A picture from the frontpage of the Washington Times this morning of a woman awaiting her caning under Sharia Law in Indonesia. The government there allowed Sharia Law in an agreement to end the 29-year war with Islamists.
I guess this should serve as a warning to the rest of us who think we should be tolerant of other cultures to a point that’s beyond reason.
So a Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel Razzaq al-Nadawi makes the point of threatening that US troops “may return in coffins” in this Breitbart article.
The problem of Iraq is the US presence and the increasing this presence will double the problem,” Nadawi told AFP on Friday.
“This is not the first plan announced by Bush. All plans have failed and this plan will not be any better. We do not welcome this strategy and moreover we do not welcome the US soldiers,” he said.
Nadawi accused Bush of taking decisions about Iraq’s security without consulting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government, who owes his job to the votes of 32 Sadrist deputies.
Pretty brave stuff, but it reminds me of Baghdad Bob’s “There are no Americans in Baghdad” remark and Sadam’s “mother of all battles” speech. Everytime Arabs get backed into a corner or they’re facing anhilation, they put on a brave face and start yapping about how many Americans will die.
I guess these Sadr-ites forget that they were almost irradicated a short couple of years ago and survive only because we got weak-kneed about Iraqi democracy. I think next time, ol’ Butterball-in-black and his fellow hairy fatties will pay the ultimate price.
Â
Financial Times is reporting this morning that the European Commision and the Arab League are criticizing the US for using gunships against Islamists in Somalia;
On Tuesday the Pentagon confirmed that an AC130 aircraft was used to target “the principal al-Qaeda leadership in the regionâ€. The attack marked the first overt US military intervention in the Horn of Africa nation since its doomed invasion in the 1990s.
The strike was criticised by the European Commission, as well as the Arab League which claimed it had killed “many innocent victims†and demanded that Washington refrain from further attacks. There were no accurate casualty figures.
And even though the FT.com story says that we missed our targets in Somalia, Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, in their Inside the Ring column today are reporting;
Defenses sources said Aden Hashi Ayro, who led the Hizbul Shabaab, a violent army of young Islamists within the Somalian Islamic Courts Union, “is thought to have been wounded.” The Islamic Courts Union captured the capital last year, but a combined Ethiopian-Somalian government force routed the Islamists last month and regained Mogadishu.
    The sources said the United States obtained bloody clothes at the scene where five to 10 al Qaeda-linked suspects were killed.
    The sources declined to say how the clothing was obtained, but one source said U.S. commandos were operating in Somalia.
    Ayro is no small fish. He was trained in one of Osama bin Laden’s terror camps in Afghanistan before the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to topple the hard-line Taliban regime. He operated with al Qaeda members in Somalia and was thought to have associated with the three main targets of Monday’s attack: Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani.Â
And the frontpage of the Washington Post announces there are now a small number of US troops in Somalia.
AÂ report in USA Today reports (by way of Captain’s Quarters) that Somalian warlords have decided to join the transitional government there;
The warlords and the government have agreed to collaborate for the restoration of peace in Somalia,” said government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari.
This proves two things I’ve been saying for years; the only thing people in that region understand is overwhelming force and it’s better for neighbors to handle miscreants in their particular regions than for the US to act like a global policeman.
That piddling US mission to Somalia in the 90s was meant to be a meals-on-wheels mission, not an armed force to rebuild a failing society. Our forces operated out of tiny fortresses while the enemy ranged the country-side (like our wild west days). The Clinton Administration thought they could frighten Aidid into succumbing to our desires by conducting pin-prick operations which scared no one and tempting him with carrots.
Ethiopia applied overwhelming force and drove the Islamists out of the country. It’s the same type of neighborhood policing that should have been taking place in the Middle East and with North Korea for the last few decades and we could have avoided the new arms race among those miscreants in Iran and North Korea.
But because Old Europe and the Old Arabs can’t see past the nose on their collective face, they’ll be left behind and they’ll grow more irrelevant on the world stage.
The following story from the WaPo about US troops raiding the Iranian embassy in Iraq;
U.S. troops raided an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq late Wednesday night and detained several people, Iran’s main news agency reported today, prompting protests from Tehran just hours after President Bush pledged to crack down on the Islamic Republic’s role in Iraqi violence.
Iran released news of the raid through its Islamic Republic News Agency in a dispatch that was broadly critical of Bush’s plan to deploy about 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
The IRNA report said that U.S. forces entered the Iranian consulate in Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdish-dominated north, and seized computers, documents and other items. The report said five staff members were taken into custody.
