Ehud Barak: Fighting Terror Like Fighting Malaria: Kill Mosquitoes and Drain the Swamp

In a talk given to the World Leaders Lecture Forum hosted by the University of Utah yesterday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak addressed serious Middle Eastern issues but also provided some entertaining one-liners and sound bites.

As reported in the Deseret Morning News, in describing Israel’s current posture in its dealings with Palestinians and neighboring terror sponsoring states, Barak bluntly remarked that:

Israel has one hand stretched out in peace and the other hand very close to the trigger. . . . That’s the only way to survive in the Middle East, where there is no mercy for the weak.

He later added this quippy gem:

The Mideast is not the Midwest. We would love to have the Canadians as our neighbors, but you got them.

Given Israel’s neighbors, Barak’s quip is understandable, but perhaps Canada is not quite as peaceful and benign as he implies. Canada’s radical Islamic population is increasing at a rapid pace, and anti-Americanism, along with a strong anti-Semitism, are thriving, particularly in Montreal-Quebec. Courtesy of IDF Israel, this is what Mr. Barak wishes for on his borders in exchange for what Israel currently faces:


This should provide some perspective if Barak would love to have such people as depicted in these photos as his neighbors. He considers the U.S. lucky to have Canada as a neighbor, and despite Canada’s covetous anti-Americanism, I suppose we are fortunate in our geographical location in the modern world. Of course we also have a neighbor to our south that hates us more than Canada . . . but I digress.

Barak made some interesting remarks about U.S. strategy in the war on terror, including our efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. According to Barak, the U.S. will need to compromise with China on human rights issues and Russia on self-determination for Chechnya to secure the cooperation of these nations in confronting Iran.

Human rights advocates will oppose such compromise, of course, and on the surface it is humbling to step back from previously stated demands made of China and Russia, but as I wrote about our strategy in Iraq in yesterday’s post, sometimes it is necessary to make unpleasant deals with unsavory characters or nations in order to achieve a more critical goal. We did so with Stalin in WWII, and it appears necessary now, as Russia and China are arming Iran and providing Ahmadinejad with the equipment to enrich uranium. Of course we are concerned with the human rights of the oppressed citizens of China, and we are similarly in favor of liberty and self-government for Chechnya, but neither of those issues currently imperils the existence of America and its allies. A nuclear Iran does. If we are intent on pursuing diplomatic pressure to convince Iran to change course, we must enlist Russia and China to intervene decisively in the interest of global security.

Mr. Barak seemed also to discount the importance of establishing a democracy in Iraq. According to Barak:

In the Middle East, the right to vote isn't the main issue. I'd prefer to look at the four freedoms outlined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: expression, worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Americans would do better to insist on universal, mandatory education for women rather than the right to vote.

This statement raises important questions. In my post yesterday addressing the question of whether the Iraq War is really a mess, I called attention to several tactics we failed to utilize that would have helped secure the services and cooperation of local tribal leaders and the disbanded Iraqi army in suppressing the insurgency. I quoted author Robert Kaplan’s summary of a conversation he had with an Iraqi sheik as described in Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, and Mr. Barak's speech yesterday confirmed much of what that sheik described to Kaplan as the root problem faced by the America military: democracy, or democratic elections, was merely an intangible result of the American overthrow of Saddam’s regime. The Iraqi people wanted (and are still hoping for) more tangible offerings to improve their physical situation, and Barak echoes this sentiment by identifying the four Roosevelt freedoms as issues of more importance than elections in securing allies for America in the Middle East.

Barak assigns minimal significance to the right to vote in comparison to education for women. At first glance this appears contradictory, in that education would seem useless without the right to vote and participate in decision making. However, Mr. Barak makes an important point that others in alternative media have discussed: reform of Islam will never occur unless Muslim women are permitted to receive education and training, and gradually exercise more influence on Islamic culture. Women tend to soften extremism and provide wise counsel in public discourse. Barak is no chauvinist here. Israeli women serve mandatory tours of duty in the Israeli Defense Force and the contribution of women is critical to Israeli strength in the field and perhaps more importantly on the home front.

