Grand Ayatollah Montazeri & The Second Revolution

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri died on Sunday. His burial on Monday, shown in the video above, turned into the largest protest against the Iranian regime since at least June. Here is a report on the burial that appeared on Al Jazzera. If you do not know about Grand Ayatollah, it provides a suprisingly good two minute summation:



Hossein Ali Montazeri, a man deeply respected by Shia Muslims, one of only a handful of Grand Ayatollahs and, until his death, the most senior Shia cleric living in Iran, boasts a unique resume. He was a leading figure and, indeed, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini right hand man, during the 1979 Iranian revolution. He was slated to succeed Khomeni upon Khomeini's death, but instead turned against Khomeini over Khomeini's brutal tactics and his imposition of the the velayat-a-faqi, Khomeini's bastardization of over a millenium of apolitical Shia tradition to establish a theocracy. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was held for several years under house arrest in Qom, where he remained an implacable critic of the regime. Now he has played a central role in igniting the fires of a second revolution.

In the wake of the theocracy's stolen election in June, Montazeri criticized the regime and called for new, fair elections. When the regime responded with brutality to repress demonstrations, Montazeri issued a fatwa declaring the regime un-Islamic and illegitimate, writing:

"A political system based on force, oppression, changing people's votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened . . . and forcing them to make false confessions in jail is condemned and illegitimate."

Montazeri, more than anyone else in Iran, gave legitimacy to what is now a revolutionary movement. And he, more than anyone else, has torn asunder the religious legitimacy of the theocracy in the eyes of the Iranian people. His importance in this second revolution cannot be overestimated. His death will not in the slightest extinguish his influence. Indeed, given Shia's penchant for revering the dead and Montazeri's highly respected standing in the Shia faith, he will now pass into iconic status for those who wish to see the theocracy ended. Thus it is no surpise at all that his burial should lead to the largest single anti-regime demonstration since June. This from the NYT, discusses both the demonstraton-nee-burial and the importance of Montazeri that will continue on long after his burial:

The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a huge and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities.

As mourners carried the body of the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, tens of thousands of his supporters surged through the streets of Qum, chanting denunciations of the leadership in Tehran that would have been unthinkable only months ago: “Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!” and “Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!”

Although the police mostly stayed clear during the funeral procession, some skirmishes broke out between protesters and members of the hard-line Basij militia. As the mourners dispersed, security forces flooded the streets, blocking all roads around the ayatollah’s house, and some militia members tore down posters of him, witnesses said.

The funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri, who died in his sleep on Sunday at the age of 87, appears to have put Iran’s rulers in a difficult position. They had to pay public respect to a senior religious scholar who helped build Iran’s theocracy and was once the heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Yet they are also keenly aware that his mourning rites could set off further protests, especially as Iranians commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, on the Ashura holiday this Sunday.

More broadly, the continuing protests underscore a deadlock between the opposition and the government, which wants to avoid the cycle of martyrdom and mourning for dead protesters that helped create Iran’s revolution, analysts say. . . .

The government made some conciliatory gestures Monday, including a respectful statement of condolence from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that was read aloud at the funeral. The statement hailed him as a “well-versed jurist and a prominent master” and said “many disciples have benefited greatly from him,” according to state-run Press TV.

But the statement also described Ayatollah Montazeri’s break with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 as a mistake. That line provoked jeers and shouts of “Death to the dictator!” — shouts that were audible in video posted on the Internet. In one clip, protesters could be seen shaking their fists and chanting, “We don’t want rationed condolences!”

“Words cannot describe the glory of the funeral,” said Ahmad Montazeri, the ayatollah’s son, in a telephone interview on Monday night. But he added that 200 to 300 Basij members had partly disrupted the ceremony, and that by evening Basij members and security forces had filled the streets and occupied the grand mosque of Qum, preventing the family from holding a planned mourning ceremony there.

The government jammed phones and Internet service through much of the day, and the BBC’s Persian service, a crucial source of information for many Iranians, suspended broadcasts, saying the government had been jamming it since Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on Sunday.

There were also protests in Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s birthplace. Videos posted on the Internet showed large crowds of people chanting “Dictator, dictator, Montazeri is alive!” and “Oh, Montazeri, your path will be followed even if the dictator shoots us all!” Banners in the bright green color of the opposition movement were visible.

The protests in Najafabad, which began Sunday, were apparently set off in part by disrespectful reports about Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on right-wing news sites, including Fars News, which initially referred to him without the title “ayatollah.”

Iran’s hard-liners have long spoken dismissively of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was under house arrest from 1997 to 2003 for his antigovernment critiques. In the months since June’s disputed presidential election, he had unleashed a series of extraordinary denunciations of the government crackdown on protesters, declaring that the government was neither democratic nor Islamic and that Ayatollah Khamenei was unfit to be the supreme leader. He also dismissed the results of the election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won officially by a landslide, as fraudulent, echoing the claims of opposition leaders.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s criticisms carried a special weight because of his status as Iran’s most senior cleric. And despite the fact that many younger opposition supporters are generally hostile to clerics, his advocacy was meaningful to them.

“It was important that the most senior cleric, politically and religiously, came out and supported the people,” said Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar, a former student of Ayatollah Montazeri who is now a visiting scholar at York University in Toronto.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s defense of Iran’s opposition also helped to unite its religious and secular wings, some analysts say. And he may turn out to be more influential in death than he was in life.

“His death has become a pretext for the movement to expand,” said Fatimeh Haghighhatjoo, a former member of Iran’s Parliament who is now a visiting scholar at Boston University. “He was the only cleric who gave up power and supported human rights, the characteristic that earned him respect from various political factions.”

Michael Ledeen, writing at PJM, notes the reaction of the regime to the protest - a reaction sure to enrage:

the regime is frightened. The supreme leader and his acolytes (Ahmadinejad is less and less visible. Somebody should tell Diane Sawyer) are groping for a way to survive. They seem not to realize that they died before Montazeri, and that nobody cares to mourn them. And so they stagger about, and find the worst possible gesture. As the indispensable Banafsheh tells us:

On Monday evening Saeed Montazeri announced that the Montazeri family was forced to cancel the post-funeral sacrament as the Islamic regime’s forces had invaded the A’zam mosque where the observance was to be held. Saeed Montazeri also added that the Montazeri residence has now been surrounded by various revolutionary guards, members of the Basij, intelligence agents, members of special force, etc.

It is reminiscent of Gorbachev at his most inept, finding a way to be mean enough to enrage the people, but not tough enough to assert his power, thereby provoking that most dangerous of all mass reactions: contempt for his person and his rule.

There is also one other related item to watch. With Grand Ayatollah Montazeri's death, the next most senior Shia cleric is the Iranian-born, Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Like Montazeri, Sistani is opposed to the velayat-a-faqi and, indeed, refused to support the imposition of a theocracy in Iraq. Sistani, reportedly one of the most popular clerics among Iranians today, could in fact play some role in how events transpire in Iran. Sistani had not, as of yesterday, issued a statement on Montazeri's death. One will surely be forthcoming, and may well give some indication of what role, if any, Grand Ayatollah Sistani is willing to play in the nascent Iranian Revolution II. It will be one to watch closely.

