British Muslim youth more in favor of sharia than their parents' generation

What many Omani women wear underneath their black abaya (as seen below).

In a poll conducted by Policy Exchange, described as a "right-wing think tank" by the London Telegraph, 40 percent of young Muslims (ages 16-24) said they would prefer that Britain adopt Islamic law or sharia compared to only 17 percent of their parents generation (those over 55 years of age).

Under sharia, the reader will recall, men's testimony in court is worth that of two women, adulterers may be lashed or even stoned to death, thieves can have their hands cut off, and apostates may be put to death.

Now if the reader is wondering whether these young British Muslims really understood the implications of what they were saying, Policy Exchange tried to ferret out the answer to that question by asking whether Muslims who repudiate their faith should be "punished by death." Thirty-six percent of the youths said yes they should, compared to only 19 percent of the over 55s.

Seventy-five percent of the Muslim youth polled also thought Muslim women should wear the veil or hijab to signal their piety. This was compared to only 25 percent of their parents generation. This seems to me to indicate that the same Islamic fashion wave that hit the Middle East in the past 30 years would appear to be becoming the vogue among young British Muslims as well.

Thirty years ago, as the youths over-55 parents' or even grandparents' generation can recall, the streets of Cairo, not to mention Kabul, were filled with women wearing miniskirts. Today the vast majority of women don the headscarf in Egypt and most women are still afraid to shed their burkas in Afghanistan. In Oman, most women did not cover their already modest traditional outfits with the black abaya that almost all the females past puberty now seem to feel compelled to wear. Even in Saudi Arabia, where the constitution has always been the Koran, women were not shrouded in black outside their homes to the same extent they are today.

While sharia traces its origins to the advent and expansion of Islam in the Middle Ages and has always guided Muslims, sharia did not become the basis of modern Muslim nation-state law, especially in countries with codified legal systems until the 1980s. In Pakistan, for example, Islam did not become the source of law until 1981, at which point apostasy indeed became a crime punishable by death. In Iran, it was only after the Islamic revolution in 1979, that the minimum age for marriage was moved from 18 to 9 for women - or rather girls.

In Iran, leftists, communists and other Iranians that were not necessarily inclined toward an Islamic identity rallied behind the new Islamic theocracy because at the time, it seemed to be a charming alternative to Western imperialism (with which the Shah had come to be identified). But three decades later, according to most accounts, life under the "Islamic Republic" has not turned out to be the utopia that was anticipated. Islamic law does not seem to have improved Pakistan much either.

Perhaps these young British Muslims who are so eager to implement sharia should study how Islamic law has actually panned out in the countries that have tried it. Maybe they'll find that most of their elders aren't so ignorant after all in not wanting to see sharia imposed in Britain.

More images from militant-jihad-free Oman

Militant-Jihad-Free Zone: Oman

I wasn't posting last week because I was in Oman. And when in Oman for less than a week, well, you can't just surf the Internet.

(Or so I was repeatedly told whenever I checked my Blackberry. At one point, to get my attention, my daughter had to email me from her Blackberry even though we were traveling in the same car. Before you report me for child neglect, however, you should know that I'm talking about a college graduate here.)

Anyway, one of the attractions of Oman is that in spite of the fact that it is an Islamic country, it is virtually a militant-jihad-free zone.

From what I've been able to gather, no Omani has ever been caught participating in the jihad against coalition forces in Afghanistan or Iraq. While the 9/11 Commission claims that bin Laden recruited an Omani jihadist organization to join his Islamic Army Council, the predecessor organization to al Qaeda he created while living in the Sudan during the early 1990s, this Omani group could not have played a very significant role as it has since dropped off the radar screen.

There were also reportedly a few Omanis alleged to be members of al Qaeda that were arrested in Oman in 2002, as was a Kuwaiti-Canadian al Qaeda member who was caught perhaps on his way to Saudi Arabia, according to a Jamestown report. But exactly what these al Qaeda members were precisely doing in Oman is not known as nothing has been made public, aside from a report that at least some were extradited to U.S. custody (a report denied by Omani officials). From what I can tell, none of these jihadists have been seen or heard from since.

Perhaps the closest encounter Oman had with homegrown Islamic radicals occurred in 2004-5, when some 100-300 people were arrested in connection with a plot to violently disrupt an upcoming trade and culture festival in Oman's capital city, Muscat. The plotters reportedly objected to the festivities because they believed celebrations of this sort were unIslamic. But they vigorously asserted that they were loyal Ibadhis as opposed to Wahhabis or Salafis, the type of Muslims usually identified with al Qaeda.

And ultimately, the 31 persons that were ultimately convicted in connection with this alleged plot had their sentences, which ranged from one to twenty years, immediately pardoned by the Sultan who decided that in the end, they were just a bunch of misguided religious fanatics. (I'm putting words in the Sultan's mouth here, but that's essentially what he said.)

Now why would Oman be so uniquely free from militant jihadism as opposed to, say, its nearest neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Yemen? N. Janardhan, a Jamestown terrorism expert posits that this is because Oman is unique in that it is an Ibadhi Muslim country. That is, the de facto state religion of Oman is a branch of Islam that is Ibadhi, a branch of Islam that is neither Sunni nor Shiite. (Note that the de jure state religion is, however, simply Islam.)

So what is so special about Ibadhi Islam? The simple answer is that Ibadhis part ways with the rest of their coreligionists for pretty much the same reasons the Shiites separated from the Sunnis - because of irreconcilable differences over who should have led the early Muslim community.

Recall that after the Prophet Muhammed died, the Sunnis maintain that the leadership of the umma (Muslim community) correctly fell to the person who was best qualified. The Shiites, on the other hand, believe that this leadership position should have resided with the person who was most closely related to the Prophet. Since the Prophet had no sons, his closest relative was his cousin and son-in-law Ali, who did eventually become what the Sunnis call the 4th "rightly-guided imam" believing as they do that the first four imams (or leaders of the Muslim community) after the Prophet's death were truly divinely-inspired leaders - as opposed to those who came after them, who were well, less meritorious or pious.

The Ibadhis, like the Sunnis, also believe that merit should trump hereditary claims to leadership but reject the Sunni notion that these first four imams were all in fact "rightly guided." This is because the Ibadhis contend that the 3rd such imam, Uthman, introduced too many innovations into Islam. And they believe that the 4th imam, Ali, the Shiite favorite, should have been impeached the moment he agreed to negotiate with as opposed to defeat a group of Muslims who rebelled against him in what came to be called the First Muslim Civil War or Fitna.

The Ibadhis also believe (as do the Shiites) that the Koran was created as opposed to being the actual word of God.

Now I'm not sure whether any of this makes the Ibadhis truly less receptive to militant jihadism in the current era than their Sunni or Shiite counterparts today but the Ibadhis in Oman also seem to be a good deal more tolerant than say their Muslim brothers in next-door Saudi Arabia. Not only do Ibadhis have no problem worshipping at Sunni mosques (some 25 percent of Omanis are Sunnis - mostly the Balochis), but they let the Shiites in Oman build their own mosques as they please, and the Sultanate has even given its Christian and Hindu communities public land on which to build churches and temples. Guest workers in Oman of other faiths, while they have not yet been given real estate, are free to organize their own worship services. And, even more amazingly given the regional norms, while there is no discernible presence of Jews in Oman, it was was the first Gulf Cooperation Council country to host an Israeli prime minister - Yitzhak Rabin, in 1994.

Indeed there is certainly some privileging of Muslims in Oman - nonMuslims cannot proselytize, though informally they do, and Muslim women cannot marry nonMuslim men, though some probably end up doing that too, but compared to its neighbor to the west - and Iran, its neighbor across the Strait of Hormuz, Oman does indeed seem to be exceptionally tolerant.

Could this also be the reason it is remarkably free of militant jihadism?

Michelle Malkin reports on the AP's mystery source, Jamal Hussein

Michelle Malkin, back from Iraq, publishes the results of her investigation into the story of the mystery Associated Press source, Jamal Hussein in what would now be yesterday's New York Post (as I'm reporting from London).

The reader will recall that Mr. Hussein came to the blogosphere's attention when he was identified as the source in the AP's report of the firebombing of Sunni mosques last Thanksgiving, allegedly by Mahdi forces, that culminated in six Sunnis being torched to death that some bloggers found, well, hard to swallow.

