re: "US to designate the IRGC, affiliates as terrorists"

Amir Toumaj at the Long War Journal ("dedicated to providing original and accurate reporting and analysis of the Long War (also known as the Global War on Terror)") marked some long-overdue news.

Money quote(s):

"Known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, the law’s Iran section requires the president to extend a terrorism designation pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224 to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its foreign agents and affiliates by Oct. 30.

The milestone marks the first instance the US will designate the military branch of a foreign country for terrorism."

Read the whole thing here.

"E.O. 13224 is an authority aimed at freezing the assets of terrorists and their supporters, while isolating them from the US financial and commercial systems, according to Treasury."

Why is this long overdue?  Here's why (highlighted for emphasis):

"During the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Guard provided material assistance to militants targeting American soldiers and in Iraq directly oversaw attacks."

re: "Obama's Misplaced Mideast Optimism"

Daniel Pipes at danielpipes.org (" Opine briefly on diverse topics ") provided some thinkery on likely fallout from the Arab Spring.

10/25

re: "What Lies Beneath"

Richard Fernandez a Belmont Club critiqued the Administration's habit of pre-emption.

Money quote(s):

"Pre-emption was also in evidence in foreign affairs, but this Pearl Harbor was not directed against America’s supposed enemies, but at its allies. Mark Perry at Foreign Policy writes an article strongly implies that the Obama administration is pre-emptively leaking Israeli military cooperation arrangements with Azerbaijan to protect Iran from a potential strike. Perry says officials told him that Israel was acquiring airfields on Iran’s northern border, something that may not have been common knowledge."

&

"Well if the Iranians didn’t know about Azerbaijan, they know now. Lee Smith says that this may be a blatant tip-off. “A number of Israeli journalists, led by Ron Ben-Yishai, one of the country’s esteemed security correspondents, claimed that Mark Perry’s article was clear evidence the White House was leaking critical information about Israel’s strategy in order to pressure Jerusalem to abandon its war plans and wait for the administration’s sanctions to bring the Iranian regime to its knees.” Maybe they’ll have to wait a long time. But for what it is worth, John Bolton believes the administration is alerting Iran, the administration acting as their Chain Home system, so to speak."

Omitted from my selective excerption were the passages that suggest the information about Azerbaijan may not have been correct, and the whys of that.

About half of Wretchard's post had to do with the Supreme Court's then-pending health care reform decision.

4/4

re: "Silent Scream: The Sudan Ethnically Cleanses Its Christians"

Rob Miller at American Thinker (" a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans ") described the traditional next phase after partition: ethnic cleansing.

Money quote(s):

"The government of the predominantly Muslim nation of Sudan has stripped its 500,000 to 700,000 Christians of citizenship and has put them on notice that they have one week to leave the country. Even sub-Jim Crow dhimmi status is to be denied them."

This sort of thing happens whenever a multi-ethnic, multi-confession country partitions into two (or more) states.

That doesn't make it right, but it does make it pretty predictable.

"(T)he government of Sudan has declared that all whose "parents, grandparents or great grandparents [were] born in the South Sudan or [who] belong to any southern ethnic group" are no longer citizens of Sudan and must leave by April 8...or else."

&

"The Sudan has always been a borderland between Arab and black African, between slavemaster and slave. And increasingly, between Muslim and Christian. During the decades-long jihad by the Sudan between the early 1980s and today against the black Africans to the east in Darfur and in the south, conservative estimates put the death toll at over 2 million. Al-Bashir has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, something the Arab League has thumbed their noses at, with al-Bashir able to freely attend meetings and travel all over the region without fear of arrest. The charges he was indicted for -- the mass rapes, the slavetaking, the wanton murders -- make what's going on now in Syria look like a particularly sedate bridge party.

In July 2011, the jihad officially ended when the largely Christian South Sudan achieved independence, although sporadic attacks by al-Bashir's military and aircraft still continue in places like the Nuba Mountains and along the South Sudan borders.

Due to the discord caused by the breakaway, al-Bashir is under pressure to turn the Sudan into a extremist fundamentalist, Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Islamist state." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

One of the critical issues still outstanding between Sudan and South Sudan are that the border between the two states has never been officially demarcated.

"The Iranians already have an arms factory in the Sudan to supply Hamas and their allies in Somalia, Yemen, and Central Africa. If my sources are correct, they also maintain training camps staffed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezb'allah members, some of whom have been killed by Israeli air strikes on arms convoys headed north in the desert towards Sinai and Gaza.