Few people in the world have the depth of experience with and knowledge of Arab culture that Barak has acquired over a lifetime of military, intelligence, and political service, and it should be significant to U.S. strategic planners that a former Prime Minister of the original Middle Eastern democracy would urge America to place higher priority on humanitarian and security concerns than on democracy as the key tools for winning the War on Terror. Based on his assessment, it appears we have killed many “mosquitoes” in the War on Terror, and hopefully the troop surge will contribute more to “draining the swamp” by securing Iraqi cities so Iraqis can receive Roosevelt’s four freedoms.

Is the "Mess" in Iraq Fact or Fiction? Newt Gingrich, Winston Churchill, and Robert Kaplan Make Their Cases

I was recently asked, “Is Iraq really a mess, or does the media just portray it as a mess?” The knee-jerk reply to such a question would be to blame the media, since liberal media bias against President Bush and the military has been so well-documented in alternative media including Spy The News! However, the recent criticisms by Senator John McCain of the management of this war, which echoed similar criticisms he leveled in 2004, remind supporters of the war effort that criticizing war management does not equate to being anti-war or in favor of our withdrawal from Iraq.

Is the situation in Iraq a mess? Liberals and conservatives agree that it is. The difference lies in what one does with that realization. Liberals interpret the mess as confirmation that we cannot win the war and should withdraw our troops as quickly as possible regardless of the long term consequences for Iraqis and anxious neighboring nations. Conservative critics, except for cut and run advocates like Chuck Hagel, understand that the current situation is a mess, but favor learning from our mistakes and adapting strategy to achieve the original, noble purpose of the war. Both sides have engaged in useless political posturing, with Democrats and some weak-kneed Republicans passing non-binding resolutions assigning blame to someone else despite their own votes for the war in 2003. Republicans too, like McCain, have attacked former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for what they consider mismanagement of the war strategy.

Assigning blame will not make Iraq any less of a mess than it is now, and merely creates personal animosity when the more important matter, fixing the current situation in Iraq, receives secondary attention. To improve the current situation, it is essential to recognize what mistakes were made (not who made them) and correct the mistakes.

Critics seem to be in agreement that the biggest mistake was our failure to incorporate the then-existing Iraqi army and local tribal sheiks in our efforts to win the hearts of the Iraqi people and offer them security. In a book frequently recommended by radio and blog personality Hugh Hewitt, Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond, journalist Robert Kaplan, who was embedded with Army and Marine units in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, observed the following about our failure to utilize tribal leaders and the Iraqi army:

In fact, repression had not been the only tool used by Saddam Hussein. He had also bribed the paramount sheiks of the Sunni Triangle with cash, fancy cars, tracts of land, and other tangible gifts. But the American-led invasion dismantled that entire system. And what had the Americans brought in return to assuage such notables, who for millennia had affected the thinking of their extended clans? The promise of elections? What was that? An abstraction that meant little to many here. In a part of the world where blood was thicker than ideas, it was a difficult step for one Muslim to dime out another Muslim, especially for something as intangible as elections.

Thus the Sheiks and others, driven by narrow self-interest-as if that should have surprised anyone-made it known that they were open to deals with Syrians and assorted other jihadists. . . . It didn’t help matters that the very militarization of the state facilitated by Saddam had turned Iraq into one huge ammunition storehouse for the supply of rockets and mortars to the jihadists, and the making of IEDs. . . . And with the Iraqi army disbanded, there was now a pool of people with knowledge of ordnance and explosives, and the incentive to use it against the Americans.

