domestic political victory into political defeat.

Third, those Japanese members of Parliament whose constituents favor the development of a national military, along with all the economic and social consequences that a strong and growing military entails in a capitalist economy, would put great pressure on PM Koizumi to keep the SDF in Iraq, for reasons similar to those given above.

Fourth, organizations in Japan interested in high-tech research and development, including many private firms, government-sponsored research institutions, and bureaucrats within a wide range of ministries would all apply pressure to maintain the SDF in Iraq. Again, the incentives to do so can be traced back to the hope for an eventual constitutional amendment that would allow Japan to develop a full-scale military, and to the fear that backing out of Iraq now would undermine that cause. The ministerial bureaucrats especially exert considerable influence on members of Parliament, as the two groups have a highly mutualistic relationship. And since increased government spending on a full-fledged Japanese military would mean that some bureaucrats somewhere in the Japanese ministries would be controlling more resources than they did before, there will be ministerial pressure on Parliament to keep the SDF in Iraq now.

Lastly, there may be Japanese who sincerely support the moral cause in Iraq and the War on Terror, and though the pressure applied by this group will be important in the decision to keep the SDF in Iraq, this group of moral supporters is itself hard to classify or identify in any simple way.

I doubt the SDF is going anywhere, for a while. If it does, it will be the result of several humongous political mistakes.

Former Democratic Senator (and 9/11 Commission member) Bob Kerrey writes about Iraq:

Mr. Clarke's views on Iraq notwithstanding, after 9/11 we could not afford either to run the risk that Saddam Hussein would be deterred by our military efforts to contain him or that these military deployments would become attractive targets for further acts of terrorism. I supported President Bush's efforts to persuade the United Nations Security Council to change a 10-year-old resolution that authorized force to contain Saddam Hussein to one that authorized force to replace his dictatorship. And I believe the president did the right thing to press ahead even without the Security Council's support. Remember, the June 25, 1996, attack on Khobar Towers that left 19 American airmen dead happened because of our containment efforts. Sailors had also died enforcing the Security Council's embargo and our pilots were risking their lives every day flying missions over northern and southern Iraq to protect Iraqi Kurds and Shiites.

It is my view that a political victory for terrorism in Iraq is a much greater danger to us than whether or not we succeed in capturing Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Victory in Iraq will embolden radical Islamists as much as our failure to recognize the original danger of their declaration of war against us.

This debate becomes all the more important since the work of this commission--to examine an attack against the U.S. that occurred nearly three years ago--has been overshadowed by the events taking place in Iraq. The war there is not over. Twelve marines were killed in Ramadi Tuesday night in what has become a dramatic escalation of violence against coalition forces. I believe this escalation is taking place precisely because the country is about to be handed over to the Iraqi people to run themselves.

This guy, at least, appears more focused on the welfare of the nation than on political grandstanding, and I'm thankful for it. Senator Kerrey is one of the reasons I have hope that the 9/11 Commission isn't going to turn out to be a completely partisan waste of time.

Update:
Apparently others in the blogosphere disagree. That's fine, I haven't read all the 9/11 Commission transcripts yet.

With all the fighting going on in Iraq now -- Shiite and Sunni alike -- those Iraqis who want a peaceful and democratic government need to have the guts to stand up and be counted, even if that means opposing their fellow countrymen. Everyone was hoping the transition would be mostly peaceful once Saddam was gone, but tyranny is apparently too entrenched in the populace and there are still plenty of people who'd rather stand alone atop a pile of skulls than work together to build a skyscraper.

America needs Iraq for military purposes, but if the Iraqis can't get their act together we may have to give up on reforming them politically. Our troops aren't leaving any time soon, but once we turn the government over to the natives they're going to have to fight these battles on their own. If the emerging Iraqi government wants to be respected, it has to demonstrate that it has the support of the population. That means the Iraqi people need to take responsibility for their country and not let it be torn apart by dead-enders.

Iraqis: if you want freedom and democracy, it's time to fight for it. We can't hand it to you on a silver platter. You've got to decide, and it looks like the time is now.

(I'm sure others have written the same thing already, only better, but I haven't had a chance to peruse the web much yet today.)

Fallujans explain why killing Americans is justified:

"Islam bans what was done to the bodies, but the Americans are as brutal as the youths who burned and mutilated the bodies," said Mahdi Ahmed Saleh, a retired school principal who now runs a small grocery store. "They have done so much to us and they have humiliated us so often."

Saleh, like most men in Fallujah, singled out raids on homes as the most troubling U.S. military practice.

"Look at this wide and long street," he said. "Do you see any women? So, if we don't let them out on the street, can you imagine how we feel when American soldiers barge in and see them in their sleeping gowns?"

What a cheerful bunch. Look who's side you're on, Kos.

Jay Redding has a tribute to the three identified men who were killed in Fallujah a couple days ago. As I first saw from Bill Hobbs, leftist blogger Kos doesn't care that these men were burnt, killed, mutilated, and desecrated.

They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

I'd like to point out that that I, myself, am in a similar position. I'm not in the military, but I work in the defense industry. I make money doing it -- more than our brave soldiers make -- but it's not all about the money. I'm proud to use my education and abilities to further "American hegemony", because that means encouraging democracy, capitalism, and liberty all over the world, including Iraq. I don't carry a rifle or push buttons to launch missiles, but I'm doing my part to equip our military with the tools it needs to carry out its mission.

Are you, Kos, indifferent to my life as well? Well screw you.

Update:
It looks like Kos has changed/removed the post in question. Here's a screenshot, via IP.

Newly released documents prove that Bill Clinton knew of the Rwandan genocide in April, 1994, and not only decided not to intervene (which is a defensible position) but did everything possible to prevent the American people from learning the truth.

US president Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, classified documents made available for the first time reveal.

Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president knew of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak.

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington policymakers.

The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his officials that they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings.

Not only that, but the exalted Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, was in charge of the UN peacekeeping office from March of 1992 to December of 1996.

Before being appointed Secretary-General, Mr. Annan served as Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations (March 1992-February 1993) and then as Under-Secretary-General (March 1993-December 1996). His tenure as Under-Secretary-General coincided with unprecedented growth in the size and scope of United Nations peacekeeping operations, with a total deployment, at its peak in 1995, of almost 70,000 military and civilian personnel from 77 countries.

As this editorial by Nat Hentoff that appeared in the April 30, 2001, edition of the Washington Times (I think) says:

The Washington Times editorial at least had some reservations about Mr. Annan's tenure so far. But there has been scant mention in the media of the plain fact that it was Mr. Annan, when he was head of the United Nation's peacekeeping office, who could have prevented the slaughter of 800,000 Tutus and their sympathizers in Rwanda in 1994.

Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, urgently pleaded with Mr. Annan to intervene before the killings began, because Mr. Dallaire knew of the preparations for the genocide. Mr. Annan refused to act, or to say anything publicly. ...

Finally, in 1999, after these and other disclosures of the responsibility of the United Nations for the massacres, the United Nations issued a report acknowledging, to some extent, its role in the killings, including the role of Mr. Annan. But for five and a half years he refused to accept any responsibility for the Rwandan holocaust until Mr. Gourevitch and others revealed that less than 5,000 U.N. troops could have stopped the killings if Mr. Annan had not closed his eyes.

To this day, moreover, Mr. Annan has said nothing about the massive enslavement of black Christians and animists in Sudan by the National Islamic Front government. Nor has he said anything about the gang rapes and murder that accompany slave raids on the villages of southern Sudan.

And people want to put the UN -- led by Annan -- in charge of Iraq? What a joke.