When Curt of FloppingAces wondered whether Mr. Hussein, identified by the AP as an Iraqi police captain, really existed, the Iraqi government and U.S. military officials responded that couldn't find any evidence he did, at least not in their records. The New York Times, for its part, could not confirm Mr. Hussein's existence either, nor could Eason Jordan's Iraqslogger. The AP, however, still stood by its story.

Eventually, Iraq's Interior Ministry did revise its finding and determined that yes, the Iraqi police captain did indeed exist. Not surprisingly, the AP was triumphant. Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll even wondered on record why anyone would have "disbelieved" the AP in the first place.

The only problem was, the mosques that were alleged to have been destroyed were still standing and no one could corroborate Mr. Hussein's account that six Sunnis had been doused with kerosene and lit on fire. Not even Michelle Malkin or her colleague, Bryan Preston, who went to Iraq to check out story.

While they found that some of the mosques Mr. Hussein had identified had been damaged in attacks by the Mahdi Army, none had been damaged or destroyed, as he had alleged. Nor could they find anyone who would vouch for Mr. Hussein's account of the torching of the six Sunni individuals.

As Lt. Col. Steven Miska, commander of the Dagger Brigade at Forward Operating Base Justice, told Michelle: "Part of it is, if you're relying on Iraqi reporters, well, what are their biases? What clans are they from and tribes? Why are they telling me this? What's his underlying motivation? And if you quote a police chief, well, those guys have underlying motivations, too . . ."

It does seem a bit odd, and I'm not the first to point this out, that the AP, which still stands by its story, no longers apparently uses Mr. Hussein as a source, though they had used him on some 60 different occasions in the past and still claim he is legitimate.

Now for the obvious question: Should not perhaps persons with the last name Hussein be more carefully vetted than your average Iraqi? Not that I'm suggesting that all people with this last name (or middle name for that matter) should be generally suspected. But in the Sunni areas of Iraq, well, wouldn't this seem obvious?

Is Pakistan colluding with the Taliban?

Or is the Taliban - not to mention other interested parties - trying to nail the ISI and by extension Pakistan?

In this report, from what would seem to be an aptly named place, Pashtunabad (I'm not kidding here), a neighborhood in Quetta, Pakistan, as well as other places, the New York Times explores the rumors that Pakistan's intelligency agency, the ISI is behind a resurgent (and insurgent) Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban, the reader will recall, were dominated by the Pashtuns.

The problem one is struck by when reading the Times report, is how does one ferret out what the real truth is in a place named Pashtunabad? (Actually, I think it's a very nice name in a very nice language in a very nice culture, to those readers who will barrage me with emails for making fun of their neighborhood, their grandmother's, or the local language.)

According to the Times, Western diplomats, Pakistani officials, and almost everyone the newspaper spoke to said they thought that Pakistani officials were backing the Taliban. This isn't because Pakinstan loves these guys (lovable though they ,may be; again, I don't want to be appear to be racist or Islamophobic here), but because they regard the Taliban as Pakistan's "strategic depth."

Now, knowing what we know now, it would seem to be odd to characterize the Taliban as anyone's strategic death, wouldn't it? (Well, ignoring Al Qaeda for a minute.) But according to who the presumably knowledgable sources the Times quotes, there is some logic here.

The idea is that the Taliban are supposed to provide a buffer to block Indian and Russian expansion on Pakistan's Western front. This would be that lovely resort area on the Afghan-Pakistani border that everyone wants to seek refuge in because no central government has never been able to control it.

Of course I don't need to point out that the ISI is notorious for having enabled the Taliban back in the day, i.e., before 9/11. In fact, the head of the ISI during this period, Hamid Gul, is still said to believe that Pakistan was right to encourage these, could we say, fanatical madrassah types to take over Afghanistan. Yes, I acknowledge, the Taliban did provide some security, in Mr. Gul's defense. And, no less an authority than the Pakistani president himself has said that retired intelligence officials may well be supporting, as the Times puts it, these "former protégés" of theirs.

That said, the reader should bear in mind that many of the people the Times polled would seem to have a vested interest in fingering the Pakistani government, as opposed to say, themselves or their children - as the Times noted, Pashtunabad is "flagrantly" Taliban.

But would these "flagrant" Taliban sympathizers really be reliable sources on this story? Wouldn't they fear Pakistani reprisals if they sided with those who are harming Pakistan's international standing by opposing the UN-supported government and the NATO forces in Afghanistan?

Also, bear in mind that many people the Times asked to weigh in on the situation were identified as Pakistani dissidents. Surely they wouldn't lose any sleep if they were simply trying to frame the Pakistani government as being dissidents, they oppose it.

So, the moral of this story is: Keep in mind that old Roman question when you read this piece; namely, qui bono? (Who benefits?)

One person who did not subscribe to the popular perception, incidentally, was one Hajji Abdul Hai, 50, the father of a 25-year-old killed in Afghanistan in an airstrike in May. As Cindy Sheehan fans would say, surely he would have some moral authority. He told the Times that, au contraire to what everyone else seems to have thought, his son was not motivated by any sinister force but only his faith.

“From the start it was his spirit to take part in jihad,” he is quoted as saying. “It’s all to do with personal will. If someone agrees, then he goes. Even if someone wishes to, no one can stop him.”

The elder brother of a 22 year-old also killed in Afghanistan, Allah Dad, however, summed up the general opinion, when he said yes, the ISI was to blame for sending his brother to his death: “We don’t know how he made contact with those jihadi groups,” he told the Times, "[But] it is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the I.S.I. Everyone says this.”

Clash of civilizations?

London Mayor Ken Livingstone debates leading American "neocon" "Islamophobe" also known as Islamic history scholar Daniel Pipes

Yesterday, London's Mayor Ken Livingstone faced off against eminent Islamic scholar Daniel Pipes, sometimes described as an “Islamophobe,” "racist," or "neocon" by his critics, in the opening debate of “A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations,” a conference hosted by the Greater London Authority.

In his remarks, Mayor Livingstone said he was hosting the event because he wanted to avoid repeating the “tragedy” of the last century – that is to say, the Cold War, which he suggested without bothering to offer evidence, was a sinister plot designed by a small group of Americans who were intent on world domination.

Mr. Livingstone then went on to regret Western hegemony in general in the modern period, blaming it on slavery and the discovery of America, as opposed to say, the enlightenment or industrial revolution.

The mayor did take pains to reject the notion that he was a multicultural absolutist by affirming that not all cultural norms are acceptable, pointing out that even he could see the error in cannibalism or female genital mutilation.

It was noteworthy the mayor did not take this opportunity to promote his own personal beliefs, as he has in the past, suggesting that they are so morally superior that his fellow Londoners should emulate his example and not flush the toilet after urinating (for example).

While the mayor seemed to relish pointing out various Western mistakes and failings, perhaps to relieve himself of his white man's burden, he did decline to call the former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon a "war criminal" this time, though he did say he thought the creation of the state of Israel was a mistake. Again he blamed this decision, made by the United Nations, on sinister forces in the U.S. government.

Given that the mayor is a noted leftist who plans to use London taxpayers' money to celebrate 50 years of Cuban dictatorship under Fidel Castro, it did strike this blogger as unevenhanded to say the least, that Mr. Livingston did not acknowledge the key role the Soviet Union played in the UN decision to recognize Israel, and well, the Cold War.

Dr. Pipes in his remarks, rejected the notion of a clash of civilizations and said that what he saw taking place was a battle between civilization and barbarism. He went on to say that in his mind, civilization was the place where freedom and the rule of law prevail, and that it was not the exclusive province of any culture, religion, or race.

Although Dr. Pipes refused to vilify Islam, even citing a verse from the Koran to support his argument that civilization was well within the purview of Muslims, he did say that he thinks that today's barbaric enemy is radical Islamism, or the ideology that would impose Islamic law on everyone, including non-Muslims.

Dr. Pipes rejects sharia as a basis for law in civilized society because given the way today's radical Islamists interpret Islamic law, this would privilege Muslims above non-Muslims, men above women, condemn homosexuals and apostates to death, and call for the stoning of adulterous women, among other details.