Lastly, I have one bone to pick with an otherwise good piece of journalism by the NYT that I quote above. The NYT mistakenly describes the Iranian MSM which totes the line of the theocracy as "right wing." The theocracy in Iran is non-democratic and rules both the economy and its subjects with an iron hand. They are intollerant of dissent. To describe those things as "right wing" is not but pure projection by the NYT's authors.

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Intel & Politics In The Dem's Congress

Nancy Pelosi may be clinically insane - an opinion I have had for a long time - but she knows how to choose people that are loyal. Congressman Sylvester Reyes is a case in point. Pelosi elevated this man to the post of Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. It was certainly not because he was the sharpest knife in the box - to the contrary, at the time of his appointment, he did not know whether al Qaeda was a Sunni or Shia organization. One might consider that show of confusion on the most basic of points a disqualifier for an aspiring Intel chief during time of war. But what Reyes lacks in even the most basic of understanding of intelligence, he more than makes up for in loyalty to his mentor, Pelosi. And he is now leading the charge to discredit the CIA and to insure that the truth never comes out about Pelosi's claim that she was not briefed on waterboarding.

Democrats are claiming it a scandal that our CIA might have floated a program to conduct targeted assassinations of al Qaeda operatives without briefing Congress. They further claim that the decision not to brief Congress was made by the font of all evil in the world, Dick Cheney, Their goal is to hold this situation up as proof that the CIA regularly misleads Congress, and that, as such, no further proof on the Pelosi matter is warranted. As to the program itself, one has to wonder why such a plan was not operational on 9-12. Beyond that, there is this from Congressman Pete Hoekstra writing in the NY Post:

CIA Director Panetta refused to back the allegation that Cheney gave such an order. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden flatly denied that he'd ever been instructed not to brief Congress. Now Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has also distanced himself from these over-the-top allegations by House Democrats.

There's also been a flurry of bizarre letters from House Intelligence Committee members about this matter suggesting that Democrats are no longer interested in bipartisan oversight of intelligence. One was slipped under a Republican staff member's door after business hours. I first learned about it from the news media.

Another letter signed by seven Democratic House intelligence-committee members did not use House Intelligence committee stationery, apparently to ensure that Republicans didn't get a copy. Two Democratic House Intelligence Committee members refused to sign this letter because they thought it was too political.

These new allegations, letters and calls for investigations are part of a strategy by Democrats to attack intelligence personnel and agencies. Why? To protect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who is in hot water over her May 14 comments that the CIA "lies all the time" and misled her about enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects.

A major consequence of this Democratic effort to politicize intelligence is that the House Intelligence Committee has essentially stopped doing meaningful work. The 2010 intelligence-authorization bill was so poorly drafted (and loaded with language to protect Pelosi) that President Obama threatened a veto, forcing Democratic leaders to pull the bill from consideration this month.

. . . Disarray by House Democrats on intelligence oversight is seriously damaging the morale of US intelligence officers and their ability to do their jobs. How can Democrats claim they are serious about national security when they are exploiting intelligence and attacking intelligence professionals for political advantage?

I have emphasized that the intelligence community must be accountable when it does not tell Congress what it is doing. But when Congress is told and approves, Congress needs to be held accountable.

Pelosi's claim that the CIA lied to her about enhanced interrogations and recent Democratic claims that the CIA misled them about another program ignore the point that Democrats were repeatedly briefed on and approved the CIA's tough counterterrorism programs from the outset.

. . . The incredible amount of partisanship Democrats have introduced into intelligence matters is demoralizing the US intelligence community, causing sensitive information to be disclosed and encouraging our enemies. For the good of our nation, Democrats need to start acting like adults and begin conducting responsible and bipartisan intelligence oversight. These attacks on our intelligence community need to stop now.

Partisan political games have no place when it comes to national security.

That last sentence from Congressman Hoekstra is purely aspirational. Democrats have been politicizing intelligence since they decided that the Vietnam War that they led us into was unpopular. Democrats have been politicizing and hamstringing our intelligence capabilities in an unbroken line since the Church Commission at the conclusion of the Vietnam War. It has worked for them, so why stop now.

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Iran 7/7 - The Pot Simmers (Updated)

(A great music video from Cyrus Mafia on Iran's uprising, with some English subtitles / Hat Tip Michael Ledeen)

A summary of the current situation in and about Iran:

1. Mousavi called for a 3-day strike leading up to a major rally planned on Thursday, 9 July.

2. Khameini ordered another crackdown, with hundreds more arrests and orders to confiscate all satellite dishes. He also has ordered most businesses closed, apparently in an effort to prevent a wide scale general strike being portrayed as a show of support for Mousavi

3. Money is flooding out of Iran as Iran's rich read the writing on the wall

4. The Commander of the IRGC has publicly announced that they have taken over all internal security missions since the election

5. A major development two days ago was the decision of Iran's most influential clerical body to condemn the election and the repression of protesters. Christopher Hitchens speculates that the hands of Rafsanjani and Grand Ayatollah Sistani were behind the move. He further ponders whether the example of Iraqi democracy played a substantive role in the current Iranian discontent.

6. The utterly spineless and wrongheaded Obama regime has come out against any international sanctions against the bloody theocrats for their repression, reasoning that any sanctions "might backfire." Fortunately, Congress is acting independently of Obama.

7. Biden has greenlighted Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and Saudi Arabia apparently will do its role to assist Israel. That said, this should not be Israel's burden to carry alone. Unfortunately, with Obama at the helm, it will be.

Update: 8. Amir Taheri writes on the likelihood that Khameini is likely to be far more brutal than the shah in attempting to put down the current unrest. He also writes on the fact that Ahmedinejad is now unwelcome in most parts of Iran.

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1. Mousavi, facing calls from supporters of Ahmedinejad for his arrest and punishment for treason, has called for a 3 day general strike leading up to a major planned protest on Thursday, "the 10th anniversary of a 1999 attack by pro-government militiamen on the dormitories of Tehran University that led to weeks of political unrest." Mousavi is not backing down. While some rumblings are being heard about arresting Mousavi, there can be little doubt that this ham-handed regime would already have done so if they were fully confident of their ability to weather the unrest.

2. According to Michael Ledeen, Khameini has ordered another round of arrests, as well as the confiscation of all satellite dishes:

The Iranian tyrant, Ali Khamenei, told his cluster of top advisers two days ago that it was time to totally shut down the protests, and he ordered that any and all demonstrators, regardless of their status, be arrested (although there is no longer room for new prisoners in Tehran’s jails; they are now using sports arenas as holding areas). He further ordered that all satellite dishes be taken down (good luck with that one; there are probably millions of them in Tehran alone). He ordered that the crackdown be done at night, to avoid all those annoying videos. By Sunday night, hundreds of new arrests had been made, including the regime’s favorite targets: students, intellectuals, and journalists.

His deadline: July 11th. He told his minions that if that were accomplished, the rest of the world would come crawling to him.

He may be right about most of the rest of the world, which has distinguished itself by its fecklessness, but he is certainly not right about his own people . . .

The regime was apparently so worried that the general strike would show massive support for Mousavi that they took the step of ordering the businesses and offices to close for three days. The Telegraph is reporting that most businesses in Tehran's Central Bazaar are closed, though there is no word coming out on the rest of the country.