What al-Turabi and his allies want from Bashir is a full-on Muslim Brotherhood-ruled sharia state, comparable to Iran, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan under the Taliban.

After South Sudan seceded, the Islamists demanded that Bashir implement this, and they have pledged to drive him from power if he doesn't. They formed a party headed by al-Turabi known as the Islamic Constitution Front and drafted a sharia-based constitution that the imam of Khartoum's Grand Mosque endorsed, saying Bashir must "either rule by Islam or go." "

&

"The ethnic cleansing of over half a million Christians is only a first step.

What's notable about this is the hideous silence. There's little or nothing being reported in the media on this. For all the noise about the new Responsibility to Protect Doctrine that was evoked on Libya, the United Nations has nothing to say about what's happening in the Sudan, even though it violates the organization's own charter.

No one is talking about a no-fly zone to protect black Christians under air attack in South Sudan by the Bashir regime, even though our huge air base in Djibouti is within flying distance. The infamously misnamed U.N. Human Rights Commission is preoccupied with Israel to the point of derangement, and the Muslim countries running it will see to it that it stays that way."

&

"For all the demonization of Western Imperialism so popular these days, it was those hated imperialists who largely destroyed the slave trade in the 1870s and brought a measure of peace, civil order, and decency to the country for a brief time. It is our supposedly more modern and compassionate societies that have seen the horror that has gone on in Darfur and in the South Sudan and done nothing...except react with silence.

That silence comes from fear of offending Islam, no matter how egregious and hateful the actions of a significant number of its followers become and no matter how deeply those actions offend our civilized norms."

&

"It reminds me of nothing so much as the 1930s, when the appeasers in Britain and here in our own country reacted with the same indifference while Hitler armed his legions for conquest and ethnically cleansed Germany's Jews."

4/4

re: "Iraq, Libya, and Imperialism"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor (" The Original Blog and Daybook. ") shared his thoughts on NATO's Libyan intervention.

Money quote(s):

"Qaddafi was likely executed by one or another militia faction, or even by a militiaman, possibly for his possessions. He was shot by rebels, which may have been merciful compared to what they might have done with him. It’s hard to say that beating him to a pulp then shooting him out of hand wasn’t justice. Qaddafi wasn’t quite the monster that Uday Hussein was, but he’d done enough to earn his fate, and indeed the US Air Force tried to kill him with TFX fighter-bombers in the 1986 Operation El Dorado Canyon. They didn’t get him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was an old fashioned harbor bombardment from the old days of Great Powers diplomacy. Reagan acted in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities after consultation with the Congressional leadership of both parties. Had Gaddafi been killed in the raid the history of North Africa would have been considerably different.

In any event, NATO has brought the tyrant down, which must have been the mission. The official authorization for air NATO air strikes (including US acts of war) in Libya was a UN resolution mandating the protection of civilians from a Khaddafi massacre, but it’s very difficult – for me impossible – to connect an air strike against a convoy fleeing a city just before it falls to the rebels with the mission of protecting civilians. Even assuming that most of those in the convoy were military – and surely some were not since it was a chief of state and his entourage – there were likely to be civilian casualties from the air strikes, not to mention possible massacres in the looting that followed the convoy’s defeat.

And that does raise the question of whether the President of the United States has the authority to order such acts on his own authority. The UN cover mandate didn’t authorize regime change or execution of the chief of state of Libya. The President did tell Ghadaffi to get out (but apparently wasn’t willing to let him get out alive)." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"The Constitution empowers Congress to declare war. The President has the authority to protect and defend the Constitution, but unlike the King of England he has not the power to make war on whomever he pleases (a right that remains with the Ministers who act for the Crown to this day). In England you must go to Parliament to get the financing to pay for a war, but the King along can declare it. That right was specifically and intentionally taken from the President and given to Congress (along with the power of the purse). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who passionately believed that the US ought to be involved in the War in Europe that began in September 1939, understood this very well. He could promise Churchill that the US would come to Britain’s aid, but that was restricted to support until December of 1941 when Germany honored the Axis alliance and declared war after the US and Japan were at war. In those days war was considered a serious event.

The problem with going to the rescue of the Libya rebels without any declaration of war is that the US has little say in what happens next. Perhaps we shouldn’t have any say.

