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Will the real Bush finally stand up?

US President George W. Bush has six weeks left in power. If he acts fast, that may be enough time to secure his place in history – at least in terms of the Middle East.

Bush’s initial reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks were a rare display of political and intellectual courage. Gazing at the rubble of the World Trade Center, Bush recognized that the primary failure of US policy towards the Arab and Islamic world until that day was found in the predisposition of his predecessors to slavishly maintain a Faustian bargain with tyrannical Arab regimes in the interest of maintaining "stability." That bargain committed the US to providing military assistance and political backing to authoritarian regimes throughout the Arab and Islamic world in exchange for cheap oil for the West.

What Sept. 11 showed Bush was that the "stability" the US had purchased was an illusion. As the US propped up dictators, their subjects fumed under the chains of state terror and economic privation. For millions of frustrated young men, the only outlet for resistance open to them is the mosque. There they are indoctrinated in the ways of jihad and mobilized to fight for Islamic global domination.

In the months that followed the attacks, Bush radically changed the course of US Middle East policy by pledging American support for the democratization of the Arab and Islamic world. Bush announced that from then on, the US would no longer blindly follow its duplicitous client states but would support voices of democracy and freedom in the Middle East no matter where they came from.

Bush’s message did nothing to endear him to the likes of the Saudis and the Egyptians. The Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference attacked Bush’s freedom agenda and indignantly argued that it would be impossible for them to reform their ways for as long as the US maintained its support for Israel – the sole democracy in the region.

[More]THEN THERE was Europe. Until Bush came around, Europeans had delighted in showing off their false multicultural and humanitarian credentials built on buying off terrorists, attacking Israel and giving the Palestinians billions of euros in foreign aid. Bush’s freedom agenda exposed their deceit and their cowardice. They were appalled.

Implicit in Bush’s view was the understanding that the US’s most stable allies – and indeed only stable allies – are fellow democracies. And this understanding necessarily led Bush to the conclusion that Israel is the US’s most dependable and valuable ally in the Middle East.

Bush’s views were nothing short of sacrilege not only for the Arabs and the Europeans, but for Washington’s foreign policy establishment, headquartered at the State Department and the CIA. For the men and women of these bureaucracies, Bush’s recognition that the Arab regimes they championed were the primary source of regional instability and anti-Americanism was a repudiation of everything they worked for. More disgraceful, in their view, was his open embrace of Israel – the mortal foe of all their Arab friends – as the US’s most trustworthy and strategically vital ally in the region.

All these forces joined together almost immediately to scuttle Bush’s freedom agenda for the Arab world. In country after country, Bush’s message of democracy was watered down to nothingness.

In post-Saddam Iraq, rather than embrace democratic champions like Ahmed Chalabi, the foreign policy bureaucracy in Washington foisted strongman and former Ba’athist Ayad Allawi on the newly liberated country. The State Department and the CIA allowed Iran and Syria to freely subvert Bush’s freedom agenda by buying politicians, building militias and fomenting the insurgency.

Iraq was Bush’s central foreign policy initiative. And it is for his work in Iraq that he will chiefly be remembered. Today the battle for Iraq is all but won. But it was only won after Bush realized in 2006 that if he continued following the advice of those who rejected his goal of a free Middle East, the US would be forced from Iraq in defeat.

IN LEBANON in March 2005, when more than a million pro-democracy Lebanese citizens staged the Cedar Revolution and ousted Syrian forces from their country, Bush’s battle for freedom was finally joined by the Arabs themselves. To secure the gains of the Cedar Revolution, Bush needed to work with Israel to protect the pro-Western Siniora government.

As Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah in 2006, and as the US’s championing of the UN ceasefire resolution which facilitated Hizbullah’s takeover of Lebanon showed, neither Israel nor the US was willing to protect Lebanon’s democrats. Today, with the forces of democracy defeated after Hizbullah’s violent takeover of the government in May, rather than decry this state of affairs and work to undo it, Bush has chosen to deny it. And not only does he deny it, he exacerbates it. Bush welcomed the "stability" that Hizbullah’s takeover has facilitated. And today he is arming the Hizbullah-dominated Lebanese army with tanks and other heavy arms. That is, in Lebanon, Bush has adopted the very same Faustian bargain he rejected in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Bush’s confused and self-defeating policies towards Lebanon are a direct consequence of his policies towards Israel and the Palestinians. In 2002, Bush recognized that the root of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is not Israel’s continued control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem but the absence of Palestinian leadership willing to live at peace with Israel. Moreover, he recognized that the US’s primary role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was not to mediate a dispute the Palestinians are unwilling to reconcile, but to stand by Israel as America’s main ally in the region.

Bush’s views earned him the enmity of the Arabs, the Europeans, the Washington elites and the Israeli Left. And together they undermined his policies and isolated him until less that a year later, he abandoned his positions. In mid-2003 he set aside his demand for a reordering of Palestinian society and his decision to side with Israel. In their place, Bush joined the Arabs, the Europeans, the UN and the Israeli Left in making the establishment of a Palestinian state the centerpiece of his Middle East agenda. As with Lebanon, here too Bush’s acceptance of the establishment’s position came at the cost of eschewing Israel as a US ally.

BUSH’S UNWILLINGNESS to carry through on his freedom agenda in the face of unrelenting opposition from Europe, the Arabs and his foreign policy establishment is what has prevented him throughout his presidency from contending with the greatest source of volatility and danger in the region – Iran. Largely as a consequence of the ambiguity and weakness of his policies on Iran, it is likely that one of the most prominent legacies of Bush’s Middle East policies will be a nuclear-armed Iran.

With just six weeks remaining to his tenure in office, much of what Bush will leave behind him has already been determined. But there are two things he can still do that will impact greatly both the world he leaves behind and how he is judged by history: He can take action against Iran’s nuclear program, and he can embrace Israel as an ally by pardoning four men who have been persecuted for assuming the alliance exists.

On the surface, these two agenda items couldn’t be more disparate. By neutralizing Iran’s nuclear installations Bush would save the lives of millions of people. By pardoning Jonathan Pollard, Larry Franklin, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, he would save the lives of four people.

But the fact of the matter is that the two issues present Bush with the same challenge. They both require him to find the courage to embrace the vision that he tried but failed to realize in the early years of his presidency.

By attacking Iran’s nuclear installations – or by permitting Israel to fly over Iraq to attack Iran’s nuclear installations – Bush will do two things. He will bolster the US-Israel alliance. And he will demonstrate that the stability engendered by the status quo is antithetical to US interests.

Until now, Bush has been prevented from taking action in Iran by those who insist that the status quo in Iran and throughout the region is preferable to every other alternative. This was the view that propelled Washington’s foreign policy establishment to oppose Israel’s independence 60 years ago and has caused them to continue to oppose accepting Israel as an ally to this day.

To maintain the predominance of this view, over the years its proponents have persecuted individuals who reject it. In 1985, when Jonathan Pollard was arrested for transferring classified information to Israel, he was not treated like a man who had transferred secrets to a US ally. He was treated like a man who had transferred secrets to al-Qaida. His sentence of life in prison was meant to serve as a deterrent for anyone who dared question the view that Israel is nothing more than an albatross placed around the US’s neck by a powerful American Jewish lobby and by dimwitted politicians.

Whereas Pollard’s fate was sealed long before Bush entered the White House, Franklin, Rosen and Weissman’s nightmare began under his watch.

In 2006, former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin was sentenced to 12 years in prison for seeking the assistance of two AIPAC lobbyists – Rosen and Weissman – in bringing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons program to Bush’s attention. By speaking with Rosen and Weissman, Franklin was behaving as countless government employees behave. He was prosecuted not for sharing information with the men, but for mistakenly assuming that his view of Israel as a US ally was shared by the powers-that-be in Washington.