3. File this one under "rats deserting a sinking ship." Underscoring the continuing seriousness of the unrest in Iran, the Telegraph is reporting on the mass movement of money out of the country:

Millions of pounds in private wealth has begun flooding out of Iran in the wake of mass demonstrations which have paralysed commercial life after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Fears of a new round of crippling sanctions are also thought to have fuelled the movement of money out of the country.

Western intelligence agencies have reported that prominent private businesses and wealthy families have moved tens of millions of dollars out of Iranian banks into overseas accounts. . . .

4. The IRGC is a corrupt organization whose leadership has a fully vested interest in seeing the theocracy propped up. The leadership of the IRGC is getting as rich from corruption, graft, and business interests as have many of the politicized members of Iran's clerical establishment. Thus it is no surprise to find that the IRGC is now running the internal security to brutally crush the protests. This from the LA Times:

The top leaders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard publicly acknowledged they had taken over the nation's security during the post-election unrest and warned late Sunday, in a threat against a reformist wave led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi, that there was no middle ground in the ongoing dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite military branch, said the guard's takeover of the nation's security had led to "a revival of the revolution."

. . . "Today, no one is impartial," Gen. Yadollah Javani said at the Sunday news conference, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. "There are two currents -- those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it."

The uniformed Revolutionary Guard leaders, joined by the turbaned cleric Ali Saedi, Khamenei's representative, said they would play a more active role in defending the Islamic Republic's core values . . .

It should be noted that the basij, Iran's version of the Nazi brown-shirts, who have played a central and bloody role in repressing the protests, are under the command of the IRGC.

5. I blogged here on the recent major development of Iran's most respected clerical organization, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, who issued a statement that condemned the regime for their repression of the protests, called the regime illegitimate, and challenged the Guardian Council for certifying the election. Related to this, Abbas Milani has written an exceptional article at TNR giving the history of the split among Iran's clerics over the theocracy itself that we now see spilling out into the open.

Christopher Hitchens, writing at Slate, makes the point that the impetus for the Association's statement - a group that normally stays out of politics - was likely prompted by Mousavi's backer, Rafsanjani, and the most popular cleric in Iran, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Hitchens goes on to ask a salient question:

Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran's regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let's pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.

I will be amazed if, once all is said and done, we find out that Iraq's model did not play a significant role in promoting the discontent of Iran's rank and file. I have been saying for years that the greatest single threat to Iran was a border with Iraq's secular, Shia dominated democracy - and indeed, that the two could not possibly coexist. But don't expect Hitchen's question to get asked by our MSM. Instead, we have the MSM regurgitating the Obama administration's laughable claim of credit for being a cause of the uprising, pointing to the Cairo Speech. That would be the speech wherein Obama signalled a retreat from promoting democracy in the Middle East. And it would be the speech that was not broadcast in Iran. The theocracy actually jammed the signal to prevent people from picking it up on satellite dishes.

6. As I posted here, Obama has come out against any international sanctions against the theocrats for their bloody repression because of concern that any sanctions "might backfire." As Robert Averich cogently points out on his blog, such a move could not be more counterproductive, nor more useless.

Fortunately, Congress is acting independently of Obama. McCain and Lieberman announced two weeks ago that they were sponsoring a bill to require the U.S. to assist with the communications into and out of Iraq - perhaps the most critical area where we can assist the nascent revolution in Iran. Unfortunately, that also tells us that if we are having to legislate such actions, Obama must have our covert operators sitting on their thumbs, doing nothing to assist the protests. That, if true, is an atrocity. But it would comport with Obama's simply mystifying continued push to hold talks with this illegitimate and brutal theocracy. The Telegraph also reports on more legislation in the U.S. pipeline:

. . . Republican congressman Mark Kirk has claimed there is growing support for a bill he is sponsoring which would strip American support for foreign companies supplying refined petroleum to Iran.

Iran is a large oil producer but decades of financial isolation means it must import petrol and other end products from abroad.

Reliance, the Indian operator, provides one-third of Iran's daily needs while also enjoying a massive trade loan from the US.

Another bill that would exclude companies involved in the trade from doing business in the US was put on hold earlier this year as a gesture from President Barack Obama to improve relations.

Iran's economic problems are severe. Their per capita GDP is only slightly over $3,100, inflation is running almost 25%, and their unemployment rate is well into double digits. These are not transitory conditions that just came about as a result of the global economic meltdown, but are the result of years of misrule by clerics and now Ahmedinejad. Real sanctions, particularly ones that attack the theocracy's dependence on foreign refined fuel products, could prove very effective in furthering unrest in Iran. But with Obama seeking to derail international sanctions over Iran's brutal repression, it is unlikely he would ever sign such bills.

I recommend that you take a look at how Obama has long approached such issues to evaluate their effectiveness. We learned today that Obama was highly critical of Reagan in 1983 for going ahead with the deployment of new nuclear missiles in the face of Soviet opposition and opposition in Germany - the so-called nuclear freeze movement. Obama was very much on the wrong side of history there, and if his policies were then in place, we might still be facing the Soviet Union. Let us hope Obama does not manage to throw a lifeline to our own modern "evil empire," Iran's bloody theocracy.

7. VP Biden has greenlighted Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, stating that Israel is a "sovereign nation" entitled to make its own decisions on security without U.S. interference. Given the current state of Iran, Israel would be foolish to pull the trigger yet. If they strike Iran, they may put back Iran's nuclear weapons program by a few years but unite a country on the verge of toppling. Conversely, if Iran's theocracy falls, the threat to Israel would likely vanish overnight.

That said, it is also being reported that Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow Israel to overfly Saudi airspace to attack Iran. It is now being denied, but I do not doubt that this is true. For all of the vile hatred Wahhabists preach against Israel and the Jews, the bottom line is that Israel is no threat to the House of Saud. Iran, however, is not only a religious enemy of the Wahhabis because they practice Shia'ism, but Iran also poses a major threat to the Sauds. Iran has long been reaching out to all Shia in the Middle East in an effort to expand their influence. The House of Saud rules over a substantial and strategically placed Shia minority. Anything that the Sauds and most of the other Sunni countries could do informally and covertly to assist Israel against Iran has probably already been considered and discussed.

To go one further, Daled Amos, blogging at Soccer Dad, ponders the question of whether it is time for there to be a Sunni-Israel alliance directed against Iran and what it would take to achieve such an alliance. I doubt that a formal alliance would ever coalesce until the Sword of Damocles visibly appears over the Arab Sunni world. But it is a sign of the times that such an issue is even being discussed with seriousness.

Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon was one issue that President Bush clearly wanted to deal with on his watch. It was only vociferous intervention led by Obama, Reid and Pelosi against even the threat of force, coupled with the release of a highly politicized NIE, that tied Bush's hands. Now Obama owns the Iranian problem and is responsible for countering the mad theocracy's rush for a nuclear arsenal that will threaten the U.S. every bit as much as Israel.

During his campaign, Obama said he would consider using force to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That was then, this is now. In light of totality of Obama's approach to Iran, it is fair to assume that Biden's statement was, if not a public punting of the ball to Israel, then at least an acknowledgement that Israel is on its own in this.