On the other hand, we have spent about $1 Billion on our Libyan adventure, and we don’t know what we have put into power in Tripoli. We do know that one faction claiming to speak for the rebels has said that the basis of law in Libya will be Sharia. It is clear that had we not spent the $1 Billion, Libya would either remain unified under Khaddafi or be partitioned, probably at Marble Arch. Whether that would be a better outcome than unified under Sharia law is not clear to me. It is also not at all clear that the White House thought this through before committing us to borrow a billion dollars from the Chinese in order to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Was this outcome worth the cost?"

It certainly was for someone, but not necessarily the U.S. taxpayers who'll have to pay back the Chinese. With interest.

"I am not much in favor of imperialism as a policy for the United States, but I do favor competent imperialism over the present policies. If we must have an empire, should we not be competent at it? Of course there is the problem that Afghanistan has little to nothing that we want.

I was opposed to extending our Afghan adventure beyond the punishment of the Taliban for harboring out enemies; left to me we’d have been out as soon as Kabul fell to the anti-Taliban forces, with perhaps a billion dollars in bribe money squirreled away to be spent at the discretion of whomever we left behind as resident. Our policy in Afghanistan should have been simple: don’t harbor our enemies, don’t let your country be used as a base for attacks on the US, and apply to the Ambassador if you need anything. Been good to know you. A policy, by the way, that would have been as welcome to the Afghans as to the Legions." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA rather likes Dr. Pournelle's punitive expeditionary model for Afghanistan. Of course, it's much too late for that now.

"There is no way that we could leave US troops in Iraq subject to the tender mercies of the Iraqi courts. US troops are not going to be subject to Iraqi law. But can you imagine the Japanese making that sort of demand as part of their surrender in 1945?

The result of the Iraqi war? We have removed Iran’s worst enemy. We have installed a Shiite government in Iraq. We have succeeded in changing the Middle East beyond Iran’s fondest and wildest dreams. This is the result Iran has worked toward since we invaded Iraq. They have their goals. Now we go home." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA)

10/23

re: "Today's Reading Assignment"

SPOOK86at In From the Cold (" MUSINGS ON LIFE, LOVE, POLITICS, MILITARY AFFAIRS, THE MEDIA, THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY AND JUST ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE THAT CAPTURES OUR INTEREST ") expanded upon a recent Commentary article by Max Boot.

Money quote(s):

"(B)oth the U.S. military and much of the Iraqi government favored a continuing American presence, for counter-terrorism operations; as a deterrent against Iranian meddling, and to ensure adequate training for Iraqi security forces.

Boot argues that the U.S. should re-open negotiations on our military presence as soon as the current withdrawal is complete. He believes we need at least 10, 000 troops in Iraq to handle the security and training mission--about half the number recommended by senior American military commanders earlier this year.

Unfortunately, prospects for a short-term U.S. return are virtually nil."

CAA thinks the idea of U.S. troops deploying, for a third time, to Iraq is a non-starter short of a major Mideast conflagration.

10/22

re: "Taking Out Dictators"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers ("victor davis hanson on the web") deduced the rules for U.S. intervention.

Money quote(s):

"In the past 40 years, the United States has intervened to go after autocrats in Afghanistan, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Somalia, and Serbia. We have attacked by air, by land, and by a combination of both. In the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War era, are there any rules to guide us about any action envisioned against Syria or Iran — patterns known equally to our enemies?"

Prof. Hanson outlined 15 rules.

"(W)e can make two general observations about Syria and Iran. In Syria, the US, on proper humanitarian grounds, could easily intervene through air power alone — without either congressional or UN sanction — to so weaken the non-nuclear Assad regime that, as happened in Serbia and Libya, it would surely and quickly implode. That said, we probably will not, given that such action would offend China and Russia, would not ensure quiet or stability in the aftermath, be soon criticized by those pundits who originally urged us to go in, and in six months be either unappreciated or overtly criticized by nations that had initially demanded that we do something to stop the slaughter.

As far as Iran goes, based on past precedents, there is zero chance that the United States would ever intervene to change the government, either on the ground or by an extended bombing campaign — and only a slight chance we will preempt by bombing suspected Iranian nuclear facilities."

3/2

re: "Iraq Pullout - Not A Cause for Celebration"

LONGTABSIGO at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") commented on strategy.

Money quote(s):

"I must have been absent in strategy class the day they taught that you can declare a war over unilaterally."

Well, you can. But normally you destroy their ability to make war and occupy their capital first.

Oh wait, we did that.