Weissman and Rosen are in the midst of a long, costly, drawn-out trial and stand charged with mishandling classified information under a statute that has not been enforced since World War I. For more than four years they have been treated as criminals for doing nothing more than their job as lobbyists – for a lobby that was founded on the understanding that the US and Israel are strategic allies.

The Bush who understood that a stable tyranny is a threat to a vibrant democracy knew that Iran had to be defeated and its regime overthrown. The Bush who celebrated the shared values on which both the US and Israel are founded knew that those who seek Israel’s destruction will also never peacefully coexist with the US. If that Bush is still around, the time has come for him to act on those understandings. Before he leaves office he should embrace Israel as an ally and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Not only will he secure the lives of millions of people. He will also secure his place in history.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The perils ahead

US President-elect Barack Obama has properly sought to maintain a low profile in foreign affairs in this transition period ahead of his January inauguration. But while Obama has stipulated that the US can have only one president at a time, his aides and advisers are signaling that he intends to move US foreign policy in a sharply different direction from its current trajectory once he assumes office.

And they are signaling that this new direction will be applied most immediately and directly to US policy toward the Middle East.

Early in the Democratic Party’s primary season, the Obama campaign released a list of the now-president-elect’s foreign policy advisers to The Washington Post. The list raised a great deal of concern in policy circles, particularly among supporters of the US-Israel alliance. It included outspoken critics of Israel such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser under president Jimmy Carter, and Robert Malley, who served as a junior Middle East aide to president Bill Clinton. Both men are deeply hostile to Israel and both have called repeatedly for the US to end its strategic alliance with Israel.

In the months that followed the list’s publication, the Obama campaign sought to distance itself from both men as the president-elect’s advisers worked to position Obama as a centrist candidate.

[More]Brzezinski was cast aside in February when he headed a delegation to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad. The purpose of his "fact-finding" mission was to castigate the Bush administration for its refusal to pursue Syria as an ally, and to decry Damascus’s international isolation caused by its support for the insurgency in Iraq, its strategic alliance with Iran, its support for Hizbullah as well as Hamas and al-Qaida, its illicit nuclear program and its subversion of the pro-Western Lebanese government.

To Brzezinski’s dismay, his mission was overtaken by events. The depth of Syria’s support for terror was graphically displayed during his visit when arch-Iranian/Lebanese terrorist Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus the day after he called on Assad.

Although he was a junior staffer in Clinton’s National Security Council, since 2000 Malley has used his Clinton administration credentials to pave his emergence as one of America’s most outspoken apologists for Palestinian terrorism against Israel. Immediately after the failed July 2000 Camp David peace summit, Malley invented the Palestinian "narrative" of the summit’s proceedings. While Clinton, then-prime minister Ehud Barak, and Ambassador Dennis Ross, who served as Clinton’s chief negotiator, have all concurred that Yasser Arafat torpedoed the prospects of peace when he refused Barak’s offer of Palestinian statehood, Malley claimed falsely that Israel was to blame for the failure of the talks.

In succeeding years, he has expanded his condemnation of Israel. He insists that not only Palestinian aggression, but Syrian, Lebanese and Iranian attacks against Israel are all Israel’s fault. The Obama campaign distanced itself from Malley in May after the Times of London reported that he was meeting regularly with Hamas terror leaders.

As the election drew closer, the Obama campaign expanded its efforts to present its candidate as a foreign policy moderate. Moderate foreign policy advisers such as Ross were paraded before reporters. Both Obama and his surrogates insisted that he supports a strong American alliance with Israel. Obama abandoned his earlier pledge to withdraw all US forces from Iraq by 2010. He attempted to temper and later deny his public pledge to hold direct negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions.

Due in large part to media credulousness, Obama’s new image as a centrist was widely accepted by the public. And it is likely that he owes a significant portion of his support in the American Jewish community to the campaign’s success in distancing Obama from men like Brzezinski and Malley.

BUT NOW that the campaign is over, it appears that as his critics warned, Obama’s moves toward the center on issues relating to the Middle East were little more than campaign tactics to obscure his true policy preferences.

Two days after his election, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius gave a sense of the direction in which Obama will likely take US foreign policy. And, apparently directed by Obama’s campaign staff, Ignatius based much of his column on his belief that Obama’s foreign policy views have been shaped by his "informal" adviser, Brzezinski.

Based on what Brzezinski and Obama’s "official" campaign told him, Ignatius wrote that the two major issues where Obama’s foreign policy is likely to diverge from Bush’s right off the bat are Israel and Iran. Obama, he claimed, will want to push hard to force Israel to come to an agreement with the Palestinians as soon as he comes into office. As for Iran, Obama plans to move immediately to improve US relations with the nuclear-weapons-building ayatollahs.

As for Malley, an aide of his told Frontpage magazine this week that acting on Obama’s instructions, Malley traveled to Cairo and Damascus after Obama’s electoral victory to tell Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Assad that "the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests."

In a related story, Hamas terror operative Ahmad Youssef told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that in the months leading up to his election, Obama’s advisers held steady contacts with the leaders of the terror group in Gaza, and had asked that Hamas keep the meetings secret in order not to harm Obama’s chances of being elected.

Both Obama’s transition team and Hamas leaders were quick to deny Youssef’s statements. Yet, together with the earlier Times of London story about Malley’s contacts with Hamas and the new revelations about Malley serving as Obama’s unofficial Middle East envoy, the Al-Hayat report has the ring of truth.

Even more foreboding than these reports are statements by Obama’s foreign policy advisers regarding his plans to open direct contacts with Iran. On Wednesday The Washington Post reported that Obama intends to move quickly to seek an accommodation with Iran regarding Afghanistan. Obama’s advisers assert that such a deal is possible because as far as they are concerned, the Shi’ite Iranians oppose Sunni jihadists just as much as the US does.

But the facts do not support this view. Top US and British military commanders have asserted repeatedly that Iran is a major sponsor of the Taliban and al-Qaida in their war against the Afghan government and NATO forces in the country. Since 2006, Iran has provided advanced weapons, money and political support to the Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents in the country.

The Obama team’s rejection of the demonstrated reality of Iran’s support for the Taliban and al-Qaida in favor of a policy based on the fantasy that it is possible to cut a deal with the ayatollahs will undoubtedly not be his last move in the mullahs’ direction. It will likely be quickly followed by an offer to conduct direct, high level talks with Iran’s leaders about their nuclear weapons program.

What is most disturbing about Obama’s emerging foreign policy is not simply that it ignores the reality on the ground – a reality that clearly demonstrates that Iran and its Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese surrogates are implacable foes of Israel and America and therefore not interested in being appeased. It is also not just the fact that it sends a signal of American weakness to Iran and its proxies just as Iran reaches the nuclear threshold. And Obama’s emerging foreign policy is not merely disconcerting because by speaking with Iran and its proxies, Obama will be legitimizing the genocidal regime in Teheran.

WHAT IS most alarming about Obama’s emerging foreign policy toward Iran and its proxies on the one hand and Israel on the other is that it will cause actual harm to the Jewish state.

By pressuring Israel to cede land to Syria and the Palestinians, Obama’s apparent foreign policy will provide Iran with still more territory from which to attack Israel both through its terror proxies and with its expanding ballistic missile arsenal. By embracing the Syrian regime in spite of its support for terrorism, its nuclear proliferation activities and its subversion of Lebanon, the incoming Obama administration will embolden Syria to increase its subversion of Lebanon and Iraq, while strengthening its ties to Iran still further.

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn’t already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

Over the past few years, Obama’s top nuclear nonproliferation adviser, Joe Cirincione, has repeatedly advocated placing Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table and offering it up in exchange for an Iranian pledge to end its nuclear program. Defense Secretary Robert Gates – whom Obama is considering retaining – insinuated in his 2006 confirmation hearings that Iran is only building nuclear weapons to defend itself against Israel. Gates, it should be recalled, has been instrumental in convincing Bush not only not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, but not to support an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations.