The Iranian foreign ministry appealed to the Iraqi government to obtain the release of its personnel.
What’s wrong Iran? Don’t like your embassies seized and your diplomats imprisoned?
Neither do we.
I’m reading reports of our actions in Somalia and bouncing in my chair with joy;
A U.S. air strike hit targets in southern Somalia where Islamic militants were believed to be sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies, Somali officials and witnesses said Tuesday. Many people were reported killed.
Monday’s attack was the first overt military action by the U.S. in Somalia since the 1990s and the legacy of a botched intervention — known as “Black Hawk Down” — that left 18 U.S. servicemen dead.
Helicopter gunships launched new attacks Tuesday near the scene of the U.S. air strike, although it was not clear if they were American or Ethiopian aircraft, and it was not known if there were any casualties.
But I suspect that Democrats (otherwise known as the usual suspects) will soon be comparing our actions in Somalia with Nixon’s “illegal war” in Cambodia and the attempt of that administration to widen the war in Southeast Asia in order to more effectively kill more of the enemy.
Flopping Aces is considering the attack a tribute to those 18 warriors killed in October 1993. I just think it’s tactical brilliance; get the little creatures all crammed up in a small space and drop a coupla thousands rounds of 20mm lead on their asses. They’ve terrorized and held hostage their own people long enough.
Some of the estimates I’ve seen this morning are 400 dead and I figure that’s a good start. Although I have a personal stake in massive payback, moreso, I’d love for the Somalian people to get some respite from their bloody past.
I’ve also noticed that the AP wire story that everyone seems to be using on the internet, although it mentions the “Blackhawk Down” incident, but none of the backstory like they normally would of a similar incident with a Republican administration. They don’t even pin the the year down, let alone under which President and the make-up of Congress at the time.
They don’t mention that the generals asked for US Bradleys in Somalia and got nothing but excuses from Clinton and Les Aspen, the Secretary of Defense. You’d think they’d want to point out the failures of politicians to support the troops they sent into combat, wouldn’t you?
Update 1-10-07: Captain’s Quarters and Powerline are reporting that the air attack was successful. AP reports we’re into our third day of bombing the Islamist rebels.
The Washington Time’s Rowan Scarborough reports this is not the first use of the US military against Islamist targets in Somalia;
Senior defense sources say the AC-130 was not the first action in and around Somalia since the September 11, 2001, attacks and the subsequent placement of a U.S. military task force in Djibouti a few miles from the Somalia border. The sources said the task force has periodically launched special operations missions against militants, but they declined to give specifics of where and when.
Little Green Footballs reports the outrage from the Arab League in Egypt.
Jacob Laskin writes in FrontPage Magazine;
Encouragingly, the U.S. military is more than equal to the task. As documented by the journalist Robert Kaplan, lost amid the constant barrage of bad news from Iraq is that the U.S. military remains on unwearied offensive against al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. In Africa especially the military has hunted down the terrorist group and trained local forces to carry on the fight. It has done all this, moreover, with little fanfare and even less recognition.
President Ford is keeping me busy today, but I’ll drop off part of this article from the Wall Street Journal;
In September 2004, just days after Chechen rebels raided a school in Beslan, Russia, killing 331 men, women and children, the Los Angeles Police Department summoned senior officers to its decaying downtown headquarters. The issue on the table: What would they do if a similar attack took place here?
Most of the talk that morning was about where to deploy SWAT teams if terrorists ever took over a local school. Detective Mark Severino, one of the city’s counterterrorist investigators, then asked his colleagues: “Do we even have Chechen extremists in Los Angeles?” Blank stares and silence filled the room. His boss at the time, Deputy Chief John Miller, told him to go find out.
Within weeks, Detective Severino, working with a team of LAPD intelligence analysts, tapped Russian underworld informants, and uncovered an international car-theft ring that wound its way from the streets of Los Angeles to the Chechens’ doorstep in the Republic of Georgia. The California racket was disguised as a charity group sending aid to the region. Based on other information, Detective Severino suspected that the operation was more than just a fraud scheme. His theory: The proceeds from stolen cars might somehow be financing Chechen terrorist operations around the world.
