Libertarian Leanings

Perspectives on Moqtada al Sadr's cease fire

After six days of fighting against U.S. and Iraqi forces, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army followers Sunday to lay down their arms. In the Washington Post version of events, the cease fire order is on condition of an Iraqi government agreement to release detainees and give amnesty to Sadr's fighters.  In the Post world view we are witnessing a Moqtada al Sadr political power play, and it's al Sadr who holds all the cards. 

The escalating clashes threaten to collapse a cease-fire imposed by Sadr on his militiamen last August, one reason for tenuous security gains across Iraq in recent months. Contributing to the reduction in violence were a buildup of 30,000 U.S. troops and the rise of a Sunni movement that turned against the extremist insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In 2004, Sadr's militiamen fought fierce battles in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, refusing to surrender or negotiate until Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani stepped in and brokered a truce. Today, Sadr appears more politically astute. If he succeeds in helping end the clashes, it could improve his standing ahead of provincial elections later this year.

His demand that the government return all Sadr followers displaced by raids and violence could repopulate areas with potential voters.

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial is less confident in al Sadr's ability to control events, but frets that Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki may have bitten off more than he can chew by challenging the Mahdi Army in Basra.

Among the worst mistakes of the Iraq war has been starting battles we weren't prepared to finish. Think Fallujah in 2004. We hope Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki absorbed that lesson before he began his campaign last week to defeat rogue militias in Basra.

Yesterday's political maneuvering amid a new cease-fire offer by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is hard to read from afar. "Anyone carrying a weapon and targeting government institutions will not be one of us," Mr. Sadr said. The government welcomed the offer while saying it would continue its Basra campaign, and it wasn't clear how many in the Mahdi Army and its offshoots would even heed Mr. Sadr. There were also conflicting reports of whether the militias would give up their weapons.

The worst outcome would be for Iraqis to conclude that Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi Security Forces are backing down amid more resistance than they expected. This would be a blow to the morale of the fledgling army just when it has been gaining confidence, and it would damage Mr. Maliki's own credibility with the Iraqi public. To adapt Napoleon's famous admonition, if you decide to take Basra -- take Basra...

...Some Americans -- including more than a few in the U.S. military -- think the U.S. has little stake in the Basra fight. But President Bush clearly isn't one of them. "Any government that presumes to represent the majority of people must confront criminal elements or people who think they can live outside the law," Mr. Bush said at the White House on Friday. "And that's what's taking place in Basra and in other parts of Iraq. I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

Based on reporting by Bill Roggio, I'm inclined to agree that this is a defining moment -- perhaps the defining moment in the Iraq war, and it hasn't been going well for the Mahdi Army.

The Iraqi government has welcomed Sadr’s call for his followers to cease fighting. "The order to pull off gunmen off Basra along with all Iraqi provinces and to disavow those who has taken up arms against government offices and security forces is responsive and patriotic," Ali al Dabagh, the spokesman for the Iraqi government, told Voices of Iraq. The Iraqi government has not called for a halt in military operations.

Sadr’s call for an end to fighting by his followers comes as his Mahdi Army has taken high casualties over the past six days. Since the fighting began on Tuesday, 358 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, 531 were wounded, 343 were captured, and 30 surrendered. The US and Iraqi security forces have killed 125 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad alone, while Iraqi security forces have killed 140 Mahdi fighters in Basrah.

From March 25-29 the Mahdi Army had an average of 71 of its fighters killed per day. Sixty-nine fighters have been captured per day, and another 160 have been reported wounded per day during the fighting. The US and Iraqi military never came close to inflicting casualties at such a high rate during the height of major combat operations against al Qaeda in Iraq during the summer and fall of 2007.

US and Iraqi forces are maintaining the high pace of operations against the Mahdi Army and the Special Groups. While the daily reporting from Iraq is far from over, initial reports indicate at least 18 Mahdi Army fighters have been killed and another 30 captured.

US soldiers killed 14 Mahdi fighters in Baghdad during a series of separate engagements. Iraqi security forces killed four Mahdi Army fighters and captured another 30 in Babil province, where a major offensive led by the police has been underway.

If Bill Roggio's accounts are accurate, we could be watching the start of the final campaign, one in which U.S. and Iraqi forces are clearly determined to prevail.

Getting it

The gradual shift in the public's perception of Hillary Clinton seems to have accelerated in the wake of her Bosnian sniper fire story.  Peggy Noonan thinks people are finally "getting it" about the Hillary, and in support of that Noonan quoted but did not link to this parody purported to be by an anonymous eye-witness who called himself GI Joe.

”Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy.  Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire.  She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself.  Then she turned to his wounds.  She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood.”

This video footage unearthed by Brandon Barker takes the parody to new heights.

Footage courtesy of Barely Political.

