Tag: terrorism

Eight Years Later

Eight years ago, an atrocity against civilization was committed. The events of that day were not merely attacks against the United States, or Western culture, or any of the other fashionable excuses. They were attacks against civilization itself, examples of an ideology steeped in barbarism.

Eight years later, and we have returned to a sense of complacency. The horrors of that day have become less visceral with age. We have, in some sense, fogotten the lessons we learned that terrible day. We have slipped back into the mentality of pre-9/11 America, when shark attacks and Gary Condit were more important than the barbarians at our gates.

We cannot be so complacent. Despite our best efforts, many of those responsible for these inhuman acts are still at large. Afghanistan is still threatened by the Taliban. Pakistan, a country possessing nuclear arms, still has the sword of Damocles over its head as the lawless frontiers continue to incubate terror.

The events of that day eight years ago changed our world. We owe it to those who died to never forget, and never allow this kind of barbarism to reign free again. The long war has not ended. Eight years ago, a city of millions mourned the loss of 3,000. The next attack could see it the other way around. We cannot bear that cost. We must be unflinching in our defense of our values and unyielding in our determination to fight groups like al-Qaeda.

We must never forget what happened eight years ago, or it will happen again.

Fifteen Seconds

Michael Totten has an amazing dispatch from the besieged Israeli city of Sderot, the most common target of Hamas rockets. He notes what it’s like for the residents of Hamas’ war zone:

Fewer than twenty Israelis have been killed by rocket fire from Gaza since Hamas and Islamic Jihad adopted the tactic. A few single suicide bombers inflicted more casualties all by themselves. Hezbollah killed around ten times as many Israelis in one month in 2006 than Hamas has managed with crude rockets for years. It’s no wonder, really, that critics slammed Israel for its “disproportionate” military response in the Gaza Strip.

It’s not just about casualties, though. Leave aside the fact that Hamas was escalating its attacks with bigger and longer range rockets and that a far deadlier scenario was on the horizon. Living under Qassam and Grad rocket attack doesn’t sound like much fun, but it’s worse than the low body count makes it seem.

Thousands of rockets have fallen on Sderot. And every rocket launched at the city triggers an air raid alert. Everyone within ear shot has fifteen seconds to run into a shelter.

Imagine sprinting for cover 5,000 times.

What constantly amazes me about the Israelis is not that the respond in a “disproportionate” manner, but that they don’t. If Mexicans rained fire down on Texas like Hamas rains fire down on Sderot, right now US Marines would be storming the beaches of the Yucatan and Vincente Fox would be running for his life. Very few countries would possess the singular patience that the Israelis have. Had the Holocaust not been such a terrible formative event for the Israeli state, I wonder if Gaza would not be a smoldering ember right now.

The people of Sderot should not have to live in fear. There is no excuse for such wanton violence. Hamas’ terrorism has not only killed Israeli citizens, but it is unraveling the social fabric of the region. The Israeli people have acted with incredible patience and restraint in the face of indiscriminate attacks against innocent civilians. It is unconscionable for the people of Sderot to have to live under such conditions.

Their story needs to be told, and thankfully independent and honest journalists like Michael Totten are out there to bring those important stories to light.

Bush’s Legacy

Tomorrow, George W. Bush rides off into history. The left is breathing a sigh of relief, their Emmanuel Goldstein is gone (although soon they will find another). Bush leaves an unpopular President—but so did Harry S. Truman. In many ways, Bush and Truman have had similar trajectories. Both began their terms in a time of war, and both made unpopular decisions. Like Truman, Bush will likely be vindicated by history. The narrow-mindedness and ravenous partisanship of Bush’s critics will become less and less relevant as time goes on, and a more fair-minded exploration of Bush’s legacy can begin.

George W. Bush has been systematically turned into a monster by the media. Bush the man has been obscured.

As a point of disclosure, I am only partially a fan of the President. His performance after September 11 was a masterstroke. The decision to invade Iraq was the correct one based on what was known at that point in history. At the same time, Bush’s second term was a disaster. When the President nominated the comically unsuitable Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, it was clear that Bush’s instincts for loyalty had become a flaw rather than a benefit. It was Gen. Petraeus and Sen. McCain that pushed for the surge against a recalcitrant Rumsfeld and Bush. The surge is what won the war in Iraq, and Bush only belatedly endorsed it. The Katrina disaster should not have been laid at Bush’s feet, but putting Michael Brown as the head of FEMA was unquestionably bad judgment. Bush’s tax cuts helped restore the U.S. economy and created millions of jobs. His wasteful spending and statist policies hurt the economy.

