Stuxnet did NOT hurt us (ow!): Iran says the Stuxnet worm did no damage at all. None. Nothing. Nada. Those calls to Russian tech support? Just business as usual. In other news, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has proof that aliens have landed on earth, and they’re Zionists. (And they want to destroy the world.) ((Of course.))

That famous Muslim tolerance: Christians are still being murdered in Iraq, and the Iraqi parliament is thinking about issuing a statement—in response to a Christian lawmaker shaming them publicly for their lack of action towards the tolerant Muslims in Iraq who are murdering Christians. He says that Iraqis should be protecting Christians, not allowing other nations to offer safe haven. Gee. Ya think? But of course, it’s Israel that gets slammed as the intolerant nation.

Palestinians find another way to avoid the talks: The PA is telling Israel that having the Israeli populace vote on any further withdrawals from disputed territories is—wait for it—a violation of “international law.” Yeah, that famous “international law,” the one that is applied to Israelis unequally. Hezbollah in violation of UNSCR 1701? Not a violation of international law. Israel passing a bill that will only go into effect if the Knesset doesn’t get a two-thirds majority vote on withdrawing from the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem? Violation, even though there’s not even a motion on the table for either action. Hey, I have no problem with democracy in action.

“We Christians cannot speak about the promised land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

(I think they’re just jealous that they weren’t chosen. Dudes, you can convert into the Chosen People. We won’t mind.)

Meryl says: The days when Christians could tell Jews what to do are long over. So eff off with your supercessionist twaddle, anti-Israel bishops. Gee. I am so surprised that bishops from the Middle East are anti-Israel. Shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

There are Wikileaks and then there are Wikileaks: The AP is focusing on the fact that the Iraqi civilian death toll is 15,000 deaths higher than before (and this is treated as a horribly shocking secret). You know what they’re not focusing on? The fact that Iran and Hezbollah trained Iraqi terrorists to kill U.S. soldiers. This is the second administration in a row to downplay the Iranian role in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re at war with Iran. Admit it once and for all, and take some kind of action over it instead of these namby-pamby sanctions.

For decades then, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It’s easy to point fingers — for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

The degree to which Palestinian displacement was due to Israel’s founding is usually overstated. President Obama’s speech, more than showing empathy, emphasized a false narrative.

Efriam Karsh wrote:

Yet still the Palestinians fled their homes, and at an ever growing pace. By early April some 100,000 had gone, though the Jews were still on the defensive and in no position to evict them. (On March 23, fully four months after the outbreak of hostilities, ALA commander-in-chief Safwat noted with some astonishment that the Jews “have so far not attacked a single Arab village unless provoked by it.”) By the time of Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, the numbers of Arab refugees had more than trebled. Even then, none of the 170,000-180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000-160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by the Jews.

The exceptions occurred in the heat of battle and were uniformly dictated by ad-hoc military considerations–reducing civilian casualties, denying sites to Arab fighters when there were no available Jewish forces to repel them–rather than political design.[35] They were, moreover, matched by efforts to prevent flight and/or to encourage the return of those who fled. To cite only one example, in early April a Jewish delegation comprising top Arab-affairs advisers, local notables, and municipal heads with close contacts with neighboring Arab localities traversed Arab villages in the coastal plain, then emptying at a staggering pace, in an attempt to convince their inhabitants to stay put.[36]

For the most part, then, Arabs (not yet Palestinians) left the nascent Jewish state by heeding the exhortations of their leaders, and were not driven out by the Jews.

There was a different group of refugees at this time. These were Jews who lived in Arab states. For example here’s what happened to the Jews of Iraq:

Under British rule, which began in 1917, Jews fared well economically, but all of this progress ended when Iraq gained independence in 1932.

In June 1941, the Mufti-inspired, pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali sparked rioting and a pogrom in Baghdad. Armed Iraqi mobs murdered 180 Jews and wounded almost 1,000.

Additional outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting occurred between 1946-1949. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime.

In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship. A year later, however, the property of Jews who emigrated was frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country. From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran. Thus a community that had reached a peak of some 150,000 in 1947 dwindled to a mere 6,000 after 1951.

