Iran's newly elected Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani urged Iraqis to resist a pact under discussion to extend the US troop presence there beyond 2008. Read the entire article. If that last line doesn't make you laugh, you haven't been paying attention. Read the speech on the scale of Iranian involvement and Iraqi attitudes towards it by Col. H.R. McMaster here. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is facing growing opposition to a proposed security agreement that would set out how long American forces and military bases stayed in Iraq. Read the entire article.
Iraq's government is in the midst of negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would provide the legal framework for any U.S. forces that operate inside Iraq after the end of the UN mandate in January. The elements that stand most opposed to such an agreement are Iran and its proxies.
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The SOFA agreement currently under negotiation with Iraq is, in most respects, mundane. We have them with every country in which the U.S. has maintained forces. They are more coordinating documents than anything else, and, other than the unique SOFA agreement with NATO, they do not specify that any particular troop level will or must be maintained. Though important, SOFA agreements are themselves innocuous.
The NYT writes to claim that opposition to a SOFA agreement is "growing" inside Iraq, but the NYT does a very poor job of explaining the genesis of the opposition to such an agreement. Indeed, their assertion at one point that it is because the presence of U.S. troops is "demeaning and humiliating" is pure Sadrist / Iranian propaganda. And it is with Iran that the opposition to the SOFA agreement begins. Iran sees an American presence in Iraq as both dangerous and an impediment to its goal to dominate Iraq through militias beholden to Iran. As I wrote here, the mad mullah's worst nightmare in the long run would be an Iraq that would both respect the millenium old Shia tradition of quietism and offer the example to Iran's terrorized populace of a people living in a real democracy and with real freedoms.
Twice now, the senior levels of Iran's government have expressed opposition to any SOFA agreement or any U.S. forces remaining in Iraq. The latest came just yesterday from the new Speaker of the Majis, Ali Larinjani, as reported in FARS:
"The Iraqi nation should courageously resist the US security pact just as they have so far resisted the occupiers," Larijani said in a speech in the religious city of Qom on Thursday.
"The occupiers' withdrawal is the only way to implementing security in Iraq," he said, describing the military agreement as a "challenge threatening the Iraqi people and government."
Washington and Baghdad are negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement aimed at giving a legal basis to American troops in Iraq after December 31, when a UN mandate defining the current status of foreign forces expires.
. . . Iran strongly opposes the US military presence in its neighbor to the west, and has repeatedly stressed the need for a pullout of the US troops from its war-ravaged Muslim neighbor.
Tehran has always backed the Baghdad government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The NYT also ignores history that would be well remembered by all of our leadership. In the leadup to the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini regularly and grossly mischaracterized a SOFA agreement with the Shah to build anti-American sentiment and popular hatred of the Iranian regime. What appears to be coallescing is a page right out of Khomeini's playbook - only aimed this time at Iraq. And the NYT seems somewhat inclined to assist.
This today from the NYT:
Some senior Iraqi political leaders said they had serious concerns over the central issues under negotiation, including what sort of military operations and arrests of Iraqis the American troops could carry out without Iraq’s permission, legal immunities sought for American troops and security contractors and what the Iraqi officials characterized as demands for a long-term American military presence.
. . . A United States official familiar with the talks described as “completely false” the assertion that negotiators had sought any provisions for long-term American military garrisons in Iraq.
Nor have Iraqi negotiators signaled any desire to delay, the official said. “What we are hearing is that they want to move full steam ahead.”
The raw feelings that the negotiations engender among many Iraqis — who view the prospects of a long-term American troop presence as demeaning and humiliating — underscore the political risks the negotiations hold for Mr. Maliki’s government.
Tens of thousands of Shiites in Baghdad and southern Iraq who are loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr denounced the negotiations in rallies after noon prayers on Friday, criticizing any pact that would allow American troops to establish a long-term presence in Iraq. “No America! No Israel!” demonstrators shouted in Sadr City, the Baghdad district that is Mr. Sadr’s base of power.
“This isn’t an Iraqi government, it’s an American government,” said Muhammad Mohsin, a 25-year-old laborer who attended prayers in Sadr City, where clerics delivered sermons condemning the negotiations and demonstrators later burned American flags. “The Americans keep pressuring Maliki to carry out what they want. The agreement will only serve the Americans’ interests.”
. . . But there are many Iraqi politicians who support the negotiations, including Sunni leaders who view an American military presence as a bulwark against what they fear could be an attempt by Shiite leaders backed by Iran to renew a sectarian grab for Baghdad and the mixed areas around the capital.
“We think that this agreement will guarantee the rights of Iraq and the United States,” said Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni political bloc. “If the American forces withdraw from Iraq before the right time, a state of chaos and civil war will ensue.”
