Tag Archives: George W Bush

Divest Iran

Decision Brief                                       No. 06-D 28                     2006-05-30


(Washington , D.C.): One of the most important public policy fights in years is taking place within the U.S. government. The debate is over how to deal with the growing danger posed by Islamofascist Iran.


A House Divided


In one corner are those who believe, against all historical experience, that appeasement of despots will work this time. Hence, their support of efforts by the so-called “EU-3” – Britain, France and Germany – to present a sufficiently attractive package of concessions to the Iranian mullahocracy to induce it to give up at least some of its program for developing nuclear weapons. The UN’s Kofi Annan and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Mohamed ElBaradei champion this approach. So does the State Department bureaucracy, currently led by the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns.


Unfortunately, the record of recent efforts to appease Iran has been no more encouraging than were earlier efforts to divert other totalitarians from their chosen paths. To the contrary, Iranian officials have gleefully observed that they are indebted to the Europeans and their supporters for “buying time” for the regime in Tehran, allowing it to bring its so-called “nuclear power” program to fruition. Some are becoming ever-more- brazen in confirming that energy-generation is not the object of the exercise; rather, it is to obtain the Bomb.


Now, Nick Burns and Company are evidently supporting the international appeasers’ demand that the United States “engage” directly with the Iranians. The argument is that, only by so doing, can the Bush Administration demonstrate that it has left no stone unturned in trying to avoid a showdown, including possibly military action against Iran.


Those in the opposing corner, believed to include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush, himself, are under no illusion about the consequences of such a step. It will not buy the United States any credit from its critics. Instead, it will embroil this country in talks whose sole purpose is to hamstring those who are threatened by the Iranian Islamofascists’ support for international terror and pursuit of nuclear weapons – if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be believed, for apocalyptic purposes.


Speaking of Ahmadinejad, one of the most bizarre aspects of the debate about what to do about Iran is the use being made by the appeasement camp of his recent letter to President Bush. It has been widely portrayed in the press as a diplomatic “breakthrough,” an opening for direct contacts that must not be allowed to slip away. In fact, a close reading of the document makes clear that what the Iranian regime has in mind for the United States is war, not diplomacy. Notably, the closing passage is a direct quote from a message sent by the Prophet Mohammed as he prepared to launch a devastating attack on its recipient.


Use the Reagan Playbook


The alternative to appeasement of Iran should utilize the sorts of techniques Ronald Reagan employed to counter the last horrific totalitarian ideology that threatened our destruction, the Soviet Union. These include using every available means to de-legitimate the regime. It also means helping those oppressed by our enemies, in order to assist them in undermining and, if possible, in bringing down their government – a popular aspiration lately confirmed anew by a spate of tumultuous demonstrations across Iran.


President Reagan placed special emphasis on one other initiative: drying up the funding streams that enabled the USSR to build up its military threat and to pay for anti-Western revolutions all over the globe. The same must be done to Iran.


The most obvious means of doing so – economic sanctions – are not supported by Iran ‘s strategic allies, Russia and China , and its business partners in many energy-hungry European nations and Japan. As a result, there seems little hope of imposing on a multilateral basis sanctions comparable to the long-standing American ones on oil purchases and other trade with Iran.


According to a front-page article in the Washington Post on Monday, a Treasury Department-led task force is trying a variation on the theme: It is seeking the cooperation of allies in eschewing business with “every Iranian official, individual and entity the Bush Administration considers connected not only to nuclear enrichment efforts but to terrorism, government corruption, suppression of religious or democratic freedom and violence” in neighboring states. Not surprisingly, the response has been underwhelming to date. The Post reports that, “So far, four financial institutions have signed on to the U.S. effort.”


Fortunately, America has an opportunity to bring more than moral suasion to bear on those who partner with our enemies and, thereby, help underwrite their threatening behavior: Make them choose whether they wish to do business with us, or with the Iranians.


Last month, the Louisiana Sheriffs public pension fund became the first in the nation to adopt such an approach in the form of a terror-free investment policy. Its portfolio managers, including T. Rowe Price, have agreed that the sheriffs’ retirement money will not be invested in foreign energy, telecommunications, banks and other companies that engage in commercial activities and investment in state-sponsors of terror like Iran.


The Bottom Line


The U.S. government should encourage this model – call it Divest Iran – to be adopted by the scores of millions of other American investors whose decisions to hold or dispose of stocks will probably have a lot more influence with Iranian-connected enterprises than will pleas from our “engagement”-minded officials. Such a privatization of the effort to end the danger posed by the Iranian mullahs may not only make for a more coherent U.S. policy. It may even make it possible to avoid the use of force against Iran that could otherwise become unavoidable.

Bolderdash

President Bush has, unfortunately, encouraged the belief of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the Jewish State can safely abandon 90-95% of the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. At a press conference yesterday, the President suggested that his Administration might be reluctant to support and possibly finance Olmert’s "bold ideas" only because Israel’s departure had not been negotiated with – and presumably approved by – the Palestinian government.

In fact, irrespective of such negotiations, Olmert’s "convergence" plan is riddled with fundamental problems, which were clarified in three powerful op.eds. yesterday by associates of the Center for Security Policy.

As explained in a piece for the Wall Street Journal by R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA and Honorary Co-Chair of the Center’s National Security Advisory Council, the proposal encourages a false optimism among Israelis:

 

    Israeli concessions indeed enhance Palestinian hope, but not of a reasonable two-state solution – rather a hope that they will actually be able to destroy Israel….Someday a two-state solution may become possible, but it is naive in the extreme to believe that this can occur while the centerpiece of the radical Islamic and Palestinian agendas is maximizing Jewish deaths.