What is profoundly distressing about statements by men like Cirincione and Gates is what they tell us about the strategic reasoning informing the incoming Obama administration. Their views echo those voiced by advocates of American abandonment of Israel such as Professors Steve Walt and John Mearshimer. Walt and Mearshimer argue that Iran is not a threat to US interests or to global security because in the event that the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons, they are likely to view them merely as a deterrent against Iran’s enemies. And as a result, Iran will respond as the Soviet Union did to a deterrent model based on mutually assured destruction.

This view is contradicted by Iran’s open advocacy of Israel’s destruction, and its declared willingness to absorb a nuclear attack in return for destroying Israel. But assuming that this is how the Obama team views Iran, they should be the last ones advocating Israeli disarmament. Because if this is their view, then by their own reasoning, Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal is necessary to deter Teheran from attacking. And if as Cirincione advocates, Obama intends to place Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table, he will effectively be giving Iran a green light to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.

All of the Obama team’s post-election/pre-inaugural foreign policy signals place Israel’s next government – which will only be elected on February 10 – in an extraordinarily difficult position.

It is not just that their positions make clear that the Obama administration will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Obama team’s pre-inaugural signals indicate strongly that Israel’s next government will need to strike Iran’s nuclear installations before two rapidly approaching deadlines.

The strike will have to occur before the mullahs enrich sufficient quantities of highly enriched uranium to produce nuclear bombs. And Israel will need to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program before the Obama administration begins implementing America’s new foreign policy.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Israel and the Palestinians: Ending the Stalemate

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s July 30, 2008, announcement of his intention to resign from office and the recent upsurge in internecine violence between Hamas and Fatah eratives in Gaza has thrown a monkey wrench in the Bush administration’s goal of seeing and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority sign a peace treaty laying out the borders and powers of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. But even in the unlikely event that such an agreement is reached, far from stabilizing Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians, it will likely have either no impact on the Palestinian conflict with Israel, or a profoundly negative one.

Indeed, even if the outgoing Bush administration and the lame duck Olmert government manage to sign a peace treaty with the increasingly powerless remnants of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, that achievement is liable to be quickly eclipsed by violence that will follow the signing ceremony. The likely upsurge in Palestinian violence against Israel, in turn, will demonstrate that the Administration’s stated aim of establishing a Palestinian state—an aim which is supported by the Israeli government—has little relevance to the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.  Moreover, seeking such a state today will likely exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the conflict.  Indeed, the aftershocks of such an agreement will make clear that both Israel and the United States are basing their policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on false assumptions about the nature of that conflict.

Role Reversal

In 1993, when Israel first recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian Arabs, the Israeli and American perception of the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation underwent a profound change—as did both countries’ chosen paradigm for resolving the conflict.

Prior to 1993, both Israeli and U.S. policies were based on the view that the root of the conflict was the Arab world’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. That view was codified in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which asserted that two principles were to form the basis of any “just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” The first was an Israeli withdrawal from some of the territory taken over by the Israel Defense Forces during the June 1967 Six-Day War. The second was that the Arab states must accept Israel’s right to exist. While Resolution 242 was purposely vague about the extent of future Israeli territorial withdrawals, its language on the second component of a future Middle Eastern peace was explicit.

It asserted that a future Middle Eastern peace would be based on the “termination of all claims of states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders free from threats or acts of force.”

Since Israel has consistently demonstrated its  readiness to make territorial compromises for a lasting peace with its neighbors, it was this second condition that formed the foundation of both U.S. and Israeli policies towards the Palestinians specifically, and the Arab world generally, from the end of the Six-Day War until the onset of Israel’s peace process with the PLO in 1993.

In basing their policies on the need for the Arab world to accept Israel’s right to exist, successive American administrations and Israeli governments found themselves out of step with Western Europe, the Arab League, the United Nations and the Soviet Union. For these powers, the root of the conflict was not a refusal of the Arab world generally or the Palestinians specifically to accept Israel’s right to exist, but Palestinian statelessness itself.1

The difference could not have been more profound. The Israeli-American view placed the burden of change on the Arabs. The European-Soviet-UN view placed the burden for change on Israel. In the former case, the underlying assumption was  that the principal obstacle to peace was not Israeli claims to lands it took control of during the Six-Day War but the Arab world’s refusal to accept Israel’s existence. Until the Arabs changed their view, peace would be impossible.

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Israel’s Staticide?

There is a Greek tragedy unfolding today in the Middle East.  In response to past mistakes and as a result of hubristic political calculation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is setting in motion forces that promise to lead inexorably to grief for his nation.  The result could be staticide, the destruction of the Jewish State, with incalculably serious repercussions for the Free World in general and the United States in particular.

In the pursuit of peace with its neighbors, Israel has made one strategic concession after another.  In 1979, it surrendered the Sinai to Egypt when Anwar Sadat promised peace and then was murdered for doing so.  In 1993, Israel adopted the Oslo accords, legitimating one of its most virulent enemies, the PLO terrorist chief Yasser Arafat, and setting the stage for Palestinian control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. [More]

Eight years ago this month, Israel unilaterally withdrew from South Lebanon, creating a vacuum promptly filled by Iran’s proxy army there, Hezbollah.  Then, in 2005, Israel forcibly removed its citizens living in Gaza and turned the Strip over – temporarily – to Arafat’s right-hand man and successor, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Space constraints will not permit a full rendering of the costs associated with these serial mistakes.  The “peace” with Egypt proved to be a very cold one.  In Sadat’s stead, the government of Hozni Mubarak has promoted virulent hatred for Israel among its people and assiduously armed for renewed conflict with the Jewish State.  It has also used the Sinai to funnel ever-longer-range missiles and other advanced weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip – now under the control of another Palestinian terrorist faction, Hamas.

The latter and its friends, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, are now using Gaza as a safe-haven for planning and executing terrorism against Israel.  It is a safe bet that Israel’s most important ally, the United States, is being targeted from there, as well.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah has not just taken over South Lebanon – its dominance of which was greatly strengthened when Olmert’s government proved incapable of decisively defeating the forces of this so-called “Army of God” in 2006.  In recent days, Hezbollah launched attacks in Beirut that effectively produced a coup d’etat.  The hopes for a democratic Lebanon, free of Syrian and Iranian interference, have given way to a dark future for the Lebanese people and their neighbors in Israel, alike.

Tragically, despite this sorry record of retreat followed by intensified danger, Ehud Olmert is making further and even more strategic territorial and political concessions to Israel’s enemies.  By so doing, the Israeli prime minister evidently hopes to stave off accountability for these past mistakes. He also appears to be calculating that “peace-making” will spare him prosecution on myriad corruption charges.

Unfortunately, there is now no basis for depicting such a policy as one in which Israel trades “land for peace.”  Today, Israel is giving up land for war.

In the illusion that that there is any appreciable difference between Fatah and Hamas, Olmert’s government is trying to turn over nearly all the West Bank and even parts of Jerusalem to Abbas and his faction’s Palestinian police force.  A similar illusion is causing the United States to give Fatah’s troops training, intelligence collection equipment and arms.  The latter have already used their American-supplied know-how and weapons to kill Israelis.

Olmert is also allowing the Egyptians to broker a cease-fire with Hamas.  The result is predictable:  Hamas will be legitimated, effectively ending international efforts to relegate it to pariah status and probably producing a unity government whereby the two Palestinian factions join forces once again. The stage will then be set for the ultimate defeat of Fatah by Hamas in the West Bank as well, putting all of Israel within range of its weapons.

These tragic steps are now being compounded by one further, potentially staticidal act:  Olmert has just launched negotiations to surrender all of the Golan Heights to Syria.  