In Kaplan’s writings, it is clear he is no fan of the Bush administration, yet his book provides one of the best firsthand accounts of what our Army Special Forces and Marines have faced. The failure to respect and utilize local tribal sheiks to suppress radical insurgents was perhaps the most shortsighted error made in Iraq. After decades of oppression and firm control by Saddam’s regime, Iraqis lived in fear but knew who was in charge in their local areas. After disbanding the Iraqi army, we left no force other than the American military to suppress insurgents, something the Iraqi army had been successfully doing prior to our arrival.

Lest one think that the observation of one embedded journalist is unreliable, consider this excerpt from Newt Gingrich’s book Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America:

The decision to have an American administration in Baghdad was a mistake. We seemed to be doing relatively well in Iraq until late May 2003 when the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) transitioned into power.

Instead of the CPA, we should have created an interim Iraqi government in June 2003 as we had in Afghanistan. It took only three weeks to identify Hamid Kharzai in Afghanistan. The people actually involved in Iraq’s interim government in June 2004 were all known and available in 2003.

The decision of the CPA to disband the Iraqi military, putting hundreds of thousands of armed young men out of work, was a disaster that our military warned against. Had the Iraqi army been kept intact-as General Tommy Franks and General Michael DeLong recommended-it is possible that most of the subsequent violence would have been averted.

History, in fact, provided ample tactical and cultural information about Afghanistan and Iraq that was apparently ignored in the design of “Shock and Awe” and other chest-thumping strategies. As quoted by Kaplan, in 1897 young Winston Churchill (in his Story of the Malakand Field Force) observed the following about Afghanistan, where the British Empire was attempting to hold sway against indigenous forces:

A roadless, broken and underdeveloped country; an absence of any strategic points; a well-armed enemy with great mobility and modern rifles, who adopts guerilla tactics. The results . . .are the troops can march anywhere, and do anything, except catch the enemy. . . .

“The unpractical,” Churchill replied, “may wonder why we, a people who fill some considerable place in the world, should mix in the petty intrigues of these border chieftains.” Some, whom Churchill calls “bad and nervous sailors,” would simply cut and run, even though that would be impossible in the circumstances, whereas others call for “full steam ahead,” that is, a dramatic increase in military and other resources until the frontier valleys “ are as safe and civilized as Hyde Park.” But, as Churchill intimates, there are usually neither the troops nor the money nor the will to do any such thing. Therefore, he concludes, the “inevitable alternative” is a system of “gradual advance, of political intrigue among the tribes, of subsidies and small expeditions."

Did we enter Iraq with small expeditions and forward operating bases (FOBs) spread throughout the country to assess and adapt to local tribal leaders and situations? No, we drove impressively to Baghdad in a glorified televised event, captured Saddam, disbanded the Iraqi army, failed to “grease the skids” with the local sheiks who employed small military forces of their own, and then Washington seemed surprised that an insurgency arose. Of course, bribing tribal sheiks sounds corrupt and even antithetical to the effort of establishing a democracy, but in reality a democracy can only succeed when each local tribe feels safe to go to the polls and feels adequately represented in the national government.

The tribes trusted their sheiks, but the U.S. CPA was loathe to deal with them and chose its own representatives for the tribes. We lacked adequate cultural intelligence to make appropriate decisions, and the sheiks and their armed followers were understandably offended. It would have been far wiser to “shock and awe” the tribal leaders with our monetary generosity. Gifts and yes, even bribes, would have made them forget the past payments expected of Saddam and secured their cooperation in securing local villages and cities against insurgents who could disturb this comfortable arrangement.

Was there military intelligence or training material that could have predicted this eventuality? Kaplan quoted the following from the U.S. Marine Corps Small Wars Manual(initially published in 1940):

Hostile forces will withdraw into the more remote parts of the country, or will be dispersed into numerous small groups which continue to oppose the occupation. Even though the recognized leaders may capitulate, subordinate commanders often refuse to abide by the terms of the capitulation. Escaping to the hinterland, they assemble heterogeneous armed groups of patriotic soldiers, malcontents, notorious outlaws. . .and by means of guerilla warfare, continue to harass and oppose the intervening force in its attempt to restore peace and good order throughout the country as a whole.

