International Affairs: November 2005 Archives

My wife, who knows quite a bit about Arab culture since her dad's side of the family is from Iraq, has a post about the significance of al-Zarqawi being cast out from his tribe and family.

This. is. huge.

al-Zarqawi has been disowned by the Bani Hassan.

Let me repeat: This. is. huge.

I was astounded when I read this. For one to be disowned by their own tribe means they have shamed their ancestors and have committed the gravest of unpardonable sins. For an Arab to be disowned by his own clan and tribe means that he is only worthy of taking his own life outside of tribal boundaries, left to face Allah on his own without the help of his ancestors. (I do not believe in that mysticism, just to clear up any misconceptions).

Basically, the Bani Hassan are saying that al-Zarqawi is only worthy of a shameful death, alone in the wilderness. Back in ancient times, the only way of survival was to stay within one's tribe/clan. Socio-economic and socio-political landscapes were all determined by tribal ties and ancestry. The Arab culture truly believes the saying that "there is strength in numbers." To be alone in the desert meant a lonely death; to be within a tribe meant an honorable existence. ...

What's even more shocking is that they list al-Zarqawi by his given name, thereby stripping him of his "warrior" status. That in itself is a severe insult and public humiliation. When an Arab warrior would prove himself in battle, he would frequently receive a new name to denote honor and command respect. In this case, Al-Qaeda has taken that tradition and twisted it, using names traditionally reserved for battle feats to pander to their own pride at being terrorists. The fact that the Bani Hassan listed Zarqawi by his given name is uber embarrassing and tells society that Zarqawi is worthless and not deserving of any respect. Honor and family are everything in the Arab world (the non-terrorist part) and to be stripped of both of those publicly is a sentence worse than death.

Islamofascism can't help but eventually implode as it turns on itself, and I think it goes without saying that President Bush's flypaper strategy in Iraq has helped hasten its demise.

Those on the left's fringe (though they tend to overshadow the rest of the left) enjoy comparing President Bush to Hitler and so forth, so let's hope they devote some attention to examples of real fascism.

Russia moved Wednesday to impose greater government control over charities and other nongovernmental organizations, including some of the world's most prominent, in what critics described as the Kremlin's latest effort to stifle civil society and democracy. The lower house of Parliament gave preliminary approval to legislation that would require tens of thousands of Russian organizations to register with the Ministry of Justice, impose restrictions on their ability to accept donations or hire foreigners and prohibit foreign organizations from opening branches in Russia. The legislation could yet be significantly revised, but if it is approved as now written it would force organizations like the Ford Foundation, Greenpeace and Amnesty International to close their offices in Russia and re-register instead as purely Russian organizations - something the legislation, in an apparent contradiction, appears to disallow.

The government in Moscow must be getting pretty shaky if they're afraid of actual unrest.

Some of the bill's supporters defended it as an effort to bring order to the registration of 450,000 nongovernmental organizations. But others said it was aimed at preventing foreign efforts to support political opposition movements, like the one that swept to power in Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" last fall.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Russians do move to sweep their government clean of the ex-Communists and other strongmen who have taken it over. I just hope they don't end up ceding their East to China.

The world's tyrants were thwarted last week in their efforts to take over the internet using the UN as their willing proxy. As I wrote before the process concluded, fascist governments know the free flow of information is a threat to their power and they want to strangle it before it undermines them completely.

Paul Volcker's recent report on the United Nations Oil for Food scandal taught us a great deal about how the U.N. works. Ten billion dollars worth of Iraqi oil was illegally smuggled to adjacent nations. Saddam Hussein collected $229 million in bribes from 139 of 248 companies involved in the oil business and $1.5 billion in kickbacks and illegal payments from 2,253 firms out of 3,614 providing humanitarian goods under the U.N. program. The U.N., which supervised and controlled the Oil for Food program, did nothing about any of it. ...

Indeed, last Tuesday Mr. Annan took action to reinstate U.N. Deputy Director Joseph Stephanides, who was fired six months ago for illegal bidding procedures. It seems that Mr. Annan didn't think what had happened in the Oil for Food program was really that bad after all. Or to put it our own perspective, Dennis Kozlowski stole $600 million from Tyco and got eight to 25 years in prison; Kofi Annan supervised more than $12 billion in international theft and will stay in his job.