Where Bush has failed the most is where he abandoned conservative principles. The left wants to paint him as a radical conservative activist. The truth could not be more radically different. Bush dramatically expanded the size and scope of the federal government. He pushed for a massive increase in entitlement spending under Medicare Part D. He dramatically increased federal spending at nearly all levels. Hardly a fan of deregulation, it was under Bush’s watch that the ill-considered Sarbanes-Oxley bill was passed into law, a bill which dramatically increased the regulation of business. The picture of George W. Bush as laissez-faire radical could not be further from reality.

At the same time, Bush’s tax cuts helped keep the 2001-2003 recession from deepening. They helped America create millions of new jobs. Without them, it’s likely that Bush would never have been reelected. Those tax cuts put money back into the hands of working Americans. While Bush’s economic policies were flawed at best, it was not because of the tax cuts, but because of too much emphasis on state action.

The war in Iraq remains controversial, and will for some time. It seems quite possible that the Hussein regime systematically misled the entire world into believing that they had WMDS. It seems quite possible that the Hussein regime was lying to itself about what it really had. That is unsurprising for an dysfunctional autocracy like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. What did not happen is some sinister conspiracy to “lie” about WMDs to settle some personal score or gain access to oil. The Bush Administration weighed what evidence it had and made a decision based on that evidence. The evidence turned out to be deeply flawed. But the image of a Bush Administration hell-bent on war that was discarding mountains of contradictory evidence has no basis in reality. If Leon Panetta tells President Obama that a country has WMDs and terrorist ties and there is a “slam dunk” case for it, the same principle should apply. A President should never give the benefit of the doubt to this nation’s enemies. A President’s job, first and foremost, is to act on the evidence available and act decisively. President Bush did that, and President Obama should do the same.

This war against Islamist terror will continue. The supposed excesses of this war have led to an America that has not suffered another attack, no less a greater one than that visited upon us on September 11, 2001. We are not living in a fascist dictatorship, the Constitution has hardly been shredded, and our civil liberties remain. The hysteria and fear over this war came less from the President and more from his critics. Yet one unassailable fact remains: we have not been attacked since that fateful day. The plans of terrorists have been foiled, their leaders captured or killed, their hideouts destroyed, their money supply imperiled. Modern terrorism is sui generis, and the Bush Administration responded not be repeating the failed methods of the past, but by treating it as the serious threat it was. Did they always get it right? Of course not, but no Presidency could have been expected to. In facing an evolving and dangerous threat, this Presidency did what it could to keep this country safe. After the attacks, it seemed almost assured that we would be attacked again, and harder. Today, those attacks almost seem like a distant memory. We have the vigilance of the Bush Administration to thank for that. For all the flaws of their approach, it worked.

George W. Bush has been systematically turned into a monster by the media. Bush the man has been obscured. Yet George W. Bush is hardly an unfeeling monster. He is not the caricature that he has been made to be. That he has not defended himself is curious, but perhaps he does not think it his role to do so. Instead, the real George W. Bush is a complex character, motivated by an abiding sense of loyalty and faith, but also harmed by those same instincts. Hardly the unfeeling party-boy of the media’s funhouse-mirror image, the real President Bush is the man who would go to Walter Reed and comfort injured vets, rarely making a media event out of it. If we are to learn anything from the past eight years, we must first move beyond the crude image of President Bush painted by an ideologically homogenous media and see the real George W. Bush.

Sadly, it will likely be years before that happens. But history will judge the 43rd President of the United States with far less ideological rancor than there is now, and when his legacy is remembered it won’t be through the distorted lens of a partisan media, but with the hindsight of history. With that hindsight, the legacy of George W. Bush may be far different than what we would think. Like Truman, Bush may be remembered as a President who did what was right, but not what was popular.