Writing in the Washington Times, Center President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. describes how Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank – that would presumably follow the Gaza pattern and create a power vacuum filled by terrorists – threatens the immediate strategic interests of the United States and its allies in the region:

 

    It would surely result in destabilizing and quite possibly ending Hashemite Jordan. The effect would combine Jordan’s territory, well-armed military and the 80 percent of its population that is Palestinian with the radical, Hamas-ruled state next door. The effort to consolidate the liberation of Iraq would also be jeopardized as one of two U.S. re-supply routes into the country – from Israeli ports across Jordan – becomes vulnerable to al Qaeda and others’ attacks.

And in her column for the Jerusalem Post, the Center’s Senior Middle Eastern Fellow Caroline B. Glick summarizes the long-term consequences of an Israeli withdrawal, which:

 

    Provides a strategic victory to the forces of global jihad in a war they wage not only against Israel but against the U.S. and the Western world as a whole because they will see Israel destroying itself under the gun of their terror and enabling the establishment of yet another base for global terrorists.

The Center for Security Policy urges President Bush and Congress to take the greatest care in evaluating Olmert’s proposal that threatens the existence of Israel and neighboring Jordan, makes difficult our consolidation of victory in Iraq, and hands Islamofascists a victory that will encourage their belief that the United States can be defeated in this War for the Free World.

 

West Bank Terrorist State
By R. James Woolsey
The Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2006

What does one say to a good ally who seems determined to reinforce failure? That the U.S. will pay for the undertaking?

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in Washington, where he will be asking for advice and assistance in financing the withdrawal of 50,000 to 100,000 Israeli settlers from 90% to 95% of the West Bank and major portions of Jerusalem, and for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to be repositioned largely near the security barrier Israel is constructing. Most Americans are inclined to believe that such disengagement may be a reasonable step toward a two-state solution, even if some territorial disputes remain to be negotiated. It is also widely assumed that Palestinian hostility to Israel is fueled by despair that can only be reduced by Israeli concessions. Both assumptions, however, may be fundamentally flawed.

The approach Israel is preparing to take in the West Bank was tried in Gaza and has failed utterly. The Israeli withdrawal of last year has produced the worst set of results imaginable: a heavy presence by al Qaeda, Hezbollah and even some Iranian Revolutionary Guard units; street-fighting between Hamas and Fatah and now Hamas assassination attempts against Fatah’s intelligence chief and Jordan’s ambassador; rocket and mortar attacks against nearby towns inside Israel; and a perceived vindication for Hamas, which took credit for the withdrawal. This latter almost certainly contributed substantially to Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections.

The world now needs to figure out how to keep Palestinians from starving without giving funds to a Hamas government in Gaza resolutely focused on destroying Israel. Before his massive stroke last year Ariel Sharon repeatedly said he would not replay the Gaza retreat in the West Bank. With good reason: Creating a West Bank that looks like today’s Gaza would be many times the nightmare. How would one deal with continuing launches of rockets and mortars from the West Bank into virtually all of Israel? (Israel’s Arrow missile defense will probably work against Iranian Medium Range Ballistic Missiles but not against the much shorter-range Katyushas.) A security barrier does no good against such bombardment. The experience in Gaza, further, has shown the difficulty of defending against such attacks after the IDF boots on the ground have departed. Effective, prompt retaliation from the air is hard to imagine if the mortar rounds and Katyushas are being launched, as they will be, from schools, hospitals and mosques.

Israel is not the only pro-Western country that would be threatened. How does moderate Jordan, with its Palestinian majority, survive if bordered by a West Bank terrorist state? Israeli concessions will also make the U.S. look weak because it will be inferred that we have urged them, and will suggest that we are reverting to earlier behavior patterns — fleeing Lebanon in 1983, acquiescing in Saddam’s destruction of the Kurdish and Shiite rebels in 1991, fleeing Somalia in 1993, etc.

Three major Israeli efforts at accommodation in the last 13 years have not worked. Oslo and the 1993 handshake in the Rose Garden between Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat produced only Arafat’s rejection in 2000 of Ehud Barak’s extremely generous settlement offer and the beginning of the Second Intifada. The Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000 has enhanced Hezbollah’s prestige and control there; and the withdrawal from Gaza has unleashed madness. These three accommodations have been based on the premise that only Israeli concessions can displace Palestinian despair. But it seems increasingly clear that the Palestinian cause is fueled by hatred and contempt.

Israeli concessions indeed enhance Palestinian hope, but not of a reasonable two-state solution — rather a hope that they will actually be able to destroy Israel. The Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis is quite explicit about a genocidal objective. When they speak of "ending Israeli occupation" they mean of Tel Aviv. Under these circumstances it is time to recognize that, sadly, the Israeli-Palestinian issue will likely not be the first matter settled in the decades-long war that radical Islam has declared on the U.S., Israel, the West and moderate Muslims — it will more likely be one of the last.

Someday a two-state solution may become possible, but it is naive in the extreme to believe that this can occur while the centerpiece of the radical Islamic and Palestinian agendas is maximizing Jewish deaths. A durable compromise will only be achievable when we no longer, to borrow from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "define deviancy down" for the Palestinians.