The Obama administration has given us many things things already - a record debt, rising unemployment, a failing dollar to name but a few. What they haven't given us or the world is anything remotely approaching leadership. Apparently, that is now Israel's job. At least the House of Saud seems to recognize it.

8. Iranian columnist Amir Taheri has several recent articles on Iran. In "For Mousavi: Three Roads Ahead," Taheri points out that Khameini is no longer even making a pretense that Iran has a "republican" system of government and that Khameini will not shirk from using all of the violence necessary to stay in power:

Thanks to Mousavi’s decision to fight back, the current crisis has already produced at least one positive result. It has clarified the situation by exposing the composite noun Islamic Republic as an oxymoron. The space allocated to the "republic" has shrunk to its smallest since the start of the Khomeinist regime.

On Tuesday, the official Islamic News Agency (IRNA) published the text of a long sermon by the "Supreme Guide" in the province of Kurdistan and for the staff of the elite 27th Division, spelling out the nature of the regime.

This is what Khamenei says: "Islamic society is the society of the imamate. This means that the imam is at the head of the system. {The Imam is} a man who exercises power because the people follow him as their leader from their heart and because they have full faith in him."

Khamenei makes no mention of the presidency or any other organ of state because the system he is defending has a single, all-embracing institution: the imamate.

With pretensions about democracy and popular will gone, the current system in Iran is closer to models such as the imamate in Yemen and the "Islamic emirate" in Afghanistan under the Taliban, than to a republic in which Mousavi, or anybody else, could claim a mandate based on victory in an election.

Khamenei's sermon also contains a clear warning that the regime is prepared to provoke a bloodbath to maintain its hold on power. Khamenei says that had the Shah killed half a million people he would not have been overthrown.

He criticizes the Algerian Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS) for not having called the masses onto the streets and provoked a bloodbath by confronting the army. "Had they brought the crowds onto the streets there would have been an Islamic government in Algeria today," he says. "But they were afraid and showed weakness."

With admiration, the "Supreme Guide" recalls the massacre of one million Communists in Indonesia under General Suharto that he claims saved the system in that country.

A reluctant hero, Mousavi has succeeded in drawing the true battle lines in Iran's politics. Whether he wishes to be present on those lines, for how long, and with how much determination remains to be seen.

This throws into stark relief the paucity and imprudence of the Obama administration's decision to minimize sanctions against the regime. Khamieini is set on his path and beliefs. Nothing Obama could possibly do will light a fire in the regime that was unlit before. To the contrary, the best hope of limiting the repression against those braving it in a fight for democracy would be to significantly increase the external pressure on the regime, making the regime's already noticable faultlines into crumbling chasms. As is becoming a regular pattern, Obama is doing the polar opposite.

Taheri also writes in a seperate article, A Suddenly Most Unwelcome Guest, that Ahmedinejad has been cancelling most of his travel plans inside Iran because of the likelihood of his presence leading to mass protests. Ahmedinejad is, writes Taheri, a very diminished figure whose "legitimacy is challenged at all levels of Iranian society, including every segment of the Khomeinist establishment." I don't see this ending well for Ahmedinejad.

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State of Iraq - What The Surge Hath Wrought

NYT reporter, Dexter Filkins, returns to Iraq for the first time since the height of sectarian violence in 2006, the year before General Petraeus implemented the counterinsurgency strategy. He is stunned at what he finds. Ironically, it can be summed up as hope and change.
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This from Mr. Filkins writing in the NYT:

At first, I didn’t recognize the place.

On Karada Mariam, a street that runs over the Tigris River toward the Green Zone, the Serwan and the Zamboor, two kebab places blown up by suicide bombers in 2006, were crammed with customers. Farther up the street was Pizza Napoli, the Italian place shut down in 2006; it, too, was open for business. And I’d forgotten altogether about Abu Nashwan’s Wine Shop, boarded up when the black-suited militiamen of the Mahdi Army had threatened to kill its owners. There it was, flung open to the world.

Two years ago, when I last stayed in Baghdad, Karada Mariam was like the whole of the city: shuttered, shattered, broken and dead.

Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?

. . . When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.

And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?

“We are normal people, ordinary people, like people everywhere,” Aziz al-Saiedi said to me the other day, as we sat on a park bench in Sadr City, only recently freed from the grip of the Mahdi Army. The park was just a small patch of bare ground with a couple of swing sets; it didn’t even have a name, yet it was filled to the bursting. “We want what everyone else wants in this world,” he said.

. . . Everything here seems to be standing on its head. Propaganda posters, which used to celebrate the deaths of American soldiers, now call on Iraqis to turn over the triggermen of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Mahdi Army. “THERE IS NOWHERE FOR YOU TO HIDE,” a billboard warns in Arabic, displaying a set of peering, knowing eyes. I saw one such poster in Adamiyah, a Sunni neighborhood that two years ago was under the complete control of Al Qaeda. Sunni insurgents — guys who were willing to take on the Qaeda gunmen — are now on the American payroll, keeping the peace at ragtag little checkpoints for $300 a month.

In Sadr City, the small brick building that served as the Mahdi Army’s headquarters still stands. But not 50 feet away, a freshly built Iraqi Army post towers above it now. Next to the army post, perhaps to heighten the insult to the militia, the Iraqi government has begun installing a new sewer network, something this impoverished and overcrowded ghetto sorely needs. “Wanted” posters adorn the blast walls there, too, imploring the locals to turn in the once-powerful militia leaders.

Inside the Sadr Bureau, as it’s called, the ex-militia gunmen speak in chastened tones about moving on, maybe finding other work, maybe even transforming their once ferocious army into a social welfare organization. I didn’t see any guns.

“Please don’t print my name in your newspaper,” one former Mahdi Army commander asked me with a sheepish look. “I’m wanted by the government.”

As for the Americans, they are still here, of course, but standing ever more in the background.

. . . The other day I rode in a helicopter to Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, the Wyoming-size slice of desert west of Baghdad. Two years ago, 30 marines and soldiers were dying there every month. In 2005, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia declared Anbar the seat of its “caliphate.” Since then, violence in Anbar has plummeted. Al Qaeda has been decimated. I was coming in for a ceremony, unimaginable until recently, to mark the handover of responsibility for security to the Iraqi Army and police.

Standing in the middle of the downtown, I found myself disoriented. I had been here before — I was certain — but still I couldn’t recognize the place. Two summers ago, when I’d last been in Ramadi, the downtown lay in ruins. Only one building stood then, the Anbar provincial government center, and the Americans were holding onto it at all cost. For hundreds of yards in every direction, everything was destroyed; streets, buildings, cars, even the rubble had been ground to dust. Ramadi looked like Dresden, or Grozny, or some other obliterated city. Insurgents attacked every day.

And then, suddenly, I realized it: I was standing in front of the government center itself. It was sporting a fresh concrete facade, which had been painted off-white with brownish trim. Over the entrance hung a giant official seal of Anbar Province. The road where I stood had been recently paved; it was black and smooth. The rubble had been cleared away. American marines were walking about, without helmets or flak jackets or even guns.