This concession would place Syrian – and quite possibly Iranian – forces on high ground which, in Israeli hands, has kept the peace for 35 years. If once again at the disposal of Israel’s enemies, these heights will put northern Israel at risk of, at best, harassing fire and, at worst, a new invasion in force.

Moreover, as my esteemed colleague, Caroline Glick, observed in her Jerusalem Post column last week, if Israel can no longer use the Golan to threaten Syria, Damascus and Tehran may feel free to redouble their subversion in Iraq.  Iran may even conclude the Golan can allow it to checkmate any lingering Israeli willingness to interfere with the mullahs’ pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Importantly, the Israeli people finally seem to have had enough of false peace processes.  Recent polls indicate that two-thirds of Israelis oppose their country’s surrender of the Golan; a majority believe it is motivated by Olmert’s efforts to stave off prosecution. Even the Bush Administration is said to be unhappy about his Golan initiative.

This weekend, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – universally known as “the Israel lobby” – holds its annual Policy Conference in Washington.  The organization exists to support the Israeli government.  At this juncture, however, attendees have an opportunity and an obligation to object to that government’s increasingly reckless, and predictably tragic, conduct.  After all, friends don’t let friends commit staticide.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times

 

 

 

The truth about Saddam and terrorism

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had extensive ties to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, according to an official report published by the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses and released through the Joint Forces Command.

That report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, came up with some startling revelations in its 59 pages:

  • Saddam’s Iraq trained terrorists for use inside and outside Iraq and in 1999 sent 10 terrorist-training graduates to London to carry out attacks throughout Europe. (Page 1)
  • Saddam’s Iraq stockpiled munitions (including explosives, missile launchers and silencer-equipped small arms) at its embassies in the Middle East, Asia and parts of Europe. (Pages 3-4)
  • In September of 2001, Saddam’s Iraq sought out and compiled a list of 43 suicide-bomb volunteers in a "Martyrdom Project." (Pages 7-8)
  • The report contains language from a captured Iraqi document which references an attempted assassination of Danielle Mitterand, wife of French President Francois Mitterand, by car bomb. (Page 11)
  • The report’s authors describe Saddam’s Iraq as a "long-standing supporter of international terrorism" including several organizations designated as international terrorist organizations by the US State Department. (Page 13)
  • Among the organizations that captured Iraqi documents indicate were supported by Saddam’s Iraq were: (Pages 13-15).

Fatah-Revolutionary Council (Abu Nidal Organization). (Author’s note: Abu Nidal was generally considered the world’s most dangerous terrorist in the late 1980s.)

Palestine Liberation Front (led by Abu al-Abbas). (Author’s note: Abbas was the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking and the murderer of American Leon Klinghoffer.)

Renewal and Jihad Organization, which the Iraqi documents describe as a "Secret Islamic Palestinian Organization" that "believes in armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests."

Islamic Ulama Group, a radical Islamist group in northern Pakistan.

The Afghani Islamic Party, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. (Author’s note: Hekmatyar is an Afghan mujahideen warlord who is worked with Osama Bin Laden during the 1990s. US intelligence agencies have lost track of Hekmatyar, but believe that he was trying to join Al Qaeda in 2002 when he released a video message calling for armed jihad against the United States. Reports from BBC-TV and CNN claim that Hekmatyar helped Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in 2002.

Islamic Jihad Organization (Egyptian Islamic Jihad). This is perhaps the most startling revelation in the report. Egyptian Islamic Jihad was founded and led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Al Qaeda’s co-leader. The group is most infamous for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Zawahiri is known to have worked in the Al Qaeda organization since its inception, while he was still leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in fact. Al Qaeda was started around 1989 and Zawahiri is said to have been a senior member from its earliest days. He was present in Afghanistan with Bin Laden at the time and later he was in Sudan with Bin Laden until being expelled in 1996 and eventually returning to Afghanistan. In 1998, Zawahiri formally merged Egyptian Islamic Jihad with Al Qaeda and has served as co-leader of Al Qaeda ever since. Iraq’s relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad was so close that captured documents indicate that Iraq was able to request that the group hold off on operations against the regime in Egypt in 1993.

In other words, Saddam’s Iraq had a longstanding relationship with the co-leader of Al Qaeda.

  • Captured documents show that Saddam’s Iraq was training non-Iraqis in Iraqi training camps a decade before Operation Desert Storm, including fighters from the following nations: Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Eritrea, and Morroco. (Pages 15-16)
  • A captured memorandum shows that Saddam’s Iraq had an agreement with an Islamist terrorist group to conduct operations against Egypt during the first Gulf War. (Page 16)
  • A detailed, captured document from 1993 "illuminated how the outwardly secular Saddam regime found common cause with terrorist groups who drew their inspiration from radical Islam." (Page 17)
  • In January 1993, as the American military’s humanitarian mission was begun in Somalia, Saddam directed that Iraq "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil, especially Somalia." (Page 18) Interestingly, Osama Bin Laden was setting up identical operations at the same time.
  • Saddam’s secret intelligence service (IIS) hosted 13 conferences in 2002 for various terrorist groups. (Page 19)
  • Captured Iraqi documents say that the IIS issued passports to known members of terrorist groups. (Page 19)
  • Saddam’s Iraq had close ties and provided funding to Hamas, the Palestinian jihadist organization. Captured documents indicate that Hamas offered to carry out attacks for Saddam’s Iraq in return for his support. In fact, Hamas representatives informed the Iraqis that the organization had 35 armed cells around the world hidden among refugees, including in France, Sweden and Denmark. (Pages 24-25).
  • Saddam’s IIS manufactured bombs in the early 1990s for terrorist Abu Abbas to conduct attacks against American and other interests. Three instances of these bombs failing are evidently the only thing that prevented terrorist attacks against these interests: (Page 30)

"A bomb intended to destroy the American ambassador’s residence in Jakarta, Indonesia failed."

"Bombs designed to destroy the American Airlines office and Japanese embassy in the Philippines exploded prematurely and damaged only the front of the office, while killing one and wounding another of the terrorists transporting the explosives."

  • Saddam’s Iraq carried out terrorist attacks on members of humanitarian organizations operating in the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq, including Doctors Without Borders, Handicap International and UN-affiliated organizations. (Pages 31-33)
  • The IIS was willing to reach out to jihadist terrorist groups, including those known to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. This includes the "Army of Muhammad" in Bahrain, which had threatened Kuwaiti authorities and had plans to attack American and Western interests. (Pages 35-36)
  • The report concludes with the following question: "Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against the United States?" The Institute for Defense Analyses then provides the answer:

Yes.

Conclusion

Those who claim that Saddam had no "direct, operational ties" to Al Qaeda are attempting to narrow the definition of "terrorist-sponsoring nation" to an impossible scope. By this definition, a nation, like Saddam’s Iraq, can provide money, arms, safe haven and cooperation to jihadist terrorist groups and not have "direct, operational ties" to terrorists.

This was never the standard by which a nation found itself on the US State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations and implies that, unless a dictator is found directly ordering a terrorist attack, that dictator cannot be considered as linked to a terrorist group.

The "direct, operational ties" standard was invented after the overthrow of Saddam and is a ridiculous standard that can never be met.

Five years after United States forces overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon has produced a blockbuster report that has been both misrepresented and ignored. That report shows that Saddam’s Iraq had extensive ties to international terrorist groups, both Islamist and secular, including organizations that were part of Al Qaeda. No ginned up definition invented for domestic political consumption can change the truth.

 

Kosovo’s stark warning

Kosovo’s US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities, it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.

States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for Kosovar independence from Serbia.

Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.

In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation Army’s failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread… Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo’s public administration remains weak and inefficient."

The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."

Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place."

The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad. It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo’s fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province.

According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden’s orders, in 1994 his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan and beyond.

In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo… who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."

Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on the occupied Muslim territories."

Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48% of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78% of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.