As Iraq Lifts Itself Up, Some Stick To The Script

Even as terrorists try to their best to sow fear, the signs of a major turnaround in Iraq continue as the inertia in the conflict now favors stability rather than violence.

Al-Anbar Province, once the center of violence in Iraq and a pipeline for terrorists, guns, and money is now a place of relative tranquility. The reason is simple: US resolve helped empower Iraqis to fight terrorism:

The U.S. military assault on Fallujah in 2004 yielded a significant U.S. victory both in moral and tactical terms, David Bellavia, a former staff sergeant with the U.S. Army who served with the First Infantry Division for six years, said in an interview.

“I call it my generation’s Normandy because it identified for the enemy what the American fighting man was all about,” he said. “They completely underestimated us and had this idea that because we couldn’t use our technology, we wouldn’t have intestinal fortitude to see the battle through, but this is what ultimately delivered us.”

In 2005, Bellavia received the Conspicuous Service Cross, the highest award for military valor in New York state. He is also the author of “House to House,” which chronicles the Battle of Fallujah in graphic detail.

The Rumsfeld strategy, while based on a sound premise, was ultimately based on the wrong premise. The worry was that more troops would mean more casualties, which emphasized the worries of American politicians rather than what really mattered—the security of Iraqi civilians. Even during the darkest days of the war, brave and resourceful military commanders like Col. H.R. McMaster were developing the tactics to fight and win in Iraq. In Fallujah, we demonstrated that we would not back down. That lesson was brought home time and time again, until finally the Iraqis started joining our side. Once that began to happen in a significant fashion, al-Qaeda was damned.

This ABC News report puts the usual spin on the good news: sure, violence is down, but will it last. What the media, Sen. Obama, and the rest of the antiwar partisans fail to understand is that the reduction in violence is the direct result of our fortitude on Iraq. For all of the President’s legion of faults, especially in the conduct of this war, his stubbornness may have saved Iraq from a humanitarian nightmare that would make Darfur look like nothing. His stubbornness and our military’s skill, combined with the bravery of the Iraqi people have paid off with a great peace dividend.

This peace will last so long as national reconciliation is in the interest of all the parties. The Sunnis are outnumbered. They tried violent resistance and were nearly ethnically cleansed. The Shi’ites also know that violence does not help them. They have political leverage, and because of that they have the most to lose if Iraq flies apart. They may have the numeric superiority, but if they start a civil war, the Sunnis will end up back in bed with al-Qaeda, and even if the Shi’ites win, it will be at a great cost, and would cause Iraq to fall into the hands of the Iranians. Iraqi and Iranians share a common religion, but nothing else.

Iraq can be peaceful, not because of some noble ambition, but because of enlightened self interest—and that is the most powerful force in the universe.

Yet all this could be undone by a public more interested in bread and circuses than world peace. The Democratic Party, by playing to the basest isolationist and xenophobic interests, is threatening the progress that has been made. A premature withdrawal from Iraq would undermine all this progress. If the US leaves, the Iraqis cannot yet keep the peace. A US presence is a necessity to provide the Iraqis with the security needed for progress. The argument that the US presence somehow undermines Iraq’s progress is ridiculous on its face—Iraq has made great political progress, and that progress is only possible because the Iraqis have security. If the Iraqi people cannot be secure in their homes, how can they possibly be expected to trust each other? I, for one, would love to see Sen. Obama spin his way out of that question.

Contrary to the ignorant and arrogant arguments that Iraqis are not pulling their weight, they are making great strides towards restoring the greatness of the nation of Iraq. Day by day, the Iraqis that work towards the betterment of their nation and fight against terror bring Iraq closer to the days when Baghdad can once again be a center of learning and commerce and a great world city.

We in America must never belittle their sacrifice. In a spirit of solidarity, we must continue to support our Iraqi allies in their fight against terror and oppression. Instead of giving them up, we should continue to support their struggles—after all, we were once a struggling young power as well.

It is fair to ask what we are fighting for. What we are fighting for in Iraq is this: that one day a joint US-Iraqi biotechnology venture can discover a cure for cancer, AIDS, or another terrible affliction. That some day, in a place like Darfur, US and Iraqi peacekeepers can work alongside each other again to restore another war-shattered country. That some day, Iraq will become a brother nation to us, an ally as great as those we liberated 60 years ago.

