Hamas’ War on Israel is a Societal Suicide Bombing

This weekend, Hamas launched an all-out assault on Israel, hitting the country with rockets, drones, and commando strikes. The death toll on the Israeli side is already approaching four digits and when the fog of war lifts that death toll is likely to increase. Hamas terrorists murdered Israelis indiscriminately, turning a music festival into a killing ground.

The Israelis have responded with their own assault on Gaza, which includes shutting off the power to the Gaza Strip. The loss of civilian lives among the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza is likely to devastating as well. Hamas is engaging of its usual tactics of placing military assets in protected locations like mosques and hospitals, daring the Israelis to attack.

This war represents a massive intelligence failure for the Israelis. The IDF thought that they had contained Hamas, and up to 19,000 Palestinians were commuting from Gaza to Israel to work. Former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk has a detailed analysis of what happened and why in Foreign Affairs that provides some much needed context. Indyk’s thoughts on why Hamas decided to strike are important here:

The Arab world is coming to terms with Israel. Saudi Arabia is talking about normalizing relations with Israel. As part of that potential deal, the United States is pressing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority—Hamas’s enemy. So this was an opportunity for Hamas and its Iranian backers to disrupt the whole process, which I think in retrospect was deeply threatening to both of them. I don’t think that Hamas follows dictation from Iran, but I do think they act in coordination, and they had a common interest in disrupting the progress that was underway and that was gaining a lot of support among Arab populations. The idea was to embarrass those Arab leaders who have made peace with Israel, or who might do so, and to prove that Hamas and Iran are the ones who are able to inflict military defeat on Israel.

The reality is that the Palestinians have long been used as pawns for a proxy war against Israel. But the Middle East is changing—the Iranians have become the primary adversary for Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE. And Israel is a buffer against the Iranians. This attack is likely directed by the Iranians to try to drive a wedge between Israel and the Sunni states. Whether or not that works depends both on how indiscriminate Israel’s actions become and how the rest of the Middle East reacts. But ultimately the economic, security, and political interests of countries like Saudi Arabia remain better aligned with rich and industrial Israel than the Palestinians that have been treated alternately like pariahs and useful tools since Israel’s founding. Iran is threatened by an Israel-Saudi alliance, and this attack may have been directed in large part by Tehran.

This war will not leave either Israel or Hamas in a better position. The Israelis have already declared open war on Hamas, and Israel has the military might to level the Gaza Strip several times over. Israel does not particularly want to re-occupy the Strip and try to govern over a population nearly a third of its own while facing Hizb’allah in the north and the restive West Bank in the east. No matter what happens, Hamas has forced a complex humanitarian catastrophe on its own people that will take years to resolve, and may leave Gaza permanently poorer. Israel has already taken heavy losses and has shown that its intelligence into Gaza was deeply flawed. The Israeli government has said that this will be a long and difficult war, and that prediction is quite likely to be accurate.

It is quite possible that the already unpopular Netanyahu government falls after all is said and done. Netanyahu’s appeal was primarily predicated on his ability to keep Israel safe from terrorism. It is now beyond question that the Netanyahu government and the IDF failed that mission, and failed dramatically. While Israel will likely not move towards elections during wartime, Netanyahu’s days are numbered now.

This war is a tragedy for the region. It is a tragedy for the innocent civilians in Gaza that were placed into harms way be the terrorists of Hamas. It is a tragedy for the State of Israel that has lost hundreds if not thousands of lives and has been shaken to the core. It is a tragedy for the Middle East that was for the first time in decades trending more towards peace. It is a tragedy for the world that the free world now faces another conflict in an era of relative peace.

Hamas bears the blame for this. Hamas has turned the entire Gaza Strip into a suicide bomb, using it to strike at Israel no matter what the costs to the people of Gaza. Hamas must be destroyed if there is to be peace, but the costs to both Israel and Gaza will sadly be severe.

Defeating Daesh: We’ve Done It Before And We Can Do It Again

The problem of Daesh (or ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State, etc.) seems to be an impossible one for the Obama Administration to solve. The group that President Obama one idiotically referred to as the “jayvee team” now controls a massive land area in Iraq and Syria. They’ve attacked Paris, attacked America, and will do so again. Yet the Obama Administration and the rest of the world seems powerless to do anything to stop them.

However, we already defeated the Daesh once, eight years ago. We kicked them out of their positions in the western Anbar Province of Iraq, prevented them from holding territory, and killed their leader.

Al-Qaeda In Iraq: The Forerunner of Daesh

Daesh (and I use this term because the bloodthirsty bastards hate anyone who calls them that) sprang out of the infamous al-Qaeda militant Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. Those who read this blog years ago will remember that name well. al-Zarqawi was a Jordanian-born militant and two-bit thug who ended up at an al-Qaeda training camp before the September 11 attacks. After September 11, al-Zarqawi fled Afghanistan after US troops injured him during the American assault of Tora Bora. From there, he fled to Iraq.

Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, knew that al-Zarqawi was in Iraq. American intelligence believed that al-Zarqawi received medical care in Baghdad in the spring of 2002 as a “guest” of the Hussein regime. During this time, intelligence differs as to where al-Zarqawi was: the US believed that he was in Iraq or Iran, and Arab intelligence believed he was in northern Syria, and what is now the Daesh heartland.

al-Zarqawi’s first attack against America came when he engineered the murder of USAID administrator Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan in 2002. This would be the first attack of many.

After the coalition invasion of Iraq in spring 2003, al-Zarqawi was definitely in Iraq, coordinating attacks against US troops and swearing fealty to al-Qaeda. However, even among terrorists, al-Zarqawi had a reputation for brutality. al-Zarqawi ended up killing more Muslims than anyone else, especially Shi’a. al-Zarqawi viewed Iraq’s majority Shi’ite population as apostates, and murdered them indiscriminately. This caused commotion within the senior leadership of al-Qaeda, so much so that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, wrote al-Zarqawi in 2005 and told him that his methods were so brutal that he was alienating fellow Muslims.

During the 2005–2006 period, al-Zarqawi’s group was alternately known as “Monotheism and Jihad” or more commonly as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” (AQI). AQI consisted of foreign fighters from across the Sunni world, many of whom came to Iraq from Syria. AQI was also led by former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. These former regime leaders were Sunnis who realized that Iraqi Shi’ites would gladly see them dead for years of repression under the Ba’athist regime.