In 1952, Iraq’s government barred Jews from emigrating. With the rise of competing Ba’ath factions in 1963, additional restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. The sale of property was forbidden and all Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards. Persecutions continued, especially after the Six-Day War in 1967, when many of the remaining 3,000 Jews were arrested and dismissed from their jobs. Around that period, more repressive measures were imposed: Jewish property was expropriated; Jewish bank accounts were frozen; Jews were dismissed from public posts; businesses were shut; trading permits were cancelled; telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods of time or restricted to the cities.

If the Arabs of what was then Palestine had a choice to leave, Iraqi Jews were offered no such choice. They were effectively chased out by a combination of violence and official persecution.

Now the Jewish community of Iraq is in the news again.

A few weeks ago I blogged about an ongoing effort of the Iraqi government to gain control Jewish documents that had been recovered by American forces in Baghdad. Elder of Ziyon noted the other day that apparently the American government has agreed to this travesty.

Here’s the AFP report:

“We have reached an agreement with the United States, after negotiations with officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, over the return of the Jewish archives and millions of documents that were taken to America after the events of 2003,” Deputy Culture Minister Taher Hamud said.

“The Jewish archives are important to us — like the rest of the documents, it is a part of our culture and sheds light on the lives of the Jewish community,” he told a news conference.

Important? When an Iraqi politician is a target (and his sons killed) for advocating ties with the Jewish state or the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel is defaced to erase any mention that he was Jewish, the chutzpah of claiming that the Jewish archives are important to Iraq is astounding.

It is a culture that Iraq obliterated. The documents rightly belong to the Jews who lived in Iraq, not their oppressors. That the administration would deny the historical plight of Iraqi Jews is offensive. That it would do so as the President uncritically accepts the dubious Palestinian narrative compounds the insult.

History is a tool that the Arab world has wielded effectively to wipe out their responsibility for repressing Jews – repression of Iraqi Jews started before there was a state of Israel – and to create a Palestinian narrative of Israel’s birth in sin. In word and deed, now, President Obama has faithfully accepted this distorted history. This isn’t just an affront to Israel, but all Jews.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The soldiers came looking for weapons of mass destruction. What they found in the flooded basement of Saddam Hussein’s secret police headquarters was a legacy of destruction — the demise of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world.

There was a treasure trove of Torahs and Haggadas, centuries old. And there were marriage records, university applications, financial documents — the living record of a community, seized by the Mukhabarat from the homes of Jews as they fled Iraq under pressure and amid persecution, with only a handful remaining.

Now comes the historical conundrum: Who owns these materials?

In the chaotic aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, the thousands of sodden documents were spirited out of the country with an assist from then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s office and a vague promise of their return once they had been restored. With the materials still sitting in a College Park office building, stabilized but with mold on them, the Iraqi government is demanding that they be shipped back, saying they are the property of the Iraqi people.

“They represent part of our history and part of our identity. There was a Jewish community in Iraq for 2,500 years,” said Samir Sumaidaie, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. “It is time for our property to be repatriated.”

“[O]ur property?”

Former administration official Dov Zakheim, had an appropriate response:

Dov. S. Zakheim, a senior Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration, is opposed to sending the materials back to Iraq. “I have no sympathy for a government which stole it from the rightful owners and then a successor government saying it belongs to them,” he said.

This isn’t the first time the Iraqis have made this demand. There were a few news stories about it back in January, including this one with the title, Iraq plans to reclaim artifacts of Jewish heritage it shunned, in which we read, on one hand:

“Iraqis must know that we are a diverse people, with different traditions, different religions, and we need to accept this diversity . . . To show it to our people that Baghdad was always multiethnic,’’ said Eskander.

and on the other, this:

Abraham of the Old Testament is believed to have come from the city of Ur, in what is modern-day Iraq, and despite periods of persecution, the community endured and thrived over centuries. But problems worsened when Iraq sided with Germany in World War II, and came to a head when Israel was created. By the early 1950s, Iraqi Jews were fleeing the country in droves. The few thousand who remained were harassed, too frightened to hold services, and their assets seized. In 1969, after Hussein’s Ba’ath Party took power, came the hangings.