In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo’s Serbian Christians, not its Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, two-thirds of Kosovo’s Serbs – some 250,000 people – have fled the area.

The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law, Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.

For Israel, Kosovo’s US-backed declaration of independence should be a source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy. Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they are reenacted in the international community’s treatment of Israel and the Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.

By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."

That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel’s ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni’s move was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of negotiations and opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which are aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.

The US representative at the Quartet’s meeting, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the negotiations."

Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."

Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel’s ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their refusal to recognize Hamas.

If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.

Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO’s bombing of Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo to enable it to gain independence.

And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to establish a Palestinian state.

Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will fight Hamas for it.

If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared Israel’s interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza, Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors’ experience with Palestinian terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its support for Palestinian statehood.

Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel’s request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.

What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering NATO on a silver platter.

Not surprisingly, Abbas’s adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo reacted to Kosovo’s declaration of independence by recommending that the Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."

For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo’s declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain, Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also state that as a consequence of Kosovo’s independence, Israel rejects the deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem to international arbitration.

Grimmacing to victory, grinning to defeat

 

For leaders in democracies, perhaps the most difficult decision is to change course. Decision-making is hard enough. Revisiting decisions and acknowledging mistakes is simply beyond the capabilities of most leaders. Once they have chosen a strategy, they stick with it for better or for worse.

For a leader to change strategic course, he must first be convinced that his own fortunes are inextricably linked with maintaining failure or moving on towards success. He must believe, in other words, that he has no choice other than to change course.

The current issue of the Weekly Standard contains two articles which lay bare this basic truth. In one, "How Bush decided on the surge," Fred Barnes describes how US President George W. Bush decided to adopt a new strategy for winning the campaign in Iraq. In the other, "Ehud Olmert’s Israel," Peter Berkowitz describes how Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has refused to revisit his own strategies for contending with the burgeoning threats to Israel’s national security.

Barnes’s article depicts a president who at the end of 2006 found himself isolated from the military, Congress and his own Secretary of State as the campaign in Iraq appeared increasingly unwinnable. The going consensus asserted that the reason the war was unwinnable was because US forces themselves were the cause of the fighting. If the US left, or simply hid in big bases outside the population centers and sufficed with training Iraqi forces, then the war would end.

Bush didn’t believe them. And he couldn’t accept the view that victory was unattainable. As he put it to Barnes, "Failure was no option…. I never thought I had to give up the goal of winning." So he didn’t. Instead, working with his National Security Council and relying on the work of people outside the administration and the Pentagon, he embraced the view that the war was the fault of the terrorists – not the US. Bush recognized that far from wishing for the US forces to withdraw from the country, the Iraqis wished for the Americans to stay and protect them. The surge strategy – which involved an increase in forces, and an intimate engagement of the forces in securing the lives and property of Iraqi civilians – has done just that. And the results have been dramatic.

As Max Boot reported in the Weekly Standard, "Iraqi and American deaths fell by approximately 80 percent between December 2006 and December 2007, and life is returning to a semblance of normality in much of Baghdad." Wherever the Americans are operating, al-Qaida is being defeated, the Shi’ite militias are fading away and life is changing for the better as more and more Iraqis come to trust and support the Americans and the Iraqi security forces working with them.

With the presidential race moving into full swing, the sustainability of Bush’s new strategy into the next administration is a key concern. The media’s coverage of the campaign in Iraq has been so negative for so long that in spite of the transformation of the security situation in the country over the past year, the public still considers the war to have been a failed endeavor. More Americans trust the Democrats, who have pledged to withdraw from Iraq, to handle the war than Republicans, who have pledged to see it through to victory.

On the other hand, in spite of the media’s condemnation of the war, Americans today believe they are winning the war in Iraq. According to an NBC News – Wall Street Journal poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the situation in Iraq has improved over the last six months and only 16 percent believe it has gotten worse. Even if the Democrats win the White House in November, it is hard to see the next president convincing the American people to turn their backs on victory.

Barnes is impressed by Bush’s courage to move forward, almost alone and change the war-fighting strategy in order to enable victory in Iraq. If Bush hadn’t acted as he did when he did, there can be little doubt that the US would have lost in Iraq. The public was willing to accept defeat. Congress was positively demanding defeat. The New York Times might have even granted Bush 15 minutes of sympathetic coverage if he had behaved "pragmatically" and embraced defeat in Iraq.

The fact that a failed leader can expect to find public support for his weakness was manifested in Berkowitz’s portrait of Olmert. Just as the media has manufactured false realities to convince some 60 percent of the American public that the Iraq campaign is not only unwinnable but that the US doesn’t deserve to win, so too, the media has labored for years to convince the majority of Israelis that we cannot win and indeed have no right to victory.

Berkowitz’s opening paragraph attests to the success of their labors. He began his profile of Olmert by noting that some 70 percent of Israelis support the establishment of a Palestinian state. He asserted, as the media does, that the only people in Israel who don’t support the establishment of such a state are right-wing extremists who no one would want to be associated with.

Having established that the only socially and morally acceptable view of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is that Israel must feel bad for controlling Judea, Samaria and united Jerusalem, and that Israelis must happy that Israel no longer controls Gaza, Berkowitz goes on to uphold Olmert as a competent and socially acceptable leader.

This is the same Ehud Olmert who led Israel to defeat in the 2006 war in Lebanon. The same Olmert who has exhibited unconscionable incompetence in contending with the Hamas caliphate in Gaza, its rocket and mortar war against southern Israel and its takeover of Gaza’s international border with Egypt. And this is the same Olmert who now fervently advocates surrendering Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. Such a land handover would place all of Israel within Palestinian and Lebanese rocket, mortar and missile range. Moreover, Olmert has done nothing to stem the Bush administration’s abandonment of Israel as a strategic ally and has been so feckless in his handling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program that Israel finds itself completely alone to face Iran as the mullahs surge toward nuclear capabilities.

To defend Olmert as a competent leader, Berkowitz turned to political consultant Eyal Arad who served as former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s and Olmert’s public relations guru and strategic counselor. This was a reasonable move. Arad oversaw the infantalization of Israeli politics and the trivialization of the national discourse. It was Arad who together with his fellow public relations consultants convinced Sharon that his political survival was contingent on adopting the radical Left’s strategy of surrender and appeasement. Arad, and his partner Reuven Adler, convinced Sharon to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria. They then convinced him to destroy Likud and form the Kadima party. After Sharon was felled by a stroke two years ago, they managed Olmert’s campaign as the head of Kadima in the 2006 elections.

As Yediot Aharonot reported after the elections, Arad and Adler viewed Kadima not as a political party, but as an ad campaign. They viewed its candidates not as leaders of a threatened country, but as products they had to sell like chocolate bars to Israeli consumers at the ballot box. And indeed, like actors in candy commercials, Kadima’s candidates were taught to parrot the Arad and Adler line that if they formed the next government, they would make Israel a country that’s "fun to live in."

Speaking to Berkowitz, Arad kept to his script portraying Israel as an amusement park. He downplayed the significance of the fact that thanks to Sharon and Olmert Israel is threatened as never before. What is really important, he said, is that Israelis – particularly in Tel Aviv – are enjoying the economic benefits of the free market and buying all sorts of fancy gadgets as the Tel Aviv skyline grows taller and shinier. And Berkowitz believed him.

Berkowitz extolled Olmert’s assertion at the Herzliya conference last week that the fact that Hizbullah hasn’t been fighting Israel in 18 months means that Israel restored its deterrent capabilities in 2006 war. The fact that Hizbullah is currently otherwise engaged in taking over Lebanon is apparently of little concern or relevance to either Olmert or Berkowitz.