In this time, AQI seized large amouns of territory in western Iraq, specifically the majority-Sunni al-Anbar Province. Cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi fell to AQI militants, only to be retaken by US forces. During this time, the brutality of AQI alienated the local population. By October 2006, AQI announced the formation of the “Islamic State of Iraq,” led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and another militant named Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

How Iraqis and Americans Defeated the First “Islamic State”

In January 2007, just months after AQI became the Islamic State, President Bush announced the “surge” in Iraq. Not only would more US troops be arriving in the restive country, but the rules of engagement would be changing. Instead of US troops only leaving their bases to respond to active battles, US troops would be working closely with the leaders of individual towns and villages to provide security, help repair infrastructure, and build relations between US forces and the people.

The Middle East Quarterly has an excellent article on how the “surge” worked with the native Iraqi “Anbar Awakening” to defeat the first Islamic State:

Within a year of its advent, the Awakening movement had dramatically changed the security situation in Anbar with monthly attacks dropping from some 1,350 in October 2006 to just over 200 in August 2007. By now, the movement had been established on a national basis as the coalition sought to replicate its success in other parts of Iraq. It played a particularly prominent role in improving the security situation in Baghdad as part of the troop surge, helping to slash murders by 90 percent and attacks on civilians by 80 percent, as well as destroying numerous insurgent networks. Its contribution in other provinces was no less substantial: By the end of the year, al-Qaeda leaders admitted that their forces throughout Iraq had been decimated by over 70 percent, from 12,000 to 3,500.

No less importantly, the Sahwa eventually became a tool for promoting sectarian reconciliation and weaning fighters away from sectarian militias.

This strategy worked. A combination of US airstrikes, raids, and Sunni tribes banding together to push the radicals out led to the downfall of the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq.” By 2008, Iraq was relatively stable. While there were still terrorist attacks, they were rarer and less destructive. The Iraqi Government was forced to treat Sunnis more equitably in order to keep the hard-won peace.

A US airstrike killed Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi in the summer of 2006, just before the Islamic State began. al-Zarqawi’s death, however, did not end the cycle of zealotry and brutality he commenced.

The secret to this victory was not only American “boots on the ground” but it involved using those boots effectively. Gen. David Petraeus spearheaded those strategies when he helped reduce violence in the Iraqi town of Tal Afar. Gen. Petreaus and his troops worked closely with local leaders, engaged in regular community patrols, and empowered local leaders to help fight terrorism.

What brought Iraq’s Sunnis into the hands of AQI and the first Islamic State was simple: fear. In Iraq, Sunnis are a 20% minority in the country. The Shi’ite majority was actively engaging in purges of Sunni neighborhoods in and around Baghdad. Iranian-backed radical Moqtada al-Sadr was whipping up a frenzy, pretending that killing Sunnis was necessary to stop the spread of al-Qaeda. While US troops were going after al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, they were also attacking Sunnis in order to fight al-Qaeda. Iraq’s Sunnis embraced al-Zarqawi in the hopes that he would drive away both the Mahdi Army and the Americans.

The brutality of the first Islamic State also helped create its downfall. Instead of bringing peace and prosperity, AQI put Iraq’s Sunni tribes into a Taliban-style hellhole where offenses such as smoking led to vicious punishments. AQI and al-Baghdadi’s thugs viciously attacked those perceived as insufficiently pious to their radical Islamic vision.

The “surge” ended with the defeat of the first Islamic State. It lost its territory, its leadership was scattered, and its appeal was greatly weakened. Had the story ended there, there would not be any Daesh today.

Obama Loses Iraq

The election of Barack Obama changed the equation dramatically. While US troops were scheduled to leave under a “status of forces agreement” (SOFA), that departure was conditional on Iraq remaining secure and the central government in Baghdad continuing to negotiate in good faith with Iraq’s Sunni population. But President Obama had every intention of leaving Iraq on a timeline, irrespective of the security situation. By the time Obama announced the end of US troops in Iraq, violence in Iraq seemed well-contained. Leaving did not seem, at least to Obam’s national security team, like a terrible idea.

In 2010, a US-led raid near Tikrit (Saddam Hussein’s home town) led to the death of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. The first Islamic State was left temporarily leaderless, without territory, and with most of their leadership dead or in custody.

In December 2011, the last contingent of US troops left Iraq.

Leaving without establishing either a political solution or having a US peacekeeping force in the region was a terrible idea. Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki was not interested in political reconciliation with Iraq’s minority populations. Instead, he continued to marginalize Iraq’s Sunni population from the political process and short-change Iraq’s Sunni provinces on oil revenues that could be used to make life better for Iraq’s Sunnis. Without the stabilizing influence of US forces and active US diplomacy, the situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, the Arab Spring threw the rest of the Arab World into turmoil. The Arab Spring changed the face of the Arab and Muslim world—inspired in large part by the fact that Iraq was a nascent democratic state. Long-standing regimes in Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia were overturned. Reactionary forces, both nationalist (Syria, Egypt) and Islamist (Iran, Libya) tried to prevent a wave of democratization from sweeping them away. When the US and other nations eliminated the Libyan regime of Mohammar al-Qaddafi, Islamist forces quickly took root there.

This wave of democratization had not changed much in Syria, at least at first. During the Iraq War, the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad had allowed the free flow of weapons and fighters across the Syrian border and into Iraq. This created a powder keg in Syria, just waiting for the right spark to set it off. As the Iraqis pushed out the first Islamic State, many of those fighters ended up going back across the border into Syria. This included key members of the former Hussein regime.

Bashar Assad had reasons to want at least some al-Qaeda or Islamic State presence in Syria. That way, he could argue that his regime was all that stood between stability and turmoil. That argument would be the main argument for the regime in the civil war to come.

In 2011, a young Syrian spray painted anti-Assad graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Deraa, near the Jordianian border, just under 60 miles from Damascus. Syrian regime security forces arrested and severely the young man. In response, the boy’s family burned down the headquarters of the ruling Ba’ath Party and attacked security forces. The Syrian Civil War had begun.

Through 2011 and 2012, the security situation in Syria diminished immensely. As Assad’s fighters (backed by Russia, Iran, and Iraq) brutalized the opposition, they turned a blind eye towards Islamist radicals making their home along the Syria-Iraq border. Again, Assad hoped that by being the lesser of two evils, the Syrian people would choose him over the Islamists.

That strategy failed. Instead, the same radicals that had taken over al-Anbar Province in Iraq years before found a perfect base of operations in northern Syria. They took advantage of the chaos to establish a new capital in Raqaa, Syria. From there, the newly formed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, or in Arabic, Daesh) spread like a cancer. It was only by a combination of US airstrikes and Kurdish peshmerga forces that Daesh has recently been rolled back.