If Mayor Livingstone seemed intent on promoting London, and Britain in general as a multicultural success story, Dr. Pipes countered that because so many Britons have participated in terror plots around the world, citing some 15 instances, the reality was the opposite: One could even make the case that because of this history, Britain should be added to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

If Mayor Livingstone did not elect to call his invited guest Dr. Pipes a racist or an Islamophobe himself, his debate partner, Councillor Salma Yaqoob of Birmingham, had no trouble doing so, even if this meant distorting the American scholar's remarks and extensive written record. For example, Councillor Yaqoob identified Dr. Pipes as a presidential advisor and proponent of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, assertions that as Dr. Pipes pointed out, have no basis in fact.

Councillor Yaboob, a member of George Galloway's Respect Party, delivered her remarks in what this blogger has to describe as a diatribe. Her shrill, demagogic manner contrasted sharply with her otherwise pleasant and fashionable demeanor. Dressed in a figure-flattering black pantsuit, the British politician displayed panache in the way she tied her colorful silk headscarf or hijab, the headscarf some Muslim women like to wear to signal their piety in public.

Dr. Pipes' debating partner, Douglas Murray, the 27 year-old author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, pointed out that Councillor Yaqoob entered British politics when she spoke out publicly in defense of the eight Britons who were convicted in 1999 of plotting to bomb Western targets in Yemen.

After the 7/7 bombings in London, as Murray went on to recall, Councillor Yaqoob seemed to condone the bombings when she characterized them as a response to Britain's Iraq War policy. As she was described in the official conference materials, she is also "a leading national figure in Britain's anti-war movement."

When a man from the audience indicated that his son had been killed in the 7/7 bombings and asked Councillor Yaqoob who exactly she thought these "reprisals" were supposed to target, she declined to respond, as did Mayor Livingstone, who has espoused similar views, for example in a BBC interview shortly after the attacks.

Gavin Esler, the BBC newsman who chaired the panel, ended the debate by quipping that he hoped press coverage of the event would go beyond the obvious headline that Mayor Livingstone had finally taken a stand against cannibalism.

Correction: It turns out that the man who I thought indicated his son had been killed on 7/7 was Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer. What Sir Gilbert was really saying was that his son, along with thousands of others, was one of the intended targets of these "reprisals."

Abu Sayyaf leader confirmed dead

The Associated Press reports that DNA tests confirmed the death of an FBI-most-wanted terrorist, Abu Sayyaf leader Khadaffy Janjalani, the head of the Philippines-based terrorist organization believed to have long-standing links with al Qaeda.

Janjalani was killed in a battle with Philippines forces in September.

ASG was behind the 2004 ferry bombing in the Philippines that killed 116 people. The group has also carried out kidnappings and hostage-taking, including the taking of an American missionary couple and tourist who was beheaded.

Osama bin Laden is thought to have provided the group’s $5 million seed money. Bin Laden had met the group's founding leader, Janjalani's elder brother, when the two men fought together against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The group's mission is to establish a pan-Islamic state spanning southeast Asia and including parts of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma and Thailand.

In the mid-1990s Ramzi Yousef, the lead 1993 World Trade Center bomber, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, worked with the ASG when they bombed Philippines Air Flight 434 in which a Japanese passenger was killed. This was supposed to be a test-run for Operation Bojinka, their plot to simultaneously explode a dozen trans-Pacific commercial airliners in mid-flight.

ASG is also linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian group that carried out the Bali bombings in 2002.

The group is thought to have 200-400 core supporters. The Philippines also announced that they had killed Janjalani’s possible successor in a battle last Tuesday.

American hero, Second Lieutenant Mark Daily, RIP

Michelle Malkin reports that she received news via one of her readers that Second Lieutenant Mark Daily, 23, was killed in an IED attack in Mosul along with three other soldiers.

He enlisted in the Army after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was accepted into UCLA's ROTC program and in 2005, he was named the ROTC's outstanding cadet and was a Distinguished Military Graduate, the ROTC's highest award. He was deployed to Iraq three months ago.

He leaves behind a wife of 18 months.

In MySpace he explained why he joined the military. As Michelle did, I'm reprinting what he wrote in full because it deserves to be read and you won't find this in the MSM.

Sunday, October 29, 2006
WHY I JOINED
Current mood: optimistic

Why I Joined:

This question has been asked of me so many times in so many different contexts that I thought it would be best if I wrote my reasons for joining the Army on my page for all to see. First, the more accurate question is why I volunteered to go to Iraq. After all, I joined the Army a week after we declared war on Saddam's government with the intention of going to Iraq. Now, after years of training and preparation, I am finally here.

Much has changed in the last three years. The criminal Ba'ath regime has been replaced by an insurgency fueled by Iraq's neighbors who hope to partition Iraq for their own ends. This is coupled with the ever present transnational militant Islamist movement which has seized upon Iraq as the greatest way to kill Americans, along with anyone else they happen to be standing near. What was once a paralyzed state of fear is now the staging ground for one of the largest transformations of power and ideology the Middle East has experienced since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Thanks to Iran, Syria, and other enlightened local actors, this transformation will be plagued by interregional hatred and genocide. And I am now in the center of this.

Is this why I joined?

Yes. Much has been said about America's intentions in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and seeking to establish a new state based upon political representation and individual rights. Many have framed the paradigm through which they view the conflict around one-word explanations such as "oil" or "terrorism," favoring the one which best serves their political persuasion. I did the same thing, and anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).

I joined the fight because it occurred to me that many modern day "humanists" who claim to possess a genuine concern for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their fellow "global citizens" to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and conditions. Their excuses used to be my excuses. When asked why we shouldn't confront the Ba'ath party, the Taliban or the various other tyrannies throughout this world, my answers would allude to vague notions of cultural tolerance (forcing women to wear a veil and stay indoors is such a quaint cultural tradition), the sanctity of national sovereignty (how eager we internationalists are to throw up borders to defend dictatorships!) or even a creeping suspicion of America's intentions. When all else failed, I would retreat to my fragile moral ecosystem that years of living in peace and liberty had provided me. I would write off war because civilian casualties were guaranteed, or temporary alliances with illiberal forces would be made, or tank fuel was toxic for the environment. My fellow "humanists" and I would relish contently in our self righteous declaration of opposition against all military campaigns against dictatorships, congratulating one another for refusing to taint that aforementioned fragile moral ecosystem that many still cradle with all the revolutionary tenacity of the members of Rage Against the Machine and Greenday. Others would point to America's historical support of Saddam Hussein, sighting it as hypocritical that we would now vilify him as a thug and a tyrant. Upon explaining that we did so to ward off the fiercely Islamist Iran, which was correctly identified as the greater threat at the time, eyes are rolled and hypocrisy is declared. Forgetting that America sided with Stalin to defeat Hitler, who was promptly confronted once the Nazis were destroyed, America's initial engagement with Saddam and other regional actors is identified as the ultimate argument against America's moral crusade.

And maybe it is. Maybe the reality of politics makes all political action inherently crude and immoral. Or maybe it is these adventures in philosophical masturbation that prevent people from ever taking any kind of effective action against men like Saddam Hussein. One thing is for certain, as disagreeable or as confusing as my decision to enter the fray may be, consider what peace vigils against genocide have accomplished lately. Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics. Often times it is less about how clean your actions are and more about how pure your intentions are.

So that is why I joined. In the time it took for you to read this explanation, innocent people your age have suffered under the crushing misery of tyranny. Every tool of philosophical advancement and communication that we use to develop our opinions about this war are denied to countless human beings on this planet, many of whom live under the regimes that have, in my opinion, been legitimately targeted for destruction. Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq. Others have ironically decried the war because it has tied up our forces and prevented them from confronting criminal regimes in Sudan, Uganda, and elsewhere.

I simply decided that the time for candid discussions of the oppressed was over, and I joined.

In digesting this posting, please remember that America's commitment to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his sons existed before the current administration and would exist into our future children's lives had we not acted. Please remember that the problems that plague Iraq today were set in motion centuries ago and were up until now held back by the most cruel of cages. Don't forget that human beings have a responsibility to one another and that Americans will always have a responsibility to the oppressed. Don't overlook the obvious reasons to disagree with the war but don't cheapen the moral aspects either. Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction. So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include "Good Luck"

Mark Daily

On his MySpace front page next to his picture, he featured this quote:

"Patience demolishes mountains" -Arab proverb

According to Michelle, he wanted to be a journalist.