In the crowd, I saw a face I recognized. It was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security advisor. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. Mr. Rubaie is a warm, garrulous man, a neurologist who spent years in London before returning to Iraq. But he is also a Shiite, and a member of Iraq’s Shiite-led government, which, in 2005 and 2006, was accused of carrying out widespread atrocities against Iraq’s Sunnis. Anbar Province is almost entirely Sunni.

As Mr. Rubaie made his way through the crowd, I noticed he was holding hands with another Iraqi man, a traditional Arab gesture of friendship and trust. It was Brig. Gen. Murdi Moshhen al-Dulaimi, the Iraqi Army officer taking control of the province — a Sunni. The sun was blinding, but Mr. Rubaie was wearing sunglasses, and finally he spotted me.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he asked over the crowd.

I might have asked him the same thing.

. . . In August, before I came back to Iraq, I visited Gen. Ray Odierno in his office at the Pentagon. As the deputy commander in Iraq from late 2006 to early 2008, General Odierno had helped execute the buildup of American troops that has helped quell the violence. When we met, he was preparing to assume command of the American forces here, taking over for Gen. David H. Petraeus.

General Odierno, an enormous, imposing man, has come a long way in Iraq.

. . . When he returned to Iraq in late 2006, General Odierno concluded that the American project in Iraq was headed for defeat. The American officers whom he was replacing had reached the same conclusion. “I knew that if we continued the way that we were, then we were not going to be successful,” he said.

Hence the troop increase. At its most basic level, General Odierno explained, the premise of this “surge” was that ordinary Iraqis didn’t want the violence. That is, that the chaos in Iraq was being driven by small groups of killers, principally those of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who, by murdering Shiite civilians in huge car and suicide bomb attacks, were driving ordinary Iraqis into the arms of Shiite deaths squads and the Mahdi Army. If that dynamic could be broken, ordinary Iraqis would stop relying on militias to protect them. Something approaching normalcy might return.

“We believed that the majority of the Iraqi people wanted to move forward, but you had these small groups that didn’t,” General Odierno said. “So we had to protect the people, and go after these groups.”

And so they did, with a series of offensives against the Qaeda insurgents in and around Baghdad in 2007 and then, earlier this year, in Basra and in Baghdad against the Mahdi Army. Along the way, the Americans got a huge break: The leaders of Iraq’s large Sunni tribes, which had included many insurgents, decided to stop opposing the Americans and join them against Al Qaeda. The Americans, seizing the opportunities, agreed to put many of the tribesmen, including many former insurgents, on the payroll.

The Sunni Awakening, as it is called, cascaded through Sunni areas across Iraq.

The result, now visible in the streets, is a calm unlike any Iraq has known in the five and a half years since the Americans arrived. Iraqi life is flowing back into the streets. The ordinary people, the “normal people,” as Mr. Aziz called them, have the upper hand, at least for now. . . .

Read the entire article. There is much more.

The forces arrayed against Iraq are significant. Iran has been beaten back - but only for the moment. Al Qaeda's defeat has been more significant, though it to could theoretically stage a come back. Corruption is endemic. Massive oil wealth is a blessing and a curse, increasing the wealth of the nation even as many eye a way to get their hands on an ill-gotten piece of the wealth. The Kurdish north is doing its best to take control of the oil fields near Kirkuk and to become a defacto separate country, threatening to tear Iraq apart.

Arrayed against those forces are a nation desperate to live in peace. It is a nation of intelligent and hardworking people with a history of intermixing between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. It is a nation that is hopeful of democracy to give it good and fair government. And Iraq still has a U.S. partner committed - for the moment - to seeing Iraq a success. Whatever the future may hold, for now, there is a hardwon peace.

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Michael O'Hanlon Joins The Argument Against Withdraw From Iraq On A Timetable

Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, whose article on Iraq in the NYT in July, 2007, "A War We Might Just Win." , was pivotal in reducing pressure on the Bush administration to end the surge before it could work, have now weighed in again on the topic of Iraq. Fresh from a recent trip, and joined in their article this time by Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, they see the "timeline" approach and a large-scale withdraw of U.S. troops by 2010 as risking all the gains that have been made in Iraq to date. They explain why the security gains have occurred - the surge - and the tenuousness of those gains in the absence of a significant presence of U.S. troops this morning in the op-ed pages of the NYT. Key to maintaining the peace for the next few years is the fact that it is the U.S. military presence that is trusted by all sides and whose presence both dampens the thoughts of trying to take advantage of one's neighbours and largely insures the validity of the next two rounds of scheduled elections at the provincial and national level.

This from Mr. O'Hanlon, Pollack and Biddle:

ALMOST everyone now agrees there has been great progress in Iraq. The question is what to do about it.

Democrats led by Barack Obama want to take a peace dividend and withdraw all combat brigades by May 2010. Republicans like John McCain want to keep troops in Iraq until conditions on the ground signal the time is ripe. And now the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has endorsed a timetable for withdrawal, though he seems to favor a somewhat slower pace than the Democrats propose.

If the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we should go. But this would be a bad deal for both Iraqis and Americans. Iraq is indeed much more secure than it was two years ago, thus it seems safe to suggest timing goals for significant withdrawals. Yet having recently returned from a research trip to Iraq, we are convinced that a total withdrawal of combat troops any time soon would be unwise. . . .

Violence in Iraq declined because the key combatants were either defeated in the field or agreed to cease-fires. These cease-fires were not accidents or temporary breathing spells. They were a systematic response to a new strategic landscape created by 2006’s sectarian bloodletting, the American surge last summer, the defeat of Al Qaeda’s forces in Anbar Province and the decision by battered Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias that fighting no longer served their interests. The underlying strategic rationale behind these stand-downs gives reason to believe that they are sustainable rather than ephemeral.

But this does not make the peace inherently stable. Wary former combatants are constantly on the lookout for signs — real or imagined — that rivals mean to take advantage of them. The cease-fires, moreover, are extremely decentralized: more than 200 tribal and regional groups have reached individual agreements with the United States to stand down from fighting; in time, some will inevitably test the waters to see what they can get away with, or will misinterpret innocent behavior from neighbors as threatening and retaliate.

A leader of one group of Sunni tribesmen who had switched allegiances and took up arms against Al Qaeda made this point at a meeting we had at Salman Pak, a military base south of Baghdad. He told us he was worried about encroachment onto his territory “from several directions” — apparently meaning he didn’t trust his Sunni neighbors any more than he trusted his traditional Shiite rivals. Left on their own, minor local flashpoints could easily spiral into a renewal of widespread violence.

For now, the American combat presence plays a critical role in enforcing the terms of these cease-fire deals and damping escalatory incentives from spoiler violence. Iraqi government security forces, while they demonstrated improved effectiveness this spring in places like Basra and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, cannot yet play this role themselves.

In part this is because they are still not trusted by all cease-fire participants. To many Sunnis in particular, a government military commanded by a Shiite regime is not yet trustworthy enough to be tolerated without an American presence to keep it honest. To some extent, this is changing: for example, the National Police have replaced three-fourths of its leaders over the last year or so and now have more than a proportionate share of Sunnis in command positions.

But full reconciliation will take time. On our recent trip, we heard several Sunni sheiks — one was a brother of Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, the Americans’ staunchest ally in Anbar until he was assassinated last fall — talk about their newfound regard for Prime Minister Maliki. However, some also discussed their convictions that most other Shiite politicians were “bums” at best and agents for Iran at worst. American troops, by contrast, are generally trusted, if not necessarily loved.