What The Defeat of the First Islamic State Teaches Us About Defeating Daesh Today

The defeat of the first “Islamic State” in Iraq should teach us key lessons about what to do today. First, and most obviously, it should teach us that Daesh can be defeated. The same fighters, the same leadership, the same techniques that Daesh uses today were used by the first Islamic State. Yet that first Islamic state lasted only a few years and never managed to hold much territory. Indeed, the First Islamic state was declared in October 2006 and by 2008 was virtually destroyed.

The second lesson is that Daesh cannot be destroyed from the air. Air strikes can degrade Daesh’s leadership, but that cannot destroy a terrorist network that can move easily through the civilian population. The first Islamic State was destroyed because the US was smart enough not only to commit troops, but to use them wisely.

Finally, it was not a matter of US troops staying in remote forward-operating bases and only coming out to fight. Instead, the “surge” followed Gen. Petraeus’ successes in having US troops regularly interact with and gain the confidence of local leaders. When the US kicked out the first Islamic State, US troops followed with resources that helped rebuild those downs that AQI had destroyed or terrorized. Not only did that help keep AQI from coming back, but it allowed us to get valuable intelligence that can only come from listening to people in the community. No satellite system, drone, or spy system can replace having people on the ground and having tea with the local sheik who knows everyone in the area.

The problem today is that those techniques could have stopped Daesh in its tracks in 2013, before they’d gained much territory. It will be a much tougher job today. For one, the Russian presence in Syria means that US-backed forces could be at risk of Russian airstrikes. In order to engage in ground operations in Syria, we would need to have a no-fly zone or at least a coordinated security response with the Russians. That may be difficult at best and perhaps impossible.

The reality is that Daesh is a cancer in the region. If we do not stop Daesh and eliminate it, it will spread once again. That is going to require a protracted US presence in the region for a long time: something like the 30,000 troops in Korea we have had for over 50 years now. But the alternative is worse: already Daesh have launched attacks in the West. They will do so again, and even if those attacks are just more shootings, the effects on the US and our allies would be severe. Worse, Daesh is undoubtedly looking to procure weapons of mass destruction—biological, chemical, or even a radiological “dirty bomb.” While the idea of Daesh getting their hands on a working nuclear weapon seems remote at best, it cannot be fully discounted. If that happens, the effects on the world economy would be a nightmare.

We can defeat Daesh. We have done it before. But it will take a commitment to get the job done, and an understanding that it is a long-term commitment of troops and resources. But it is worthwhile to prevent both a wider war in the Middle East and terrorist attacks here at home.

We learned many hard lessons during the Iraq War, at a cost of too many American sons and daughters. The fact that our political leadership has not digested those lessons less than a decade later should be troubling to every American. But while those who fail to learn from history may be doomed, those who apply history’s lessons can change the course of history for the better.

Obama’s Damascus Debacle

President Obama once again has stepped firmly into a disaster largely of his own making, as he now threatens Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with military action. History is not without its sense of irony: here we have the same group of Democrats who campaigned against President Bush’s “war of choice” based on a Ba’athist dictator possessing weapons of mass destruction now advocating the very same thing. To see John Kerry forced to confront a skeptical Congress and convince them to go to war in the Middle East is like peering into Bizarro World.

President Obama is right on one thing, if only in theory. The use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians should be a categorical red line. Anyone government or non-governmental entity that launches an attack with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons should be blown off the face of the earth, no questions asked. In a perfect world, the international community would swiftly and surely punish such violations of basic international norms.

Of course, we don’t live in anything resembling a perfect world.

Obama may feel free to argue that the use of chemical weapons is a worldwide “red line” that demands immediate action, but saying it does not make in so. Until the Chinese and the Russians feel the same way, all of these high-minded proclamations of global resolve are for naught.

President Obama discusses Syria in the Oval Office.

Instead, President Obama is demonstrating his naïveté on foreign policy matters. We do not live in an age of international harmony in which the saintly United Nations will come to the aid of the suffering Syrian people. We live in a world based on realpolitik. Vladimir Putin is perfectly fine with Assad gassing Syrians by the thousands. What he cares about is expanding Russian power in the region and the globe.

Even though I’m still a believer in enforcing international norms through the judicious use of military force—exactly the sort of person that the President could convince—the problem is that we are entering into yet another Middle Eastern conflict with no clear idea of just what we are hoping to achieve. Are we trying to punish Assad for the use of chemical weapons? Exactly what is the point if the punishment will be no more than a token strike with drones or cruise missiles? That will not be an effective deterrent, and sends the message that the use of WMDs will lead to a piddling and ineffectual response.

The President has made it clear that the goal is not “regime change” or killing Assad. But that is precisely what the goal should be. If we want to effectively punish the use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians, we have to make the price unacceptably high. That means that the use of WMDs should be met with immediate, clear, and undeniable action. In short: if you want to use WMDs on civilians, the United States and its allies will hunt you down and kill you, destroy your military, and end your rule. Anything less gives tyrants like Assad the leeway to gas civilians and hope to survive the consequences.

Making this all even more complicated is that many of the Syrian rebels are tied to al-Qaeda and other Salafi groups. Even if Assad were deposed, Syria will likely end up embroiled in yet another bloody civil war in which the most likely winner will be radical Islamists. Our options are, to put it mildly, not good.

In the end, we are planning on going into Syria to try to “preserve credibility” by a series of ineffectual strikes, sending the message that if you use WMDs the United States will levy a small measure of its military might against you. Maybe. If we decide to bother.

Obviously, the Iranians are quaking in their boots.

If that were not enough, the situation is even worse. Great Britain, America’s staunchest ally in international affairs is out of the running. The French were the only coalition partners that we had going into Syria. (As an aside, this is because of France’s long interest in Syria, which was once a French protectorate.) But now, Obama’s sudden (but legally required) decision to consult Congress has left French President François Hollande in the lurch, and forcing him to go to the National Assembly in the hopes of getting permission to act against Assad. Contrast that to Iraq, where President Bush had nearly 40 coalition partners at the outbreak of the war—including the British. On Syria, the United States runs the risk of standing unnecessarily alone.

But this is a problem largely of President Obama’s own making. Despite his claim that “I didn’t set the red line,” the President’s very own words make it clear that he did set a red line with Syria. That in itself is respectable: the use of weapons of mass destruction rightly should be a red line for the United States. The problem is that Obama’s statement was made to look tough without being tough. What Obama should have done was to back up that statement with force: getting Congressional approval for a limited response targeting Assad and his military personally if there was a confirmed use of WMD.