Rest in peace, Mark Daily. God bless you for your sacrifice.

Egyptian blogger faces 9 years in prison for insulting Islam and Mubarak

Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil is on trial in Egypt for insulting Islam, inciting sedition, and mocking the Egyptian president, the New York Times reports. Nabil faces up to nine years in prison if found guilty of the charges. He has been in detention since November.

Egypt is by no means unique in criminalizing blasphemy. In most Muslim countries, it is illegal to criticize Islam, and may be punishable by death though such sentences are rarely carried out. In Pakistan, a religious court ruled that the death sentence should be mandatory for blasphemy though this has not been enacted as a matter of law.

Sanctions having effect in Iran

Two Iranian newspapers that are said to reflect the opinions of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, are calling for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to keep his nose out of the country's nuclear program, the New York Times is reporting.

As Iran becomes increasingly marginalized by the international community which sanctioned the Islamic Republic in December for its defiant stance on nuclear enrichment, its economy has begun to be affected. The Iranian stock market has plummeted. Many European banks have stopped doing business with Iran.

One of the newspapers, the daily Jomhouri-Eslami, rebuked the Iranian president for having referred to the December sanctions as "a torn piece of paper" and went on to pronounce that “The resolution is certainly harmful for the country.”

“The resolution has had a psychological effect on people,” Ali Hagh, an economist in Tehran told the Times. “It does not make sense for investors not to consider political events when they want to invest their money.”

CAIR thinks Americans can't differentiate fact from fiction

The Council on American Islamic Relations, which describes itself as America's largest Muslim civil rights group, is objecting to popular Fox TV show, 24's season premiere. The new season starts out with Jack Bauer and his fellow characters having to deal with a series of suicide attacks across America, including the detonation of a nuclear bomb outside Los Angeles.

"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims," Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for CAIR told the Associated Press. "After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality.

In its defense, Fox issued a written statement Wednesday night, saying "24 is a heightened drama about anti-terrorism," adding, "After five seasons, the audience clearly understands this, and realizes that any individual, family, or group (ethnic or otherwise) that engages in violence is not meant to be typical."

Moreover, the nework noted that 24 has not singled out Muslims, pointing out that the shows' previous villains have included Anglos, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, and even the president of the United States.

Perhaps this explains President Bush's low approval ratings in recent polls.

FISA courts will now oversee warrantless wiretaps

In a letter addressed to the Senate Judicial Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez announced that the warrantless surveillance of communications from suspected terrorists abroad with persons in the United States will now be overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Previously these wiretaps were part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program the Bush administration authorized in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The Bush administration had argued that the FISA courts were too slow and their standards were too burdensome to be useful in tracking down the members of al Qaeda and related organizations. Nevertheless, the administration was widely criticized for having expanded the powers of the executive in the eyes of the program's critics.

The New York Times reports that Justice Department officials did not say whether the FISA court had addressed the Bush administration's earlier concerns by agreeing to streamline their cumbersome procedures or standards or whether the order that was issued pertained to individual cases.

Powerline reports good news from Saudi Arabia

Stephen Schwarz, a vocal critique of Wahhabism and, not surprisingly Saudi Arabia itself, is becoming "more optimistic" that, "King Abdullah is in fact prevailing in his struggle against the backward elements in his family," so Powerline reports.

Schwarz's evidence? According to Powerline, Schwarz points to the fact the Saudis have relaxed their censorship policy to the point where they can now permit the publication of a book that goes so far as to praise Jewish contributions to civilization.

The state of free speech in France

In this month's issue of Commentary, Christian Delacampagne gives the reader some interesting context in "The Redeker Affair." This, for those of you who may not have followed the story, Robert Redeker is a French highschool teacher, who published an op-ed in Le Figaro, in which he posed the question, "What should the free world do in the Face of Islamist intimidation?"

To make a long story short, because Redeker called the Prophet Muhammad a "master of hatred" and said that Islam, unlike Christianity or Judaism, "exalts violence and hatred” he was widely denounced to the point of receiving death threats. He and his family were forced to go into hiding, at his own expense but under French police protection.

According to Delacampagne, the only French leader who would vociferously defend Redeker's right to free speech was Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who said the fatwa calling for his death for having insulted Islam was “unacceptable.” Most officials and human rights advocates simply tried to distance themselves from Redeker's remarks. Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, summed up the prevailing reaction when it characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, misleading, and insulting,” and blasphemous.

Redeker's tale reminded Delacampagne of his own painful history in France. He says that because he published a book on what is considered to be a politically incorrect topic in France, anti-Semitism, he too was shut out of an academic career in France. Though he eventually found work in the United States, he claims the situation in France has only gotten worse over the years: "[Now] to speak at conferences or to be considered for important posts, a scholar must be prepared to describe the colonial era in French history as nothing less than an exercise in genocide and to denounce American policy in the Middle East as barbaric cruelty."

Beginning with Charles de Gaulle, he says the French have taken a distinctly "pro-Arab" stance in order to gain back the political capital they lost during the Algerian war and their other colonial activities in the Middle East. Zionism, or support for the state of Israel, he says is now seen as "just a form of Western colonialism, now backed by the brute strength of an imperialistic United States."

Delacampagne tells of an email he received from Redeker a few weeks after he had gone into hiding. “I never thought that such a thing could happen in our old Republican France,” he wrote his friend. "Neither did I," Delacampagne writes, "But things have changed. What was once unthinkable in France has already come to pass."

Heather MacDonald challenges "war on terror hysteria"

Gene Expression, the blog, posts an interview with conservative writer Heather MacDonald in which she wonders about the "existential threat" the United States purportedly faces from Islamists. Her thoughts:

"For all the barbarity of popular entertainment and the historical ignorance of the American public, American civilization and the West generally are at the top of their games-contrary to war on terror hysteria that holds that we face an 'existential threat' from Islamists. The rate of technological innovation is higher than at any point in human history and will undoubtedly only accelerate in the future. We are reaping a whirlwind of unfathomable benefits from scientific research.

"Would I prefer it if our elites had the taste of 18th century aristocratic patrons and were subsidizing the likes of Mozart, Haydn, and Tiepolo, instead of Jeff Koons and Richard Prince? A thousand times, yes! But as much as I yearn to live in a world that could produce such beauty, I have to recognize that this is the best of all possible times to be alive. I don't know how many of us would give up our astounding array of choices, despite their costs above all in family stability, to go back to a time of more restricted individual autonomy."

Former CIA chief Woolsey on what to do about Iran

In testimony before the House Committee for Foreign Affairs, former CIA chief R. James Woolsey gave his personal view of what the U.S. should do about Iran.

Wooley said the Islamic Republic’s “threats to destroy Israel and, on a longer time-scale, the United States are part and parcel of its essence," and that this is nothing new as, in his words, "Iran’s regime has defined itself by its fundamental hostility to the West, and especially Israel and the US, for nearly three decades (“Great Satan” etc.).”

He claims that President Ahmadinejad is a follower of the Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi in Qum, and because of this association, believes that “large-scale killing should be welcomed because it will summon the return of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, which in turn will lead to the end of the world.”

As evidence that this is the case, Woolsey cites assertions he says can be found on the Islamic Republic's Broadcasting website which say the world is in its "last days" and that soon Jesus will appear, along with the Mahdi, the imam that Shiites believe went into hiding in the 9th century who will return after a cosmic war to usher in the end stage of God's plan for humanity, i.e. the age of Islam.

(For more on Ahmadinejad and his belief in the return of the Mahdi (or Madhaviat, as the belief is called), see Scott Peterson, "Waiting for the rapture in Iran," Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2005. And for an alternative view, see Noah Feldman, “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age,” The New York Times, October 29, 2006)

Iran's determination to proceed with a nuclear agenda - whatever the motivation - has, Woolsey says, already inspired a nuclear arms race in the region. Why else, he asks, would both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have recently announced their own intentions to develop nuclear power (albeit for energy purposes) if not to counter for Iran's nuclear program?

Woolsey is pessimistic that banning the sale of dual-use materials to Iran could ever force Tehran to abandon its nuclear agenda as he says that Iran could easily buy what it needs from what he calls “its co-conspirator North Korea” who is believed to have built a nuclear weapon.