There are two other points to consider. One is the case of Mithal Alusi:

Iraqi lawmakers, who have become enraged with fellow parliament member Mithal Alusi for his visits to Israel, now have another reason to be angry with the fiery politician. Alusi hired Iraq’s leading constitutional lawyer to fight the legislature’s attempt to punish him for visiting the Jewish state, and today, he won.

For his desire for normalization with Israel, Alusi has been a pariah and has been attacked. Two of his sons were killed.

And then there’s the story of the tomb of Ezekiel:

Early reports that Iraq plans to retain the Jewish nature of the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel are apparently false. Sources in Baghdad say that the government plans to turn it into a mosque and erase all Jewish markings.

Iraq announced earlier this year that it would revamp the ancient burial site, which is located in Al-Kifl, a small town south of Baghdad. The U.S.-backed government announcement implied that its Jewish nature would continue to be emphasized.

Since then, however, reports have surfaced that the government is actually planning to build a mosque there, including removing the ancient Hebew inscriptions that adorn the site. Some reports say that all or some of the lines of Hebrew script have already been erased.

The Iraqis have shown how much they value the “diversity” of their past. They’ve exiled their Jews, punished a fellow citizen for seeking normalization with Israel and are erasing the Jewish origins of Ezekiel. The Iraqis must not be allowed to regain possession of the Jewish archives.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

This political culture sanctifies anti-Western fury, and continues, half a century after decolonization, to see the Arabs as hapless victims of the West. As a result, it gives its greatest honor and respect to those who are able to articulate a sense of furious resentment. If this can be accompanied by the successful application of political violence, then popular deification is assured.

The tremendous popularity of Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah, and even the non-Arab Mahmoud Ahmedinejad among broad masses of Arabs is a product of this political culture. Zeidi and his shoes will henceforth form a very tiny presence in its pantheon.

It is this political culture that is capable of producing the curious spectacle of the furious demonstrations against Bush by members of the Iraqi Shi’ite community in the past days. Much may be legitimately criticized about the conception and execution of the invasion of Iraq. But it is an empirically undeniable fact that the individual more responsible than any other for the enfranchisement and elevation to power of the Shi’ites of Iraq is George W. Bush. That is to say that the man who has established a situation in which the Iraqi Shi’ite Zeidi is able to work freely as a journalist, worship freely as a Shi’ite and vote freely as a citizen was the same one whom Zeidi chose to hurl his shoes at.

This culture of self-righteous fury carries its own penalties, Spyer says.

The probable lesson the US and its allies will take from the Iraq invasion is that ambitious projects for the reform and reshaping of the Arab world are not worth undertaking. Regional order, or something approaching it, will once more be maintained through “off shore balancing” in the form of relations with existing, imperfect but stable regimes in the region, such as the National Democratic Party regime in Egypt and the Saudi monarchy.

I think that’s a given. The majority of Americans do not want to shed American blood to rid Arab and Muslim nations of ruthless dictators. I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Americans wouldn’t think twice about the Middle East if there weren’t any oil dollars feeding the anti-American and anti-Israeli jihad. I don’t really think Americans give two craps about European problems with Muslim “youths,” either: It’s Europe’s own fault for importing a large Muslim workforce and refusing to allow them to become full citizens of their nations. In America, full citizenship is a given, once you become an American. I’m not saying we have no prejudice, and that it isn’t sometimes difficult—but Europe doesn’t understand what every American drinks in with mother’s milk: If you want to be here, and you follow the rules, then you’re an American. This is why so many people resent illegal immigrants. Our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents all came through Ellis Island—what’s wrong with asking Mexicans and South Americans to immigrate legally? But I digress.

Read Spyer’s full column, especially for his conclusion. Sad, but true.

Since when is it okay for a state (or an individual) to set out to kill a person based solely on accusations against him that have never been publicized and have never been tested against even the most basic norms of criminal procedure?

It is not okay. Extra-judicial killings, also known as assassinations, are always abhorrent. They shock the conscience of anyone who believes in the rule of law. When carried out by states they represent a quite unacceptable excess of state power.