All of which explains why allowing the United Nations to be in charge of running the Internet is a very bad idea. ...

Old Europe and the despotic nations want exactly that--international Internet content control. And they have convinced the EU establishment that U.N. control of the Internet would be just and appropriate. The last United Nations World Summit on the Internet--held in 2003--concluded that "governments should intervene . . . to maximize economic and social benefits and serve national priorities." The report of the U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance says it would have "respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, " explaining that meant "multilingual, diverse, and culturally appropriate content" on the Internet.

And what is "culturally appropriate" content? If your nation is a free society--America, Ireland, Australia--a free and unregulated-content Internet is a good thing. For dictatorships and state controlled societies--the former USSR, China or Cuba--it is a catastrophe, for allowing citizens free access to information puts your government at risk. And if you are in between--a socialist government like France or Germany--U.N. control is a good thing because government control is always better than unregulated markets.

The internet is a great machine for change and it's only a matter of time before those who benefit from the status quo make serious efforts to thwart it. Fortunately, I think they're already too late.

America's performance in Iraq is apparently prompting our allies to doubt whether we could defeat China head-to-head.

The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has been an assessment relayed to U.S. government officials over the past few months by countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. This comes as President Bush wraps up a visit to Asia, in which he sought to strengthen U.S. ties with key allies in the region.

Most Asian officials have expressed their views privately. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China.

"In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives," Mr. Ishihara said in an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I certainly don't know enough to say either way, but this doesn't sound right to me. Anyway, this is certainly yet another side-effect of the flypaper strategy in Iraq that we're using to lure in terrorists. We may be meeting that strategic goal, but to most people it looks as if we can't crush the resistance.

In light of all the recent hullabaloo by Democrats accusing President Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction, I wonder what Saddam Hussein will say about the matter when it comes up in his trial?

1. Saddam will simply refuse to talk about WMD or to say anything substansive.

2. Saddam will continue to insist that he did have WMD and that we just didn't find them.

3. Saddam will say he never had WMD and that he was just trying to trick the world into respecting him.

4. Saddam will admit that he thought he had WMD but was actually deceived by his scientists.

Number 4 is most likely the truth, but Saddam will never admit it because it will make him look like a fool. I don't see how any of 2, 3 or 4 can do anything but hurt the Democrats, and 1 doesn't do anything to help them.

Sally B. Donnelly reports that battalion commanders with experience on the ground in Iraq have told the Senate Armed Services Committee that they want more troops, in contrast to what the top brass has been saying, but she doesn't mention that this "shortage" could be an integral part of President Bush's "flypaper" strategy.

According to two sources with knowledge of the meeting, the Army and Marine officers were blunt. In contrast to the Pentagon's stock answer that there are enough troops on the ground in Iraq, the commanders said that they not only needed more manpower but also had repeatedly asked for it. Indeed, military sources told TIME that as recently as August 2005, a senior military official requested more troops but got turned down flat.

There are about 160,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq, a number U.S. commanders in the region plan to maintain at least through the Iraqi national assembly elections on Dec. 15. But the battalion commanders, according to sources close to last week's meeting, said that because there are not enough troops, they have to "leapfrog" around Iraq to keep insurgents from returning to towns that have been cleared out.

It may be the case that allowing openings for terrorists is part of the strategy. If we sent another 100,000 troops to Iraq and clamped down hard, the thousands of foreign terrorists we've killed might not have decided to come to Iraq at all. The President is constantly referring to Iraq as "terrorist flypaper"; even though the terrorists don't comprehend that they're being lured to their deaths, I don't think we should be so naive. I'm not saying I think this is the greatest strategy ever, and the short-term appearance has certainly hurt the President's popularity, but I think the strategy is at least reasonable and it has the potential to work profoundly well.

I can't think of a worse idea than giving the UN control over the internet. I mean, c'mon... seriously. Despite what should be the obvious absurdity of it all, Claudia Rosett explains some of the many reasons why the Tyrannical Dictator's Club shouldn't get to regulate the net.