At least one bright observer theorized that we've fought at least three wars in Iraq already, since invading in 2003.

So which war is that we won this time?

(Hint: Identify your enemy.)

(Take your time.)

(Another hint: Read the Max Boot quote towards the end of the linked post.)

"But the rationale is not even adversary-based. It is ostensibly because DOD and State Lawyers cannot work out an appropriate Status of Forces agreement such that US Troops would not be subject to the arbitrary whim of Iraqi law (even if taking an action deemed to be "in the line of duty" by US law/standards).

I've heard of "lawfare" as a check against offensive action out of fear of risk or possible bad press. But an inabilty to convincinly negotiate as a rationale for major troop reduction?" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

10/21

re: "If I Wanted to Attack Iran"

DAVE SCHULER at The Glittering Eye made this perfectly clear.

Money quote(s):

"I have repeatedly pointed out that I do not want the U. S. to bomb or invade Iran. I think it would be illegal, immoral, and futile. It would be worse than a crime; it would be a mistake."

That being said:

"I wouldn’t attack its hardened nuclear development facilities or its population centers or even its military. I would attack its oil fields, its oil refineries, and its fuel depots. I would do it with drones and I would keep it up until the present Iranian regime collapsed."

3/2

re: "From 2004: Blackfive's Exit Strategy from Iraq and Afghanistan"

Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") re-posted some cartographic excellence:

re: "Court Gives State Department Deadline to Resolve FTO Status of Iranian Group"

Robert Chesney at Lawfare ("Hard National Security Choices")informed that the Department is now under a deadline.

Money quote(s):

"A DC Circuit panel has issued an opinion giving the State Department four months maximum to make a final decision on PMOI’s petition to revoke its status as a designated foreign terrorist organization. The issue has been somewhat high profile, as that status is the predicate for material support liability under 18 USC 2339B and various immigration-law constraints…and because PMOI is an entity hostile to the government of Iran, with a considerable amount of support in Congress for its delisting."

6/3

re: "Abdicating Iraq"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") waxed pessimistic about U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Money quote(s):

"(W)hat do you call cutting and running from victory before it has solidified?"

"Abdication" works for me.

It also represents the creation of our second-largest potential hostage situation.

"Iran is our biggest enemy in the Middle East and this naive and misguided action leaves the playing field to them and they will certainly take advantage. We could have a good friend and ally on the free country of Iraq, a la Japan or Germany or Korea."

&

"Iraq is free to choose its own path in a dangerous region and that is a good thing. But they do not act in a vacuum. Iran and Syria and others attempt to influence them and not in ways that are good for peace-loving people. We sacrificed the lives of thousands of US troops to allow millions of Iraqis to taste freedom."

10/18

re: "A Rational Actor in Pursuit of Wholly Irrational Goals"

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna (" At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war. ") isn't falling for the mirror-imaging fallacy.

Money quote(s):

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is on the verge of building an operational nuclear warhead. It already possesses ballistic missiles capable of delivering it.

Those who understand the eschatological doctrines of Shi’a Islam know that a nuclear-capable Iran will not be deterred, as the Soviet Union was deterred during the Cold War, by the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction. According to Shi’ite theology it is the duty of faithful Muslims to bring on the End Times and expedite the appearance of the Twelfth Imam. One of the recommended ways of hastening the Shi’ite apocalypse is to cause widespread destruction in the world by whatever means come to hand.

Given these circumstances, it would be foolish to assume that the mullahs in Teheran can be discouraged from using nuclear weapons once they acquire them. "

It's not sufficient that the "average" Iranian might be freedom-loving, might "love" the U.S., might have normal and peaceful ambitions for life, employment, and a family.

Not when their nation is controlled by mullahs (and their ilk) who take this sort of thing seriously.

3/1

re: "Death By Cultural Misunderstanding"

MikeM at the former-Confederate Yankee ("Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.") put the recent D.C. restaurant assassination plot by Iran into larger context.

Money quote(s):

"What we now know is that the Iranian used-car salesman from Texas who was apparently the prime broker in the plot was actually trying to arrange not only the murder by explosives of the Saudi Ambassador in a Washington DC restaurant, but attacks on American and Israeli embassies possible in simultaneous strikes. Not only was this used-car dealer traveling between Texas, Mexico and Iran, but was prepared to deliver $1.5 million dollars to the DEA informant posing as a representative of a Mexican drug cartel. It is not known with certainty, but it seems we may have intercepted this plot for no reason other than that the Iranians blundered—by pure chance—into one of our assets rather than the Mexican killers he sought. If so, this is truly one of the most remarkable cases of serendipity on record." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Let's just get it out in the open that CAA is very much against the use of explosives in Washington DC restaurants.