“Extra-judicial killings” is a term pacifists use to define war. It has the convenient side effect of legitimizing terror. Essentially it means that terrorists who operate outside of the norms of international law should be exempt from military actions against them.

Cobban continues:

This week, we have had yet another shocking example of

(a) our government– speaking through still unnamed “administration officials”– trying to “justify” the acts of lethal aggression it committed against Syria on Sunday by saying that they were aiming at (and indeed, also succeeded in) killing an alleged long-time operative of Al-Qaeda in Iraq called Abu Ghadiya; and

(b) this explanation being reported by many branches of the media– e.g. the NYT, “Wired” magazine, and Britain’s ITV– without those reporters also providing the essential background in national or international law, or in common morality, that would indicate that such acts of assassination constitute serious violations of the rule of law. And without seeking out and quoting the opinion of anyone who states anything to that effect… In other words, these acts of extra-judicial killing are treated by these reporters and the editors who stand behind them simply as “business as usual”, the kind of “normal” acts that a government carries out need that not be exposed to any particular questioning or criticism.

So not only is our government illegitimate or at least involved in illegitimate activities, but our media is abetting our criminal government. I’m not going to go into a long discourse about irregular warfare, but it is Cobban who is ignorant of international law (as well as much of the MSM) because she denies countries their legitimate right of self defense. Maybe she should spend some time in the courtroom of Judge George Daniels and learn about the difference between terror and warfare.

So what was the United States doing in Syria this week? Here’s how Michael Yon describes the situation:

It is extremely safe to say that many hundreds, indeed thousands, of Iraqis have been killed by the handiwork of foreign fighters. Untold tons of munitions have flowed across the border over time. Those arms are a lifeline to the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Anbar has gone mostly quiet and Special Forces and conventional forces have been making progress up there in Nineveh, but Mosul is the last serious redoubt of al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as other insurgent groups. (Diyala still has some problems.) In 2007 and early 2008 when I was last there, explosives were coming in through Syria. In fact, the last combat mission I did in Iraq this year was with a Special Forces team that specifically was searching for weapons coming in through Syria.

I’ve been right up to that desolate border on a number of occasions. The terrorists just come across that border to murder and otherwise intimidate Iraqi villagers in Nineveh to achieve their nefarious ends. Some of the truck bombs in Nineveh and Mosul proper have been massive, and during one attack that I have previously written about, perhaps four to five hundred Yezidis were murdered within minutes. The Yezidis are very friendly toward Americans and have treated me like an honored guest. When they were attacked, it felt like a punch into my own stomach, and so I wrote “[2] Stake Through Their Hearts” after hundreds were murdered.

The insurgency in Mosul is the last big thorn left in Iraq’s paw. That we struck targets in Syria does not surprise me and I am not appalled. I am appalled that Syria allows these groups to use its territory as a base and conduit to destabilize Iraq. A Syrian government that allows these groups to penetrate Iraq’s borders and murder Iraqis and Americans doesn’t have much moral standing to complain about an incursion into its territory.

Bill Roggio explains how the U.S. learned about the terror network in Syria:

The US military learned a great deal about al Qaeda’s network inside Syria after a key operative was killed in September of 2007. US forces killed Muthanna, the regional commander of al Qaeda’s network in the Sinjar region.

During the operation, US forces found numerous documents and electronic files that detailed “the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places,” Major General Kevin Bergner, the former spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, said in October 2007.

Bergner said several of the documents found with Muthanna included a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from “a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom.”

Eli Lake (via memeorandum) shows how this represents a legitimate escalation of the war on terror.

We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush’s personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the “Chicago Way,” an allusion to Sean Connery’s famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

Plus, Lake wonders

On one level, this new policy conflicts with Obama’s stated desire for opening up diplomatic channels to places like Tehran and Damascus. On the other hand, this is precisely the type of policy that he has repeatedly promised at least for Pakistan, whose territory is believed to host Osama bin Laden: If America has actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, and the country housing those terrorist sits on its hands, we will act. His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit. Is this a development that pleases him?