Today we cannot envision the 250,000 Jewish settlers who live outside Israel’s pre-1967 borders being permitted to live at all, much less live free and unmolested, in a West-Bank-Gaza Palestinian state. But some 1.2 million Arabs, almost all Muslim, today live in Israel in peace among some 5 million Jews — about double the percentage of Jews now in the West Bank as a share of the Muslim population there. Israel’s Arab citizens worship freely — one hears muezzins calling the faithful to prayer as one walks around Tel Aviv. They vote in free elections for their own representatives in a real legislature, the Knesset. They give every evidence that they prefer being Arab Israelis to living in the chaos and uncertainty of a West Bank after Israeli withdrawal.

A two-state solution can become a reality when the Palestinians are held to the same standards as Israelis — to the requirement that Jewish settlers in a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state would be treated with the same decency that Israel treats its Arab citizens. Until then, three failures in 13 years should permit us to evaluate the wisdom of further concessions.

Mr. Woolsey, a former director of Central Intelligence, is co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger.

Olmert’s folly

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in town this week on a sales campaign. He hopes to secure the United States ‘ approval and financing (perhaps as much as $10 billion) for his controversial plan to withdraw unilaterally Israeli civilians and troops from nearly all of the West Bank and even parts of Jerusalem. He would settle, however, for American acquiescence – which he could then use to suppress debate at home about what amounts to state-icide.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

The danger arises from the fact that the beneficiary of Israel ‘s proposed surrender of territory will be her Islamofascist enemies . They include Hamas, the terrorist group that came to power in Gaza after Israel withdrew unilaterally last year from that relatively tiny piece of real estate. If the experience with Gaza is any guide, however, Hamas will turn the West Bank into a Taliban-style safe-haven for other terrorists including: al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

From the Gaza Strip, such enemies of Israel have launched daily mortar, rocket and/or artillery attacks, by some counts as many as 500 since the Israelis "disengaged." Fortunately, the areas of the Jewish State thus far within range are largely agricultural and thinly populated – with the notable exception of the important port city of Ashkelon . As a result, there have been no casualties to date, even from attacks on Ashkelon ‘s vital electrical, oil pipeline and water desalination infrastructure.

That will almost certainly change over time, however, as the experience and accuracy of Islamofascist terrorists in Gaza and the range and lethality of their weapons improve. Such improvements are being facilitated by the now-essentially-open border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt . The fact that the Mubarak regime in Cairo tolerates, if not enables, the transit of anti-Israel terrorists and their ordinance is just one manifestation of the latter’s increasingly overt hostility to the Jewish State, with whom it is nominally at peace.

Even relatively inaccurate gunners and primitive weapons would be capable of inflicting great harm on Israel from the West Bank , however. Every population center, major highway and the country’s main civilian airport would be within range. Such attacks would be sure to take a toll, in lives and in economic activity.

Our Problem, Too

Some will argue that it should be up to Israel whether such risks are acceptable or not. The repercussions of Israel ‘s withdrawal will not be hers to bear alone, however. American equities are on the line as well.

For one, the effect of withdrawal is likely to be to weaken Israel considerably, reducing it from a powerful and self-reliant strategic ally to a potential liability , one unduly dependent on the United States for its security. For example, Israel ‘s economy, which is heavily dependent upon trade and tourism, could be severely disrupted by terrorist attacks on aircraft flying to and from Ben Gurion airport and upon other critical infrastructure. For another, some forty percent of the Jewish State’s water supply comes from West Bank aquifers; a disruption of access to such precious resources in a desert could constitute an existential danger.

A terrorist state on the West Bank will translate, moreover, into a threat to others in the region. It would surely result in the destabilization and quite possibly the end of Hashemite Jordan. The effect would be a combining of Jordan ‘s territory, well-armed military and the 80% of its population that is Palestinian with the radical, Hamas-ruled state next door. The effort to consolidate the liberation of Iraq would also be jeopardized as one of two U.S. re-supply routes into the country – from Israeli ports across Jordan – becomes vulnerable to al Qaeda and others’ attacks.

More to the point, the evident strategic retreat in the face of terror that the Israeli withdrawal will represent – not just for the Jewish State, but for the Free World in general and the United States in particular – can only be an encouragement to our enemies and a warning to our friends: The "strong horse," as bin Laden puts it, is the irresistible and growing power of Islamofascism. Those who submit to it will survive; those who resist are doomed to be defeated and destroyed. And al Qaeda and others will be working to effect the latter from their new safe-haven on the West Bank.

The Bottom Line

For all these reasons, Israel is not the only party to have a stake in the question of its continued control over the West Bank . We do, too. As a result, if the surrender of such territory does not make sense to or for us, we should not hesitate to say so.

Yet some would have us believe that, whatever the merits of these and similar concerns about the Israeli withdrawal (which are brilliantly elucidated by my colleague, Caroline Glick), the decision has already been taken by the recently elected government of Israel. Some assert that it will go forward no matter what we think. Others contend that we have no choice but to go along with whatever Israel decides to do.

In fact, we have an obligation to object. Friends don’t let friends commit suicide. That is especially true when, in so doing, they are likely to inflict grave harm on others, including this country and its vital interests. President Bush and the Congress should tell Mr. Olmert during his visit this week: "No more territory for terrorists."

‘Insanity’

The Center for Security Policy today began a television advertising campaign concerning Israel ‘s proposed surrender of most of the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem to terrorists like al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The ad recalls the consequences for Israel and for U.S. interests of previous Israeli retreats from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and urges Americans’ representatives in Washington to oppose further territorial concessions to our enemies.