A Clinton immigration policy

Two quotes from a Washington Times story on the resignation of Emilio Gonzalez, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, caught my attention.   The second one first:

Immigration groups and some editorial pages were more pointed, with the New York Times saying Mr. Gonzalez was "leaving behind a gummed-up bureaucracy and perhaps a million empty promises." The paper said the glut of applications seems well-positioned to help deny potential Democratic voters from being able to vote.

And then this one which actually came first in the story:

"I can't allow citizenship to be politicized. It was allowed once before in the '90s, and it was a disaster, and I'm not going to allow it again," Emilio Gonzalez, whose resignation takes effect April 18 after more than two years as director of the agency, told The Washington Times.

The '90s.  Let's see, that would be the Clinton administration.  Can we expect a Hillary administration to seek a demographic shift in the U.S. through immigration "reform?"  Is that what Bill had in mind in the '90s?

Hillary hires the Wilsons

In a dramatic appeal to the lunatic left, the Hillary Clinton campaign has hired Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame.  Joe immediately went to work burnishing Hillary's anti-war credentials, by claiming the Bush Administration misled her into voting in favor of military action against Saddam Hussein.

"The administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization," Mr. Wilson continued. "Senator Clinton's position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path."

Ambassador Joe, you may recall, had determined -- or maybe concluded is a better word -- actually, speculated would be most accurate -- OK, he made it up -- that the Bush Administration twisted the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.  So, now here he is on board with the Hillary campaign to help her match Obama's anti-war fervor.  Come general election time this may turn into a handicap.

This is the same Senator Clinton who spoke extensively of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his WMD, who endorsed the invasion as a way to remove that threat, whose husband endorsed the invasion, and who supported the war for years afterward until it began to jeopardize her chances of winning the Democratic nomination...

As for Mr. Wilson, he was last seen campaigning for a Democratic Presidential hopeful for a brief period in 2004. John Kerry's campaign dumped him as a spokesman that summer after the Senate Intelligence Committee found Mr. Wilson had lied in claiming his wife had played no role in sending him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam was seeking to acquire uranium yellowcake. The same bipartisan report found that Mr. Wilson's trip, which he had advertised in a splashy New York Times op-ed, had produced no information of any intelligence value.

So in order to blunt Mr. Obama's attacks over Iraq, Mrs. Clinton has resorted to relying on the word of someone whose antiwar inventions were too embarrassing even for the Kerry campaign.

If Hillary is still on the campaign trail after August, it's likely by then she will have cut her ties with the Joe and Val show, as did the Kerry campaign in 2004.  While their antics may fire up the loons on the left, reaction from the center-right may not be so cordial.  Some of us would take delight in the public airing that a general election campaign might give to the Wilson-Plame story.  But I don't see that ever happening.

We're winning

Rasmussen says it's beginning to sink in.  We're winning the war on terror.

Over the past several months, confidence in the War on Terror has grown to the highest levels since the President was re-elected. The 47% who say the U.S. and its allies are winning is a sharp increase from the 33% who held that view at the beginning of 2007.

The 20% of voters who believe the terrorists are winning marks the lowest level of pessimism every measured by this poll since tracking began in January 2004.

In the meantime, the "Iraq is a distraction" theory is dying a very slow death. 

In a tape first aired by al-Jazeera Thursday, bin Laden said that “Iraq is the Jihad theater that would lead to the liberation of Palestine. The Jihad in Iraq should be supported in order to liberate Palestine.”

While the Democratic leadership remains in denial, voters are finding it harder and harder to toe that party line.

Chavez "endorses" McCain

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez says U.S. relations with Venezuela could worsen with if John McCain is elected to the presidency in November.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a socialist and fierce U.S. critic, warned on Tuesday that relations with Washington could worsen if Republican candidate John McCain wins this year's presidential election.

Much to McCain's credit, I'd say.

Parental consent

A Bret Stephens column on Opinion Journal explores the expanding debate on the topic of parental consent.

Do minors require their parents' consent to become suicide bombers? Believe it or not, this is the subject of an illuminating and bitter debate among the leading theoreticians of global jihad, with consequences that could be far-reaching.

On March 6, Al-Sahab, the media arm of al Qaeda, released a 46-minute video statement titled "They Lied: Now Is the Time to Fight." The speaker is Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu-al-Yazid, 52, an Egyptian who runs al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan, and the speech is in most respects the usual mix of earthly grievances, heavenly promises and militant exhortations. It's also an urgent call for recruits.

"We call on the fathers and mothers not to become a barrier between their children and paradise," says Abu-Al-Yazid. "If they disagree who should first join the jihad to go to paradise, let them compete, meaning the fathers and the children. . . . Also, we say to the Muslim wives, do not be a barrier between your husbands and paradise." Elsewhere in the message, he makes a "special call to the scholars and students seeking knowledge. . . . The jihad arenas are in dire need of your knowledge and the doors are open before you to bring about the virtue of teaching and jihad."

