International Affairs: March 2007 Archives

Meir Javedanfar theorizes that Iran took the 15 British soldiers hostage as a ploy to "Carterize" Tony Blair and knock the UK out of the Global War on Terror.

By capturing the servicemen, Tehran is hoping that the British people, particularly the majority who are already against the war in Iraq will openly blame Blair for the crisis, by saying that it is his fault for endangering the lives of troops by sending them into a conflict zone.

Such internal dissatisfaction, Tehran hopes, would subsequently deal a deadly blow to any plans Blair or his successor may have to support an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The solution to dealing with thugs is to turn to Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan. Every time we give an inch they push for another, and pretty soon we're living under sharia law and baseball is replaced as the national pass-time by stampeding off bridges.

I pray nightly for the safe return of those British soldiers, but I cringe at the policies that allowed their capture. I hope that American troops would have been free to resist capture, but I'm not confident of it thanks to our weak-kneed politicians.

Walid Phares thinks he knows what Iran will do next.

2) The regime "needs" an external clash to crush the domestic challenge.

As in many comparable cases worldwide, when an authoritarian regime is faced with severe internal opposition it attempts to deflect the crisis onto the outside world. Hence, Teheran's all out campaign against the US and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and the region is in fact a repositioning of Iran's shield against the expected rising opposition inside the country. Hence the Khomeinist Mullahs plan seem to be projected as follow:

a. Engage in the diplomatic realm, to project a realist approach worldwide, but refrain from offering real results

b. Continue, along with the Syrian regime, in supporting the "Jihadi" Terror operations (including sectarian ones) inside Iraq

c. Widen the propaganda campaign against the US and its allies via a number of PR companies within the West, to portray Iran as "a victim" of an "upcoming war provoked by the US."

d. Engage in skirmishes in the Gulf (and possibly in other spots) with US and British elements claiming these action as "defensive," while planned thoroughly ahead of time.

3) The regime plan is to drag its opponents into a trap

Teheran's master planners intend to drag the "Coalition" into steps in engagement, at the timing of and in the field of control of Iran's apparatus. Multiple options and scenarios are projected.

a. British military counter measure takes place, supported by the US. Iran's regime believe that only "limited" action by the allies is possible, according to their analysis of the domestic constraints inside the two powerful democracies.

b. Tehran moves to a second wave of activities, at its own pace, hoping to draw a higher level of classical counter strikes by US and UK forces. The dosing by Iran's leadership is expected to stretch the game in time, until the departure of Blair and of the Bush Administration by its political opponents inside the country's institutions and public debate.

So basically they plan to keep jabbing us until President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are out of office, at which point the mullahs expect our next leaders to capitulate and sue for peace. Seems like they're familiar with the Democrats.

In January Mark Steyn wrote in a book review that if you're not "obsessed with victory" then you shouldn't have gotten into the war in the first place. Alas, the newly-elected Democrat majority in Congress is obsessed with many things, none of which involve America winning the Global War on Terror.

Now as [in the 1970s], America seems less a sleeping giant than a helpless one, ensnared by Liliputians and longing for release. Some Republicans distance themselves from the President’s “surge” in Iraq, others dutifully string along with it, but without any great confidence it will make a difference. Democrats, meanwhile, are all but urging on defeat. Explicitly threatening to cut off funds for “Bush’s war”, Senator Ted Kennedy trotted out the old Vietnam “quagmire” analogies but added a new charge, bizarrely formulated: “In Vietnam,” he recalled, “the White House grew increasingly obsessed with victory, and increasingly divorced from the will of the people and any rational policy.”

“Obsessed with victory”? In the history of warfare, most parties have been “obsessed with victory” to one degree or another, ever since Caveman Ug first clubbed Caveman Glug. If you’re not “obsessed with victory”, you probably shouldn’t have got into the war into the first place. It would be more accurate to say that Kennedy and his multiplying ilk are obsessed with defeat, and they’re prepared to do what’s necessary to help inflict it. The famous photographs of the departing choppers lifting off from the US embassy in Saigon with pleading locals clinging to the undercarriage are images not just of defeat but also of the betrayals necessary to accomplish it. “In reality,” writes John O’Sullivan in his splendid new book The President, The Pope And The Prime Minister, “the betrayal was truer than the defeat. America had not been defeated on the battlefield and South Vietnamese ground forces had themselves defeated a full-scale North Vietnamese invasion in 1972 when they still enjoyed US air support. Not only did the United States withhold such support in 1975, but Congress also refused to supply even the ammunition and military supplies that it had promised when the American forces left. For some perverse psychological motive, the American establishment acted as if the United States would not be genuinely free of involvement in Vietnam until its allies were conquered and occupied.”