That dream is within the grasp of both the people of the United States and Iraq—but only if we do not let our short-term politics interfere.

“This Nation Will Live To Regret What The Court Has Done Today”

One of the professors at my law school teaches a course on “atrocious cases”—and today he will have something new to add to his syllabus. The Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case of Boumediene v. Bush that represents one of the most blatant examples of judicial activism of our time. The Supreme Court, or at least five of its Justices, have decided that an alien outside the territory of the United States has the right to the writ of habeas corpus.

Chief Justice Roberts, in his dissent (joined by Justices Alito, Thomas, and Scalia) explains why this decision is both overly broad but also unsatisfying to all:

So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court’s analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation to determine the content of their new habeas right, followed by further litigation to resolve their particular cases, followed by further litigation before the D. C. Circuit—where they could have started had they invoked the DTA procedure. Not Congress, whose attempt to “determine-through democratic means—how best” to balance the security of the American people with the detainees’ liberty interests, see Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 636 (2006) (BREYER, J., concurring), has been unceremoniously brushed aside. Not the Great Writ, whose majesty is hardly enhanced by its extension to a jurisdictionally quirky outpost, with no tangible benefit to anyone. Not the rule of law, unless by that is meant the rule of lawyers, who will now arguably have a greater role than military and intelligence officials in shaping policy for alien enemy combatants. And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.

Justice Scalia’s dissent was blistering—even by his standards:

And today it is not just the military that the Court elbows aside. A mere two Terms ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557 (2006), when the Court held (quite amazingly) that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 had not stripped habeas jurisdiction over Guantanamo petitioners’ claims, four Members of today’s five-Justice majority joined an opinion saying the following:

“Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority [for trial by military commission] he believes necessary. “Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal
with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means.” Id., at 636 (BREYER, J., concurring).

Turns out they were just kidding.

Indeed they apparently were. Like Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown, the Supreme Court has told both the elected branches of government that they call the shots. If there were some strong constitutional logic behind this decision it would be one thing. But the majority opinion even admits that the law is at best murky on the issue of whether a foreigner has ever been granted habeas rights when they are outside the sovereign territory of the United States (and even that contention flies in the face of the weight of authority that decisively holds that they have no access to the writ). Undeterred, the Court chooses to dramatically rewrite settled precedent nonetheless. If prior cases had eviscerated and overruled the key Supreme Court precedent in Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), this decision has rendered it a nullity.

The goal of our courts is not to make the law, but to follow the Constitution. This decision is not grounded in the jurisprudence of the Constitution, but of the whims of five. Justice Scalia puts it bluntly, but accurately:

Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable “functional” test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.

I certainly hope that it will, but if certain members of the judiciary have their way it will be as a tyranny of the few. Our country is, and should be, a nation of laws, not men. It is sad that we are elevating the whims of five Justices over the will of those who are responsible to the people.

Hizballah Declares War

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hizballah has declared a state of open warfare against the Lebanese government. In Beirut, Hezballah terrorists have already engaged in two days of fighting with Lebanese troops.

Tony Badran, blogging at Michael Totten’s site offers some trenchant analysis as to what this all means:

“What this has done is lay bare all the charades of the last two years that Hezbollah’s is a “national” opposition, etc. What we saw yesterday is that Christians didn’t budge (Aounists that is), in any region. And so, what you have here is Hezbollah vs. the rest, and Hezbollah vs. the state. Politically this is very bad for them, and obviously for Aoun. In that sense it was a shrewd political move by March 14, because it hit them on a point that they can’t get sympathizers for outside their thugs (i.e., they have no allies, and they’re fighting the state!). Second, it puts them in a corner: they either force the government to capitulate, or they lose themselves. Nasrallah is against the wall.”

Hizballah, even though politically isolated, is a grave danger to the future of a free and democratic Lebanon. With both Syria and Iran providing Hizballah with money and weapons, they could outfight the Lebanese military and potentially take down the Lebanese government.

The Lebanese also have a stake in what happens here in the U.S.:

Second, as Tony conjectures, the Lebanese are watching closely a the US presidential campaign unfolds and are likely concerned what an Obama presidency represents for March 14, especially if Hezbollah starts a war with Israel: it means the pillar of the international alliance supporting a democratic Lebanon is apt to go hat in hand to Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran and Damascus looking to “engage.” If there is another war, the US impulse will likely be to go over March 14’s head and sue for peace with Iran and Syria, which is precisely what Bush resisted.