Instead, he argues that sanctions should target the Iranian leadership, and not the Iranian people. He suggests, for example, banning the Iranian leadership from travel or perhaps pursuing Ahmadinejad in an international tribunal for his violations of the Geneva Convention because of his calls for the destruction of Israel.

Woolsey says he doesn’t think anything less than regime change will work but he doesn’t think this needs to involve the U.S. military, however.

He says the U.S. should state its goals for Iran clearly and then support the domestic players inside Iran that could effect this change. He believes that Iran’s minorities – Arab, Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluch – as well as Iran’s young have enough grievances against the regime to want to change it. In other words, Woolsey rejects the recommendation made by the Iraq Study Group, that the U.S. should try and engage the Iranian regime, says instead, “we should indeed engage, but with the Iranian people, not their oppressors.”

Woolsey says to reach the Iranian people, the U.S. should resuscitate a Cold War method, and tell the Iranian people what is really taking place inside their country as opposed to what we are doing now, that is broadcasting popular music and world news briefs into Iran, and occasionally even ones that have a distinctly anti-American slant.

Woolsey claims that last year a Voice of America correspondent, in a broadcast into Iran, characterized the arrest of 21 individuals in Britain who were said to be plotting to use liquid explosives to blow up transAtlantic airplanes as “a conspiracy against Islam” designed by the U.S. and Britain to distract world attention away from the "victories" Hezbollah was racking up in Lebanon. (On this Woolsey cited Richard Benkin in Asian Tribune Aug. 12, 2006, vol. 6 no. 41.)

What is going on in UK mosques?

Maybe you don't want to know.

An undercover investigation by the UK-based Channel 4 Dispatches reveals that some of Britain’s leading mosques are perpetuating an intolerant view of Islam, encouraging worshippers to wage jihad against "enemies of Islam" such as the United States and the UK, and hit girls if they refuse to wear hijab.

As The (London) Observer reports, in the video Dispatches made during its 12-month investigation (available on YouTube), a cleric can be seen telling worshippers at the Sparkbrook mosque that “you cannot accept the rule of the kaffir [non-Muslim].”

Another speaker at the same mosque can be seen on video calling democracy “kuffocracy” and referring to it as “the hidden cancerous aim of these people.” At the time he made these remarks, this man was the headmaster of a local Islamic high school, Darul Uloom, according to The Observer, though he has since been fired because the school determined that, to quote Dar Uloom, “many of his opinions were inconsistent with the policies of the school.”

The umbrella organization, UKIM, that oversees the Sparkbrook mosque told The Observer: “We are a nationwide organisation and hold different programmes in our mosques. We are very concerned about this. We have instructed all our branches not to allow any more speakers with radical or fundamentalist views.”

Dispatches also documented that DVDs and internet broadcasts produced by extremist preachers are popular items at a London bookstore at the Regent’s Park Mosque. On one DVD being sold there, a Saudi-trained preacher, Sheikh Feiz, can be seen saying,
“Kaffir is the worst word that can ever be written, a sign of infidelity, disbelief, filth, a sign of dirt.”

The company that runs the bookstore issued a statement to The Observer saying: “It is totally unfair to blame [us] for any of the views expressed in these lectures.”

Lord Ahmed, described by The Observer as “the convener of the government's Preventing Extremism taskforce” issued the following statement to Channel 4 in response to its documentary: “While I appreciate that exaggerated opinions make good TV, they do not make for good community relations.”

Iraqslogger reports: Sunni leader says Sunnis have only themselves to blame for their political marginalization in Iraq

Veteran reporter Nir Rosen of Iraqslogger reports that a leading Iraqi Sunni tribal chief living in exile in Amman, Jordan has admitted that the problems in Iraq are not the fault of the current Shia dominated Iraqi government. “The Sunnis left the political process,” he is reported as saying, “this is our fault. Sunni scholars led by Harith al Dhari (leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars) forbade political participation.” This was the first time, Rosen says, that he has ever heard an Iraqi Sunni leader make such an admission.

Sheikh Saad Mushhan Naif claims to lead the largest subtribe of one of Iraq’s largest tribes (namely, the Aithawi, a subgroup of the Dulaimi tribe) of the restive Anbar province. Saad told Rosen that the Shiite militias who are killing his fellow Sunnis in Iraq “belong to Iran not Iraq or America," adding, "there is a new dictatorship now, a religious one.”

More than half the Americans killed in Iraq last year were killed in Anbar province.

Saad also told Rosen that “Al Qaeda is not cooperating with the Iraqi resistance,” and that “the real Iraqi resistance considers al Qaeda an enemy.” Outside of Baghdad, this is also the most dangerous place to be an Iraqi.

Iraqslogger's report seems to be corroborated by a report USA Today issued yesterday, in which U.S. military officials noted that the Anbar province has seen an upsurge recently in the number of people willing to join the ranks of the police force. In the past two weeks, 2,000 applications were received compared to the "few dozen" that were received in September.

After Al Qaeda killed a popular Sunni tribal leader, the Sunnis have increasingly come to recognize that the message of Al Qaeda is "anarchy and chaos," according to Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer, the commanding officer in Anbar province.

Incidentally, for those of you who haven’t yet discovered Iraqslogger, it is a great place to go for news on Iraq. It is run by Eason Jordan, the former head of CNN news, who after a series of awkward admissions and allegations, seems to have fully embraced the potential of the Internet to collect and disseminate news. He is currently hosting blogger and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin over in Iraq as she investigates the story behind the mysterious AP source Jamil Hussein.

Update: Eason Jordan wrote to say that though he offered to host Michelle, she ultimately declined his offer and went to Iraq on her own where she embedded herself with the U.S. military.

Update: Michelle is now back and you can see her first report here.

WSJ: Asean nations forge "watershed" convention against terrorism

The Wall Street Journal heralds what it describes as the "watershed" pact the The Association of Southeast Asian Nations forged over the weekend to counter terrorism at their conference in the Philippines.

As the WSJ points out, the Asean convention provides a "stark reality check" in affirming that "terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, committed wherever, whenever, and by whomsoever, is a profound threat to international peace and security and a direct challenge to the attainment of peace, progress and prosperity for Asean."

Signatories are compelled to implement measures that will cut off the flow of terrorist funding, prosecute terrorism suspects as efficiently as possible, and establish a regional database to track their activities and movements.

As the WSJ points out, while some of the Asean nations were swift to strengthen their counterterrorism laws after 9/11, other members of the group - namely, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam - have done very little, and so this pact is a welcome measure that should finally force them to act.

"Why now?" the WSJ asks and then posits: "Perhaps the Asean nations finally understand that terrorism is a threat to every kind of government -- democratic, autocratic, Communist. Perhaps they feel pressured to show that Asean is a meaningful group in the face of other, overlapping regional alphabet-soup clubs, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the East Asia Summit."

Barry Rubin: The Middle East has indeed changed

Barry Rubin, a prominent Israeli-based Middle East scholar, says in the Jerusalem Post says that the Middle East has just undergone its most significant shift in alignments since perhaps the 1950s. On one side he says are Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, Hamas; and on the other, are almost every other Arab state, Israel and the United States.

This shift has occurred, he says, because of Iran’s insistence on being able to pursue a nuclear program, widely believed to have as its end goal a nuclear bomb; Iran’s designs on Iraq; and of course its proxy, Syria’s designs on Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia is reported to be trying to resuscitate interest in its 2002 Middle East peace initiative, the terms on which Riyadh suggested the Arab states would be willing to normalize relations with Israel. In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is said to be trying to prop up the more moderate Fatah party in opposition to Hamas, the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization which is the ruling party of the Palestinian National Authority, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

25,000 Jews left in Iran in spite of Ahmadinejad: Why?...

Clue: It's never so simple.

The American Jewish daily, the Forward is reporting that in spite of various campaigns, Iran’s 25,000 Jews are reluctant to leave the Islamic Republic of Iran, their native homeland, even though the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner, has threatened wipe Israel off the map and who hosted a conference this fall to, as the Forward says, “assess" the Holocaust.

Jews have lived in Iran for some 3,000 years when Cyrus the Great, credited with the first human rights code, gave them refuge. According to the Forward, 80 percent of the Iranian Jewish community has emigrated since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The Forward reports that Iranian Jews are still able to practice their religion freely in Iran, since Judaism is a recognized religious faith. They are exempt from the Islamic Republic’s prohibition against alcohol.