According to Stephens, al Qaeda's recruiting problem arises as a result of "Revisions", a book by Sayyed Imam al-Sherif, mentor to al Qaeda second in command Ayman al Zawahiri.  "Revisions" is a recanting of his earlier work, "Foundations (Mainstays) of Preparation for Holy War", which is considered the theological cornerstone of modern-day jihadist operations.  It has apparently had an impact.

There really is a broad rethink sweeping the Muslim world about the practical utility -- and moral defensibility -- of terrorism, particularly since al Qaeda began targeting fellow Sunni Muslims, as it did with the 2005 suicide bombings of three hotels in Amman, Jordan. Al Qaeda knows this. Osama bin Laden is no longer quite the folk hero he was in 2001. Reports of al Qaeda's torture chambers in Iraq have also percolated through Arab consciousness, replacing, to some extent, the images of Abu Ghraib. Even among Saudis, a recent survey by Terror Free Tomorrow finds that "less than one in ten Saudis have a favorable opinion of Al Qaeda, and 88 percent approve the Saudi military and police pursuing Al Qaeda fighters."

To the question, "Is parental consent required?"  In conservative Arab circles the answer can hardly be, "No."  There, parents are in charge of their children.

World Markets Surge

Well, maybe the world economy is not headed for the tank after all.  The Wall Street Journal reports that regional indexes surged in the wake of overnight gains on Wall Street.

Asian markets ended mostly higher Tuesday, as Hong Kong and Tokyo stocks rose sharply in the wake of Wall Street's overnight gains and better-than-expected U.S. housing figures.

Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index surged 6.4% to 22464.52 on the first trading day after the four-day Easter break. On Monday in New York, the Dow Jones industrial average jumped nearly 190 points as investors applauded an improved bid from J.P. Morgan Chase for Bear Stearns. J. P. Morgan raised its bid for Bear, agreeing to pay $10 a share from the initially reported $2 a share. (See related article.)

In Tokyo, the benchmark Nikkei 225 Index rose 2.12% to 12791.24, its highest finish since March 12 as credit-market fears eased and the dollar recovered against the yen. The weakened yen boosted exporters and electronics shares, with Canon adding 3.9% while TDK gained 5%. Trading houses also rallied on the stronger dollar. Itochu rose 4.8% and Mitsubishi gained 4.3%.

Paper firms dropped on worries that imported pulp and other raw-materials costs would rise. Nippon Paper Group lost 5.2%.

Confirmation

Deroy Murdock lists some of the specific terrorist activities of Saddam Hussein and his boys.

Uday Hussein writes his father in 2001 about “attacking the new Land Cruiser vehicle with the UN symbol. . . . There were four American citizens including one female in the vehicle.” After that February 19 Baathist bombing, Uday continues, “The results of the mission were the destruction of the above mentioned vehicle, the death of the head of the organization and the serious injury of the other three, including the woman.”

A December 8, 2001, Fedayeen Saddam letter reveals Uday’s Yuletide spirit towards relief workers in Kurdistan:

Your Excellency [Uday Hussein] ordered striking the dens and concentrating on the foreigners who work in the Northern Zone to frustrate their planning and their disgraced action. Two targets that are over populated with foreigners were specified; one of them will be done on Christmas night, and the other one will be done several days after the first.

When it's better to receive than to give

That would be when it's the Clintons who are doing the receiving.  The givers, on the other hand, didn't fare all that well.  Last week's release of 11,046 pages of Mrs. Clinton's White House activity calendars tell a fascinating story.  It turns out that in March of 1993 Indonesian businessman Mochtar Riady flew to Little Rock to have dinner with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on the occasion of her being named "Arkansan of the Year."  At the time Riady's company, the $12 billion Indonesia-based Lippo Group, was urging the U.S. to end its 30-year trade embargo with Vietnam.

Five days after the March 4, 1993, dinner at the Excelsior Hotel, Mr. Riady took the embargo question directly to President Clinton, saying in a four-page letter that its demise would bring political reforms in that communist country.

By that time, Mr. Riady's banking conglomerate, the $12 billion Indonesia-based Lippo Group, its subsidiaries and its employees, including his son James and executive John Huang had funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr. Clinton's 1992 presidential race and had guaranteed a $3 million last-minute loan to a cash-short Clinton campaign just before the crucial New York primary in 1992.

Within six months of the dinner, the Lippo firm opened its first offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and a further five months later Mr. Clinton signed an executive order lifting the embargo, which had been in effect since 1964...

...LippoBank California, a state-chartered bank affiliated with the Lippo Group, pleaded guilty in 2001 to 86 misdemeanor counts charging that its agents made illegal foreign campaign contributions to Democrats from 1988 through 1994.

James Riady paid a record $8.6 million in criminal fines in 2001 and also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. by unlawfully reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds in violation of federal election law.

Mr. Huang pleaded guilty in 1999 to a felony charge of conspiring with other Lippo employees to make campaign contributions and reimburse employees with corporate funds or money from Indonesia. He was sentenced to one year probation and fined $10,000.