“Engagement” with Iran and Syria is futile—they have no intention of giving up their efforts to gain influence in Lebanon and the U.S. offers them nothing that would make them change their mind on that account. There is a good reason why Hamas has endorsed Obama. Obama’s foreign policy team is the same as Jimmy Carter’s, and there is every reason to believe that an Obama Presidency will be as weak on foreign affairs as Carter’s was. His love of meaningless “engagement” presages a U.S. policy of compromise that would allow Damascus and Teheran to take the initiative. The progress that has been made by the Franco-American alliance in the U.N. woule end up stalled as the Obama team naively assumes that they can trust the word of tyrants.

This is a critical time for Lebanon. The world community must unite in support of the democratic Lebanese government and against the thuggery of Hassan Nasrallah. If that means putting diplomatic, political, and even military pressure on Iran and Syria then so be it. The people of Lebanon have suffered enough under the domination of Syria and their Hezballah puppets. It is time for the world to unite to put an end to Hezballah’s games. The great question is whether the U.S. and France will be able to get enough of a coalition together to do something or whether once again the world will fiddle while Beirut burns.

Gitmo And The Question Of Terrorist Detainees

Jeffrey Toobin has a lengthy examination of Guantánamo Bay and the detention of people caught in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legal battles over the status of detainees continue, as the Supreme Court is set to release the latest opinion concerning detainee rights in Boumediene v. Bush sometime in the next few months.

The real question is what we do when and if Gitmo is closed down. Giving members of al-Qaeda access to US civilian courts does not at all work. A terrorist suspect cannot be given the same rights as a civilian criminal—it’s unworkable to argue that they should have the right to confront their accusers when their accusers might be deep-cover CIA agents actively working against al-Qaeda. There’s a quantitative difference between the sort of evidence used in a criminal trial and the evidence gathered on the battlefield. We certainly don’t want to reduce the standards for civilian trials to the level of evidence gathered on the battlefield—but it doesn’t make any more sense to demand that our armed forces play CSI on the battlefield.

It’s tempting to give these suspects over to their home countries—but if human rights are a serious concern, that would hardly be a good idea. Someone who is deported to a place like Algeria or Saudi Arabia won’t have to worry about waterboarding being torture—instead they’ll likely end up being tortured to death or at the very least treated far worse than they are at Gitmo. For all the hyperbole about Gitmo being “the Gulag of our times” that diminishes the real horrors of the average Third World prison where waterboarding is just the appetizer.

Toobin believes there may be a solution for this problem:

Even if the commissions can somehow begin, the larger question of what to do with the remaining detainees is, for now, unsettled. One response to that quandary is a controversial proposal, by the law professors Neal Katyal and Jack Goldsmith, that is attracting a great deal of attention in the small world of national-security law—and which may offer an electoral lifeline for the Republicans this fall.

Katyal and Goldsmith make unlikely allies. A law professor at Georgetown and former Clinton Administration official, Katyal won widespread renown when he argued and won Salim Hamdan’s case before the Supreme Court in 2006. Goldsmith is a former Bush Administration official who, despite leaving the government in 2004, in part over concerns about civil liberties in the war on terror, remains a strong national-security conservative. (He is now a professor at Harvard Law School.) But the two men shared a conviction that both military commissions and ordinary criminal prosecutions would be impractical for a few of those captured on distant battlefields. Together, they came up with an alternative: a national-security court.

According to their proposal, which was recently the subject of a conference sponsored by American University’s Washington College of Law and the Brookings Institution, sitting federal judges would preside over proceedings in which prosecutors would make the case that a person should be detained. There would be trials of sorts, and detainees would have lawyers, but they would have fewer rights than in a criminal case. Hearsay evidence may be admissible—so government agents could testify about what informants told them—and there would be no requirement for Miranda warnings before interrogations. Some proceedings would be closed to the public. “It’s a new system that’s needed only in extreme circumstances,” Katyal said. “It’s not a default option.”