What the contrasting tales of Bush and Barnes and Olmert and Berkowitz show clearly is that strategic shifts, even when necessary, can never be foregone conclusions. Bush would have had no trouble finding a reporter to extol his prudence in accepting defeat in Iraq if he had decided not to buck the media and indeed his own administration in order to win in Iraq and secure his place in history. There would have been a multitude of reporters like Berkowitz willing to tell the 60 percent of Americans who want to leave Iraq within a year that they are right to believe that you can win a war by losing it.

The articles though also show something else. They show the difference between leaders who believe in using their power to advance ideas and leaders who use their power to advance themselves. While Bush recognizes that historians will judge him not by whether he was liked, but by whether he left America safer than he received it, Olmert couldn’t care less how history judges him. He just wants to be prime minister, and to maintain power he finds it more convenient to tell Israelis to have a good time than to ask us to join him in defending the country from those who seek our destruction. It is easier to tell us that defending our country is socially unacceptable and that good Israelis choose to empower terrorists instead in the name of peace.

Or maybe Olmert has it right and Bush is a fool. After all, if he could convince Berkowitz to trust him, perhaps future historians will truly believe that the best way to secure one’s country is to accept defeat with a grin.

Condi’s African holiday

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice introduced a new venue for her superficial and destructive stewardship of US foreign policy during her lightning visit to the Horn of Africa last Wednesday.

The Horn of Africa is a dangerous and strategically vital place. Small wars, which rage continuously, can easily escalate into big wars. Local conflicts have regional and global aspects. All of the conflicts in this tinderbox, which controls shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, can potentially give rise to regional, and indeed global conflagrations between competing regional actors and global powers.

The Horn of Africa includes the states of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Kenya. Eritrea, which gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 20-year civil war, is a major source of regional conflict. Eritrea has a hot border dispute with Ethiopia which could easily ignite. The two countries fought a bloody border war from 1998-2000 over control of the town of Badme. Although a UN mandated body determined in 2002 that the disputed town belonged to Eritrea, Ethiopia has rejected the finding and so the conflict festers.

Eritrea also fights a proxy war against Ethiopia in Somalia and in Ethiopia’s rebellious Ogaden region. In Somalia, Eritrea is the primary sponsor of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Courts Union which took control of Somalia in June, 2006. In November 2006, the ICU government declared jihad against Ethiopia and Kenya. Backed by the US, Ethiopia invaded to restore the recognized Transitional Federal Government to power which the ICU had deposed.

Although the Ethiopian army successfully ousted the ICU from power in less than a week, backed by massive military and financial assistance from Eritrea, as well as Egypt and Libya, the ICU has waged a brutal insurgency against the TFG and the Ethiopian military for the past year.

THE SENIOR ICU leadership, including Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed have received safe haven in Eritrea. In September, the exiled ICU leadership held a nine-day conference in the Eritrean capital of Asmara where they formed the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia headed by Ahmed.

Eritrean President-for-life Isaias Afwerki declared his country’s support for the insurgents stating, "The Eritrean people’s support to the Somali people is consistent and historical, as well as a legal and moral obligation."

Although touted in the West as a moderate, Ahmed has openly supported jihad and terrorism against Ethiopia, Kenya and the West. Aweys, for his part, is wanted by the FBI in connection with his role in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Then there is Eritrea’s support for the Ogaden separatists in Ethiopia. The Ogaden rebels are Somali ethnics who live in the region bordering Somalia and Kenya. The rebellion is run by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) which uses terror and sabotage as its preferred methods of warfare. It targets not only Ethiopian forces and military installations, but locals who wish to maintain their allegiance to Ethiopia or reach a negotiated resolution of the conflict. In their most sensationalist attack to date, in April ONLF terror forces attacked a Chinese-run oil installation in April killing nine Chinese and 65 Ethiopians.

Ethiopia, for its part has fought a brutal counter-insurgency to restore its control over the region. Human rights organizations have accused Ethiopia of massive human rights abuses of civilians in Ogaden.

THEN THERE is Sudan. As Eric Reeves wrote in the Boston Globe on Saturday, "The brutal regime in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, has orchestrated genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur for five years, and is now poised for victory in its ghastly assault on the region’s African populations."

The Islamist government of Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir is refusing to accept non-African states as members of the hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur that is due to replace the undermanned and demoralized African Union peacekeeping force whose mandate ends on December 31. Without its UN component of non-African states, the UN Security Council mandated force will be unable to operate effectively. Khartoum’s veto led Jean-Marie Guehenno, the UN undersecretary for peacekeeping to warn last month that the entire peacekeeping mission may have to be aborted.

And the Darfur region is not the only one at risk. Due to Khartoum’s refusal to carry out the terms of its 2005 peace treaty with the Southern Sudanese that ended Khartoum’s 20-year war and genocide against the region’s Christian and animist population, the unsteady peace may be undone. Given Khartoum’s apparent sprint to victory over the international community regarding Darfur, there is little reason to doubt that once victory is secured, it will renew its attacks in the south.

THE CONFLICTS in the Horn of Africa have regional and global dimensions. Regionally, Egypt has played a central role in sponsoring and fomenting conflicts. Egypt’s meddling advances its interest of preventing the African nations from mounting a unified challenge to Egypt’s colonial legacy of extraordinary rights to the waters of the Nile River which flows through all countries of the region.

Globally, the region is a hotbed of Wahabist activity. Osama bin Laden was based in Khartoum until 1995. The ICU receives support not only from Eritrea, but from the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. So too, international attempts to end the genocide in Darfur have been stymied by the Arab League and the OIC. One of the main reasons for the recent US decision to establish a military command in Africa is its strategic importance to the forces of global jihad. The US’s largest force in Africa is located in Djibouti.

International efforts to resolve the manifold conflicts in the region have failed to address the roots of the conflicts and so, even when successful are generally short lived. As the situation in Southern Sudan and the Eritrean-Ethiopian border show, these agreements only last as long as neither side believes it can defeat the other.

Beyond that, while US and European leaders have spoken eloquently of the need to end the slaughter in Darfur and help the Somalis establish order, Washington and Brussels have made clear that they will not take effective action to back up their declarations. Indeed, even if Khartoum weren’t actively working to undermine the peacekeeping mission in Darfur, it is hard to see the mission actually succeeding. No NATO member will agree to donate helicopters to the peacekeeping force. Without the helicopters, the peacekeepers will be unable to perform their mission.

THIS REGIONAL morass of wars and rivalries formed the backdrop last week to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s one-day visit to African Union headquarters in Ethiopia. It is far from clear what Rice hoped to accomplish by traveling to Africa. She didn’t bring any plans to solve any of the region’s problems or even suggest new ways of looking at them. Even more troubling, Rice devoted the majority of her attention not to pointing a finger at Eritrea and Sudan for their bad behavior, but to attacking Ethiopia and pressuring the southern Sudanese to cut a deal with Khartoum.

It seems fairly clear that Ethiopia’s hands are not clean in its handling of the separatist war in Ogaden. But at the same time, it is equally clear that Ethiopia is the only state among the warring factions that has tried to bring a semblance of law and order and openness to its war torn, fractured society.

Beyond that, Ethiopia is without a doubt the US’s most loyal, stable, militarily capable and strategically valuable ally in the region. And yet, in her public statements, Rice singled Ethiopia out for censure demanding that it curtail its operations along its border with Eritrea. She also called for an Ethiopian withdrawal from Somalia despite the fact that she knows that the African Union has not been successful in raising a peacekeeping force to deploy to the country that could secure a peace. Rice refused to accept Ethiopia’s position that the ONLF is a terrorist organization and took a step back from US threats in September to label Eritrea a state supporter of terrorism despite its open support for the al-Qaida linked ICU.

Then too, aside from declaring that the peace agreement between the southern Sudanese and the Khartoum government must not be permitted to unravel, she offered no helpful advice on how to prevent that from occurring. Rice refrained from attacking Khartoum for boycotting her visit, and apparently sufficed with pleasantries in her meeting with south Sudanese leader Pagan Amum.