It seems clear that the Marines in 1940 were already providing keys to success in the War on Terror 61 years before 9/11, Afghanistan, and eventually Iraq. Kaplan and Gingrich also identified other mistakes that we have made that can still be corrected. Kaplan was embedded with a Marine unit in Al-Fallujah and witnessed what he described as progress in the battle against the insurgents there. Just as our military seemed poised to score what could have been a decisive victory, the Bush administration called for a cease-fire for, as journalist Kaplan writes in Imperial Grunts, media and public opinion reasons:

The focus of the media. . .on Al-Fallujah. . .was central to the decision-made at the highest levels of the U.S. government-to call a cease-fire that would end the Marine assault. This happened just as the Marines, strengthened by the arrival of a whole new battalion, may have been about to overrun the insurgents.

To be sure, the decision to invest Al-Fallujah and then pull out just as victory was within reach demonstrated both the fecklessness and incoherence of the Bush administration. While a case can be made for either launching a full-scale marine assault or continuing the previous policy of individual surgical strikes, a case cannot be made for launching a full-scale assault only to reverse it because of political pressures that were foreseeable in the first place.

The tendency of our political leaders to be swayed by media coverage and subsequent public opinion polls, led to decisions that rendered the tasks of the on the scene military commanders impossible. Those commanders are not being allowed to wage brutal war against a brutal enemy. Had we decisively defeated the insurgents in Al-Fallujah, one of the most violent areas of Iraq, the course of the war might have been vastly different than what we have experienced. Newt Gingrich went into more detail about our mistakes in the public opinion war, specifically that we have not waged one:

We also underestimated the effect of the Arab media’s propaganda campaign against us. We had no information program in the Arab world or in Europe capable of effectively communicating what we were trying to do. CPA media efforts were wrongly focused on American public opinion, not Iraqi public opinion. That made it much harder for us to mobilize Iraqis to our side.

In the global struggles against fascism and communism, the United States waged a military, economic, and propaganda war. Yet we have done nothing similarly organized and coherent in the war against Islamists and the rogue states.

While there is much to criticize about the management of the Iraq War, and plenty of blame to go around, the enduring lesson is that in the course of difficulty it is preferable to recognize and mend mistakes than to withdraw in defeat before the stated goal of the mission is accomplished. The stakes are high for our own security, our international credibility, and most importantly, the future of 50+ million Iraqis. The Boy Scouts are taught to always leave a place better than they found it. Regardless of how Iraq became a mess for us or who contributed to the mess, we are now obligated to leave Iraq better than we found it. Removing Saddam was the right thing to do, but we will not be leaving Iraq better than we found it if we abandon it to a Sunni-Shiite conflict that will quickly escalate and embroil neighboring nations eager to expand their borders and resources.

The only asset in short supply for Americans is patience. The media, possibly influenced by the initial “shock and awe” bluster, focus only on body counts, rarely reporting the rebuilding of infrastructure and other humanitarian work occurring in Iraq. But in fairness, the civilian affairs groups that typically provide humanitarian efforts have been largely unable to operate in Iraq because we have not yet secured the country from insurgents. As a result, as Kaplan describes effectively, our military is forced to fight insurgents while also rebuilding villages, schools, and utilities. The dissatisfaction among the troops in Iraq stems mainly from not being allowed to focus on the duty they are best trained for: engaging and killing the enemy.

Why are they not allowed to engage the enemy fully? Because casualty rates kill campaigns, and we are now in another election cycle. It is time for Republicans and Democrats who are serious about national security and winning the War on Terror to stop making war decisions based on small random sampling polls that purport to represent national opinion. Engaging the enemy more fully despite casualty risk, along with our propaganda efforts and outreach to local tribal leaders, can be corrected and proven effective, but only if we avoid a rash rush to retreat.