Similarly, Noah Pollak thinks that the candidates, especially the favorite must address this escalation:

What’s important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances — as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

I think most people intuitively know how McCain would answer these questions.

The New York Times adds this context to Lake’s report:

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has attacked terrorism suspects in the ungoverned spaces of countries like Yemen and Somalia. But administration officials said Monday that the strikes in Pakistan and Syria were carried out on the basis of a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets on militants in countries with which the United States is not at war.

The justification is different from the concept of pre-emption the administration articulated immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and which was used as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. While pre-emption was used to justify attacks against governments and their armies, the self-defense argument would justify attacks on insurgents operating on foreign soil that threatened the forces, allies or interests of the United States.

Administration officials pointed Monday to a passage in President Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month as the clearest articulation of this position to date.

“As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders,” Mr. Bush said. “We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime.”

The Hashmonean reports on another recent anti-terror success that seems to bolster Lake’s point.

By the same token, America’s international anti-terrorism efforts scored huge this past week. It is little reported but a massive terror funding ring has been blown wide open in a long, complex US anti-terror and anti drug investigation which has revealed massive ties between Hezbollah & South American and Colombian Narco trafficking. An entire Hezbollah criminal drug funding ring has been busted while at the same time revealing the deep tentacles that organization has to brutal criminal elements and enemies of America. The Terrorists are dealing drugs for profit.

The Washington Post reports on this story from the vantage of Syrian government:

In the same letter, Syria urged Iraq to investigate the U.S. raid and said the attack came as Syria had been increasing efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

“In this regard, we refer that this unjustified act of aggression comes at a time when the Iraqi and US sides recognize Syria’s efforts exerted to preserve Iraq security and prevent any illegal infiltrations into its territories,” the letter said. The Syrian news agency did not specify which Syrian officials signed the communication.
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Underscoring the possibility that the raid could hinder U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq, Syria on Tuesday indefinitely postponed Syrian-Iraqi talks on regional cooperation that had been set for Nov. 12 in Baghdad.

Yon and Roggio, though, undermine the Syrian claim to making efforts to stem the deadly tide of smuggling. However the Washington Post’s editorial showed a level of comprehension absent in the news report:

The logic of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad seems to be that his regime can sponsor murders, arms trafficking, infiltrations and suicide bombings in neighboring countries while expecting to be shielded from any retaliation in kind by the diplomatic scruples of democracies. For most of this decade that has been lamentably true: U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials have over and over again pointed to the infiltration of al-Qaeda militants through the Damascus airport and the land border with Iraq, and Syria’s refusal to curtail it, without taking direct action. Yet in the past year Israel has intervened in Syria several times to defend its vital interests, including bombing a secret nuclear reactor. If Sunday’s raid, which targeted a senior al-Qaeda operative, serves only to put Mr. Assad on notice that the United States, too, is no longer prepared to respect the sovereignty of a criminal regime, it will have been worthwhile.

However I’m not so impressed with the closing paragraph:

Mr. Assad’s government has lately taken a few cautious steps toward breaking out of its isolation, participating in indirect peace talks with Israel and granting formal diplomatic recognition to Lebanon for the first time. European governments have been quick with rewards, and the next U.S. president — if it is Barack Obama — may also hasten to upgrade contacts. If the Syrian regime is genuinely interested in making peace with Israel, distancing itself from Iran and the terrorist movements it sponsors, and rebuilding ties with the West, that is to be welcomed. What Damascus should not be allowed to do is reap the diplomatic and economic rewards of a rapprochement while continuing to plant car bombs, transport illegal weapons and harbor terrorists. Israel has let Mr. Assad know that it is prepared to respond to his terrorism with strikes against legitimate military targets. Now that the United States has sent the same message, maybe the dictator at last will rethink his strategy.

That’s a big if. Unless American and Israeli pressure persist, Assad will have no reason to change his behavior. That will only happen when the cost of threatening the United States (and Israel) outweighs the benefits of subscribing to a phony peace.