RICE’S FORAY into the Horn of Africa left an acrid aftertaste. Her superficial treatment of deep and dangerous conflicts indicates her lack of interest in the strategically vital region. Most troubling though, was her abusive treatment of Ethiopia. By attacking the US’s strongest ally while making light of the actual conflicts plaguing the area, Rice showed that in the Horn of Africa her view of her role as chief US diplomat is no different from her perception of her role in the Middle East and Asia. Apparently, as Rice sees it, her remaining time in office is best spent weakening America’s allies and giving a free ride to its foes.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi should be thankful that her main focus lies elsewhere.

Islam and the nation-state

Throughout the world, one of the most prevalent causes of war, terrorism, and political instability is the ongoing weakening of the nation-state system. There are several reasons that the nation-state as a political unit of sovereignty is under threat. One of the most basic causes of this continuous erosion of national power throughout the world is the transformation of minority-dominated enclaves within nation-states into ungovernable areas where state power is either not applied or applied in a haphazard and generally unconstructive manner.

While domestic strife between majority and minority populations has been an enduring feature of democratic and indeed all societies throughout history, the current turbulence constitutes a unique challenge to the nation-state system. This is because much of the internal strife between minority and majority populations within states today is financed and often directed from outside the country.

Traditionally, minorities used various local means to engage the majority population in a bid to influence the political direction or cultural norms of the nation state. The classic examples of this traditional minority-majority engagement are the black civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s and the labor movements in the West throughout the 20th century. By and large, these movements were domestic protests informed by national sensibilities even when they enjoyed the support of foreign governments.

Today while similar movements continue to flourish, they are now being superseded by a new type of minority challenge to national majorities.

This challenge is not primarily the result of domestic injustice but the consequence of foreign agitation. The roots of these minority challenges are found outside the borders of the targeted states. And their goals are not limited to a call for the reform of national institutions and politics. Rather they set their sights on weakening national institutions and eroding national sovereignty.

Muslim minorities throughout the world are being financed and ideologically trained in Saudi and UAE funded mosques and Islamic centers. These minorities act in strikingly similar manners in the countries where they are situated throughout the world. On the one hand, their local political leaders demand extraordinary communal rights, rights accorded neither to the national majority nor to other minority populations. On the other hand, Muslim neighborhoods, particularly in Europe, but also in Israel, the Philippines and Australia, are rendered increasingly ungovernable as arms of the state like the police and tax authorities come under attack when they attempt to assert state power in these Muslim communities.

Logic would have it that targeted states would respond to the threat to their authority through a dual strategy. On the one hand, they would firmly assert their authority by enforcing their laws against both individual lawbreakers and against subversive, foreign financed institutions that incite the overthrow of their governments and their replacement with Islamic governments. On the other hand, they would seek out and empower local Muslims who accept the authority and legitimacy of their states and their rule of law.

Unfortunately, with the notable exception of the Howard government in Australia, in country after country, governments respond to this challenge by attempting to appease Muslim irredentists and their state sponsors. The British responded to the July 7, 2005 bombings by giving representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood an official role in crafting and carrying out counter-terror policies.

In 2003, then French president Jacques Chirac sent then interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy to Egypt to seek the permission of Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi of the Islamist al-Azhar mosque for the French parliament’s plan to outlaw hijabs in French schools.

In the US, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI asked the terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations to conduct sensitivity training for FBI agents.

In Holland last year, the Dutch government effectively expelled anti-Islamist politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the interest of currying favor with Holland’s restive Muslim minority.

The foreign policy aspect of the rush to appease is twofold. First, targeted states refuse to support one another when individual governments attempt to use the tools of law enforcement to handle their domestic jihad threat. For instance, European states have harshly criticized the US Patriot Act while the US criticized the French decision to prohibit the hijab in public schools.

More acutely, targeted states lead the charge in calling for the establishment of Muslim-only states. Today the US and the EU are leading the charge towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and the creation of an independent state of Kosovo.

In two weeks, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will host the Annapolis conference where together with her European and Arab counterparts, she will exert enormous pressure on the Olmert government to agree to the establishment of a jihadist Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland with its capital in Jerusalem and its sovereignty extending over Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount.

The establishment of the sought-for Palestinian state presupposes the ethnic cleansing of at a minimum 80,000 Israelis from their homes and communities simply because they are Jews. Jews of course will be prohibited from living in Palestine.

For its part, the Palestinian leadership to which Israel will be expected to communicate its acceptance of the establishment of Palestine, is one part criminal, and two parts jihadist. As Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues have made clear, while they are willing to accept Israel’s concessions, they are not willing to accept Israel. This is why they refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

A rare consensus exists today in Israel. From the far-left to the far-right, from IDF Military Intelligence to the Mossad, all agree that the Annapolis conference will fail to bring a peace accord. Since Rice’s approach to reaching just such an accord has been to apply unrelenting pressure on Israel, it is fairly clear that she will blame Israel for the conference’s preordained failure and cause a further deterioration in US-Israeli relations.

While Israel is supposed to accept a Jew-free Palestine, it goes without saying that its own 20 percent Arab minority will continue to enjoy the full rights of Israeli citizenship. Yet one of the direct consequences of the establishment of a Jew-free, pro-jihadist State of Palestine will be the further radicalization of Israeli Arabs. They will intensify their current rejection of Israel’s national identity.

With Palestinian and outside support, they will intensify their irredentist activities and so exert an even more devastating attack on Israel’s sovereignty and right to national self-determination.

Shortly after the Annapolis conference fails, and no doubt in a bid to buck up its standing with the Arab world, the US may well stand by its stated intention to recognize the independence of Kosovo.

On December 10, the UN-sponsored troika from the US, Russia and Germany is due to present their report on the ongoing UN-sponsored negotiations between the Kosovo Muslims and the Serbian government regarding the future of the restive province of Serbia. Since the Kosovo Muslims insist on full sovereignty and Serbia’s government refuses to accept Kosovo’s independence, those talks are deadlocked. Since Russia refuses to support Kosovo’s removal from Serbia, there is no chance that the UN Security Council will pass a resolution calling for Kosovar independence.

The push for Kosovar independence was begun by the Clinton administration. It was the natural consequence of the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Yet the basic assumptions of that bombing campaign have been turned on their head in recent years. In 1999, Serbia was run by a murderous dictator Slobodan Milosovic. He stood accused of ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its Muslim population which was perceived as innocent. Today, led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia is taking bold steps towards becoming a liberal democracy which abjures ethnic cleansing and political violence. On the other hand, the Saudi-financed Kosovo Muslims have destroyed more than 150 churches over the past several years, and have terrorized Kosovar Christians and so led to their mass exodus from the province.

As Julia Gorin documented in a recent article in Jewish World Review, Kosovo’s connections with Albanian criminal syndicates and global jihadists are legion. Moreover, Kosovar independence would likely spur irredentist movements among the Muslim minorities in all Balkan states. In Macedonia for instance, a quarter of the population is Muslim. These irredentist movements in turn would increase Muslim irredentism throughout Europe just as Palestinian statehood will foment an intensification of the Islamization of Israel’s Arab minority.

The Kosovo government announced last month that given the diplomatic impasse, it plans to declare its independence next month. Currently, the Bush administration is signaling its willingness to recognize an independent Kosovo even though doing so will threaten US-Russian relations.

In a bid both to prevent the Bush administration from turning on Israel in the aftermath of the failure of the Annapolis conference and to make clear Israel’s own rejection of the notion that a "solution" to the Palestinian conflict with Israel can be imposed by foreign powers, the Olmert government should immediately and loudly restate its opposition to the imposition of Kosovar independence on Serbia.