Democratic partisans will argue that Obama would never have received the approval of the Republican House. Maybe so, maybe not. (I would guess that Obama could have squeaked it by.) But Obama is the one who decided not to even try to consult Congress until the last minute. Had this debate happened a year ago, the United States could have backed up its words with action now when it counts. But the President is openly and clearly contemptuous of working with Congress, abdicating the true source of his Presidential bully pulpit when it is needed the most.

Now, the United States faces an unnecessary crisis. Even if the President gets his approval to strike Syria, it will be too little, too late. The lesson being taught here is that the use of WMD against civilians will be tacitly tolerated, and that the United States is not to be feared, at least not under this Administration. And even if we do act in Syria, we will be acting in aid of a group of rebels closely associated with al-Qaeda who promise more bloodshed to the already ravaged Syrian people.

This is a situation that should never have been allowed to develop in the first place, but this Administration has abdicated leadership on the world stage. We have sent a message of weakness rather than resolve, and the world has taken notice. Our traditional allies are no longer with us, and we face a conflict with no clear goals, no clear resolution, and no real purpose.

While the President is right that the use of WMD is a categorical red line that should never be crossed, he lacks the political and international power to back up that statement. Even if we attack Syria, which is not a foregone conclusion, it will not achieve much. President Obama may think that it’s the credibility of Congress or the world that’s on the line, but the reality is that it was his credibility that was on the line, and he failed. Sadly, the consequences to America, Syria, and the world are likely to be severe.

The Ghosts Of September 11

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade now since the World Trade Center fell. Time moves ever forward, and what was once a great psychic scar upon our nation has become just another part of history that the children born on that day now learn in school.

The World Trade Center attacked

But the inhuman events of September 11, 2001 should, must, never be forgotten. The ghosts of September 11 still haunt us today, and while we are fortunate that we haven’t been hit like that again, the world we live in no is in some ways more dangerous than the one that existed on September 10, 2011.

Even though Osama bin Laden is burning in the deepest pits of Hell, and al-Qaeda no longer exists as it did, the same factors that drove the terrorism of September 11 are still out there. Across the Arab and Muslim world, preachers of hate still find receptive audiences. The Muslim Brotherhood, the entity that was instrumental in informing al-Qaeda, is more powerful then ever. The same group that brought us Ayman al-Zamahiri and Mohammad Atta now runs all of Egypt. And rapidly, the Middle East is falling into tyranny rather than freedom. From Tunis to Tehran, radical Islamist groups are gaining new ground, taking over entire countries, and spreading their ideals across the world.

If there is one consolation to this, it is that when these groups try to lead, they fail. The beliefs of radical Islamism are anti-human. They cannot stand in the real world, and the only way they can survive is through nothing more than naked force. As it happened in Iraq, it may happen elsewhere: the people see what livinig under a violent theocracy is like, and they reject it. But that may be too hopeful.

We owe it to the victims of the September 11 attacks not to forget not only what happened on that terrible day, but to make sure than such atrocity never happens again. We are failing. A new iron curtain falls from North Africa to Central Asia, an iron curtain of radicalism and hatred. The roots of the next September 11 are growing silently right now.

As we remember the dead, let us honor them by not only carrying their names and their lives in our hearts, but by committing ourselves to a better world. On that terrible day eleven years ago, we showed the world that the forces of radicalism were nothing compared to the forces of democracy and freedom. They showed us the worst that humanity was capable of. We showed them the best. They murdered innocents in cold blood. We sent heroes into burning buildings to save as many lives as they could.

We would like to think that freedom will always conquer fear, that democracy will always conquer savagery, that peace will always beat out violence. Those are comfortable illusions for us, but they are only that. The ghosts of September 11 compel us to remember that the world is what we make of it, and that we must carry on in defense of the values that make us who we are.

The ghosts of September 11, 2001 whisper to us today. We should stop and listen.

Can The Iraqis Hold It Together?

Rare is the day that I find that Thomas Friedman has written something actually worth reading, but he manages to deliver an even-handed and even insightful look into the end of the war in Iraq. Of course, he cannot resist putting in a few digs at President Bush, but overall his message is true: the future of Iraq will be decided by whether the Iraqi people can pull their country together.

Friedman writes:

Iraq had its strategic benefits: the removal of a genocidal dictator; the defeat of Al Qaeda there, which diminished its capacity to attack us; the intimidation of Libya, which prompted its dictator to surrender his nuclear program (and helped expose the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear network); the birth in Kurdistan of an island of civility and free markets and the birth in Iraq of a diverse free press. But Iraq will only be transformational if it truly becomes a model where Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the secular and religious, Muslims and non-Muslims, can live together and share power.

As you can see in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, this is the issue that will determine the fate of all the Arab awakenings. Can the Arab world develop pluralistic, consensual politics, with regular rotations in power, where people can live as citizens and not feel that their tribe, sect or party has to rule or die? This will not happen overnight in Iraq, but if it happens over time it would be transformational, because it is the necessary condition for democracy to take root in that region. Without it, the Arab world will be a dangerous boiling pot for a long, long time.

Friedman thinks that Iraq was a war where the U.S. and Iraq both paid too high a price, but he’s right in pointing out that the war had its benefits. Without the invasion of Iraq, we would not have seen the wave of revolutions across the Arab world that we’re seeing now. The visions of Iraqis going to the polls and choosing their own leaders left an indelible mark on the region. From Tunis to Tehran others in the Arab and Muslim world saw Iraq hold peaceful elections and wondered “why can’t I do this?” It took years to come to fruition, and it is far too early to see whether the Arab Spring will lead to a victory for Islamists or a real democratic movement (or some combination of both). But in the end, one thing was right: the invasion of Iraq marked a turning point.

That’s where the critics of the war in Iraq kept getting it wrong: they assumed that the U.S. and its allies went to war for one reason and one reason only: weapons of mass destruction. But wars are never that simple: and while WMDs were chosen as the primary causus belli for the war, that wasn’t the only one. The war in Iraq was intended to be a transformational moment for the region. It was, but it happened on a far longer timetable than the planners of the war perhaps thought.