On Feb. 15, 2006, the LAPD busted eight people for fraud in connection with the alleged scam and issued arrest warrants for 11 others. Chechen terrorist financing was never mentioned in the indictments or in the press release that trumpeted the takedown of the operation. There were no news conferences claiming victory in the war on terror. Yet Russian police, U.S. intelligence and State Department officials familiar with the case today all say that they believe the LAPD’s breakup of the ring was a setback to international terrorists.
Los Angeles police say that since 9/11 they have arrested nearly 200 people, both American citizens and foreign nationals, with suspected ties to terrorist organizations. These included a group of North Africans that LAPD and federal officials are convinced were part of an al Qaeda support cell living in Los Angeles. The charges against them have ranged from marriage fraud to identity theft to illegal weapons possession.
Each arrest was the result of a conventional criminal investigation using California state law with no need for warrantless phone taps or secret court orders. None of the cases ever mentioned terrorism at all. Trials are still pending in many cases but there have been dozens of guilty pleas. In some cases, suspected foreign terrorists arrested on fraud charges have been scooped up by federal agents and deported on separate federal immigration charges before their criminal trials got under way.
Hats off to them.
Looking at two stories today, one from James T. Hackett and published in the Washington Times, the other by way of Captain’s Quarters in the Gulf in the Media describe the economic morass in North Korea and Iran, respectively.
According to Hackett, North Korea is having problems internally because Il can’t pay off his military and political leaders;
Stories out of North Korea may explain the government’s belligerence. South Korean intelligence sources claim to have the text of remarks Kim Jong-il made to government and military leaders shortly after the July missile launch. Mr. Kim reportedly said he decided to launch the missiles because of the “serious situation within North Korea.”
    The serious situation is the threat to his regime caused by unrest resulting from economic difficulties and food shortages. A South Korean aid official told the press the fuel shortage in the North is worse than he has ever seen it, and power outages are more frequent than at any time in the last 10 years. South Korean intelligence reportedly claims the unrest has spread to the party, government, and military elites who keep Chairman Kim in power.
While in Iran, according to the Agence France-Presse story;
Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh has lamented that the development of Iran’s oil industry was suffering from US pressure.
“Iran has been under different sanctions for years and many companies have not been able to cooperate with our country for fear of US pressures,” Vaziri Hamaneh said, according to the semi-official news agency Fars on Tuesday.
“They even do not easily deliver some dual-purpose equipment that we had previously bought. They cause trouble for us under different pretexts,” he said.
“Foreign banks have been refusing to cooperate in the field of investment and financing,” he said, adding that in response Iran has put its focus on domestic sources to replace foreign companies.
So, in a manner reminiscent on a smaller scale to what the West did to the Soviet Union, we appear to be breaking them. But, we don’t have the benefit of an Iranian or Korean Gorbachov who will react predictably and rationally to their collapse. Instead, we have two whackjobs who might try to retain their power by lashing out at their nearest perceived enemy (much like how Tom Clancy predicted the Soviet Union would react in Red Storm Rising) to try to unite their populace behind them. And with oil-rich Chavez in Venezuela on their side, it may trigger a real oil war.
I’m reminded of the collective ignorance of the media today by reading this stupid AP article; U.S. Deaths in Iraq Exceed 9-11 Count. I’ve seen others blog about it, like Little Green Footballs who calls it a “grim milestone watch”, but I think it’s a total misrepresentation of the entire war against terror.
The Left claims that they understand why we went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban supported those who attacked us, supposedly. So we were right to unseat the Taliban – we could’ve stopped there, they say. Yup, we could, if the war was about revenge.
Since the war in Iraq has cost more American lives than were lost in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the war is a failure; if the war was about revenge. We could focus our military assets in Iraq on finding bin Laden in Afghanistan instead; if the war is about revenge.
This war is about our national security, not revenge. Petty, small-minded people plan out acts of revenge – petty, small minded people like the people we’re battling in the Middle East. Petty, small-minded people who’ve been attacking us for more than a decade.
When we were attacked countless times in the 90s, we did nothing. That brought about the attack on September 11th. September 11th isn’t an event that survives all by itself in history. It doesn’t mark a single unprovoked strike against the United States, rather it’s the highwater mark of a series of unanswered attacks.
Only empty-headed journalistists and equally-empty-headed populist political candidates try to turn this into a war of empty platitudes, into 30-second sound bites about eye-for-an-eye, useless acts of revenge. It’s about the survival of Western Civilization. If this war against terror is indeed about revenge, we’ve already lost it – we’ll have become Stone Age warriors like our enemy.