6 Arab Nations Surveyed: "Moderate" Islamic Scholar Praises Suicide Bombers, Blames America for Terrorism

According to a Zogby International survey conducted in 6 Middle Eastern nations for the Brookings Institution, the consensus among Arabs is a yawner: America is to blame for terrorist attacks and the increase of Islamic extremism. Cybercast News Service further reported that according to the survey anti-American sentiment is on the rise in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates, the six nations surveyed. While the increase in anti-Americanism comes as no surprise, some of the other survey results deserve consideration.

To set the context, the survey results were presented at the U.S.-Islamic Forum held in Doha, Qatar. Ostensibly it was intended to be a conference to discuss relations between the U.S. and Islam, but due to the attendance of and remarks delivered by several highly influential Islamic figures, it regressed into a "blame America" session in which responsibility for terrorist murders was heaped upon Israel, the U.S. and England, in that order, with none ascribed to the terrorists themselves.

One of the prinicple speakers, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Sunni scholar considered as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a resident of Qatar, made a remarkable assertion, one that echoes the talking points of the anti-war movement within the U.S. According to al-Qaradawi, the U.S. had gone searching for "an alternative enemy" after the Soviet Union crumbled. According to Al-Qaradawi, "The U.S. has initiated the animosity when the neoconservatives chose Islam as an alternative enemy." Let's examine that statement. What is the Arabic term for "neoconservative"? Is it any wonder that conservatives accuse liberals of siding with our enemies when those enemies use the same phrases and descriptive names (like Neocon) in their rants against America? Did America go looking for war after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993? After the Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya? After the bombing of the USS Cole? Based on historical fact, it would seem radical Islam came looking for war, not America. Even a hyper tolerant, suicidally permissive society must at some point strike back, and 9/11 demanded a response that should have been made nearly a decade earlier.

According to al-Qaradawi's website, he is a voice of moderation, this despite his consistent defense of suicide bombings as an acceptable and encouraged practice among "oppressed" Muslims. These are the words of a "moderate" Islamic scholar who is featured frequently on Al-Jazeera network:

Allah Almighty is just; through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do," Qaradawi told BBC television in 2004, adding during a press conference around the same time that suicide bombings are "weapons to which the weak resort in order to upset the balance because the powerful have all the weapons that the weak are denied.

Of great interest were the survey results that identified the nations and leaders most despised (feared as a threat) and most admired by the 6 Arab nations surveyed.

In summary, the most despised leaders were:
1. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (in a coma since 2006)
2. President Bush
3. British Prime Minister Tony Blair

The most despised nations (actually phrased as biggest threat to Arabs) were:
1. Israel
2. The U.S.
3. Great Britain

Most admired world figures:
1. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (leader of the terrorist group Hizballah)
2. French President Jacque Chirac
3. Iranian President Ahmadinejad
4. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

It is fascinating that Jacque Chirac was more admired than Ahmadinejad and Chavez, given that one is thumbing his nose at the West and developing nuclear weapons, and the other publicly stated in the U.N. General Assembly that he could still smell the stench of President Bush's evil in the room after the President had spoken and departed. Apparently France's refusal to join the coalition assembled for the Iraq War is a cherished memory in the Arab world.

There was some good news from the conference, however. Sheikh al-Qaradawi provided the long-elusive solution to the War on Terror: "If America changed its policy [conquering the world by force], we would change our attitudes." Amazing how similar are the talking points and conclusions of terror supporters and our own liberal left. "If we would just withdraw from Iraq, they would stop hating us." "If we would stop supporting Israel, they would stop hating us." "If we weren't so brazenly immoral they would not want to kill us." All of these have been put forth as solutions for the spread of Islamic terrorism by the American liberal left and even by some well-meaning but ultimately misguided souls on the right (D'Souza comes to mind).