Not surprisingly, civil libertarians do not like the idea. The problem is that their preferred solution of going through civilian courts simply does not work. Terrorism is not a crime, nor is it like ordinary warfare. Rather it is something that is sui generis, a category all to itself. Treating terrorism like a crime does not work, nor are terrorists properly “combatants” as defined by the Geneva Conventions. (The term “unlawful combatant” is not a term invented by Bush Administration lawyers but one that is inherent in international law.) The laws of war allow us to keep these people off the battlefield for as long as there are active hostilities—which in this war is not a definite term.

The overheated rhetoric from the civil liberties groups doesn’t help. Gitmo is not a “gulag” nor is it some legal black hole. We as Americans face a difficult problem that requires creative thinking—and instead we have the Gitmo issue being used as a political talking point. If we close Gitmo, we had better have a viable solution for what we’ll do with the people being held there. Trying them in civilian courts is not a viable option, nor does it seem likely that the Supreme Court will allow for the current system. At some point, there will need to be a compromise, but that will require all sides to work together rather than merely pointing fingers at each other.

Spinning The Iraq/Al-Qaeda Links

The major news networks are running a story that claims that the Pentagon has released a study that says that Iraq and al-Qaeda were not linked before the fall of the Hussein regime. As Andrew McCarthy finds, the report actually says the direct opposite of what the media claims it says. For example, he notes the abstract to the report:

Captured Iraqi documents have uncovered evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist and Islamic terrorist organizations. While these documents do not reveal direct coordination and assistance between the Saddam regime and the al Qaeda network, they do indicate that Saddam was willing to use, albeit cautiously, operatives affiliated with al Qaeda as long as Saddam could have these terrorist-operatives monitored closely. Because Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance of and, in some way, a “de facto” link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime. (Emphasis mine.)

So, you have the mainstream media saying that the Pentagon’s report says that there was absolutely no link, yet the abstract to the report quite explicitly saying that there is a link.

We’ve known for some time that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden didn’t call each other every day, and they certainly weren’t each other’s BFF, to borrow a phrase. However, what the Pentagon report says is exactly what the argument has been all along: the Iraqi regime did have ties to terrorists, and those terrorists included members of al-Qaeda. They were willing to work together despite their differences, and it was more than plausible that had Saddam Hussein broken free of the sanctions he very well could have passed the results of a renewed WMD program to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and still maintain plausible deniability.

The media is spinning this report, and they’re not being even the least bit subtle about it. They’re hoping that people don’t bother reading it, don’t bother understanding it, and don’t question their narrative. If ever there was an example of agenda-based and shamelessly partisan journalism, this would be it.

In the old days, the media narrative would go unquestioned, but in a era of citizen journalism it’s a lot harder to pull the wool over people’s eyes—and apparently the media hasn’t learned that lesson quite yet.

Iraq Violence Falling

The New York Times acknowledges that violence in Iraq has dropped precipitously, now reaching the same level as before the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarrah that kicked off massive internecine conflict in Iraq:

The data released Sunday cover attacks using car bombs, roadside bombs, mines, mortars, rockets, surface-to-air missiles and small arms. According to the statistics, roughly 575 attacks occurred last week.

That is substantially fewer than the more than 700 attacks that were recorded the week that Sunni militants set off a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq by blowing up a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006. And it represents a huge drop since June when attacks soared to nearly 1,600 one week.

American officials said other measures indicated that civilian deaths had dropped. Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the command, said civilian deaths had dropped by 60 percent since June.

Military analysts said a number of factors explained the drop. They say, for example, that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi insurgent group with foreign leadership, has been greatly weakened by American military attacks.

Thousands of new Sunni volunteers have made common cause with the Americans. About 72,000 such civilians have joined the effort, American officials said, and 45,000 each receive a $300 a month stipend from the Americans to help with the effort.

Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, has ordered his militiamen to stand down. American military officials also say that Iran appears to be abiding by a commitment to reduce the flow of roadside bombs and other weapons into Iraq. Beyond that, many Iraqis appear to be exhausted by the sectarian violence and eager for a modicum of stability.