In the interest of defending the nation-state system, on which American sovereignty and foreign policy is based, the US should reassess the logic of its support for the establishment of Muslim-only states. It should similarly revisit its refusal to openly support the right of non-Islamic states like Israel, Serbia and even France, to assert their rights to defend their sovereignty, national security and national character from outside-sponsored domestic Islamic subversion.

El-Baradei’s nuclear policy

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency Director Muhammad ElBaradei is a man of dubious integrity. In 2005 he was vaunted to the heights of the international stratosphere when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee extolled him for his "efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes." Yet the facts indicate that the opposite is true. In his five-term tenure at the IAEA, ElBaradei has used his power to facilitate the proliferation of nuclear energy for military purposes. This he has done by working to prevent responsible states, like the United States, from taking action to prevent rogue states from pursuing nuclear weapons.

Take Iraq for example. Right up to the US-British invasion of Iraq in March 2003, ElBaradei consistently maintained that he either couldn’t tell if Iraq was or was not pursuing nuclear weapons, or that he could see no evidence that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons. Indeed, just before the war, in an effort to scuttle US-British efforts to convince the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution approving the use of force against Saddam Hussein’s regime, ElBaradei reported to the Security Council that Iraq had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

Then, in October 2004, with the still-same object of denying international legitimacy to US operations in Iraq, ElBaradei indirectly acknowledged his previous mendacity. He announced that since the invasion, equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs had disappeared from Iraq.

As he told it, in the aftermath of the US-led invasion, entire buildings related to Saddam’s nuclear weapons programs had been dismantled without any record being made of their contents. High precision "dual use" items such as milling machines, electron beam welders, and high strength aluminum all turned up missing.

Suddenly, the same ElBaradei who had insisted that Iraq had no nuclear program warned, "The disappearance of such equipment and materials may be of proliferation significance." In the months ahead of the US-led invasion – months which ElBaradei spent buying time for Saddam by prolonging inspections that could be relied on to never end conclusively – then prime minister Ariel Sharon warned that satellite imagery had shown large truck convoys of suspicious materials moving from Iraq to Syria. Former IDF chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya’alon later reiterated Sharon’s claims.

US AIR FORCE intelligence operative David Gaubatz, who was sent to Iraq between March and July 2003 to search for nuclear, chemical and biological installations found four suspicious, reinforced, underground sites in southern Iraq around Nasiriyah and Basra. For reasons that remain to be examined, the US failed to inspect the sites. Medical examinations of Gaubatz and his team taken after their site visits showed that they had been exposed to high levels of radiation.

As Melanie Phillips reported in the British Spectator in April, Gaubatz stated that he subsequently learned from CIA, British and Iraqi intelligence agents that the sites were stripped by Iraqi, Syrian, and Russian operatives who moved their contents to Syria.

In a move exposing his own cynical refusal to take seriously the threat posed by nuclear proliferation, ElBaradei ended his October 2004 warning regarding the disappearance of the Iraqi nuclear equipment by asking anyone with information about the whereabouts of Iraq’s nuclear program to give his office a telephone call.

In November 2006, the IAEA again expressed concern regarding the Iraqi nuclear program whose existence it had denied ahead of the US-British invasion. This time, it decried the administration’s posting of certain captured Iraqi documents on the Internet. Those captured documents included Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that could be useful for other states working to build a nuclear arsenal.

WHILE DISMISSING as non-threatening Iraqi, Iranian, Libyan and Egyptian nuclear activities, ElBaradei has repeatedly expressed deep concerns about one Middle Eastern country’s nuclear program. In July 2004 ElBaradei paid a visit to Israel. At the time he visited, Iran was defying his call to end its uranium enrichment activities and Western intelligence agencies believed that Iran would achieve a nuclear break-out capacity within a year.

ElBaradei used his visit as attempt to place Israel in the same category as Iran and insisted that Israel open its Dimona nuclear site to IAEA inspection and control. The next month, during a home visit in Cairo, ElBaradei proposed convening a conference on establishing a "nuclear-free zone" in the Middle East whose aim would be Israeli dismantling of its presumptive nuclear arsenal.

Indeed, ElBaradei has been unrelenting in his attacks against Israel. Over the weekend he gave an interview to Austrian television in which he harshly criticized the US decision to increase its military assistance to Israel by $30 billion over the next ten years claiming that the assistance could lead to a regional arms race.

Since Iranian opposition forces first exposed Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program in August 2002, ElBaradei has been Iran’s primary international defender. Knowingly acting in breach of the IAEA’s charter, ElBaradei used his office to repeatedly stall US bids to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council.

The IAEA charter stipulates that in the event that there is any evidence that a state signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is acting in a non-transparent manner regarding its nuclear activities, that state must be referred to the Security Council. In spite of the fact that since its nuclear program was first exposed Iran has been consistently behaving in a non-transparent manner, ElBaradei took four years to refer Iran to the Security Council. His determined and illegal defense of Iran bought the mullahs four years to develop their program without fear of UN sanctions or military action against it.

Last August, the IAEA sent a letter to US Representative Peter Hokstra, then chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence condemning a committee report that concluded that Iran’s nuclear program is military, not civilian. The report further alleged that the IAEA was working to prevent any conclusions from being drawn about the nature of Iran’s program in order to prevent international action from being taken against it.

The IAEA’s assault on the Congressional report is part and parcel of ElBaradei’s insistence that the US take no concerted action against Iran’s program. To this end, he works diligently to demonize American voices calling for Iran to be prevented – by force of arms if necessary – from becoming a nuclear power.

IN AN interview with the BBC in May, the man who is charter-bound to prevent nuclear proliferation had an interesting take on his international role. ElBaradei said, "I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say ‘Let’s go and bomb Iran.’"

ElBaradei, who claims that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons is preferable to any nation taking action to militarily prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, has consistently sought to demoralize Iran’s foes and potential victims by claiming that the cat is already out of the bag so any attempt to stop Iran is doomed to fail. In the same interview with the BBC, ElBaradei claimed that military strikes would be worthless because you cannot "bomb knowledge." And it isn’t only military force that ElBaradei opposes. He also opposes sanctions. After a meeting in February with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, in which Larijani repeated Iran’s refusal to end its uranium enrichment activities in spite of UN Security Council sanctions, ElBaradei condemned not Iran, but the use of sanctions.

In his words, "Our experience without exception is that sanctions alone do not work and in most cases radicalize the regime and hurt the people who are not supposed to be hurt…. [S]anctions have to be coupled at all times with incentives and a real search for a compromise based on face-saving, based on respect."

TODAY BARADEI and his IAEA are in open conflict with the US. In a move to preempt US efforts to pass a third sanctions resolution against Iran in the Security Council next month, ElBaradei acceded to a new "framework" agreement with the Iranians last week. In three rounds of talks that have taken place since last month, Iran agreed to give the IAEA some answers to some undefined questions about its nuclear program that it has refused to answer for the past five years. It also allowed IAEA inspectors to enter its heavy water plutonium production facility in Arak – a largely insignificant concession since the plant won’t be operational for two years.

Gleefully extolling this great "breakthrough," IAEA spokesmen have announced that in ElBaradei’s report to his board of governors and to the Security Council next month, he will use this meaningless agreement as an excuse to block a third sanctions resolution from being passed.

It is clear where all of this is leading. By undermining coercive diplomatic steps aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program without war, ElBaradei is leading the international community to one of two inevitable futures. Either Iran will acquire nuclear weapons – as he no doubt hopes it will, or force will have to be used to prevent it from acquiring those weapons.

In the event that Iran is attacked, as his duplicitous behavior ahead of the US-led invasion of Iraq demonstrates clearly, that war will be launched and fought against the backdrop of international condemnation led by ElBaradei and his nuclear proliferating supporters at the IAEA, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and the UN. And if, instead it is Iran that drops the bomb, well, ElBaradei will say, Israel had it coming to it, and so did the American "crazies."