"In its 30-year history of attacking the West, the Quds Force went out of its way never to be caught with a smoking gun in hand. It always used well-vetted proxies, invariably Muslim believers devoted to Khomeini’s revolution. And when the operation was particularly sensitive, they gave the job to Lebanon’s militant Shi’ite Hizballah, organization the Iranians themselves had founded and which has an unsurpassed record in political murder. Hizballah has cells all over the world, including in the United States. But the point of it all was that if caught — and they were, more than once — Iran still enjoyed plausible deniability, a commodity in this business worth its weight in gold. So, if this plot was genuine, why didn’t the Iranians use tried and tested Hizballah networks and keep Iranian nationals, much less unknown Mexican narcos, out of it?" " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

A couple of possibilities, just to throw them out there, occur to me. The first, obviously (given how the writer leads you by the hand) is the possibility that this plot was meant to be blown. Which would take you to the next question: why?

Another possibility is that the plot was being arranged by some other, less professional, player in the sandbox of Iranian assassination operations.

"(T)he Revolutionary Guards have somehow gone rogue and are conducting, dangerous, provocative operations on their own, outside of the knowledge and control of the Iranian leadership. Another possibility is that the democratic Iranian opposition is trying to frame the Mullacracy in an attempt to bring the United States into a direct conflict that might unseat the hardliners, allowing democracy to flourish."

The "democratic Iranian opposition"? Hmm, who could that be?

Seriously, the Iranian opposition most qualified (as in experienced) in covert operations isn't all that democratic a bunch.

And the actual Iranian democrats, stipulating that they survived their almost revolution a couple years ago, might very well be sufficiently un-versed in this sort of thing, in other words they might-could be just about this amateurish. It's an interesting thought to consider.

"I am endlessly fascinated to discover that most Americans seem unable to truly understand that the peoples of other nations are so utterly different than Americans, so actually alien in the truest sense of the word."

What did the guy in Full Metal Jacket say? Ah yes:

"because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out"

"Americans tend to think of religion only within the American framework of separation of church and state and tolerance for the faiths of others. Americans may think adherents of some faiths to be a bit odd--holy Mormon underwear, people going to church on Saturday, eating only fish on Fridays—but they are generally accepting of that, and the fact that Americans are free to change religions and churches as often as they change their socks. Many Americans take their faith seriously, but the idea of killing in its name is—alien, as alien as the idea of being ruled by ministers, mutilating the genitals of their wives and daughters, killing their wives and daughters for violating family honor, killing friends, even family members who leave the faith, or killing anyone not of the faith for that reason alone."

This is something the pre-Founding Fathers brought with them from Europe, the psychic baggage of the Thirty Year's War, where European Christians did most of these things themselves, to one another, decade after decade. With the result that our Founding Fathers and Framers deliberately established a political framework and a civic secular culture inoculated against it.

"In a very real way, we are dealing with medieval thinking, a mindset that sees the world in black and white terms. There are the strong and the weak, the elect and infidels. There is, above all, the Dar al-Islam—the realm or land under Islamic control—and the Dar al-Harb—the realm of war or chaos, the land of the infidels where Islam is not in control. In the Dar al-Islam, Sharia—Islamic law—reigns supreme. It is a medieval code of conduct and justice administered by Imams, essentially Islamic ministers, who have absolute power over life and death. In Islam, there are no individual freedoms, not separation of church and state. The church is the state and individuals live—or die—at its whim."

Okay, while I get what Mr. McDaniels is saying, I have to lay down a few observations and reservations.

First, the myth of monolithic Islam. Not that there isn't considerable common ground between the various threads of Islam, even those that quite often occupy themselves with trying to kill one another, when it comes to opposing, attacking, invading, defeating, or otherwise troubling the infidel West.

Islam is even less monolithic than Communism was, and for many of the same reasons.

This is not to downplay or dispute that the things Mr. McDaniels describes here; they're true enough in plenty enough places.

But, for instance, the "Imams" mentioned are a feature of Shi'a Islam, not one of the more numerous Sunni muslims.