The Center’s ad campaign is timed to coincide with the visit to Washington next week by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Mr. Olmert will be pitching his so-called "Convergence Plan" for the West Bank to President Bush in an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. Among other activities during his U.S. visit, he will also be holding meetings at the Pentagon on Monday and addressing a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.

The ad draws on an analysis of the convergence plan authored by the Center’s Senior Mideast Fellow, Caroline Glick. Ms. Glick is also the Deputy Managing Editor of and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s President, in unveiling the 30-second spot entitled "Insanity," said:

With his proposal to turn over up to 95% of the West Bank and sections of Israel ‘s capital city, Jerusalem , to terrorists, Prime Minister Olmert is embarking on a course of action fraught with danger not only for Israel but for America . Hard experience with Hezbollah’s use of southern Lebanon to attack Israel and with Hamas’ use of the Gaza Strip to create forward operating bases for terror against the Jewish State and others, including the United States , means it would be insane even to think about relinquishing control over the West Bank.

Mr. Olmert needs to know that Americans will not support, let alone finance, such an action that would threaten the future survival of both Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, endanger the effort to consolidate the liberation of Iraq and create a new safe-haven from which Islamofascist terrorists will be able to plot and launch attacks against the United States.

The script for "Insanity" reads as follows:

In 2000, Israel turned over south Lebanon to terrorists.

The terror threat grew larger, for Israel and for us.

In 2005, Israel turned over the Gaza Strip to terrorists — including al Qaeda.

The terror threat grew larger still, for Israel and for us. Now, Israel proposes to turn over nearly all the West Bank to our terrorist enemies.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We cannot afford any more of this insanity.

For more information about the Center’s ad campaign, the analysis upon which it is based or to conduct an interview, contact Mr. Gaffney or Ms. Glick at 202-835-9077.

 

PlayPlay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Venezuela arms embargo should be part of Bush Doct

Decision Brief                                       No. 06-D 26                     2006-05-17


(Washington , D.C.): The new U.S. arms embargo against the extremist regime in Venezuela should have implications beyond South America . Though intended to protect democracies in the region, the embargo should be used to convince our allies that there is a price to be paid for actions that willfully undermine American security interests.


The Miami Herald reports that President Bush’s embargo is “largely symbolic” because Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez “has been buying the bulk of his weapons, including attack and transport helicopters, patrol boats and military transport planes, from Russia and Spain.”


Bush Doctrine Created Stark Choice for Our Allies


The post-9/11 Bush Doctrine created a stark choice for nations to either side with us or against us in the global war on terror. This hard line has given way to a new reality where some of our allies simply take for granted that we will ignore their efforts against us. For example, France and Germany undermined U.S. efforts to compel action by the United Nations against Saddam Hussein, yet they continue to benefit from our military presence in Europe . They also profit from U.S. purchases of their military products. As the war proceeds, the United States should consider how it can make its policies more consistent.


The most practical approach is to stop purchasing military equipment from countries that disregard our security interests, at least whenever viable alternatives are available. No country should be more concerned about this possibility than Spain , a once-loyal partner in the war on terror that now prefers to thumb its nose at the U.S. while lobbying Congress and the U.S. military to buy its products.


Spain decided to cool its warm relations with the United States after the al Qaeda bombings of the Madrid transit system propelled Socialist Workers Party President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to power in March, 2004.


In fact, Spain has defied U.S. interests in spectacular fashion – and in a way that demands a response . Last November, Spain sold 12 of its CASA C-235 and C-295 military transport aircraft to Venezuela , despite strong U.S. objections. Because the aircraft includes American-made technology, the Bush Administration tried to halt the sale under the 1992 International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Instead, Spain replaced U.S. components in the aircraft and has made a very public spectacle of the sale ever since – even taking part in the Venezuelan dictator’s propaganda campaign against the United States.


Even before making good on his campaign promise to pull his country from the international coalition in Iraq , Spain ‘s socialist president traveled to Caracas to negotiate the sale personally with the Venezuelan dictator. He later dispatched Defense Minister Jose Bono to Caracas on November 28, 2005 to seal the deal with Chavez, despite U.S. objections that the trip would legitimize the Chavez regime’s anti-U.S. rhetoric.


Spain dismissed U.S. concerns. Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told his nation’s largest newspaper on November 27 that the deal would not cause problems for Spain in the U.S. This was in spite of a report four days earlier in the same paper that “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono to personally sign the deals in Caracas to stress what he described as a ‘defeat’ of the United States.” The foreign minister’s comments were despite warnings from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld just three days earlier that Spain was “making a mistake” over the sale to Venezuela.


To make matters worse, the Spanish defense minister used his appearance in Venezuela to denounce the U.S. as an “empire,” while Chavez used the occasion to characterize Spain’s decision as “confronting the hegemonic and imperialist ambitions of the elite that now governs the United States,” and which is “massacring the people of Iraq.”


Part of Campaign to Undermine the U.S. and Its Allies


To reinforce his point that the deal with Spain was intended to insult the U.S., Chavez forced an American congressional delegation led by 81 year-old House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL) and his ranking colleague, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) to sit on the Caracas airport tarmac for two hours while the deal with Spain was sealed, and then forced the delegation to leave the country. It reeked of a setup job.