In essence, our nearly year-long process of changing our counterinsurgency strategy is paying off. The “surge” wasn’t just about increasing troop numbers, but about a major change of strategy away from protecting our own forces and towards protecting Iraqi civilians. At the same time al-Qaeda in Iraq’s sheer barbarity was alienating the Iraqis, the US was changing strategy to work better with the Iraqi people. The confluence of those two events is key to understanding why violence is down. Iraq’s Sunni population had finally had enough, and we were there to support them in their grass-roots effort to destroy al-Qaeda.

The majority of the credit does need to go to the Iraqis. In order for Iraq to be secure, the Iraqis need to stand up and fight against terrorism. That is precisely what Iraqi Sunnis have been doing—and as the murder of Sheikh Abu Sattar al-Risha demonstrates, their bravery comes at a cost. Even the Iranians are realizing that the costs of their proxy war against the US are too great. They’ve stopped their shipments of weapons to terrorists in Iraq and they’ve put Moqtada al-Sadr back on his leash.

Of course, anything could change in Iraq, but the signs of progress have become unavoidable. Violence is down, al-Qaeda in Iraq is severely disrupted, and life is returning to normal in many parts of the country.

Those who have protested this war have now painted themselves into a rhetorical corner. By arguing that Iraq is an unwinnable morass and the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history, any sign of progress undercuts their argument. Yet despite all the negative hyperbole, the situation in Iraq is undoubtedly getting better, and all the resources spent by al-Qaeda in training and equipping fighters in Iraq has diminished their resources and left them with nothing. Instead of radicalizing Iraqi Sunnis, the last few months have seen Iraqi Sunnis soundly rejecting al-Qaeda and embracing a course of democratic peace.

There remains much left to be done, but should these trends continue, the drawdown of forces scheduled for the next few months shouldn’t leave the kind of security vacuum that caused problems in the past. The Iraqis have rejected terrorism and embraced a peace, albeit an uneasy one. The transition from dictatorship to democracy will always be a matter of two steps forward followed by one and a half steps back, but Iraq is democratizing, if in baby steps. Far from a disaster, the war in Iraq may end up being the turning point in which radical Islamic terrorist suffered its first major defeat in its own back yard.

The Devil We Know

The niece of Benazir Bhutto explains why Bhutto’s return is not a positive development for Pakistan:

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she’s saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she’d like to make a deal with his opponents — but still, she says, she’s the savior of democracy.

The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf’s regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

Bhutto was ejected for Pakistan for massive corruption. She was growing rich at the expense of the Pakistani people, and there’s little reason to believe that all her noble words about democracy aren’t just a way of getting her hand back in the cookie jar.

As reprehensible as we find the idea of Musharraf’s emergency rule, we have to consider the alternatives. Benazir Bhutto was in power when Pakistan was providing support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. She was kicked out of the country for corruption on a massive scale. It is uncertain that she could hold the country together in the face of rising Islamic extremism.

Pervez Musharraf, for all his flaws, has promised that there will be elections in January. He appears to be preparing for a crackdown on the al-Qaeda infested regions of Waziristan and the restive territories along the Afghan/Pakistan border. He has already worked towards reducing tensions with India over Kashmir.

As a general principle, what Musharraf is doing is wrong. Democracy should be a key principle of American foreign policy. However, we cannot ignore the reality that Pakistani democracy could lead to nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorist groups—or even a government willing to provoke India into a nuclear exchange. The level of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan could lead to a government more like Hamas than we can accept.

Musharraf, unfortunately, is the devil we know. We should be pushing him to end his emergency rule as soon as practicable, and to treat his people with respect and only minimize civil liberties as much as absolutely necessary. We should push him to help develop civil society in Pakistan and ensure that the Pakistani government does not succumb to the same endemic corruption that ended Bhutto’s government. However, looking at the situation in Pakistan, we have to consider that right now Musharraf’s interests are closely enough aligned with our own that to lose Musharraf would be to lose a stabilizing force in the region.

If all this reeks of realpolitik, that’s because it is. However, democratic idealism has its place, but not at the potential cost of a nuclear war in Central Asia. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for our foreign policy problems, which is why we must show flexibility in dealing with the Musharraf regime. We want a democratic Pakistan, but that must not mean allowing a Taliban-like regime to possess nuclear weapons. In this case, it is better to go with the devil we know rather than the one we do not.