“Iranian Jews have a comfortable Jewish life,” Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Middle East analyst now living in Israel is quoted as saying. As long as they don’t criticize the Iranian regime and don’t publicly speak out in favor of Israel, he told the Forward the regime leaves them alone for the most part. Jews are also banned from holding government jobs and from becoming officers in the army.

According to what Amir Cyrus Razzaghi told the Forward, it is in the interest of the Islamic regime to make sure Iranian Jews are able to live relatively freely in Iran to, as Razzaghi says, "demonstrate to the world that the goverment is anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish."

Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, had a different point of view. He told the Forward that Iranian Jews are mostly elderly and only speak Persian and because of these reasons are afraid of leaving Iran.

Australia "confronts" as opposed to co-opts radical Islamism

In the Times of London, Gerard Henderson, former chief of staff for Australian Prime Minister John Howard explains why Australia takes such a hard-nosed approach to Islamist extremism.

According to Henderson, this is because:

• Most radical Muslims in Australia are second or even third generation Lebanese- or North African-Australians

• Some are Anglo-Australians who converted to Islam

• Almost none are asylum seekers or illegal immigrants

In other words, almost all Muslim extremists in Australia are homegrown.

This means, says Henderson, that Australia cannot afford to be other than “direct, event blunt” when it comes to dealing with Islamic radicals down under.

Muslim leaders are advised, says Henderson, to keep their communities free of radicals as they are a threat to moderate Muslims as well.

Community leaders who adopt extremist viewpoints - deny the Holocaust or glorify those aspects of Islamic law that are inconsistent with Australian values- are advised to do themselves and Australia a favor by emigrating to a country that would be more supportive of theirs. The Australian government takes the position that any Australian citizen or resident ought to embrace Australian values and culture and hence, imams are advised to address their congregations in English.

And, as noted here earlier, Australia is no longer keen to allow more Saudi-funded mosques to be built.

Cheney: Iran is a growing threat

Vice President Dick Cheney explains why Iran "is of concern to everybody in the [Middle East]" on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace:

“The entire region is worried, partly because of the conduct of Mr. Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who appears to be a radical, a man who believes in an apocalyptic vision of the future and who thinks it's imminent.

“At the same time, of course, they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They are in a position where they sit astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20 percent of the world's supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day.

“They use Hezbollahas a surrogate. And working through Syria with Hezbollah, they're trying to topple the democratically elected government in Iran. Working through Hamas and their support for Hamas in Gaza, they're interfering in the peace process."

Chavez loves Ahmedinejad and the feeling seems to be mutual

The New York Times reports that last night, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that their countries would invest in each others economies and together in third countries. The two oil producers also claimed that they would collude to reduce petroleum supplies in order to push oil prices up from their 19-month low, according to the Times report. Iran and Venezuela are the world’s fourth and fifth largest oil producers, respectively.

In an address before the National Assembly, President Chavez referred to the Iranian leader as a “brother” and “revolutionary.” As the Times reminds the reader, the two leaders have already worked out separate agreements over the past several months to look for new oil fields, build an oil refinery and housing for poor people, and produce bicycles and tractors together.
Meanwhile, at home the Chavez administration said it would nationalize Venezuela’s electricity industry and its largest phone company. There are also plans to replace municipal governments with communal councils in Venezuela which critics say would effectively eliminate the regime’s domestic opposition.

The Times reported that Venezuela has long had close ties with fellow oil producers in the Middle East, namely the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Alberto Garrido, author of “Chávez’s Wars,” a book about Venezuela’s ties to the Middle East, reportedly told the Times, “The Venezuelan left has for decades considered alliances with Muslim countries as one of the ways to create a new civilization through the toppling of American values.”

The reader may recall that the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal was a Venezuelan Marxist who admitted in a French television interview that he was responsible for some 1,500-2,000 deaths Israeli civilians on behalf of the Palestinian cause. In 2003, from his prison cell in France where he is serving a life sentence multiple murders, he published a book entitled Revolutionary Islam in which he suggested that his fellow revolutionaries though they may be Leftists and atheists should convert to radical Islam because it is the only force capable of destroying imperialism and capitalism.

Pentagon and CIA: Probing into personal records at home

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon, and even the CIA, have in addition to the FBI, looked into the banking and credit records of hundreds of terrorism and espionage suspects in the United States. These requests would be in addition to those made by the FBI, which it has been previously reported, has examined the records of thousands of persons since the 9/11 attacks.

The government requests these personal records using “national security letters,” a vehicle which has been available to the government for almost thirty years. According to the New York Times report, banks and other financial institutions usually voluntarily provide whatever is requested under this cover. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the leads provided by this information are “tremendous.”

A senior Army counterterrorism said that the information obtained through this process is never used to pursue individuals suspected of crimes other than spying or terrorism: “We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it,” said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.
And, in most cases, such information actually eliminates suspects, the Times reports military officials as saying.

However, officials at the Pentagon reportedly told the Times that they plan to maintain the information they obtain through these letters in their intelligence database, called Portico. “You don’t want to destroy something only to find out that the same guy comes up in another report and you don’t know he was investigated before,” a military official was quoted as saying.

The same agency which maintains Portico also maintains another database called Talon, which was criticized for maintaining information on persons whose only reason for inclusion was that they had participated in anti-war protects. When this became known, Talon was reported purged of these types of records.

New provisions enacted in the Patriot Act last year provide for recipients of the national security letters to contact a lawyer and request a court review.

The Economist opines on Bush's Iraq surge plan: "We think he is right"

As Iraqslogger points out, "The Economist magazine surprises with an endorsement of the Bush Iraq 'surge' plan."

Or, as The Economist writes, "We don't admire Mr Bush, but on this we think he is right."

"After everything that has gone so wrong, it would be foolish to argue that Mr Bush's plan is certain of success. Even if it does succeed, this would not be 'victory' in any normal sense. Iraq is likely to be violent and unstable for years to come. Contrary to what Mr Bush said this week, the dream of turning it into a democratic model for other Arabs has died.

"And yet there is much that America can still try to do to mitigate the dimensions of the debacle. At one end of the spectrum of bad consequences is a failed state, fought over by neighbours, breeding terrorism in the oil-rich centre of the Middle East. Another possibility is partition, of the sort that resulted in massive death and displacement during the independence struggles of India and Israel. Yet another is an Iraq in thrall to a nuclear-arming Iran that is increasingly hostile to Western friends and interests in the Middle East...

"For the present, Iraq still has an elected government that claims to want what America wants: security for all of Iraq's people and a power-sharing agreement that prevents the place from spinning apart or falling under the control of any neighbour. The job of holding it together remains daunting, but the Americans in Iraq have many resources, from the power of the gun to the power of the purse. The one they are running shortest of is support back home. For all his flaws, the lonely Mr Bush is right to resume the charge."

Blair urges Britain to maintain his war policy

The New York Times says that "Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday urged his successors to maintain the warlike foreign policy that he promoted, sending troops into battle in Africa and the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"To retreat in the face of global terrorism, he said in a speech to military specialists abroad a transport ship, would be 'a catastrophe.'"

“There are two types of nations similar to ours today,” he said. “Those who do war fighting and peacekeeping and those who have, effectively, except in the most exceptional circumstances, retreated to peacekeeping alone. Britain does both. We should stay that way,” he said.

“The frontiers of our security no longer stop at the Channel,” he said. “What happens in the Middle East affects us. What happens in Pakistan, or Indonesia, or in the attenuated struggles for territory and supremacy in Africa for example, in Sudan or Somalia — the new frontiers for our security are global.

“Our armed forces will be deployed in the lands of other nations far from home, with no immediate threat to our territory, in environments and in ways unfamiliar to them,” he said. “They will usually fight alongside other nations, in alliance with them; notably, but probably not exclusively, with the U.S.A.”

“My choice,” Blair was reported as saying, “is for armed forces that are prepared to engage in this difficult, tough, challenging campaign, to be war fighters as well as peacekeepers; for a British foreign policy keeps our American alliance strong and is prepared to project hard as well as soft power; and for us as a nation to be as willing to fight terrorism and pay the cost of that fight wherever it may be.”

But, he said: “The covenant between armed forces, government and people has to be renewed. For our part, in government, it will mean increased expenditure on equipment, personnel and the conditions of our armed forces, not in the short run but for the long term.”