Troop loyalty is not the only concern. The Iraqi security forces are simply not yet able to operate effectively without United States air support, combat advisers and help with logistics and intelligence. When Iraqi units with no American embeds tried to take the port city of Basra last spring, they were turned back in mass confusion, and it required United States combat help to save the day.

American combat troops are also critical for political progress in Iraq. There has been real political change in Iraq — but less from the grand bargains imagined by many Americans and more through thousands of informal, local decisions by war-weary groups and individuals opting to put the past behind them. The pressure from this “bottom up” process has also translated into top-down progress. Over the past year the Iraqis have passed critical amnesty, de-Baathification and provincial-powers laws, as well as a federal budget — all of which had been previously seen as hopelessly deadlocked.

But to capitalize on this progress the next two rounds of elections — provincial races this fall and a national contest next year — must go smoothly and be seen as legitimate. The elections will create losers as well as winners, breeding a grave risk of instability in an immature polity. American combat troops are needed to protect polling places from terrorism, and even more important, from voter intimidation, fraud and the perception that the results were rigged.

Over time, the need for United States contributions will diminish. The longer violence stays down, the more Iraqis’ expectations of one another will improve. Groups of former insurgents being gradually integrated into the Iraqi security forces should become more trusting of the government. And as their technical proficiency and self-sufficiency increase, the need for partnership with American combat units will decrease.

Ideally, progress will also be made on such key issues as the resettlement of four million people now displaced by violence, the equitable sharing of Iraq’s future oil revenues, and a resolution of disputed internal borders in places like the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. But this won’t happen overnight: a stable post-election environment cannot possibly be established until after next year’s elections. If current trends continue, major reductions in American troop levels will be possible — but to begin large-scale drawdowns, much less to complete them, before mid-2010 is to run serious risks.

What can be done, then? One possible model is provided by Anbar Province, which has gone from being Iraq’s most violent region in 2006 to arguably its best today. In 2007, the United States had 15 maneuver battalions in Anbar. Today it has six — far fewer, but nothing close to zero. Several hundred marines remain as advisers with Anbar’s two Iraqi Army divisions; Americans still do some joint patrols with Iraqi forces (if fewer than before), and many Americans work with provincial police and border-security forces. Anbar offers a model for large — though gradual and partial — withdrawals across Iraq that can preserve stability in the process.

American experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo are also instructive. A key to stability in the Balkans has been the presence of outside peacekeepers to enforce the deals that ended the fighting. Yet the number of peacekeeping troops had fallen by about 50 percent four years after the cease-fires were reached in both cases. The Balkan peacekeeping job was easier in some important ways, as it was built on a formal peace treaty among just a few major parties, whereas Iraq’s newfound partial stability is built on scores of local cease-fires signed in 2006 and ’07. It seems clear that withdrawing troops faster from Iraq than we did from Bosnia and Kosovo could be very risky.

Still, the Balkan experience suggests a serious prospect for major withdrawals — perhaps on the order of half the American troop presence — in the next two to three years. Thereafter, if current trends continue, reductions might proceed roughly on the Balkan schedule — with barely 10 percent of the original force expected to be remaining a decade after the end of major hostilities.

Why, then, does Prime Minister Maliki want an earlier withdrawal of United States combat forces? Part of the answer may lie in simple overconfidence: as Americans may recall from the spring of 2003, victory can easily be declared too soon. Another factor, however, surely lies in Iraqi domestic politics. With elections looming, Mr. Maliki and other members of the current government hope to demonstrate that they brought about the end of the occupation and the return to normality during their term.

Mr. Maliki in particular has sought to position himself as the symbol of Iraqi sovereignty, and surely hopes to supplant his young rival Moktada al-Sadr, the standard-bearer for Iraqi nationalism. What better way to do this than to champion a timetable for an American withdrawal, especially when the security forces that would replace the Americans are under his command and his Shiite faction enjoys the preponderance of power in Iraq?

It would be tragic, however, to allow American haste and Iraqi political opportunism to undermine a real chance for long-term stability in Iraq. Perhaps an early withdrawal would succeed, and today’s system of cease-fires would survive a rapid United States drawdown. But much important work remains to be done in Iraq. And to believe that it can be done without the longer presence of a significant number of American combat troops requires a degree of optimism that could well end up making “Mission Accomplished” look as premature today as it was in 2003.

Read the entire article. It is unfortunate that PM Maliki chose such a pivotal time to act with hubris and overconfidence.

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NYT Calls Iraq For Obama

It's official. Obama has the Iraq vote sewn up - at least if the NYT is to be believed today. The article has all the typical NYT biases on full display, and the author even goes so far as to suggest that Obama's highly undefined plan to leave a residual force in Iraq might well be sufficient to meet Iraq's security needs. Once beyond the agenda part of the NYT's agenda journalism, the article gets interesting. Iraqis seem to look favorably on Obama because they see him as having "Muslim roots." They are also quite leary of his plan to quickly drawdown all combat forces.
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This from the NYT:

A tough Iraqi general, a former special operations officer with a baritone voice and a barrel chest, melted into smiles when asked about Senator Barack Obama.

“Everyone in Iraq likes him,” said the general, Nassir al-Hiti. “I like him. He’s young. Very active. We would be very happy if he was elected president.”

But mention Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawing American soldiers, and the general stiffens.

“Very difficult,” he said, shaking his head. “Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: for now, we don’t have that ability.”

Thus in a few brisk sentences, the general summed up the conflicting emotions about Mr. Obama in Iraq, the place outside America with perhaps the most riding on its relationship with him.

There was, as Mr. Obama prepared to visit here, excitement over a man who is the anti-Bush in almost every way: a Democrat who opposed a war that many Iraqis feel devastated their nation. And many in the political elite recognize that Mr. Obama shares their hope for a more rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

But his support for troop withdrawal cuts both ways, reflecting a deep internal quandary in Iraq: for many middle-class Iraqis, affection for Mr. Obama is tempered by worry that his proposal could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war. Many Iraqis also acknowledge that security gains in recent months were achieved partly by the buildup of American troops, which Mr. Obama opposed and his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, supported.

“In no way do I favor the occupation of my country,” said Abu Ibrahim, a Western-educated businessman in Baghdad, “but there is a moral obligation on the Americans at this point.”

Like many Iraqis, Mr. Ibrahim sees Mr. Obama favorably, describing him as “much more humane than Bush or McCain.”

“He seems like a nice guy,” Mr. Ibrahim said. But he hoped that Mr. Obama’s statements about a relatively fast pullout were mere campaign talk.

“It’s a very big assumption that just because he wants to pull troops out, he’ll be able to do it,” he said. “The American strategy in the region requires troops to remain in Iraq for a long time.”

. . . Even as some Iraqis disagreed about Mr. Obama’s stance on withdrawal, they expressed broad approval for him personally as an improvement over Mr. Bush, who remains unpopular among broad portions of Iraqi society five years after the war began. No one interviewed expressed a strong dislike for Mr. Obama.