I also take issue with the idea that the war was waged “incompetently.” The fact is that we took out Saddam Hussein in a matter of days. Yes, we made plenty of mistakes in the post-war period. But that’s not because the U.S. was incompetent. It’s because the U.S. has not done anything like what it had to do in Iraq before in its history. The U.S. had never engaged in nation building on a scale like it had in Iraq. The analogies to the Marshall Plan ignore the fact that while Europe was devastated by World War II, it has had a tradition of democracy and civil society that has barely existed in Iraq. Of course we were going to screw things up: the most important thing was that we adapted to the situation as it happened. Sadly, the Bush Administration was slower to adapt than it should have, but the fact was that Bush’s embrace of the “surge” (against the political conventional wisdom) was the right choice, which even Friedman now admits.

If we had done what John Kerry would have had us do: abandon Iraq early and leave it to al-Qaeda and Iran, who knows what the Middle East would look like today. Iraq would have been ripped apart by a combination of al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias.

The planners of the surge were right in separating Iraq’s Sunnis from al-Qaeda. Once al-Qaeda in Iraq was destroyed by the joint U.S.-Iraqi forces, Iraq’s Shi’ites no longer felt the need to rally around groups like Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Instead of trying to force a “political solution” without changing the reality on the ground, President Bush and the U.S. military set the groundwork for a political solution to happen on its own: something that could have only happened once al-Qaeda was defeated.

Now it’s ultimately up to the Iraqis to decide their own fate. The U.S. has left Iraq, and while leaving so completely without at least establishing basing rights in Iraq was an utter failure of the Obama Administration, the mission in Iraq was going to have to transition to Iraqi control at some point. We could not provide a security umbrella in Iraq—otherwise the Iraqis would have had no incentive to develop their own security umbrella.

But there is still a problem: President Obama got his wish. We’re out of Iraq now. And now President Obama will basically ignore Iraq—not that any of the Republican candidates care to engage there either. But right now, as Friedman notes, Iraq is in a state of transition that could either lead to a chance at a lasting democracy or a renewed civil war, At the very least we should be active in getting both sides to negotiate rather than start to rearm sectarian militias.

Right now, Iraq’s future is in grave trouble: the Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused Iraq’s Sunni Vice President of being involved in terrorism and is threatening to upset the delicate political balance that has kept the peace in Iraq. The arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi threatens to split off the Sunni Iraqiya bloc, and since al-Hasmemi fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, it may lead to tension with the Kurds as well. If that happens, then Iraq could all too easily fall into civil war once again.

If President Bush were President, there would be extensive shuttle diplomacy going on to cool these tensions: but President Obama seems blithely uninterested in the long-term peace in Iraq. That mistake threatens to undo everything that more than 4,000 brave Americans fought and died to achieve.

We did pay a high price to bring a hope for democracy to Iraq, but what was achieved there could be transformative for the region and for the world. But if we neglect Iraq, we risk losing everything. It may be ultimately up to the Iraqis to shape their own future, but we cannot pretend that we’re not interested in the results, and we should not abandon them when we could help them create and maintain a stable and civil society.

Model Aircraft Are Not A National Security Threat

Recently, the FBI launched a successful sting operation that nabbed an wanna-be al-Qaeda member, Rezwan Ferdaus, who had been trying to provide terrorists with cellphones turned into explosive detonators and who had been plotting on attacking the Pentagon and the Capitol with remote-controlled aircraft.

There is already a great deal of hype from writers like Slate‘s Will Saletan over terrorists using RC aircraft to launch terrorist attacks. But it’s hype with little factual basis. The fact is that RC aircraft are not a significant threat to national security.

Setting the Record Straight

First, it’s important to get the facts correct. CNN erroneously reports that a model aircraft like the one that terrorist wanted to use can be purchased for less than $200. That is simply incorrect—you can buy small aircraft powered by electric motors and made of styrofoam for $200. But those will not carry much more than a small camera—certainly not enough explosive to make a dent in a building. Such aircraft weigh less than 2 pounds and have a range of less than two miles—hardly a devastating terror weapon.

The RC F-86 intended for the DC bomb plot could not have carried a 20-pound payload

The aircraft that Ferdaus used was apparently a model of the Korean-War era F-86 with a wingspan of over five feet and a similarly-sized model of the Vietnam era F-4 Phantom. More than likely the aircraft would have been powered by gas turbine engines. Aircraft of that size are quite expensive, probably several thousand dollars, not including equipment. Plus, those aircraft are not designed to lift large payloads. They are designed for speed and maneuverability, not lifting objects. Even if Ferdaus had actually gotten his hands on C4 explosive, the chances of him pulling off a successful attack would have been slim. Loading that aircraft with 20 pounds of explosives and the gear needed for it to use GPS to fly to its intended target would have probably left it too heavy to fly, or at the very least much slower than it would otherwise be. While some reports say that the aircraft could carry 50 pounds of explosives, that is simply untrue. In theory a model aircraft of that size could be stuffed full of C4, but they would have no prayer of actually taking off with that kind of weight.

Not only that, but a turbine aircraft flying over Washington would have been very noisy and very visible. No doubt the Pentagon and the Capitol have systems in place to deal with airborne threats. Even at a maximum speed of over 100 miles per hour, a model aircraft is much slower than a missile, and much larger. The chances of it getting to a target undetected are slim to none. A plane packed full of explosives, assuming it could fly at all, would fly so slowly and ponderously that small arms fire would have no problem knocking it out of the sky long before it reached its target.

That assumes that Ferdaus wouldn’t have blown himself up in the process. C4 is a very stable explosive, but anyone who’s ever flown a model aircraft will say one thing: it’s damn hard. It’s harder than flying a full-scale aircraft. Even with technological aids, it’s still very difficult. And the aircraft that Ferdaus chose would require a long, paved runway to take off. It’s not something that could be launched from a park. Ferdaus would have more than likely not been able to take off, and there’s a good chance he would have ended up meeting his 72 virgins long before he would have caused harm to any government buildings.

In short, this attack would not have worked even if it hadn’t been an FBI sting from the very beginning. As Fast Company observes:

Model aircraft and drones are exceedingly poorly suited to lone wolf terrorist attacks. Despite the use of drones by the U.S. military for targeted strikes and assassinations, operation of these types of unmanned aircraft require access to resources and training generally available only to domestic and foreign military forces. In other words, if you don’t have North Korea or Pakistan training you and supplying AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, fuggedaboutit. The many drones easily available to the civilian market are good only for surveillance and aerial monitoring.

But that won’t stop the busybodies in Congress from trying to regulate model aircraft into oblivion given half the chance.

The Real Threat is Regulation

The real threat here isn’t from al-Qaeda. If you wanted to attack the Pentagon, there are 20,000 missiles gone missing from Libya that could do a lot more damage than a model F-86 packed with C4. Model aviation does not pose a substantial security threat to the United States.