Only a leftist would consider it a crime for our President to be obsessed with American victory.

Just as Robert Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe -- formerly "the jewel of Africa" -- with his "agrarian reforms", tyrant Hugo Chavez is preparing to seize private farms and convert them to "collective property". History has shown that this will not work well. When Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia it exported food to its neighbors and was incredibly prosperous... now people there are starving to death. How's socialism working in Venezuela?

Chavez, who hosted Sunday's program from a ranch in Venezuela's sun-baked plains, said his government would move to expropriate large ranches and farms spanning more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) and redistribute lands deemed "idle" to the poor under a nationwide agrarian reform.

Since the reform began five years ago, officials have redistributed over 1.9 million hectares (4.6 million acres) of land that had been classified as unproductive or lacked property documents dating back to 1847, according to a recent government census.

Critics say reform has failed to revive Venezuela's agriculture industry, which does not produce enough food to satisfy domestic demand. The government has been forced to import food amid shortages of staples such as meats, milk and sugar.

The quickest way to ruin a country is to nationalize private property and turn it over to the masses.

Pray for the British soldiers who were abducted by Iran and are now going to be put on trial for spying. The Iranians may be all bluster, but they may also be trying to provoke a conflict to boost oil prices and throw us Brits and Americans off our game. The soldiers caught in the middle are in a lot of danger.

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

Punishable, obviously, by death. The British deny that their soldiers were in Iranian waters.

Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.

It's interesting to read that recently updated sanctions might be hurting the Iranian leadership enough to motivate this sort of provocation.

Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”.

Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances.

Sanctions must hit rogue leadership personally to be effective, since most tyrannies don't care how much the regular people of the country suffer. Good for America and the UK for insisting on tough sanctions.

Bill Gates is completely right: America should welcome highly skilled immigrants with open arms.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the world's richest man, said on Tuesday the United States should reform its immigration laws and give more flexibility to higher-skilled foreign workers. ...

Gates, who runs a foundation with his wife that is the world's largest charity, said flexibility of movement for higher-skilled workers was especially important for his global company.

"I think every country in the world should make it easier for people with high skills to come in," he said.

This seems obvious. Ideally, all the smart people in the world would come here. The problem is that unskilled, uneducated workers flagrantly violate our immigration laws by the millions, while America simultaneously puts up roadblocks that impede the entrance of highly-skilled workers. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

It's my opinion that the reason we're having so many problems in Iraq now is that we didn't thoroughly defeat our enemies when we first invaded. Instead of destroying the Iraqi army and eliminating Ba'athists, we let the army and its leadership dissolve into the populace and jump-start the ongoing guerrilla conflict. By trying to fight a "kind" war and limiting casualties we actually doomed the Iraqi people to years of strife and turmoil. It's right to decry the Iraqis' ambivalence towards peace and freedom, but part of the reason they're having such a hard time is that our military was hamstrung by political correctness from the very beginning.

Four years into the Iraq war, all sides in the bitter debate agree that President Bush’s “troop surge” plan represents the final drop of American patience for the war. If Iraqis fail to control the violence, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “The American taxpayer has a reasonable expectation that we will bring our people home.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has steadfastly supported the mission, said Republicans’ patience is nearly exhausted, too.

“This is the last chance for the Iraqis,” the Kentucky Republican said in an interview with The Examiner. “The last chance for them to step up and demonstrate that they can do their part to save their country.”

We shouldn't forget that the reason we're fighting an uphill battle now is because we were unwilling to deliver the coup de grâce in 2003; instead, we listened to domestic peaceniks and our erstwhile "allies" who demanded a "humane" war. The ongoing chaos in Iraq is the result of that lukewarm policy.

Continuing my series about Mexican outrage, Mexico is mad at America for putting out a fire on our shared border.

Mexico has sent a diplomatic note to the United States objecting to an alleged incursion into Mexican territory by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Arizona trying to extinguish a fire, the country's Foreign Relations Department said Tuesday.

The incursion allegedly took place on Monday, as Border Patrol agents stationed in Sonoita were trying to quash a brush fire on the U.S. side that quickly spread into Mexico, the department said.

We're waiting for America's ambassador to Mexico to once again apologize like a... kitten.

At that time, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza issued a statement promising to look into the incident and asserting that the United States "has the deepest respect for the integrity of the sovereignty of Mexican soil and for the importance of the border shared by our two countries."

No indication yet that Mexico reciprocates.