“It has taken a generation for the enemy to grow,” he said. “It will, in all probability, take a generation to defeat.”

NYT polls world leaders on Bush's new Iraq plan

Europe is most dismissive; the Middle East is worried

The New York Times surveyed world leaders to gauge their response to President Bush's new Iraq plan.

“It hasn’t changed anything,” Bernard Bot, the Dutch Foreign Minister, told the Times, which reminded the reader that the Netherlands withdrew its troops from the Iraq coalition in 2005.

The French newspaper Le Monde, which as the Times recalled for the reader, had declared “We are all Americans” after the 9/11 attacks, published a cartoon, as the Times writes, "depicting President Bush as a bulldozer driver shoveling American soldiers into a ditch in the shape of Iraq."

The Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, “Bush hopes to douse the Iraqi fire with the blood of Americans.”

“Europeans and Germans believe you have to talk to regimes you don’t like,” Eberhard Sandschneider, the director of the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations, told the Times, which then added, as a parenthetical statement, "(Pointedly, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, declined to discuss Iraq in an interview with correspondents on Thursday.)"

“Only political solutions can solve the crisis which affects stability in the region,” said Spain's foreign minister, according to the Times.

Middle Easterners preferred to be focused on what would happen were the United States to withdraw its forces before Iraq was stabilized.

“Iraq is going to descend into mass chaos — we can see the country splinter,” Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University said. “The region will be further radicalized. Iran would become the regional hegemon.”

Asharq Alawsat, the London-based Arabic daily described as being "close to the Saudi royal family" published an editorial stating: “The withdrawal would signify defeat, which would result in strengthening all the enemies’ desire for expansion, such as Iran’s persistence in developing its nuclear weapons, and Al Qaeda would double its activities in Iraq and the whole region.”

Mansoor al-Jamri, editor in chief of the Bahraini newspaper Al Wasat, told the Times he thought some Arab leaders privately supported the increase in U.S. troops, hoping this would effectively counter Iran, but they could never publicly admit to this way of thinking.

An Egypt-based Arab diplomat who wouldn't allow his name to be used, told the Times that "the immediate departure of American troops will leave such a vacuum in power, it will have two results — Iran will fill the vacuum where it can, and the whole country will explode.”

Not surprisingly, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of Bush's closest allies, expressed strong support: “If America, the most powerful country in the world, our strongest ally, is defeated in Iraq or retreats in circumstances of defeat in Iraq, that would be the greatest propaganda victory the terrorists could ever win.”

Russia urged dialogue - with the warring Iranian factions and its neighbors, including Syria and Iran.”

A Polish left-leaning politician, representing the Civic Platform party in the Polish legislature said, “President Bush’s arguments should be understood, because leaving Iraq by Americans would be a tragedy."

But Kazimiera Szczuka, a right-leaning literary critic, had a different view: “Americans should find a way to withdraw honorably from Iraq as soon as possible. Polish troops should not stay there any longer.”

Now why do jihadists kill schoolteachers in Thailand?

The (Bangkok) Nation reports that 64 teachers have been killed by Muslim insurgents in the past three years of an Islamist insurgency in the southern region of Thailand.

Australian government nixes plans for new Saudi-funded mosque fearing it would foment extremism

The Australian reported last week that the government vetoed plans for the Saudi government to invest in a mosque in suburban Adelaide, a city in Australia.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was reported as saying, "There has been concern internationally, not specifically to Australia, about some elements in Saudi Arabia which is the heartland of Wahibbism and Sufism ... trying to spread that particular extremist interpretation of Islam.

"Historically the Saudi Arabian Government has provided funding (to overseas mosques), I'm not saying there's anything illegitimate about that ... but we can obviously express a view to the Saudi Arabian Government."

White House says plan to go to war with Iran and Syria is an "urban legend"

The Washington Post reports:

"White House press secretary Tony Snow yesterday addressed what he called the 'urban legend' of pending U.S. action against Iran and Syria. He told reporters that there is no intent to go to war with either country, and that the administration is committed to diplomatic efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program."

Pentagon wants to use what happened in Somali as a blueprint for the war on terror

The New York Times says Pentagon strategists say the recent military operations in Somalia should serve as a blueprint for other counterterrorism missions around the globe. In this operation, American commandos, using the Ethiopian Army as a surrogate force, rooted out Al Qaeda operatives in the country.

This was the type of Special Operations strike that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to promote under his watch, military officials told the Times.

But as the Times reports, "Some critics of the Pentagon’s aggressive use of Special Operations troops, including some Democratic members of Congress, have argued that using American forces outside of declared combat zones gives the Pentagon too much authority in sovereign nations and blurs the lines between soldiers and spies."

According to the Times, "The State Department and Pentagon took control of Somalia policy in the summer, after a failed effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to use Somali warlords as proxies to hunt down the Qaeda suspects.

"The trail of the terrorism suspects in Somalia, blamed for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, had long gone cold. But American military and intelligence officials said that the Ethiopian offensive against the Islamist forces who ruled Mogadishu and much of Somalia until last month flushed the Qaeda suspects from their hide-outs and gave American intelligence operatives fresh information about their whereabouts."

Americans reportedly provided the Ethiopian troops with intelligence regarding the military positions of the Islamist fighters, according to the Times unnamed sources.

A Pentagon consultant, described as having knowledge about Special Operations, told the Times that the Ethiopian army was assisted by small teams of American advisers.

“You’re not talking lots of guys,” the Pentagon consultant who spoke only on condition of anonymity is quoted as saying, “You’re talking onesies and twosies.”

Negroponte nails Pakistan for providing a "secure hideout" to al Qaeda

The BBC reports that National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said that al Qaeda has found a safe haven in Pakistan and is strengthening its ties across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. According to the BBC, this is the first time the U.S. has so precisely specified where it believes the al Qaeda leadership is since U.S.-led forces destroyed the group's camps in Afghanistan in 2001.

Negroponte told a Senate committee in his annual threat assessment that al-Qaeda still "poses the greatest threat to US interests." He added in his written testimony: "They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

"We have captured or killed numerous senior al-Qaeda operatives, but al-Qaeda's core elements are resilient. They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties," he went on to say.

"Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror and has captured several al-Qaeda leaders. However, it is also a major source of Islamic extremism," he added.

Pakistani officials denied that Pakistan is in any way complicit in the finding. "Pakistan does not provide a secure hideout to al-Qaeda or any terrorist group," a Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman said. "In fact the only country that has been instrumental in breaking the back of al-Qaeda is Pakistan."

Al Qaeda is widely believed to be hiding out in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border. These areas have never really been under the control of the central government.

Update: The Washington Post reports from Pakistan that "the bodies of two dozen Islamic insurgents killed in a clash with NATO and Afghan army forces near the border with Pakistan were sent back Friday to Pakistan, where Taliban leaders asked that they be given funerals as 'martyrs,' according to news reports here."

As the Post goes on to say, "The reports appeared to bolster Afghan and U.S. assertions, repeatedly denied by Pakistani officials, that Pakistan's tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan have provided a haven for Islamic militia groups seeking to destabilize the Western-backed government of Afghanistan."

"The jihad is now against the Shias, not the Americans"

The London Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, described as "the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines," reports on the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

"I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad," Rami, described as a "thick-necked former Republican Guard commando who now procures arms for his fellow Sunni insurgents"is reported as saying.

"Its not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad," another Sunni insurgent, Abu Omar, is said to have told the reporter. "We Sunni are to blame. In my area some ignorant al-Qaida guys have been kidnapping poor Shia farmers, killing them and throwing their bodies in the river. I told them: 'This is not jihad. You can't kill all the Shia! This is wrong! The Shia militias are like rabid dogs - why provoke them?'

"I am trying to talk to the Americans," he added. "I want to give them assurances that no one will attack them in our area if they stop the Shia militias from coming."

Later the Guardian reporter witnessed a conversation in which Abu Omar tried to convince his fellow insurgents to make peace with the Americans.

"Look, the Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia," Abu Omar was reported as saying.

"Where is the jihad and the mujahideen?" he went on to say. "Baghdad has become a Shia town. Our brothers are being slaughtered every day! Where are these al-Qaida heroes? One neighbourhood after another will be lost if we don't work on a strategy."