Terrorism cannot be stopped by appeasing it, counseling with it, or seeking to understand its root causes, since according to radical Islam the justification is in the Quran regardless of the socio-political climate. It can only be stopped by destroying those who practice it, harbor it, and fund it. That is why Chirac is so popular, as he has attempted none of these. The Arab world clearly wants more leaders like him in power in the West, and influenced Spain's elections accordingly with pre-election bombings. Will they need to resort to that here? If voting trends continue, they will get their wish without further attacks on American soil.

Comparing Lists of Top Threats to the U.S.

In today's Fox News People's Weekly Brief, 15 year CIA veteran Mike Baker provided a list of the top threats facing the U.S. as submitted by PWB readers. Although the list contains some "threats" that I certainly do not rate as imminent (such as Global Warming or the Democratic Party), it is instructive to compare this list with the Spy The News! list of the top 5 threats facing the U.S. in 2007.

Mike's PWB readers and Spy The News! readers certainly share a healthy mistrust of Russia, and especially Mr. Putin, who continues his sabre rattling with new threats against Czechoslavakia and Poland if those nations agree to house components of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense system designed to detect and intercept missiles launched from rogue Middle Eastern nations like Iran. PWB readers ranked Russia #7, while Spy the News! had Russia at #2. It is becoming more obvious with each public exchange of Cold War barbs that whatever friendship President Bush developed with Mr. Putin over the years has been replaced with Putin's increasing nostalgia for the time when Russia was taken seriously because of its threats to "bury" any nation foolish enough to oppose it.

The PWB and Spy The News! lists also include, of course, Iran. PWB readers chose Iran as the #1 threat, but I maintain that because there are still options and opportunities for preventing Iran from fully developing a deployable nuclear weapon, the threat from Iran remains, at least for now, a terrorist threat only. Dollar for dollar, Russia is providing more weapons systems, equipment, and replacement parts to terrorist organizations and terror sponsors than any other nation in the world. While it is true that Iran is shipping those weapons into Iraq and other terrorist operational venues, the weapons are being produced in and sold by Russia or other former Soviet states looking to profit from their proxy war with America and its allies.

China, also standing to benefit greatly in world esteem and profit immensely from the decline of America's wealth and power, not surprisingly also made both lists and is a major supplier of technology to North Korea and Iran. This is not to downplay the threats posed by Iran. Clearly Iran is the most imminent threat in the Middle East. But in the long run, who poses a greater risk to America and its allies, the terrorists themselves or the nation-states that arm, equip, and maintain them? We wage war on one, while granting most favored nation trade status to the other.

Some argue that Putin faces his own Islamic terrorist threat in Chechnya and thus is a natural ally in the War on Terror. This view is too simplistic. Under the former Soviet regime, which produced Putin and the iron fist ideology he yearns for, Islamic terrorism was ruthlessly suppressed. Putin is a Cold War product and views the U.S., not Islamic terrorists, as the single obstacle preventing Russia from achieving global dominance. How long will Russians tolerate the loud and arrogant claims that America won the Cold War and that communism was defeated? National pride is a dangerous force that, once unleashed, typically propels a nation toward cataclysmic war. Hitler tapped into just such feelings of wounded pride and anger stemming from defeat in previous wars.

Putin is centralizing businesses and natural resource industries, threatening Poland and Czechoslovakia, and publicly condemns the U.S. far more than any terrorist groups. Only those unwilling to see the signs will fail to recognize that the path Russia is taking bears ominous similarities to Germany in the 1930's. A global recession that forces Russians to beg their government to take further control, and a scapegoat upon which to blame their economic misfortunes, are the sole ingredients needed for Putin (or another like him) to turn a flickering flame of nationalist pride into a raging wildfire. For Hitler, the Jews were the economic and cultural scapegoats. For Russia, the scapegoat will be the Americans and post Cold War "capitalism."

I invite you to compare the two lists and form your own conclusions. Spy The News! maintains that "Internal Strife" poses the single greatest threat we face in 2007, for the reasons detailed in the original post.