The U.S. also specifically warned Spain that its deal was part of the Venezuelan dictator’s strategy to undermine U.S. interests and destabilize the region, including by coordinating actions with Cuba and supporting leftist FARC rebels that hope to overthrow the Columbian government. Chavez himself has proclaimed that his “new strategic map” is intended to “break apart” the South American democratic countries. In fact, when Spain told the U.S. that its CASA aircraft would be used in Venezuela for humanitarian purposes only, Chavez told the European media the aircraft will be used “mainly” for humanitarian purposes, and that they would be used both “inside and outside the country.”


Spain was also aware that Chavez was scheduled to take possession from Russia of 30,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles just days after signing the CASA aircraft deal. Spain ignored Colombian and U.S. concerns that the guns are of the same type used by FARC, and that the total order of 100,000 rifles is far more than is needed to arm every Venezuelan soldier. In response to U.S. concerns, the Spanish defense minister told the media he was “not willing to recognize that there are chosen people who are above others.”


Spreading Anti-U.S. Propaganda while Competing for U.S. Tax Dollars


As if spreading anti-U.S. propaganda abroad wasn’t bad enough, Spain has been working in Washington to get the Coast Guard and Pentagon to buy the same planes it was selling Chavez.


Last year, CASA got Congress to earmark funds for two C-235 aircraft to be used by the Coast Guard’s Deepwater program. CASA is now pressing for even more Deepwater funds, and has established a new campaign to supply up to 35 C-295s to the U.S. Army and Air Force Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program.


Congress authorized start-up funding for the JCA program in 2005, and must eventually fund additional transport aircraft for the Coast Guard Deepwater program. The programs combined will be worth $3-4 billion in the next two years, and as much as $30-40 billion over the next decade. It would be appropriate for the U.S. to make sure that Spain ‘s decision to earn $1 billion from Venezuela for its CASA aircraft should come at the cost of earning far more from sales in the U.S.


The Bottom Line


The U.S. is accustomed to the self-serving actions of some of our friends abroad. But there is growing resentment among American taxpayers when they are asked to pay for products from companies of countries that actively undermine U.S. interests. The Bush Administration has made it clear that we have compelling interests in stopping the arms build-up in Venezuela. Congress should step in to make sure that our allies understand the message. When it comes to buying planes from supposed allies like Spain, Congress should just say no.


 

There is a war on

Decision Brief                                       No. 06-D 25                           2006-05-15


(Washington , D.C.): Now we know. The Sunday morning CNN program hosted by Wolf Blitzer provided an explanation for at least some of the bizarre behavior in evidence lately in Washington .


In response to a video clip of Senator Jon Kyl (Republican of Arizona) making the sensible point that it is “nuts” in a time of war to be disclosing our intelligence sources and methods, former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski declared that “we are not at war.” While he acknowledged that there are serious threats, he suggested that it was fear-mongering to talk about being in a war, a practice used to justify otherwise insupportable infringements on the privacy and equanimity of Americans.


Breaking the Code


This is a useful prism through which to view this week’s hearings on the nomination of Air Force General Michael Hayden to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. We can expect Democratic Senators and even some Republican ones to showboat as they take the nominee to task for his work in a previous incarnation as the head of the National Security Agency (NSA). In that role and at presidential direction, the general strove to use NSA’s powerful and exceedingly sensitive computing and eavesdropping tools to protect us against another terrible attack by enemies bent on our destruction.


Specifically, Gen. Hayden will be excoriated for having used warrantless wiretaps to try to monitor the battlefield communications of such foes. Battlefield signal intercepts in time of war are the stock-in-trade of the National Security Agency and, indeed, of military intelligence more generally. That such intercepts involve phone calls, faxes and e-mails to or from people inside the United States simply underscores the fact that we are, indeed, at war, one that amounts to a global conflict that is different – and potentially far more dangerous – than any we have fought before.


Legislators will also assail the general for having sought phone records – not wiretaps – for millions of Americans. Such information could allow the NSA to establish links between terrorist operatives and cells in this country based on calling patterns or connections between known targets and unknown associates. Again, this is the sort of activity the public would expect our government to be doing in time of war. Indeed, polling suggests the American people overwhelmingly support the NSA’s efforts on our behalf.


Still, the denunciations of such eminently sensible and legal practices as unacceptable invasions of our privacy, as illegal activity and possibly as impeachable offenses are an important foretaste of what could happen if the critics get to run one or both house of Congress after November’s elections: Instead of prosecuting the war for the Free World, official Washington will be consumed with prosecuting George W. Bush.


Confirmed: There is an Anti-Bush ‘Camp’ at the CIA


A front-page article in Sunday’s Washington Post confirms what many have long believed: Those who disagree with the President’s view that we are at war with a very dangerous, state-sponsored Islamofascist ideology include “a camp within the Central Intelligence Agency that considers the war to be a diversion from counter-terrorism activity.” With no hint of irony, one of the Post reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for publishing classified information apparently leaked to the paper by one of those CIA operatives, Mary McCarthy, refers to such a cabal within the ostensibly objective, non-partisan ranks of the Agency by way of trying to rehabilitate Ms. McCarthy – who had been fired by former director Porter Goss.


Mr. Goss was subsequently dismissed by President Bush at the insistence of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte. Now, Mr. Bush seems about to accede to another, no less ill-advised recommendation by the DNI. Mr. Negroponte wants to rehire another member of the anti-Bush “camp,” former senior CIA official Steve Kappes, to be the Agency’s Number 2. Such an appointment would be, to use Sen. Kyl’s term, “nuts.”