But that won’t stop the regulators from trying to end the hobby. There have been efforts to regulate model aviation into the ground in the past, and busybodies like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have threatened to regulate RC planes before. The federal government does not like it when anyone does something that they can’t control, and model aviation is next in their crosshairs. This harebrained scheme by a terrorist wanna-be is just the excuse that Washington needs to clamp down.

And this could not come at a worse time. Model aviation is becoming more and more useful to the American people. Thanks to better battery technology and cheaper radios, model aviation is open to people who could never have afforded to get into the hobby in the days of expensive and dangerous fuel-powered engines and equally expensive radios. This means that children can get into a hobby that will teach them about physics, engineering, and aerospace. Last I heard, we wanted to build a high-tech 21st Century economy. We can’t do that by restricting the ability of the average citizen to explore science and technology on their own.

Not only that, but this technology has more concrete uses. Civilian drones can be used for aerial surveying, aerial photography, and scientific studies. The University of North Dakota recently flew a model plane close to a tornado to launch probes into the storm. An off-the-shelf AR.Drone that can be bought at a mall was used to survey damage after the New Zealand earthquake. These are applications that would have previously been too expensive for civilians to afford.

We should not risk these benefits over unnecessary fears of terrorism. We have already sacrificed too much in the name of security, preferring the illusion that “security theater” will keep us safe when the reality is that those measures are less about preventing terrorism and more about having the illusion of doing something.

Rezwan Ferdaus’ foiled attempt to attack Americans with model aircraft was never going to work, and even if it had, the damage would have been far less than more conventional modes of attack. But we should not let Ferdaus’ foolishness lead to an overreaction on the part of government. We only have so many resources that can be brought to bear in stopping the next terror attack, and using those limited resources to patrol civilian hobbyists diminishes our capacity to deal with real threats to our safety and security.

The Decade Of War – Remembering September 11

It is hard to believe that it has been ten years since the events of September 11, 2001. A child born on that day would now be in the fourth grade.

In that time, the Taliban is no longer in control of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein has been removed from power in Iraq, and at least two waves of democracy have crashed across the Arab and Muslim world. And Osama bin Laden, the central figure of al-Qaeda has met his richly deserved end at the hand of the Navy SEALS.

But at the same time, the Taliban is still wreaking havoc in Afghanistan. Pakistan still harbors the surviving leadership of al-Qaeda. At the same time that dictators from Hosni Mubarak to Muhammar Qaddafi have been deposed, the future of the region is still in doubt, and the forces of Islamist repression could still win out over the supporters of democracy. And Turkey, once a beacon of Muslim democracy is rapidly backsliding into political and religious repression.

The World Trade Center attacked

We have had a decade of war, and the war still isn’t won. If anything, the greatest risk we face is fatigue. Our populace has lived with this war for years, and they are sick of the war footing. And the military has made more sacrifices than anyone else—the stress of long deployments and years of battle have strained our military nearly to the breaking point. And yet the threat requires constant vigilance and a willingness to seek out and destroy groups who would pull off the next 9/11.

At the same time, there has not been another 9/11. No terrorists have gotten their hands of chemical weapons, biological weapons, or nuclear materials. There have been attacks since 9/11, but they have not reached to the level set on that terrible day. But that does not mean that there could not be another attack looming on the horizon. We have to foil every terrorist attack attempt—the terrorists need only succeed once.

The Legacy of September 11, 2001

The terrible events of September 11, 2001 changed our world, and changed America. On that terrible morning we saw the very worst of humanity meet the very best. The animals that drove those planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville showed the world what they were. The first-responders and the brave men and women of Flight 93 showed what we are. They drove themselves without fear or hesitation straight into the jaws of death itself, and saved countless lives.

We should not forget either the barbarity of the terrorists who murdered indiscriminately that day or the heroism of those who saved indiscriminately that day. But the forces of political correctness want to bowdlerize September 11, 2001 into yet another day to celebrate “diversity” and “tolerance.”

This world would be better off with “diversity” not including al-Qaeda and their ilk. Tolerance of evil allows evil to flourish.

Let us remember September 11 not as we would want it to be, but as it was. Nineteen evil men committed an act of inhuman depravity. They were motivated by a twisted and evil sense of religious devotion. The leadership that sent them to their task was evil. Those who planned the atrocity were evil men.

As a society, we would like to think that the term “evil” doesn’t really apply. Political correctness says that there’s no real evil—that one person’s terrorist is another freedom fighter.

That ideology should have collapsed with the Twin Towers.

When we succumb to moral relativism, we forget the essential lesson of September 11, 2001: evil exists, and must be opposed. Mohammad Atta was not a downtrodden member of the Middle Eastern poor, he was a child of relative privilege with a Western education. Most of the 9/11 murderers had similar backgrounds. This was not about poverty, or U.S. policy, or any of the other things that are blamed for this atrocity. This was about evil, an act of sheer inhumanity.

It has been a long decade, a tiring decade, a decade of sacrifice and uncertainty. But ultimately this decade was a necessary one. This war has been long and difficult, but it has led to a world that is, on a whole, freer than the one that existed on September 10, 2001. The sacrifices that have been made across this decade have led to a blossoming of human freedom from Tunis to Baghdad and beyond.

Al-Qaeda wanted to change the world with their actions on September 11. They did, but not in the way they intended. It will be a long time before al-Qaeda and their ilk will be fully consigned to the ash heap of history, but they are well on their way.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead

It’s official… Osama bin Laden is dead, killed in a ~~missile strike~~ daring Special Forces raid just outside the capital, Islamabad.

More information as it arrives.

11:52 pm

The government is stating that bin Laden’s body will be treated according to Islamic customs. Which I hope involves having his head mounted on a pike at the top of the new Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan while the rest of his body is slathered in pig fat and fed to a pack of dogs. Sadly, he will get far more respect from his enemies in death than he ever showed in his life.

11:42 pm

The Pakistani government was not informed of the raid before it took place. That’s not surprising – Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has long been suspected of being in bed with al-Qaeda.

It is also being said that the compound where bin Laden was hiding was constructed five years ago and was made specifically for him. That strongly suggests that at least some elements of the Pakistani government knew that bin Laden was hiding in their country.

It was never really doubtful that bin Laden was in Pakistan, but it’s surprising that he was so close to the Pakistani capital. Then again, there were always rumors floating about that bin Laden was hiding in an urban area rather than the desolate mountains and rivers of the Afghan/Pakistan border.

11:36 pm

Allegedly, this was the location of bin Laden’s hideout. It seems too close to the center of town to be right, but it does match the general description of the site.