Overall, this looks like a big win for the United States, but the next administratin needs to keep this policy in place or it will lose contol of Iraq.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The United States is trying to negotiate a strategic agreement with Iraq that would allow American troops to remain in the country and carry out military operations. The pact faces strenuous opposition from neighboring countries, especially Syria and Iran, because of fears that the United States might use Iraqi territory to carry out attacks on them.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has withdrawn its ambassador to Syria.

It is kind of odd to make the focus of the article the fears of Syria and Iran. Part of the problem is that the Times’s report seems to have been early and they haven’t updated it.

The Washington Post provides more information and context:

U.S. attacks inside Syria are extremely rare, though the U.S. military has stepped up security along Iraq’s border with Syria in recent months to stem the traffic of fighters and weapons into Iraq. U.S. officials say many insurgents, particularly suicide bombers, arrive in Iraq via the Syrian border.

The two most obvious questions are what was U.S. military doing and why now?

(more via memeorandum)
Bill Roggio gives some background and speculates what the United States may have been after.

If the raid occurred, the US military must have detected a senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq in the region. Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is reported to have left the country earlier this year after the terror group lost its sanctuaries in Diyala province.

The US military may be closing in on al Qaeda’s senior leadership. US forces killed Abu Qaswarah, al Qaeda in Iraq’s second in command, during a raid in Mosul in northern Iraq on Oct. 15. The military has also killed and captured numerous al Qaeda leader and couriers over the past several weeks. The information obtained during these raids help to paint a picture of al Qaeda’s command structure inside of of Iraq as well as in neighboring countries.

Amos Harel of Ha’aretz makes an interesting observation:

The common denominator to all these operations is that nobody takes the Syrians seriously anymore, given the repeated violations of their sovereignty. It is doubtful the domestic security situation there has ever been this unstable.

Then he adds:

The lack of stability in Syria adds to the already-tense situation between Israel and Lebanon. Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said Sunday that weapons-smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah is continuing across the country.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel is prepared to attack weapons convoys, on a background of Hezbollah efforts to equip itself with anti-aircraft missiles.

Is it possible that the American raid is a signal to Israel then?

After observing that the raid took place 5 years too late, Noah Pollak frames it in the context of the Presidential election:

What’s important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances — as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

Joshua Landis writes:

The Bush administration seems to be ratcheting up action against Syria during its last days in power. The cross border raid undertaken on Sunday, which killed eight people, seems to fit into a broader pattern of the Bush administration initiating cross boarder attacks into countries that it is not officially at war with. The recent attacks in Northwest Pakistan are a case in point.

The Bush warmonger meme, which we will now doubt see quite a bit in the MSM in the coming days. The idea, as Bill Roggio wrote that there was likely as specific target, will get little attention.

Mere Rhetoric, Meryl and LGF have previously blogged this.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

An official Syrian spokesman confirmed reports by the country’s state-run television and witnesses, who said that four US military helicopters attacked an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, killing eight people and wounding at least five.

SANA’s report quoted unnamed Syrian officials and said the area is near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It later added that US soldiers stormed a building during the aerial raid.

Local residents told The Associated Press by telephone that two helicopters carrying US soldiers raided Hwijeh village, 17 kilometers inside Syria’s border, killing seven people and wounding five others. One of the witnesses said five of the dead were from a single family.

Ed Morrissey has more, including an email from Bill Roggio.

Countdown to the Arab press calling the deaths all civilians at three, two one….

Update: That was quick. Syrian agencies already calling them civilians. And of course the BBC quotes them.

The WMD issue was only one of the reasons for the Iraq Campaign, and the other reasons bear directly on the War Against the Jihadist Terrorists, although Senator Obama, and many others, are not sophisticated enough to understand it.

The “root causes” of terrorism, the actual ones not the fantasies of those who generally use the term, lie in the dysfunctional Arab and Persian political culture. It is that political culture that keeps thtrowing up tyrants into power there. For those who are enamored of the economic “root causes” foolishness, it is those tyrants whose rule brings about the lousy economic conditions of the Middle East. So even that grows directly out of the dysfunctional political culture. The radical Islamists arose as an alternative to the failed Pan-Arab Nationalists like Nasser who had made such a mess of things yet still clung to power as tyrants. This movement actually has no more promise of success than the earlier one, as we can see in Iran. But frequently the mosque is the only political breathing space people have in Arab countries.