As usual, the U.N. for reasons sadly unrelated to actual performance, is styling itself as the champion of the poorest people, in the poorest countries. (This is the same U.N. that still hasn't repaid or even apologized to the people of Iraq for the billions worth of their national assets that were grafted, stolen and wasted under U.N. supervision in the Oil for Food program). In the face of mounting public concern over the Tunis summit, Secretary-General Kofi Annan betook himself recently to the pages of the Washington Post to argue that the main aim is "to ensure that poor countries get the full benefits that new information and communication technologies--including the Internet--can bring to economic and social development." Mr. Annan concluded with what I suppose was meant to be a clarion call: "I urge all stakeholders to come to Tunis ready to bridge the digital divide," etc., etc.

What Mr. Annan evidently does not care to understand, and after his zillion-year career at the U.N. probably never will, is that for purposes of helping the poor, the problem is not a digital divide. It is not the bytes, gigs, blogs and digital wing-dings that define that terrible line between the haves and the have-nots. These are symptoms of the real difference, which we would do better to call the dictatorial divide.

In free societies, all sorts of good things flourish, including technology and highly productive uses of the Internet. In despotic systems, human potential withers and dies, strangled by censorship, starved by central controls, and rotted by the corruption that inevitably accompanies such arrangements. That poisonous mix is what prevents the spread of prosperity in Africa, and blocks peace in the Middle East, and access to computers, or for that matter, food, in North Korea (which is of course sending a delegate to Tunis).

But never mind the realities, as long as Mr. Annan and his entourage see an opportunity for more U.N. turf, job patronage, global clout and funding (including the prospect of a "ka-ching" for the U.N. cash register every time someone logs on). Leading the charge, with policy documents posted on the U.N. information summit site, are such terrorist-breeding blogger-jailing regimes as those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and such millennial pioneers of backward motion on free speech as Belarus and Russia. China's rulers, who have recently been availing themselves of modern technology to censor the Chinese word for "democracy" out of Internet traffic, and to track down and punish its users, have been toiling away to add their two cents to this summit. Sudan, better known for genocide than free speech, has registered to set up a pavilion. Were Saddam Hussein still in power in Iraq, as Mr. Annan tried to arrange, the odds are good that a front company for his regime, with U.N. blessing, would be setting up a booth in Tunis as well.

The UN can't even manage a single office building. I can't believe my tax dollars are still paying Kofi Annan's salary.

Anyone who cares about the future of Europe should read Mark Steyn's take on the doom of France (free registration required).

It’s remarkable to me how many European commentators cling to the old delusions — mocking Bush for being in thrall to his own Texan version of Osama-like fundamentalism. I look on religion like gun ownership. That’s to say, New Hampshire has a high rate of firearms possession, which is why it has a low crime rate. You don’t have to own a gun and there are sissy Dartmouth College arms-are-for-hugging types who don’t. But they benefit from the fact that their crazy stump-toothed knuckle-dragging neighbours do. If you want to burgle a home in the Granite State, you’d have to be awfully certain it was the one-in-a-hundred we-are-the-world pantywaist’s pad and not some plaid-clad gun nut who’ll blow your head off before you lay a hand on his $70 TV. That’s the way it is with religion. A hyper-rationalist might dismiss the whole God thing as a lot of apple sauce, but his hyper-rationalism is a lot more vulnerable in a society without a strong Judaeo-Christian culture. American firearms owners have a popular slogan: ‘If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.’ Likewise, if you marginalise religion, only the marginalised will have religion. That’s why France’s impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital.

Cultural confidence. I like the term. Just because you want to get along and co-exist with everyone doesn't mean they feel the same.

... which isn't bad, as long as the ships belong to the other guy. In 1982 CIA scientists learned from a defector that the Soviet Union was intending to steal some software systems for operating its trans-Siberian natural gas pipeline. With President Reagan's approval they slipped some malicious code into the software and caused the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion in history.

"Reading the material caused my worst nightmares to come true," Weiss recalled. The documents showed the Soviets had stolen valuable data on radar, computers, machine tools and semiconductors, he wrote. "Our science was supporting their national defense."

The Farewell Dossier included a shopping list of future Soviet priorities. In January 1982, Weiss said he proposed to Casey a program to slip the Soviets technology that would work for a while, then fail. Reed said the CIA "would add 'extra ingredients' to the software and hardware on the KGB's shopping list."

"Reagan received the plan enthusiastically," Reed writes. "Casey was given a go." According to Weiss, "American industry helped in the preparation of items to be 'marketed' to Line X." Some details about the flawed technology were reported in Aviation Week and Space Technology in 1986 and in a 1995 book by Peter Schweizer, "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union."