Saad Sultan, an official in an Iraqi government ministry, contended that Mr. Obama could give a fresh start to relations between the Arab world and the United States. Mr. Obama has never practiced Islam; his father, whom he barely knew, was born Muslim, but became a nonbeliever. Mr. Sultan, however, like many Iraqis, feels instinctively close to the senator because he heard that he had Muslim roots.

“Every time I see Obama I say: ‘He’s close to us. Maybe he’ll see us in a different way,’ ” Mr. Sultan said. “I find Obama very close to my heart.”

Race is also a consideration. Muhammad Ahmed Kareem, 49, an engineer from Mosul, said he had high expectations of Mr. Obama because his experience as a black man in America might give him more empathy for others who feel oppressed by a powerful West. “Blacks suffered a lot of discrimination, much like Arabs,” Mr. Kareem said. “That’s why we expect that his tenure will be much better.”

. . . Mr. Obama has advocated a withdrawal that would remove most combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. Despite some fears about such a departure, that stance is not unpopular here. Many Iraqis hate American forces because soldiers have killed their relatives and friends, and they say they want the troops out.

“Of course I want the American forces to leave Iraq,” said May Adnan Yunis, whose sister was killed, along with a female and a male co-worker, when they were gunned down by American soldiers while driving to work at Baghdad International Airport three weeks ago. “I want them to go to hell.”

After the killings, a statement by the American military describing the three employees as “criminals” who shot at the soldiers inflamed Iraqi officials even more. In a rare public rebuke of the American military, the Iraqi armed forces general command described the American soldiers’ actions as crimes “committed in cold blood.”

For General Hiti, who commands a swath of western Baghdad, the American military is a necessary, if vexing, presence. He ticks off the ways it helps: evacuating wounded Iraqi soldiers, bringing in helicopters when things go wrong, defusing bombs, getting detailed pictures of areas from drone planes.

But the issue of withdrawal is immensely complex, and some of the functions mentioned by General Hiti would not be affected under Mr. Obama’s plan. The senator is calling for the withdrawal of combat brigades, but has said a residual force would still pursue extremist militants, protect American troops and train Iraqi security forces.

. . . But for some Iraqis the American presence remains the backbone of security in the neighborhood. Saidiya, a southern Baghdad district, was so brutalized by violence a year ago that a young Iraqi television reporter who fled thought he would never come back. But a telephone call from his father in December persuaded him to return. An American unit had planted itself in the district, helping chase away radicals. The family could go out shopping. They could drive their car to the gas station.

“The Americans paved the way for the Iraqi Army there,” said the young man, who married this year. “If they weren’t there, the Iraqi forces could not have taken control.” Even so, he agreed with Mr. Obama’s plan for a faster withdrawal. American forces “helped the Iraqi Army to get back its dignity,” he said. “They are qualified now.”

But Iraq is now a complex landscape. Some areas are subdued, and others are still racked by violence and calibrating troop presence will be tricky.

Falah al-Alousy is the director of an organization that runs a school in an area south of Baghdad that was controlled by religious extremists two years ago. Former insurgents turned against the militant group, but local authorities still rely heavily on Americans to keep the peace; the Iraqi Army, largely Shiite, is not allowed to patrol in the area, Mr. Alousy said.

“Al Qaeda would rearrange itself and come back, if the Americans withdraw,” he said. As for Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawal, “It’s just propaganda for an election.”

Most Iraqis dislike the fact that their country is occupied, but a few well-educated Iraqis who have traveled abroad say they would not oppose a permanent American military presence, something that Mr. Obama opposes. Saad Sultan, the Iraqi government official, said his travels in Germany, where there have been American bases since the end of World War II, softened his attitude toward a long-term presence. “I have no problem to have a camp here,” he said. “I find it in Germany and that’s a strong country. Why not in Iraq?”

Read the entire article. Based on what I have read to date, it would appear that the only clique that wants the U.S. out of Iraq quickly are those in league with Iran. The Sunnis want us to stay for at least a decade, the Kurds are ready to apply for statehood (if accepted, it would mark a major step towards Obama's goal of leaving office with 7 new states having been added to our country), and the vast majority of the Shia do not want us leaving for the forseeable future. Indeed, when it comes to "occupiers," many Shia believe it is Iran, not the U.S., that seeks to be the permanent occupation force.

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Iraq, A Broken Clock & The NYT

The difference between a broken clock and the NYT agenda journalism on Iraq over the past five years has been that the broken clock has been accurate at least twice a day. That said, the quality of the NYT Iraq reporting has just met with a sudden and amazing improvement. For the first time in the past five years, the NYT manages to get two major points right about Iraq in the same article. The NYT hits the nail on the head at the beginning of their article Saturday, "Big Gains for Iraq Security, but Questions Linger:"

Violence in all of Iraq is the lowest since March 2004. The two largest cities, Baghdad and Basra, are calmer than they have been for years. The third largest, Mosul, is in the midst of a major security operation. On Thursday, Iraqi forces swept unopposed through the southern city of Amara, which has been controlled by Shiite militias. There is a sense that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government has more political traction than any of its predecessors.

And at the conclusion of their article, the NYT finishes by hitting the nail on the head a second time, discussing that the security gains are fragile and Iraq needs U.S. forces for protection against internal and external foes if it is to survive (the foes go unnamed, as apparently acknowledging the Iranian's acts of war is still a bit too much reality for NYT to take on at the moment).
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This from the NYT, following the lead paragraph quoted above:

For Hatem al-Bachary, a Basra businessman, the turnabout has been “a miracle,” the first tentative signs of a normal life.

“I don’t think the militias have disappeared, and maybe there are sleeper cells which will try to revive themselves again,” he said. “But the first time they try to come back they will have to show themselves, and the government, army and police are doing very well.”

While the increase in American troops and their support behind the scenes in the recent operations has helped tamp down the violence, there are signs that both the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government are making strides. There are simply more Iraqi troops for the government to deploy, partly because fewer are needed to fight the Sunni insurgents, who have defected to the Sunni Awakening movement. They are paid to keep the peace.

Pehaps the least covered aspect of the Iraq War has been the surge in Iraqi forces, both in numbers and training. We have heard of a few Iraqi units that have faded under fire, but given that we are building Iraqi forces from scratch, the degree at which they are progressing is heartening indeed. This is not just picking up the pieces of the old Soviet model, top down military that Iraq had under Sadaam. The U.S. military model is competely new to Iraq. It relies heavily on highly professional junior leaders who are expected to display judgment and initiative - and they are grown over years. Later in its article, the NYT to its credit, discusses in detail the tremendous growth in the Iraqi forces.

That said, NYT just can't untangle themselves from the far left meme that Anbar is only quiet because we have bribed the Anbar Sunnis. The Anbar Sunni Awakening started of its own accord as a push back to the animalistic brutality and draconian treatment at the hands of al Qaeda. True, thankfully, the U.S. has exploited it, but to suggest, as the NYT does, that bribery is at the heart of the pacification of Anbar is dissembling.

To continue with the NYT article:

Mr. Maliki’s moves against Shiite militias have built some trust with wary Sunnis, offering the potential for political reconciliation. High oil prices are filling Iraqi government coffers. But even these successes contain the seeds of vulnerability. The government victories in Basra, Sadr City and Amara were essentially negotiated, so the militias are lying low but undefeated and seething with resentment.