After all, Kappes was reportedly removed from his previous post as CIA Deputy Director for Operations when Goss discovered that he and his deputy were engaged in unauthorized disclosures of classified information to members of the press and Congress – then defiantly refused to desist when called on it. Fortunately, members of the congressional leadership have indicated strong opposition to the Kappes candidacy. They may insist that he be subjected to the sort of polygraphing about Kappes’ alleged backchanneling of information to critics of the Bush Administration that resulted in Ms. McCarthy’s confession to having done the same thing.


The Bottom Line


The fate not just of this presidency but control of Congress and the security of the country may depend on whether the public is clear that we are at war – and with whom and the exceedingly high stakes associated with losing. Toward this end, the President must make a redoubled effort to drive that message home, starting with assuring that his own staff and that of the Nation’s intelligence agencies share his understanding of the nature of this war and his determination to win it – both of which seem to be true of Michael Hayden.


Those who feel otherwise are certainly entitled to their view. They are even entitled to work to advance it – just not from a vantage point inside the executive branch, especially by masquerading as objective, non-partisan intelligence analysts and operatives.


 

From Londonistan to Palestan

In courtrooms and movie theaters this spring, Americans are being exposed in an unvarnished way to the true character and evil purposes of our enemies in this War for the Free World. Yet, governments around the world – including, on most days, ours – seem still to be unwilling, or unable, to come to grips with these realities.

Zacharias Mousaui used his trial on charges of assisting in the 9/11 conspiracy to put a vivid, and frightening, human face on today’s totalitarian ideology bent our destruction: Islamofascism. Some may discount as bravado or delusion his oft-repeated desire to kill Americans. His lack of remorse is no act though. It is the hallmark of a true believer, and a staple of his creed.

Such sentiments are also much in evidence in the new movie "United 93." Its reconstruction of the horror-filled September 11, 2001 flight of the fourth hijacked plane leaves audiences shaken as much by the cold-blooded lust for death exhibited by our foes as by their intended purposes, prevented in that instance only by the extraordinary courage of ordinary Americans.

What’s Wrong with These Pictures

So why do ostensibly friendly governments not recognize the threat posed by Islamofascism for what it is: a viral ideology that threatens non-Islamist Muslims as much as the rest of us, one that cannot be appeased and must be rooted out and destroyed?

The easiest case to address is that of the Saudi government. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that "Saudi Arabia has mobilized some of its most militant clerics, including one Osama bin Laden sought to recruit as his spiritual guide, in a campaign to combat the continuing appeal of al Qaeda’s ideology in the Kingdom about the latest Saudi effort to counter al Qaeda."

The article recounts how the Saudis are using teams of three clerics and a psychiatrist or psychologist to "reeducate" young men by exposing them to hours of clerical discourse. "Some detainees attend five-week courses in the fine points of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist sect of Islam that dominates Saudi society and lends crucial support to the ruling family."

In other words, the Saudis – who are the world’s most aggressive and generous champions of Islamofascism – are trying to ensure that their young men adhere to the Wahhabi strain of this ideology, rather than bin Laden’s. The only perceptible difference between the two is that the former holds that it is Allah’s will to kill non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslims outside the Kingdom; the latter includes among his target list Saudi royals who have adopted Western ways and mores. Thanks for the help, King Abdullah.

 

A riveting new book by Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, makes clear that for years Great Britain has been scarcely less complicit than the Saudis in affording safe haven to Islamofascist recruiters and operatives. She recounts how the UK’s principal domestic security service, MI5, "was guilty of a combination of flawed analysis and cynicism….[As a result,] it never understood the power of the Islamic nation – or ummah – over its scattered members and for a variety of reasons believed it was not in Britain’s interest to act against Islamist radicals. The security service was content instead to watch as Londonistan [a term the author has coined to describe Islamofascism’s rising power in Britain’s capital] took shape, apparently either oblivious or indifferent to the carnage that its proponents might be inflicting overseas."

Ms. Phillips (who will be presenting her book at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday) adds, "Shocking as this may be, the intelligence debacle is only the tip of the iceberg. Among Britain’s governing class – its intelligentsia, its media, its politicians, its judiciary, its church and even its police – a broader and deeper cultural pathology has allowed and even encouraged Londonistan to develop, one which persists to this day."

 

A similarly self-destructive pathology is clearly at work in another allied nation, Israel. Later this month, the newly elected prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, will be coming to the United States seeking President Bush’s endorsement of his "convergence" plan – the euphemism adopted to describe his intention to withdraw over the next few years between 50,000 and 100,000 Israeli civilians and Israel’s security forces from up to 95 percent of the West Bank. Mr. Olmert will also reportedly be seeking $10 billion in U.S. aid to underwrite this retreat.

In a superb analysis and withering critique of the convergence plan, the Center for Security Policy’s Senior Mideast Fellow, Caroline Glick, makes clear that Israel’s earlier abandonment of the Gaza Strip has turned it into an area not only governed by the terrorist organization, Hamas, but used as a training and operational base for allied Islamofascist entities like al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence. The threat posed by such activities is already real, not only for Israel but the United States and the rest of the Free World, as well. It will become infinitely greater, however, should the West Bank also be allowed to become a safe haven for such forces. Call it Palestan.

The Bottom Line

The Bush Administration has, of late, become a bit clearer about the ideological character of Islamofascism. It has yet to adopt, however, the war footing required to counter it, let alone hold our allies – real and imagined – accountable for their appeasement of its practitioners. The United States can no longer indulge in such a dereliction of duty, or tolerate, to say nothing of encourage, it in others.