The sabotage of the gas pipeline has not been previously disclosed, and at the time was a closely guarded secret. When the pipeline exploded, Reed writes, the first reports caused concern in the U.S. military and at the White House. "NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based," he said, referring to North American Air Defense Command. "Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device." However, satellites did not pick up any telltale signs of a nuclear explosion.

"Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis," he added, "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry."

This sort of counter-espionage helped strangle the Soviets' spy apparatus by casting all their stolen technology into doubt, contributing to their ultimate economic downfall. Alas, the Soviet turncoat who provided the information that made the sabotage possible was discovered and executed by the KGB in 1983.

Spies should be executed:

Four persons arrested in Los Angeles are part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ring, federal investigators said, and the suspects caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems, including submarines and warships. ...

The ring was led by Chi Mak and his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, along with Mr. Chi's brother, Tai Wang Mak, and his wife, Fuk Heung Li, officials said.

Key compromises uncovered so far include sensitive data on Aegis battle management systems that are the core of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers.

China covertly obtained the Aegis technology and earlier this year deployed its first Aegis warship, code-named Magic Shield, intelligence officials have said.

The Chinese also obtained sensitive data on U.S. submarines, including classified details related to the new Virginia-class attack submarines.

Officials said based on a preliminary assessment, China now will be able to track U.S. submarines, a compromise that potentially could be devastating if the United States enters a conflict with China in defending Taiwan.

Mr. Chi, an electrical engineer, also had access to details on U.S. aircraft carriers and once was aboard the USS Stennis. A Pentagon report made public earlier this year said China's military is building up capabilities to attack U.S. aircraft carriers.

China also is thought to have obtained information from the spy ring that will assist Chinese military development of electromagnetic pulse weapons -- weapons that simulate the electronic shock caused by a nuclear blast -- that disrupt electronics.

It also is thought to have obtained unmanned aerial vehicle technology from the spy ring.

China is not our friend and we shouldn't trust them. Security leaks like these cost America billions of dollars and certainly contribute to thousands of potential deaths, not to mention potential military defeat. The spies should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

In the face of continuing rebellion, Jacques Chirac is talking tough and sounding a lot like a local "cowboy" we all know and love.

The violence came in open defiance to a warning by French President Jacques Chirac who pledged to clamp down on the troublemakers.

Chirac emerged from an emergency meeting with top members of his Cabinet on Sunday to tell his nation that the "absolute priority is to reestablish security and public order."

"The law should have the final say, and the republic is determined to be stronger than those who want spread violence and fear. Those people will be apprehended, judged and punished."

I know 13 years is a long time, but I still can't help feeling a little smug when I think back to how the French responded after Los Angeles' Rodney King riots. (HT: Kyle Haight in the comments to an earlier post.)

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs." President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."

Meanwhile, am I the only one wondering if all the battles Muslims are fighting around the world may be their own fault? Maybe they need to learn to be more tolerant.

Every few decades or so the French feel the need to riot through the streets and burn their country to the ground... all that's left is to whip out the guillotines and let the heads roll.

ACHERES, France (AP) - Youths armed with gasoline bombs fanned out from Paris' poor, troubled suburbs to shatter the tranquility of resort cities on the Mediterranean, torching scores of vehicles, nursery schools and other targets during a 10th straight night of arson attacks. ...

The violence - originally concentrated in neighborhoods northeast of Paris with large immigrant populations - is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity. ...

Arson attacks were reported in the Paris region and outlying cities, many known for their calm. Cars were torched in the cultural bastion of Avignon in southern France and the resort cities of Nice and Cannes, a police officer said.

Arson was reported in Nantes in the southwest, the Lille region in the north and Saint-Dizier in the Ardennes region east of Paris. In the eastern city of Strasbourg, 18 cars were set alight in full daylight, police said. ...

By daybreak Saturday, 897 vehicles were destroyed - a sharp rise from the 500 burned a night earlier, police said. It was the worst one-day toll since the unrest erupted Oct. 27 following the accidental electrocution of the two teenagers who hid in a power substation, apparently believing police were chasing them.

I just hope the sixth republic isn't an Islamic Republic. Seriously though, these are the jokers who had the nerve to lecture us about peace and justice? It won't be long before they'll need their own UN peacekeeping team.