"Winston Churchill observed that individual Muslims may have "splendid qualities," and indeed, most Muslims wish only to live in peace with their neighbors. However, it must be clearly understood that these Muslim are not, in fact, following the dictates of their faith. It is those who war against the Dar al-Harb who are being true to the letter and intent of their religion. And if there are only ten million such Muslims in the world—and there are surely that many—who are determined to follow the clear dictates of their faith to the letter, it's not hard to see the depth of our problem." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

This cuts to the heart of the problem. Too much of their holy book reads like it could have come from Charles Manson, had he been born an arab. So it's part of their "operating system" and their "reality tunnel."

"In waging war, Americans generally abstain from striking the first blow, are incredibly cautious about harming non-combatants, even risking and losing American lives rather than accidently killing innocents. Americans even avoid unnecessarily destroying property. For Americans, there are specific laws regulating the conduct of soldiers. None of this is true for Muslims waging Jihad—holy war aimed at establishing a global Dar al-Islam. They kill indiscriminately, ignore the international laws of war, use innocents as human shields, and commit inhuman atrocities as common practice." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Sayin this is not precisely true takes understatement to the level of criminality.

There is a well-develeped and defined set of rules, laws if you will, governing the waging of war by and within Islam. It is not the same, has not the same basis, neither has it evolved with either the same considerations nor in the same directions as was we in our Western conceit have done with our "international laws of war." From a Western perspective, much of what it condones or even requires amounts to war crimes themselves.

"In the pursuit of Jihad, Islam encourages and allows Muslims to lie to infidels. However, it requires Muslims to give infidels a chance to convert to Islam. If they do not, they may be slaughtered at will. When Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens America and Israel and suggests conversion to Islam, he is not doing this because he has a sincere religious concern for the souls of Americans and Israelis, but because he is adhering to Islamic rules for war.

Americans make the mistake of hearing what they think is yet another preacher trying to convert them and think ignoring them will have no consequences just as it does in America. They fail to realize that when they don't immediately convert to Islam, the safeties have just been released on Muslim weapons." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

This has considerable historical basis and is part of the Islamic laws of warfare. Infidels must first be allowed to submit peacefully to Islam; if they decline, then harsher measures may lawfully follow.

"Jihadists recognize no international laws, no "international norms," no treaties, no diplomatic protocols. There is only the struggle to conquer the world, and apart from the Islamic rules for waging war, they observe no restraints, even killing other Muslims, which the Koran forbids." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

See my above. Jihadists do recognize international laws and "norms."

They just don't happen to be the same ones recognized by the West.

"One of the most dangerous misconceptions Americans have is confusing the political realities of America with those of other nations, particularly Islamic nations. "We can't attack Iran," our State Department says. "It's only the leaders of Iran that are bad. The people love us. There are many factions. There are moderates. Why, the leaders of Iran may not even know what is being done in their name!" Idiocy.

Doubtless many Japanese in 1941 had no desire for war. Many Germans were likewise peaceful people, but nations are responsible for actions done in their name, using their resources--$1.5 million and more in this case--pursuing their stated national goals. All of these factors are clearly present in the thankfully foiled plot." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

It wasn't the first Iranian act which could constitute casus belli for the U.S., and it surely won't be the last.

The thing is, acts of war are in the eye of the beholder.

"Islamic nations, particularly rogue states like Iran—unquestionably the foremost terrorist nation on the planet—do not brook internal opposition. There is no democracy, no debate, no effective political opposition. Iron-fisted rule extends from the top down. And while it is true that millions of young Iranians think well of the United States and would welcome having the heel of the Islamic boot lifted from their collective necks, this is a tactical, not a strategic concern.

It is not as though we are contemplating turning all of Iran, or even its major populations centers, into a sheet of glowing, radioactive glass. Alone in the world we possess the military means to strike with amazing precision, severely limiting collateral damage. Our assets could, with a few days of overwhelming strikes, severely damage, even obliterate Iran's ability to produce nuclear weapons and wage war."

&

"But Iran would be angry with us! Iran would strike out at us! Iran has been doing just that since 1979. Not only have its agents been caught on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have captured its munitions, specifically designed and manufactured to kill American soldiers. There is no doubt that Iran is arming and training our enemies, enemies that have killed Americans and the citizens of our allies. Iran declared war on us in 1979 and has been actively pursuing that war on multiple fronts.

Yet, Iran has exercised some restraint. Its leaders understand that in a conventional military conflict with the United States, it wouldn't last a week. But they also understand that we are tied down in two conflicts. It works with China, North Korea, Syria, any nation opposed to America, to keep us occupied, to limit our ability and willingness to respond."