Intelligence failures

Anniversaries are opportunities for reflecting on the year just past. For the U.S. intelligence community – and for the Nation it serves – the retrospective occasioned by this week’s first anniversary of the installation of Ambassador John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is, in a word, grim.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

Take, for example, the critical bipartisan assessment recently provided by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) under its chairman and ranking minority member, Reps. Pete Hoekstra (Republican of Michigan) and Jane Harman (Democrat of California), respectively. As the New York Times reported on April 20:

The fear expressed by the two lawmakers…is that Negroponte, the nation’s overseer of spy agencies, is creating just another blanket of bureaucracy, muffling rather than clarifying the dangers lurking in the world. In an April 6 report, the [HPSCI] warned that Negroponte’s office could end up not as a streamlined coordinator but as "another layer of large, unintended and unnecessary bureaucracy." The committee went so far as to withhold part of Negroponte’s budget request until he convinced members he had a workable plan.

A no-less-scathing critique of the DNI’s performance to date has recently been provided by Richard Posner, a federal appeals court judge, University of Chicago law school professor and author of three books on intelligence issues. In an address earlier this month to the legal staff of the CIA, he noted the parallels between the dysfunctional Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence:

When a bureaucratic layer is added on top of a group of agencies, the result is delay and loss of information from the bottom up, delay and misunderstanding of commands from the top down, turf fights for the attention of the top layer (rival agencies have a single boss for whose favor they fight), demoralization of agencies that have been demoted by the insertion of a new layer of command between them and the President and underspecialization, since the new top echelon can’t be expected to be expert in all the diverse missions of the agencies below.

Such concerns do not exactly come as a surprise. Last December – even as Jane Harman, among others, was insisting that the DNI position had to be created to correct intelligence deficiencies identified after the attacks of September 11, 2001 – this column served notice that:

[The DNI-creating legislation’s] changes to U.S. intelligence will likely make matters worse, not better. It will create more bureaucracy and more "stove-piping," actions that are likely to produce more "groupthink" and less timely and actionable intelligence. These are precisely the things the reformers say they want to avoid and that we can ill-afford during a time of war.

A Question of Competence, Too

If it were predictable that the Directorate of National Intelligence would prove counterproductive, the full magnitude of the damage it has done could not be fully contemplated until Amb. Negroponte started making a number of abysmal personnel decisions in staffing his increasingly bloated organization. These included giving top positions to two individuals whose judgment and conduct had previously been called into serious question: Thomas Fingar, the Deputy DNI for Analysis, and Kenneth Brill, the Director of the DNI’s new Counterproliferation Center .

During his prior assignment as the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, Mr. Fingar participated in the savage attacks on the nomination of John Bolton to become our ambassador to the United Nations. In the process, he displayed not only a poor grasp of the status of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction know-how and technology; he also evinced a partisan hostility to President Bush’s policies.

Worse yet was the performance of Ken Brill as the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In that position, he routinely and insidiously tried to excuse the nuclear aspirations of North Korea and Iran — and interfere with the Bush Administration’s efforts to counter them.

Given this background, is it any wonder that Messrs. Negroponte, Fingar and Brill last week gave us the spectacle of absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons? Remember it took the U.S. less than four years to go from the invention to the use of atomic weapons during World War II. The Iranians have been at it for over fifteen years, with lots of help and technology from knowledgeable Russian, Chinese, Pakistani and North Korean experts.

Other Damage

It must also be asked: If government officials in sensitive positions who actively subvert the President’s policies are given promotions by the Director of National Intelligence, should we be surprised that a partisan CIA officer like Mary McCarthy would feel untroubled leaking highly classified – and operationally and politically damaging – information to the Washington Post?

Mr. Negroponte and his team also created an environment in which one of the Nation’s finest national security professionals, Michelle Van Cleave, felt unable to continue to serve under the DNI as the President’s National Counterintelligence Executive. The Negroponte team does not understand this vital position and is ham-handedly undermining the role we need it to play.

The Bottom Line

As White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten continues his reorganization of the Administration, he could go a long way towards redressing the problems with the Directorate of National Intelligence – problems that have become too manifest to ignore – with a DNI personnel change of his own. He should make this entity’s first anniversary the occasion for replacing the incumbent Director of National Intelligence with someone who truly understands how to fix what ails the U.S intelligence community and wants to help the President accomplish that goal: Michelle Van Cleave.

 

Our man Rumsfeld

Suddenly, a hardy perennial of the Washington political hothouse is once again in full bloom. The usual suspects are clamoring for the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld, a goal some had sought from shortly after he was first chosen to serve as Secretary of Defense by then-President-elect Bush.

Unfortunately, the chorus has lately been joined by a handful of retired senior military officers – affording fresh material to a hostile press corps and political cover to elected officials. To his credit, President Bush has made it clear that he is as unwilling to jettison one of his most capable and faithful Cabinet officers in the face of this tempest as he has been in the face of numerous previous ones.

Stand by Our Man

This is the right call for several important reasons:

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously – and persuasively – argued six decades ago, it is ill-advised to turn over the leadership of a war effort to new and untested leadership in the midst of a conflict. That is particularly true at the moment, when most of those seeking Mr. Rumsfeld’s dismissal are explicitly arguing that it is necessary to signal a new policy direction in Iraq.

President Bush is correct in believing that the last thing the Iraqi people need now is proof that they are about to be abandoned once again by the United States – something the forced departure of one of those most closely associated with the liberation of Iraq will unmistakably signal.