11:22 pm

Marc Ambinder is reporting that the former Seal Team Six performed the operation with help from unmanned drones and helicopters.

Bin Laden was hiding in a large walled estate 80 miles outside Islamabad in the town of Abadabad.

11:16 pm

Reports are that President Obama received several briefings over the past few weeks on bin Laden, and gave the go-ahead for the operation on Thursday, April 29th.

11:14 pm

Sources are saying that Navy SEALs were involved with the operation near Islamabad.

11:11 pm

Thus also demonstrates that despite all of our impressive technology, the deadliest tool in the American arsenal is the US soldier.

11:09 pm

If bin Laden was so close to Islamabad, it does suggest that he had a great deal more operational control of al-Qaeda than previously thought. His death could be more momentous than just a moral victory against al-Qaeda.

The other good aspect of this is that what’s left of al-Qaeda has got to be running scared. Now Ayman al-Zawahiri is the most wanted man in the world, and if we can nail bin Laden, he’s certainly not safe.

11:00 pm

I never would have predicted that bin Laden would have gone down like this. That we’d actually get him in a firefight, face-to-face. I always figured that we’d have taken him out in a drone strike or he would have died in a cave somewhere. To know that he died knowing that the US was closing in on him is utterly fitting.

I hope he died in abject fear.

10:57 pm

Another thought: according to the President, the US had intelligence that Osama bin Laden was near Islamabad since August. It’s shocking that Osama would not have moved in eight months. It’s a sign that he was getting sloppy, and that undoubtedly helped us finally get him.

10:54 pm

The story of how this was pulled off has got to be incredible. The sheer amount of skill needed to pull off a covert op in the middle of Pakistan and kill the most wanted man in the world without a single casualty is just amazing.

10:53 pm

From one of my Facebook friends: they should take bin Laden’s body back to the US and charge to kick him in the balls. Budget deficit solved. I’d be in line for that.

10:47 pm

The President’s speech faltered at first, but he found the right voice and the right tone at the end.

10:45 pm

The President’s speech ended on a wonderful note of American unity. A very strong end to a historic speech.

10:44 pm

“Today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of the American people.” Very much so.

10:43 pm

There’s nothing more just than an evil man meeting his well-deserved end.

10:42 pm

The President is striking the right tone now. “Justice has been done.” Indeed it has.

10:41 pm

No US casualties in the operation that led to bin Laden’s death. Damn good work.

10:40 pm

Apparently the killing of Bin Laden occurred today, and was accomplished by US Special Forces.

10:39 pm

President Obama’s speech is not reaching the Churchillian heights I’d hoped for. It sounds like a policy speech, and Obama is stumbling on some phrases. So far not a line that’s worth remembering.

10:35 pm

Obama is speaking now.

10:34 pm

There are hundreds of people outside the White House now. Remember the “Arab Street?” This is the American street.

10:31 pm

Awaiting President Obama, expected to speak shortly.

10:30 pm

CBS is reporting that bin Laden was not killed in a missile strike, but was “shot in the head.” Exactly the ending the bastard so greatly deserved.

And to whomever pulled that trigger, thank you.

10:27 pm

This may be the most important speech Obama gives. He has a reputation for great oratory—now more than ever he’ll have to live up to it.

10:26 pm

Politically, this helps Obama. But the political calculation doesn’t really matter now. This is a good day for America. This is a good day for civilization itself.

10:25 pm

There is a risk that this event may destabilize the Pakistani government. And because Pakistan is a nuclear state, there’s a huge risk of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. Hopefully the military and intelligent community have been preparing for this announcement.

10:23 pm

Sources are saying that Osama was killed in a “ground operation.” The CIA’s fingerprints are all over this.

10:20 pm

They’re singing the national anthemn outside the White House… beautiful.

10:16 pm

Time for celebratory glass of Scotch…

10:13 pm

Outside the White House, chants of “USA, USA!”

10:12 pm

President Obama was to speak an hour ago, but hasn’t appeared yet. On a momentous occasion, finding the right words can’t be easy.

Christian Persecution Spreads In The Middle East

The Coptic Christian community has been a part of Egyptian life for nearly 2000 years. The Copts are direct descendants of the Ancient Egyptians, and the Coptic language is the closest linguistic descendant to the language of the Pharaohs. Christianity existed in Egypt before the Islamic faith was revealed to Mohammad.

The aftermath of the Alexandria church bombing

That is one of the reasons why the plight of Egypt’s Christian minority is so disturbing. On New Year’s Day, a Coptic church in the port city of Alexandria was bombed by Islamic terrorists with links to al-Qaeda, killing 21 people and wounding another 97. Repression of Egypt’s Coptic minority is becoming increasingly common, as Islamic radicalism spreads like a cancer through Egypt’s body politic. It is telling that the reaction to the bombing was not a condemnation of Islamic radicalism, but the typical accusations that “Zionists” and the Mossad were behind the blasts.

Not all Egyptians have fallen for the official line, and there have been widespread protests against the attacks, and calls for national unity between Egyptian Christians and Egypt’s Muslim majority. But at the same time, there have been attacks against Christian groups by Egyptian security forces, and the Mubarak government has been less than interested in stopping the attacks. So long as the terrorists aren’t going after the government itself, the Mubarak government will condemn terrorism on one hand, while fanning the flames of extremism with the other.

The Guardian explains some of the institutionalized prejudice felt by Egyptian Copts:

Some feel their very identity as Egyptians is being deliberately eroded by the state. Baghat expresses a victimisation that leaves Christians feeling “assaulted twice, once by their Muslim neighbours and then again when the powers-that-be side with the attackers”.

Peter Gobrayel, a worshipper at St Paul’s, said; “We are treated as second-class citizens in every way; the only interaction we have with the government leaves us feeling like failures, and of course that makes us feel like we don’t belong.

“I fought for Egypt in the 1967 and 1973 wars, and was a PoW in Israel; you could say that I’ve spent the whole of my life on the frontline for my country. Now, speaking honestly, when I see the nation burning I just want to add petrol. I am an Egyptian first and foremost, and yet my country seems to want to eradicate me.”

For Hossam Baghat, Copt-Muslim tensions will only be resolved when the government ends its security-driven response to sectarian violence and begins implementing the rule of law.

But the Mubarak regime has little interest in the rule of law. The Mubarak regime is playing a cynical game by using anti-Christian and anti-Semitic sentiment as a safety valve. Blaming religious minorities and Israel focuses popular anger away from the regime where the anger truly belongs. If people are rioting against the “Zionists,” they aren’t rioting against the Mubarak regime. Caught in the middle between autocratic regimes and Islamic zealots are people like Egypt’s Copts, increasingly endangered minorities trying to keep their faith alive.