It is well to remember that Iranians, even "crazy" (by our standards) Iranian mullahs are Persians.

Persia is one of the oldest continuing civilizations in the world, certainly one of the oldest which was (and remains) the dominant culture within a multiethnic empire.

Islam is a major cultural overlay upon Persian culture, but it is only the top, latest layer.

Persians were civilized when most Westerners ancestors were, to put it plainly, not yet civilized. Politics, including international power politics, is something they were waging against not just the Romans, but the Greeks before them.

"Would Iran conduct an attack against Americans that would cause hundreds, even thousands of deaths? Of course it would. Iran has been killing hundreds, even thousands of Americans for years. But iran has never done anything so brazen before! You mean like seizing hundreds of American diplomats hostage and keeping them for more than a year? You mean like killing hundreds of Americans through proxies and by providing purpose-built weapons to them? But this hasn't been Iran's modus operandi—their method of operation—in the past!

Even if that were true—and it isn't--it is now." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Nothing about this plot crosses any bright new lines for Iran. Assassinations of diplomats? Check. Operating in the U.S.? Check.

So check your preconceptions.

"Americans must now be careful in interpreting the clear words and actions of one of our most deadly and determined enemies. They say: "we will kill you all," over and over again. If we don't take them at their clear words, if we don't understand their mindset, millions of Americans and Israelis could die of a cultural misunderstanding."

10/16

re: "On Capability vs. Intent, Part II"

Andrew Exum at Abu Muqawama ("a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East") examined the significance of uncertainty in intelligence analysis.

Money quote(s):

"(I)n my World Politics Review column this week, I tackle the intelligence problems related to intent, which are normally much more difficult than those related to capability. Specifically, I tackle the (understandable) failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to determine whether or not Israel will attack Iran -- a failure that matches my own inability to do so." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

He fleshed that out a little bit more with reference to reading and conversation.

(It'll only take a moment to read.)

4/18

re: "Terrorist group’s supporters throw party in U.S. Congress"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") reported from bizarro-world (which is to say: Capitol Hill).

Money quote(s):

"It's not every day that groups supporting a State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization hold a party in the U.S. Congress, but that's exactly what happened today when the friends of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) threw their Nowruz party in the hearing room of the House Foreign Affairs Committee."

Okay, they didn't bill themselves as the FOMEK (friends of the MEK), but that's essentially who they were. See below.

"(T)he event is sponsored by "Iranian American communities" from around the United States, but the mention of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty is a clear reference to the MEK, a group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization that has about 3,000 members living in the secretive Ashraf compound in Iraq.

The U.N. and the State Department are working to move them to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport, but the MEK is resisting that move, and has enlisted its many supporters in the United States to decry the conditions at the former military base. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani even went so far as to call Camp Liberty a "concentration camp." "

Normally, I have every respect in the world for the former mayor, but in this case he's either a willing dupe or being played.

No shame in being played by the PMOI; they're quite good at it after all.

"(T)he Treasury Department's counterterrorism unit has issued a subpoena to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for records related to his paid advocacy of the MEK, as part of an investigation into the web of organizations that support the terrorist group.

There is a long list of Iranian-American organizations that fund pro-MEK events and pay speakers fees to MEK supporters. Many of these organizations - such as the "Global Initiative for Democracy, whose homepage is entirely devoted to the MEK's concerns and who hosted an MEK conference in January -- seem to have no other function other than to advocate for the MEK, and the actual sources of their money is unclear.

Receiving funding from a terrorist organization or even providing it with "material support," which could include advocacy, is a crime." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Crime is in the eye of the prosecuting (nor non-prosecuting) attorneys, it would seem.

"The campaign by the MEK's supporters to disparage Camp Liberty and lobby for the MEK's removal from the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations has included huge rallies outside the State Department, massive sit-ins at Congressional hearings, and an ongoing vigil outside the State Department's C Street entrance."

The vigil seems to have evaporated of late, just to give an update on that.

"Congressional aides attended the event on Thursday in the hearing room both out of curiosity and hunger for free food. But multiple aides told The Cable the event was bizarre, even by Congressional standards." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA has never worked on Capitol Hill, himself, although he's worked in the vicinity at two different executive departments. Still, at least some the of the "hill rats" got a nice kabob lunch out of this.

3/22