Much of the argument for firing Donald Rumsfeld rests on the contention that he should be held accountable for the present difficulties in Iraq. In fact, it is at least as arguable that the worst of those difficulties have arisen thanks to decisions made elsewhere.

The conviction at the State Department and in various allied capitals that UN approval had to be obtained for action against Saddam Hussein bought the latter (and neighboring states) six-months to prepare the post-invasion insurgency and, it now appears settled, to move Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to Syria with Russian help. But for that delay, it may have been possible to consolidate the liberation of Iraq far more quickly, and the WMD threat grounds for undertaking it would surely have been less disputed.

Had the increasingly unfriendly Turkish government not blocked the 4th Infantry Division from participating as Rumsfeld planned in the invasion by entering Iraq from Turkey, still more troops would have been available in the initial phases of the campaign.

Finally, but for the resistance of some senior military officers, large numbers of expatriate Iraqi forces could have been trained outside the country to accompany the U.S.-led allies, much as General de Gaulle’s troops did in France in 1944. Their participation might have helped to mitigate the insurgents’ rallying cry of opposing foreign invasion and occupation. It may also have been possible to reconstitute a non-Baathist Iraqi army far faster. Interestingly, Don Rumseld was one of those who called for such training and equipping of a Free Iraqi military as early as 1998.

While the desire for a fall-guy when the going gets tough is characteristic of the worst of Washington , the hindsight being applied to castigate Secretary Rumsfeld’s role on Iraq seems remarkably selective.

Many of Secretary Rumsfeld’s critics lack his understanding of the full scope and nature of the conflict. As a result, they remain fixated on one front – Iraq – with seemingly little appreciation either of the dangers extant or looming on other ones (notably, in Iran , Asia , South America , even Europe ), let alone the implications for our security interests and ability to defend them in such places if we cut and run from Iraq . For example, the sober assessment of China ‘s ambitions and activities prepared under Rummy’s direction and finally released last year represents the single best treatment of the subject by an executive branch in decades.

Secretary Rumsfeld has also appreciated the Nation’s most serious deficiency in this larger War for the Free World: our inadequate efforts to wage what he has called the "battle of ideas." Sadly, the responsibility for doing so lies largely outside his department and such efforts as he has tried to undertake in this arena have been repeatedly sabotaged by disloyal public affairs officers and their friends in the press.

Last but hardly least, Donald Rumsfeld has taken seriously the job assigned him by President Bush in 2001: transforming the military so as to ensure that it is capable not only of fighting today’s conflicts but tomorrow’s. The latter may be very different affairs and reengineering institutions like the armed forces to anticipate and be prepared for them is not easy. It is also a source of at least some of the grumbling now being heard from the ranks of the retired flag officers.

The Bottom Line

It bears mentioning that few, if any, of those demanding Secretary Rumsfeld’s removal offer an alternative. Judging whether his departure would actually constitute an improvement is impossible without knowing who would come next and whether he (or she) would bring to the job anything like the vision, energy and wisdom – to say nothing of experience – of the incumbent.

In the final analysis, the country is very fortunate to have had Donald Rumsfeld serving in office during the opening years of this tumultuous War for the Free World. We will be even luckier if he agrees to continue to provide his leadership in the Pentagon for the foreseeable future.

Ehud Olmert’s “Convergence” Plan for the West Bank and U.S. Middle East Policy

Executive Summary

Israel’s incoming Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced his intention to implement what he refers to as “the convergence plan,” which involves an Israeli pullout from some 90-95 percent of the West Bank and from several neighborhoods in Jerusalem by the end of 2007. Mr. Olmert is scheduled to visit Washington in May 2006 to present his plan to the Bush Administration and Congressional leaders in the hope of securing U.S. monetary and policy support for his plan.

Olmert’s convergence plan entails the expulsion of between 50,000-100,000 Israeli civilians from their homes in the West Bank and the destruction of between 50-100 Israeli towns and villages in the area. It further requires the withdrawal of Israeli military forces to garrisoned locations in proximity to Israel’s security barrier which will encompass the remaining 5-10 percent of the West Bank territory located along the 1949 armistice lines that constituted Israel’s national boundaries until 1967.

Olmert maintains that implementation of his plan will enhance Israeli security and regional stability by lessening the daily contact between Israelis and Palestinians and by safeguarding Israel’s demographic durability as a democratic Jewish state. He further maintains that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank will enhance U.S. and Israeli interests by improving Israel’s political posture internationally.

Upon scrutiny, however, it is clear that Olmert’s plan will do none of the above. An Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank will effectively cause the area to be transferred to the control of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. As experience from Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September 2005 has shown, the area will likely become a base for global terrorists allied with Iran and other terror-supporting states.

In fact, terrorists operating in the relinquished areas will be capable of conducting missile attacks against Israel’s major cities, its international airport and other strategic locations in Israel. They will constitute a destabilizing force that could lead to the fall of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Mass expulsions of Israeli civilians will destabilize Israeli society and will manifest a serious blow to the morale and retention levels of the Israeli military’s combat officer corps. Also, an Israeli pullout from the West Bank will likely make it easier for terrorist forces to execute infiltrations of Israel for the purpose of conducting large-scale bombing attacks in Israeli population centers like Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa and mobilizing the Israeli Arab minority in the cause of jihad against the Jewish state.

 

–––––––––––––––

Caroline B. Glick is the Center for Security Policy’s Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16