Another Sunni insurgent described as a "taxi driver commander," reportedly added to the discussion: "If the Americans leave we will be slaughtered."

Abu Aisha, a man described as a "mid-level Sunni commander" told the Guardian, "There is a new jihad now. The jihad now is against the Shia, not the Americans.

"We have been deceived by the jihadi Arabs," he added, in reference to al Qaeda and other foreigner fighters. "They had an international agenda and we implemented it. But now all the leadership of the jihad in Iraq are Iraqis."

As to how the insurgents are actually organized, "Ameriya, Jihad, Ghazaliyah, all these areas are becoming part of the new Islamic state of Iraq, each with an emir in charge," Abu Aisha told the reporter. "Each group is in charge of a specific street. We have defence lines, trenches and booby traps. When the Americans arrive we let them go through, but if they show up with Iraqi troops, then it's a fight."

According to the Guardian's sources, funding for the insurgency comes from three sources, levies paid by each family in the neighborhood (usually around $8), donations from wealthy Saudi businessmen or other sponsors, and 'ghaniama' or loot.

"Every time they arrest a Shia, we take their car, we sell it and use the money to fund the fighters, and jihad," Abu Aisha told the Guardian.

The money is then distributed, either by a sympathetic imam or the local commander. "It has become a business, they give you money to kill Shia, we take their houses and sell their cars," an insurgent told the reporter. "The Shia are doing the same.

"Last week on the main highway in our area, they killed a Shia army officer. He had a brand new Toyota sedan. The idiots burned the car. I offered them $40,000 for it, they said no. Imagine how many jihads they could have done with 40k."

Al Qaeda leadership is getting pro bono counsel from some of America's most prestigious law firms

Robert Pollack of the WSJ points out that the list of lead counsel who have volunteered to defend the high-ranking members of Al Qaeda being held at Guantanamo "reads like a who's who of America's most prestigious law firms: Shearman and Sterling; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr; Covington & Burling; Hunton & Williams; Sullivan & Cromwell; Debevoise & Plimpton; Cleary Gottlieb; and Blank Rome are among the marquee names."

He writes that a senior U.S. official wondered if, as Pollack writes, "this information might cause something of scandal, since so much of the pro bono work being done to tilt the playing field in favor of al Qaeda appears to be subsidized by legal fees from the Fortune 500."

"Corporate CEOs seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists" who deliberately target the U.S. economy, he quoted the official as saying.

The list of lawyers was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Update: The New York Times is reporting that Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, made the following remarks in a radio interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio: “I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking.

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

In an interview on Friday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reportedly weighed in on the controversy saying, “Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases.”

Bush administration prepares to try KSM and other high-ranking members of Al Qaeda

The Bush administration, the New York Times reports, has set up a secret war room in Virginia to assemble evidence in order to prosecute high-ranking members of Al Qaeda currently in U.S. detention, including the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

As the Times reports, "The preparation of cases against the high-value operatives appears to rebut many who doubted that Qaeda suspects like Mr. Mohammed would ever be brought to trial. Critics in Congress and human rights groups had asserted that such trials would not be feasible because they would expose harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency."

According to the Times, "In preparation for the trials, the Justice Department has been quietly recruiting lawyers from the ranks of experienced terrorism prosecutors, mainly in New York and Virginia.

"The new war crimes trials will operate according to rules modeled after the military justice system which were approved in legislation known at the Military Commission Act, which was signed into law last fall. The law has been criticized by some Democrats in Congress and human rights groups who say the procedures are flawed because they tilt in the government’s favor.

"Prosecutors could use hearsay evidence or second-hand testimony, but could not use information obtained under torture. Even so, that would mean virtually any information obtained by the C.I.A would appear to be admissible because, under Justice Department legal opinions, none of the harsh techniques amounted to torture.

"At their trials, the accused would have the right not to testify and would have the opportunity to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses against them. The trials would be open unless a military judge determined that they should be closed to protect classified information. Defendants would have the right to review the evidence to be used against them."

The C.I.A. has indicated that it would prefer that these high-value Al Qaeda detainees not be allowed to divulge details of their confinement because of national security concerns. As the Times reports, in an affadavit filed in an on-going case, C.I.A. lawyers argued that such disclosure would “permit terrorist organizations to adapt their training to counter the tactics that C.I.A. can employ in interrogations.” No ruling on the case has yet been made.

Some Somalis "close to al Qaeda" killed in American airstrike

A top American official in the Horn of Africa has told the New York Times that none of the suspected members of al Qaeda believed to be hiding in Somalia were killed in the American airstrike this week, but some Somalis that had close ties to the terrorist group were killed.

This contradicts an earlier report by Somali officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a main suspect in the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, had been killed in the American attack.

American officials did say that Abu Taha al-Sudani, a top aide to Mr. Fazul, and Aden Hashi Ayrow, a Somali terrorism suspect, may have been among those killed.

An unnamed American official, based in Kenya, also told the Times that American special forces and Ethiopian troops were still in pursuit of Al Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia.

Terror bombings in the Philippines inspire Asean nations to hammer out counterterror accord

The New York Times is reporting that the ten countries that comprise the Southeast Asian Nations, or Asaen, responded to Wednesday's terror attacks in the Philippines by stepping up efforts to hammer out a regional antiterrorism agreement.

The agreement is supposed to facilitate the sharing of information and intelligence among the parties to it and encourage them to beef up their domest anti-terrorism laws as well.

Bombs went off in three southern Philippine cities in Mindanao on Wednesday, killing eight and wounding many times more. No group has claimed responsiblity yet, but Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah are the leading suspects.

As Wikipedia notes, Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center Bomber (and nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, KSM) is believed to have been associated with Abu Sayyaf. After he bombed Philippine Airlines Flight 434 in 1994, killing a Japanese passenger, an anonymous phone caller identifying himself as a member of Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for the bombing, stating, "We are [the] Abu Sayyaf Group. We explode[d] one plane from Cebu." The bombing is believed to have been a test run for Operation Bojinka, a plan to simultaneously explode a dozen jetliners over the Pacific that Yousef and KSM were trying to carry out before it was foiled by the Manila police in 1995.

Jemaah Islamiyah was the organization behind the Bali bombings in 2002 that killed some 200 people.

Brzezinski and Mead discuss whether the U.S. is going to war with Iran and Syria.

On PBS, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, told anchor Jim Lehrer that he is growing increasingly worried that the Bush administration may be seriously contemplating a military action against Iran or Syria.

He said that while the Bush administration could "use the failure of the Iraqis to meet the benchmarks [Bush set out in his speech] and, in effect, adopt a policy of blame and run, not cut and run, but blame and run," he thought that because the administration has created what he characterized as an "exaggerated horror scenario" with "all the dominos falling in the Middle East if we leave," he wondered whether the administration really could leave "because [of] all of these horrible things [they have said] will happen if we [do]."

"There are a lot of people still around here," he went on to say, "particularly the neocons, who would like us to have a crack at Iran."

Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, indicated that he too thought the U.S. was "trying to tighten a noose around [Iran] or at least [was stepping up] the pressure."

As Mead pointed out, "We're substantially increasing our naval forces in the region. The diplomatic pressure is continuing. I understand an Iranian bank has just been sort of sanctioned by the U.S. The Europeans are working with the U.S. to go even beyond the latest U.N. sanctions. And let's not forget the bombing raids in Somalia as an indication, an indication that the Americans have teeth."

But, as Mead went on to say, he's not certain that these recent actions really do mean that the U.S. is really preparing to escalate or whether they are meant to simply create, as he put it, "a situation where negotiations and a real regional approach [can] become more feasible."

Brzezinski said he was ultimately pessimistic about the potential for victory in Iraq: "The fact is, the American effort in Iraq is essentially a colonial effort. We're waging a colonial war. We live in the post-colonial era. This war cannot be won because it is simply out of sync with historical times."

Mead, on the other hand, seemed to be cautiously optimistic: "One of the reasons is that I see today that the Ayatollah Sistani has issued a statement in which he says that the disarming of private militias is the right thing to do, the states should have a monopoly on force, and he encourages the disarming of militias, and not only of one sect.

"So there is more legitimacy in Shia opinion in Iraq for some of these measures. Now, that doesn't means this going to be a cakewalk or that there won't be a lot of resistance within the government or within the community to it, but that's something we did not have before, and I think it's pretty positive."