. . . A second American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqis appeared to be unwilling to make any concessions before the provincial elections scheduled for later this year that would seem to voters to be too accommodating to the occupying forces. “They are playing hardball right now,” the official said.
American and Iraqi negotiators are far apart on a number of issues, said Mr. Adeeb and another senior lawmaker close to Mr. Maliki, Haider al-Abadi, in interviews on Friday.
The Americans want to continue to have “a free hand” to arrest Iraqis and carry out military operations, and they want authority for more than 50 long-term military bases, Mr. Adeeb said. He said that he doubted that a security pact along the lines sought by the Americans would pass in the Iraqi Parliament.
Mr. Abadi, another senior member of Dawa, said Americans were insisting on keeping control of Iraqi airspace and retaining legal immunity for American troops, contractors and private security guards.
The United States official familiar with the negotiations accused Iran of orchestrating a disinformation campaign to undermine the negotiations, saying, “This is Iran’s playbook.”
The official, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity because of the fluid nature of the negotiations, said the debate over what kinds of operations American troops could carry out without Iraqi permission “will be subject to constant revisions and review.” Troops right now are cooperating extensively with Iraqi security forces, and the “new mandate should reflect that fact,” the official said. . . .
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Opposition To A SOFA Agreement Growing In Iraq Or Being Pushed By Iran?
The Malignant Effects Of Socialism In The UK
The middle classes have lost confidence in the police, a stark report has warned. They fear they have been alienated by a service which routinely targets ordinary people rather than serious criminals, simply to fill Government crime quotas. Read the article.
I am a rabid anglophile by any measure. I believe that Britain has, over the last millenium, had the single greatest positive impact on the world of any nation. That said, as I wrote here, Britain today sits amidst a perfect storm brought about by its near century embrace of socialism and its membership in the EU. A read through the British papers today shows some of the truly malignant effects of socialism – one on crime and policing, the other on the war against Christianity.
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Socialists are by definition anti-democratic statists. A core tenet of the socialist philosophy is to centralize control instead of allowing locals to make their own decisions on local issues. One of the areas where the deleterious effects of centralization can be easily seen is in policing.
Local police chiefs in the UK are appointed and controlled from the central government. The locals do not control their police through the ballot box. Not surprisingly, one of the biggest complaints I hear from my British friends is that the police in the UK are nowhere near as responsive to the locals they serve as they should be.
Since all is centralized, what has inevitably evolved is policing based on targets and quotas set by a government that wants to show good statistics to the people in advance of elections. Indeed, if you read the Labour crime statistics, they are inevitably impressive. But get below the statistics, and what you find is a country that has spiraled so far down in terms of law and order that a person living in Britain today is less safe from violent and serious crime than if they were living in the Balkans. Indeed, the government’s quota system is not only an incompetent and incredibly cynical game of smoke and mirrors, it is having an adverse effect on Britain’s middle class, as discussed in a report just released:
The attitude of some officers has also led to spiralling complaints about neglect of duty and rudeness. The report from the Civitas think-tank says incidents which would once have been ignored are now treated as crimes - including a case of children chalking a pavement.
. . . The report warns that a generation of young people - the police's favourite soft targets - are being criminalised, putting their future prospects at risk.
. . . The report details how officers are expected to reach a certain number of 'sanction detections' a month by charging, cautioning or fining an 'offender'. Arresting or fining someone for a trifling offence - such as a child stealing a Mars bar - is a good way of hitting the target and pleasing the Home Office. Amazingly, the chocolate theft ranks as highly as catching a killer.
Miss Sergeant says performance-related bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 a year for police commanders depend partly on reaching such targets. This leads them to put pressure on frontline officers to make arrests for the most minor misdemeanours. . . .
Meanwhile, the socialist Labour Government continues its war on Christianity - and as the Bishop of Rochester pointed out the other day, it is a war the government is winning at perhaps existential cost to British society. Indeed, it is a war that has been going on since the inception of socialism. "It is a profound truth," declared the British Socialist Party in a 1911 manifesto, "that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion." And today, we have the story of a man who regularly rented out a castle for weddings. The state is now closing his business because he refused to make the castle available for a gay couple to be wed there. The man is a devout Christian, such unions violate his faith, and the castle is his private property. The state is using its police power to punish him for his Christian faith and to promote its socialist, anti-religious agenda.
There is finally a push-back going on in Britain. The socialist Labour government is being slaughtered in local elections and faces the abyss come the next general election. That said, the “conservative” party in Britain, the Tory party, seems little more than Labour-lite. As such, it is doubtful that even a crushing Tory victory can salvage Britain with its historical anglo-saxon values in tact. That is certainly true as long as Britain remains in the EU. Britain is just too far down the socialist / EU road to survive in even its current form beyond half a century. If the Britain of Churchill is ever to return, it will take some near disaster to move the British of today from their complacency, though I of course hope that I am proven wrong in that prognostication.