This is the NYT back in its old, highly disingenuous form. Sadr's forces resisted in Basra, supported by Iran, and they suffered exceptionally high casualties over six days of fighting before they surrendered. Much the same thing happened in Sadr City, where Sadr waved the white flag after suffering high casualties and with a full scale offensive into Sadr City literally days away. To describe these actions as simple negotiations and to call the Sadrists undefeated is ridiulous. Iran's proxy Sadr has suffered a devestating series of reverses and their popularity is at its nadir. Sadr just demobilized the Mahdi Army. Is the NYT paying any attention at all?

. . . Attacks like the bombing that killed 63 people in Baghdad’s Huriya neighborhood on Tuesday showed that opponents can continue to inflict carnage.

This too is quite troubling. That bombing was carried out by an Iranian proxy against Shi'ites. That was not an "opponent" doing the bombing, that was an act of war carried out at the behest of a foreign power that wants the U.S. out and Iraq "Lebanized." Unfortunately, the NYT studiously ignores the Iranian threat and acts of war throughout its otherwise heartening article.

Perhaps most worrisome, more than five years after the American invasion, which knocked Mr. Hussein from power but set off great chaos, Iraq still lacks the formal rules to divide the power and spoils of an oil-rich nation among ethnic, religious and tribal groups and unite them under one stable idea of Iraq. The improvements are fragile.

A year ago, there were the eighteen benchmarks that the NYT trumpeted to show that Iraq was a failed state incapable of governing itself. Today, of those benchmarks, the only substantive one remaining is the oil law. To cite to the oil law while studiously ignoring all of the other progress is both disingenuous and a red herring.

What the NYT fails to say is that no one claims that the oil wealth flowing to the central government is not being shared and shared fairly. The system is not broken because of the lack of an oil law. There is no blood being spilled over the sharing of oil wealth. As to the "5 year" remark, the NYT fails to note that democratic government in Iraq just turned two years old. The Iraqis are still arguing over the precise contours of how an oil law should be set up, true, but their time frame to get legislation in place on this issue is hardly excessive, particularly when compared to our own government's years of inability to pass laws on such things as entitlement reforms.

That said, the biggest problems the Iraqi government faces is getting basic government services out to the people. This is the non-warfare part of supporting Iraq that goes unreported in our news but that is equally as important to long term success as the security gains. The LWJ did an exceptional article on this topic several months ago that is well worth the read. In essence, the problem is not sectarianism, but a highly inefficient bureacracratic system that is riddled with far too much corruption. The Iraqi government and the U.S. are making much headway in streamlining the system and rooting out the corruption, but the challenges are immense and the clock is ticking.

. . . The most obvious but often overlooked reason for the recent military success has been an increase in the number of trained Iraqi troops.

The quality of the recruits and leadership has often been poor, even in recent months. In Baghdad’s Sadr City, one Iraqi company abandoned its position in April, forcing American and Iraqi commanders to fill the gap with hastily summoned reinforcements. In Basra, more than 1,000 recently qualified soldiers deserted rather than obey orders to fight against Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army. One senior Iraqi government official conceded that the deserters simply “felt that the other side was too strong.”

But sheer numbers have helped to overcome the shortcomings. After the embarrassing setback in Basra, Mr. Maliki was able to pull units from elsewhere to provide reinforcements and saturate the city with checkpoints and patrols, restoring a measure of order after years of domination by Islamist militias and oil-smuggling mafias.

This continuing Basra narrative of painting it as an Iraqi Army failure because they did not blow through unexpectedly strong resistance in six days of attacking against defenders occupying urban terrain is just utterly ridiculous. As is the NYT's continued emphasis of a few military units that did not perform to standard under fire. That was a small part of the forces sent into Basra. And some green units failing under fire is as old as the military itself. For example, the word "decimate" comes from the ancient world's finist military, the Romans, who inflicted a decimation - the ritual slaughter of every tenth soldier - upon legions or cohorts that broke under battle. Suggesting that Iraq's newly minted military is somehow weak because of the actions of a few units under combat likewise shows that, while the NYT may understand agenda journalism, their understanding of the military and history is sorely lacking.

But the government’s successes in Basra and Sadr City were not so much victories as heavy fighting followed by truces that allowed the militias to melt away with their weapons. “We may have wasted an opportunity in Basra to kill those that needed to be killed,” said one American defense official, who would speak candidly about the issue only if he was granted anonymity.

Let's see, hundreds of Sadrists killed, hundreds of criminals captured, virtually all of Iraq now under government control, the Iranians exposed, Sadr exposed, the Sadrist trend isolated in the Parliament, and the Mahdi Army demobolized. If that does not sound like victories to the NYT, they need to radically up their meds. The goal never has been complete destruction of the Sadrists, its been to split off the majority from the trained and paid Iranian proxies. With virtually all of Iraq in government hands, the ability of any militia to operate is severely circumscribed. The government does not have to destroy the militias in cataclysmic battles to win. Just as al Qaedea hemmoraged people and support as the tide turned against it, so too is that happening Sadr and his militia.

I wont' bother to fisk most of the rest. The NYT spends several paragraphs reporting quite literally the wildest speculations it can find from various individuals who state things such as that Maliki is an agent of Iran, etc. Compare that to the reporting from ABC not long ago and from the Atlantic Monthly where both describe Malik's popularity as being at its zenith across all religious and ethnic lines in Iraq. No need to discuss that, though, when you can get a money quote from someone with an axe to grind or a conpiracy theory dreamed up below their tin foil hat. But when we finally get to the end, the NYT, to their credit, hits the nail on the head a second time.

Reversible Gains

The anti-government and anti-occupation forces have also stumbled. The Islamist Sunni insurgents alienated many Iraqis with a trail of blood and bans on alcohol and smoking. And as attacks on Shiite areas by Sunni insurgents dropped, Shiites who had looked to the Mahdi Army for self-defense were less willing to put up with abuses.

. . . Despite their newfound confidence, some senior Iraqi officials close to Mr. Maliki said that without an American military safety net they are vulnerable to threats from outside and inside their borders. One important but less-noticed element of the security negotiations has been Iraq’s effort to extract an American pledge to defend the government against foreign or domestic aggression. Mr. Adeeb, the top Maliki adviser, said officials wanted the Americans to protect the Iraqi government against anything the government viewed as a threat — not just what the Americans saw as a threat.

“Our political system is weak, the terrorists and former regime members are sparing no effort to overthrow the system, and neighboring countries have their own ambitions,” Mr. Adeeb said. “Our army is not qualified to defend Iraq yet.”

Amen. Which is why a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq as Obama has articluated is just incredibly wrong-headed and comes with existential implications for all the gains made in Iraq and for the national security threats we face from the mad mullahs in Iran. When even the hyperpartisan NYT is coming around to that conclusion, one wonders if the fantasy based folks on the far left will begin to see the light. Or perhaps this is just laying the groundwork for the mother of all flip flops from Obama once he has a chance to visit Iraq and consult with our military commanders - General Pew and Admiral Rasmussen in particular.

At any rate, my hats off to the NYT. They have raised their level of reporting on Iraq to the level of a broken clock. This is a heartening development indeed.

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