But Egypt isn’t alone in this regard. In Iraq, an ancient Christian community is also under siege. Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled the country as Islamic extremism have made Christians a target. Nearly half of Iraq’s Christian population have fled the country.

From Egypt to Iraq, the Christian communities of the Middle East are dwindling due to violence and discrimination. The rise of radicalized Islam have pushed out minority communities, especially religious minorities. Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Morocco used to have vibrant Jewish communities during more tolerant times. But since cynical Arab leaders realized that exploiting anti-Semitism could keep them in power, those communities have been forced to flee to the West or Israel.

What is more disturbing is that this phenomena is spreading across the globe. After the attacks in Alexandria, Coptic Christians from Australiato Canada to Germany are fearing further attacks by Islamic terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. If the goal of terrorism is to sow fear, then these attacks are working.

As Mark Seddon writes in The Independent that we may be witnessing a new age of Christian persecution across the region. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that is exactly what is going on.

The West should not stand idly by while entire communities are uprooted and religious persecution spreads across the region and the world. The plight of Egypt’s Copts and Iraq’s Chaldean and Assyrian Christians are part of the larger struggle for the Middle East. One of the goals of groups like al-Qaeda is to push all but Salafist Muslims out of the Middle East. But their violence won’t stop there: their goals are worldwide, and they will attack anyone who stands in their way.

The West cannot make weak condemnations and then ignore the problems. The US gave over $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Egypt in 2010, mostly in the form of military aid. If the Mubarak regime will continue to sit idly by while Egypt’s Copts are slaughtered—or worse yet, be complicit in the persecution itself, the US need not support them with foreign aid. Further US aid should be tied to demonstrable changes in Egyptian policy and demonstrable steps in fighting terrorism rather than tacitly encouraging it.

We would like to think that persecution of Christians is a phenomenon of the past: but throughout the Middle East it is a sad reality. And unless both the West and the people of the Middle East stand together against this new wave of persecution, it will only continue until these ancient communities are destroyed. But unfortunately, small communities like Egypt’s Copts or Iraq’s Assyrian Christians are almost invisible to most in the West. That is why al-Qaeda and other Islamic radical feel free to attack them: they know that it won’t make as big a splash as attacks against Western interests. But if the West stands firm and works hand-in-hand with civil society groups in the Middle East to protect religious minorities, there is still a small chance these ancient communities can be saved.

This January 7th is the Coptic Christmas celebration, a celebration that this year is muted by fear and violence. But Christmas is a time of hope, and if the world is willing to stand united in opposition to terrorism, there may be hope to stop this wave of oppression before it wipes out the Christian communities of the Middle East.

Obama On Iraq: Setting The Record Straight

Tonight, President Obama will speak to the nation about the end of combat operations in Iraq. I’ll be liveblogging the speech here. I’ll be using a new system for liveblogging — as I liveblog the speech, you’ll be able to follow along without the need to reload the page. I’ll also be sending out liveblog updates through my Twitter feed.

Setting the Record Straight

An Iraqi woman raises a purple finger after voting for the first time in a free Iraqi election.

But first, it’s important to set the record straight. We would not be able to be removing our combat troops from Iraq had we not successfully quelled the sectarian violence in Iraq. In short, without the surge back in 2007, Iraq would not be nearly as stable as it is now. The surge worked. It reduced sectarian violence.

Because the U.S. worked with Sunni leaders, Iraqi Sunnis helped us remove al-Qaeda in Iraq. This lead to the death of al-Qaeda leaders like Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and more recently Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. While there are still al-Qaeda affiliated splinter groups in Iraq, they are nowhere near as powerful as they were in 2007.

Because the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq was eliminated, the radical Shi’ite groups lost support. Iranian-backed radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr couldn’t use the fear of al-Qaeda to win over Iraqi Shi’ites. Instead of leading a Shi’ite civil war, Moqtada al-Sadr ended up being discredited. His band of thugs, the Mahdi Army, are no longer a major threat to the future of Iraq. Al-Sadr himself was forced to flee to Iran out of fear.

All of this was due to the surge—not just the fact that we added more troops, but we used better tactics to protect the Iraqi people and improve their security and their living conditions.

There are two reasons why Iraq never flew into civil war in 2007: the bravery of the Iraqi people and the bravery of the U.S. and coalition troops.

The Real Obama Record On Iraq

Notably absent from these reasons in President Obama. His record on Iraq is a record of being fundamentally wrong from the beginning. Then-Senator Obama was an ardent opponent of the surge from the very beginning. He is on record as saying that not only would the surge not work, but the added troops would have increased tensions in Iraq.

As a candidate, Obama strongly opposed the surge throughout 2007 and into the 2008 campaign. His position was that the U.S. should begin immediately removing troops from Iraq. Had President Bush listened to Obama then, there would have been a power vacuum in Iraq that would have turned the country into another Somalia.

In fact, Obama had said that even after it was clear that the surge was working, he still would have opposed it.

But Obama has subsequently changed his tune. He tried to scrub his prior criticisms of the surge from his campaign web page. And it would be only a few years after Obama ripped the concept of the surge to shreds that he would endorse the very same policy—but that time applying it to Afghanistan. President Obama may have opposed the surge when he was a candidate, but now he seeks the credit.

He deserves little credit. He can’t say that he fulfilled any campaign promise to withdraw from Iraq: in fact the timetable for US withdrawal was set before Obama took office. It was the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that set the withdrawal date, not President Obama. Regardless of who had won in 2008, the situation would be the same. It was the surge that allowed the U.S. to draw down its forces in Iraq without creating a dangerous power vacuum that would have destabilized the entire region.

Now, if President Obama gives full credit to the troops without politicizing the issue, he’ll have set the right tone. But Obama’s statements must be set against Obama’s record on the war. He was wrong on the surge. The surge worked. The security of the Iraqi people was a necessary precondition to any political rapprochement. Obama’s preference for a “diplomatic surge” would never have worked.

No matter what Obama says tonight, the real heroes in this conflict and the American, coalition, and Iraqi soldiers, police, and security forces that put their lives on the line day in and day out to secure a better future for Iraq. If the President acknowledges this, he deserves credit. But if he tries to spin Iraq into a political victory for himself, it will backfire on him. This isn’t Obama’s victory, this is a victory for Iraq. We should never let the President forget that.