The Perfidy of Europe
According to a Telegraph poll, a plurality of Europe's citizens see America as evil. Further, the socialists of Europe join the ranks of Ahmedinejad, Castro, FARC, Ghadaffi, and other assorted haters of America in desiring to see Obama as President.
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The Telegraph ran a poll of several thousand people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia to determine attitudes towards America. Question 1 was do you consider America a force for good or a force for evil in the world. The results:
Britain - Evil 35% / Good 33% (Et tu, Britain, et tu?)
France - Evil 40% / Good 28%
Germany - Evil 39% / Good 25%
Russia - Evil 56% / Good 16%
Italy was the one country, surprisingly, that has a very positive view of America - Good 49% / Evil 27%. It is also the only country that has finally rid itself of communists and elected a true conservative to head its government.
I am not surprised by the British response, given the stranglehold socialism has on that country, though I am depressed about it. Britain is a natural ally and our closest European ally.
It should also be noted that in a poll taken last year, 48% of Germans believed that the US is a greater threat to the world then a soon to be nuclear armed Iran. With allies like these . . .
The poll also asked several other questions, including whom would you like to see elected President. In every country, the overwhelming majority went for Obama. The sum total of all polled went for Obama, 52% to 15%. You can find the poll results here.
We pulled Europe out of the fire in two world wars. We spent a great deal of our wealth rebuilding all of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan following WWII. We protected Western Europe against the Soviet threat during the Cold War. Even with the fall of the Soviet Union, we are still spending billions each year in support of European defense through NATO. Indeed, virtually all European nations have taken advantage of the situation to run minimal defense budgets and rely on the U.S. for their protection. With all of that, one might expect a bit of good will towards the U.S. But there is little to be found among the perfidious socialists who dominate Europe. Indeed, Der Spiegel, the BBC, and many of the state owned media outlets of Europe promote a virulent form of anti-Americanism.
The photo at the top of this post adequately sums up my take on this. If you have not seen it before, its LTG George Patton urinating into the Rhine in 1945. Can the U.S. get out of NATO and the UN fast enough? And as to the Middle East, if we can get our oil from other locales, we should leave Iran to the Europeans to worry about. The nuclear missles they will have in two years won't reach America, but Brussels will likely be in range. And while I am willing to defend the classical values of western civilization with my life and the life of my progeny, when I see things like this, it leads me to conclude that there is little of such civilization left in Europe to defend.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Friday's Art & Verse
Art: Little Red Riding Hood & The Big Bad Wolf, Richard Hermann Eschke
Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf
As soon as Wolf began to feel
That he would like a decent meal,
He went and knocked on Grandma's door.
When Grandma opened it, she saw
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
And Wolfie said, "May I come in?"
Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
"He's going to eat me up!" she cried.
And she was absolutely right.
He ate her up in one big bite.
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And Wolfie wailed, "That's not enough!
I haven't yet begun to feel
That I have had a decent meal!"
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
"I've got to have a second helping!"
Then added with a frightful leer,
"I'm therefore going to wait right here
Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood
Comes home from walking in the wood."
He quickly put on Grandma's clothes,
(Of course he hadn't eaten those).
He dressed himself in coat and hat.
He put on shoes, and after that,
He even brushed and curled his hair,
Then sat himself in Grandma's chair.
In came the little girl in red.
She stopped. She stared. And then she said,
"What great big ears you have, Grandma."
"All the better to hear you with,"
the Wolf replied.
"What great big eyes you have, Grandma."
said Little Red Riding Hood.
"All the better to see you with,"
the Wolf replied.
He sat there watching her and smiled.
He thought, I'm going to eat this child.
Compared with her old Grandmamma,
She's going to taste like caviar.
Then Little Red Riding Hood said, "
But Grandma, what a lovely great big
furry coat you have on."
"That's wrong!" cried Wolf.
"Have you forgot
To tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?
Ah well, no matter what you say,
I'm going to eat you anyway."
The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature's head,
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, "Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat."
- Roald Dahl
Dahl, born in 1916 in Wales, was a novelist, short story writer and screenwriter, who rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. His most popular books include The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches and The BFG. Read more about Roald Dahl
Whoa . . .A McClellan-Soros Connection
This just in from The American Pundit: Very interesting. Especially since Ari Fleisher spoke with McClellan yesterday, who claims his editor “tweaked” the book. Apparently the original book Ari was told about was supposed to be “
This promises to get real interesting real quick.
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Scott "Fredo Corleone" McClellan, has written a scathing book that takes aim at the Bush White House. With the latest revelations, it seems possible that McClellan's work was heavilly influenced by, if not twisted by, Soros minions. If so, this could be a true scandal. Media Mythbusters provides some of the background: