Category: Networks

Michael J. Totten comments on this article from the Independent on what the Iraqis (remember them?) actually want:

So did the people of Iraq plead for us to take to the streets to stop this war? No — the opposite. Even in a country where the price for this kind of dissidence is often torture and murder, large numbers explained they want the Americans and British to help them dislodge Saddam through war.

I wish more of our “anti-war” people could read the British press.

Also writing in the Observer, Nick Cohen is also sharply critical of the anti-liberation forces of the left for the damage they’re doing to Iraq with their protests:

…The democrats are struggling without the support of Western liberals and socialists because they don’t fit into a pat world view.

The conclusion the Iraqi opposition has reluctantly reached is that there is no way other than war to remove a tyrant whose five secret police forces make a palace coup or popular uprising impossible. As the only military force on offer is provided by America, they will accept an American invasion.

This is their first mistake. American and British power is always bad in the eyes of muddle-headed Left, the recent liberations of East Timor, Sierra Leone and Kosovo notwithstanding.

Then the uppity wogs compound their offence and tell their European betters to think about the political complexities. The British and American governments aren’t monoliths, they argue. The State Department and the CIA have always been the foes of Iraqi freedom. But they are countered by the Pentagon and a US Congress which passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 – a law which instructs the American government to support democracy. Not one Iraqi I have met trusts the Foreign Office. However, they have had a grudging admiration for Tony Blair ever since he met the Kurdish leaders and gave them a fair hearing – a courteous gesture which hasn’t been matched by the Pinters, Trotskyists, bishops, actresses and chorus girls on yesterday’s march.

The Iraqis must now accept that they will have to fight for democracy without the support of the British Left. Disgraceful though our failure to hear them has been, I can’t help thinking that they’ll be better off without us.

The Observer also carries a harsh Op-Ed by one Kanan Makiya on the battle between the CIA and the Pentagon over the shape of the post-liberation government. This is an important struggle, and only those who support liberation have a voice in it.

The struggle for factional power in a liberated Iraq is moving into high gear as the invasion draws near. One dynamic that’s in high tension right now pits the White House against the CIA and the State Department on the democratic nature of the new government. Some of this comes out in an article in The Observer:

Chalabi, who lives in London, said demonstrators who attended anti-war protests across Britain yesterday were misguided. ‘I would urge them to think again,’ he said.
‘War is a horrible thing to wish on anyone. But I firmly believe that the Iraqi people want the US to get rid of Saddam. Blair is doing the right thing.’

Chalabi was especially scathing of the German government, which he said was led by ‘ageing German leftists wishing to absolve their conscience at the expense of the Iraqi people’. It was Germany which had supplied Saddam with chemical weapons in the 1980s, he pointed out.

The Pentagon and the vice-president Dick Cheney are broadly in favour of introducing Western-style democracy to Iraq but the State Department under Colin Powell and the CIA believe it could have a destabilising influence on the region.

Chalabi has long been at odds with the CIA, who’ve disregarded 100 of his reports on Iraqi linkage with Al Qaeda which clashed with their view that religious zealots could never cooperate with secular fascists against America. Chalabi has made the CIA look bad, and they want to punish him by installing a Saudi-style government in Iraq. While I’m certainly in no position to say how this will work out in the end, it’s important to realize that the factional power struggles and the debate over the new government isn’t dampening the Chalabi-lead INC’s enthusiasm for regime change.

Moira reports that the NATO allies have out-foxed France and moved to protect Turkey from Saddamite attack:

NATO Breaks Deadlock on Iraq in 18-Nation Committee (washingtonpost.com)

BRUSSELS – NATO broke its deadlock over planning for the defense of Turkey in the event of a U.S.-led war against Iraq on Sunday after hours of wrangling in a committee where France, which had blocked the move, has no seat.

Good move, echoing what they had to do last time France tried to assert herself.

Web designer Kathy Kinsley has made a gracious offer to those who wish to sport the “Support Democracy in Iraq” logo on their blogs, but aren’t comfortable with HTML:

I do web design too, and would be quite happy to put that up in a sidebar for anyone who wants it. Free (donations accepted, though).

I urge everybody to support democracy in Iraq, and one easy way to do it is to stand up and be counted. The anti-democracy movement is pulling millions of racists and morons to their rallies, so the rest of us have to work that much harder to liberate Iraq.

David Pryce-Jones has some words about sis’s old school buddy Chalabi today in opinion.telegraph.co.uk – The marchers are doing Saddam’s work

Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and other exiles are now preparing to take over. Kanan Makiya, one of the most brilliant among them, has been drafting a new constitution for sharing power among Iraq’s disparate elements. Since they cannot liberate themselves, others have to do it for them. That is the point of our invasion.

Iraq can become a democracy, but we have to sweep Saddam, the demonstrators, and France out of the way first. So many idiots, so little time.

Quote a few people have weighed into the Great Cross Blog Debate on the liberation of Iraq.

Here are some of the responses from the pro-liberation side:

Richard Bennett
Alex Knapp
Robin Goodfellow
Mike Silverman
Derek James
John Tabin
Wylie Blog
Maarten Schenk
Stephen Gordon
Dean Esmay
John Moore
Martin Devon
John Hawkins
J. Belcher
Jason Verber
The Weigh In
Giants and Dwarves
Cranky Hermit
Charles (Little Green Footballs) Johnson
Jeff Lawson
Incidental to the Question
Dave Himrich
Legal Bean
Glome
Cold Fury
The Lazy Pundit
Sasha and Andrew’s Roundtable
Matt Johnson
Eric Simonson
Baseball Crank
Counterpoint

and from the pro-oppression side:

Karl-Friedrich Lenz
George Kysor
Anonoblogger Dr. Slack
Anonoblogger Leonard
Outlandish Josh
August Pollack
Frankly, I’d rather not
George Paine
A serving of Crow

These remarks of Tony Blair’s were quoted by Sullivan, but I want to save them so here you are:

Yes, there are consequences of war. If we remove Saddam by force, people will die and some will be innocent. And we must live with the consequences of our actions, even the unintended ones.

But there are also consequences of “stop the war”.

If I took that advice, and did not insist on disarmament, yes, there would be no war. But there would still be Saddam. Many of the people marching will say they hate Saddam. But the consequences of taking their advice is that he stays in charge of Iraq, ruling the Iraqi people. A country that in 1978, the year before he seized power, was richer than Malaysia or Portugal. A country where today, 135 out of every 1000 Iraqi children die before the age of five – 70% of these deaths are from diarrhoea and respiratory infections that are easily preventable. Where almost a third of children born in the centre and south of Iraq have chronic malnutrition.

Where 60% of the people depend on Food Aid.
Where half the population of rural areas have no safe water.

Where every year and now, as we speak, tens of thousands of political prisoners languish in appalling conditions in Saddam’s jails and are routinely executed.

Where in the past 15 years over 150,000 Shia Moslems in Southern Iraq and Moslem Kurds in Northern Iraq have been butchered; with up to four million Iraqis in exile round the world, including 350,000 now in Britain.

This isn’t a regime with Weapons of Mass Destruction that is otherwise benign. This is a regime that contravenes every single principle or value anyone of our politics believes in.

There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which if he is left in power, will be left in being.

I rejoice that we live in a country where peaceful protest is a natural part of our democratic process.

But I ask the marchers to understand this.

I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. And the cost of conviction.

But as you watch your TV pictures of the march, ponder this:

If there are 500,000 on that march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for.

If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started.

I don’t sense that these facts even register with the demonstrators, who seem to be fighting an anti-Bush battle instead of a legitimate anti-war battle; you can see this from the signs they carry and their reports of the demonstrations at Stand Down and elsewhere.

There are consequences of inactivity, and there are consequences of joining a movement predicated on hate (in this case, for Bush) instead of a genuine concern for The People — and they aren’t good.

How amazing is this?

In case you don’t happen to know where the phrase “Peace in our Time” comes from, Little Green Footballs can explain it for you.

Hint: Here’s what peace looked like in France from 1940-44:

Surprisingly sober editorial in the New York Times today: Disarming Iraq

The only way short of war to get Saddam Hussein to reverse course at this late hour is to make clear that the Security Council is united in its determination to disarm him and is now ready to call in the cavalry to get the job done. America and Britain are prepared to take that step. The time has come for the others to quit pretending that inspections alone are the solution.

I fail to see how anyone who saw the UN session Friday can’t be prepared to go to war with Iraq (and with France, China, and Russia if need be, the weasels).

What’s happening is clear: all of these countries want Iraq to disarm, but they don’t want to get stuck with the tab, so they hide behind the pretence of waiting for inspections to force Saddam to disarm. They know that the US and the UK and our allies will at some point blow off the UN and go do the dirty work, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of a world without Saddam without paying the price financially, militarily, or politically. That’s the mindset of politicians of the welfare state.