So if the jihadists are to be permanently defeated (or as permanently as possible) the dysfunctional political culture will have to be reformed, as it was in Germany and Japan after WWII. The virus of liberty had to be injected into the Middle East. Western specialist in the Arab culture have always thought Iraq was the most promising Arab country for modernizatrion because of the character of its people. So Iraq was the logical place to start this process.

There was also the matter of Saddam being a long time enemy of the USA, certainly at least since 1990. His continued presence tyrannizing his people and threatening war with others made a mockery of the US. It was a sign of US weakness that we did not need after 9/11, which was brought on in part by the perception of US weakness.

The Iraq Campaign also gave the US the opportunity to fight the jihadists on grounds of our own choosing. Geographically we could fight them in the Middle East instead of in New York. Tactically we could pit skilled US soldiers and Marines against them, instead of relying on unarmed airline stewardesses and passengers to do the fighting. Strategically it allowed us to seize the initiative from the jihadists, to make them react to our moves rather than we to their’s. Taking the initiative away from the enemy is always important in winning a war. Finally it allowed us to pit our big idea against their big idea. The jihadists’ big idea is a new caliphate, where Muslims will swagger around lording it over the wretched dhimmis. It’s an attractive vision for Muslims stuck under tha thumb of Mubarak, Assad, or some despotic King or Amir. Our big idea is liberty and prosperity in the modern world. That is also an attractive idea. Which will win? It’s still in dispute, and will be for a long time.

There was an additional aspect that I think we did not expect but has helped us in the war of ideas. Nobody expected the jihadists to be so savagly bloodthirsty against fellow Muslims. Their terrorism, approved by so many Muslims when directed against Jews and Americans, sickened them when directed against them. This has led to a major diminution of support for the jihadists in the Muslim world.

Sorry for the long post, but WMD is only a part of the story, and I think not the greater part, however necessary it was to make sure that Saddam or his psychopathic spawn did not have nukes to throw around the next time they wanted to invade Kuwait for its oil, or to throw at Israel in support of Saddam’s fantasy of being the new Saladin.

First his two sons were murdered. Now he faces prosecution. The reason for Mithal al-Alusi’s troubles? Visiting Israel and advocating peace with the Jewish state – something Iraq’s leaders refuse to consider.

The Iraqi is at the center of a political storm after his fellow lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel – a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law. Such a fate is unlikely for al-Alusi, though he may lose his party’s sole seat in parliament.

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume the maverick legislator was the real target of the assassins who killed his sons in 2005 while he escaped unharmed.

The State Department in its infinite fecklessness refuses to get involved, claiming that this is an internal Iraq matter.

Israel Matzav covered this first, so let’s quote him:

Is this what hundreds of American troops died for in Iraq? To create yet another Arab country that lives in the 8th century in eternal hatred of Jews (and rest assured that Christians will be next on the list).

Powerline seems resigned to the State Department’s refusal to say anything:

Meanwhile, the US Embassy has nothing substantive to say on the subject. This “is an issue for the Iraqi parliament, not the US Mission to Iraq,” said spokesman Armand Cucciniello. That’s not an unreasonable response, I suppose, as long as all we’re talking about is expulsion from parliament.

via memeorandum

But as Max Boot observed last week:

It is hard not to be a little awed by extreme courage like this. Some may say that Alusi is being foolish and counter-productive, and there is perhaps an element of truth to that charge, but every nation needs a few people like him who are willing to risk everything in the name of a higher cause without the slightest regard for self-preservation. In this case, his cause is our cause: He wants Iraq to be a Western liberal state that would be closely allied with the United States against Sunni and Shiite extremists. Although he may be a lonely voice in Iraq, he is hardly alone, as seen from the fact that he did manage to win a parliamentary seat as the only representative of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation which he leads. It is imperative that the U.S. government do what it can to help and protect him.

By assuming that the lesser punishment will be removal from Parliament is what’s being discussed and being quiet, the State Department is doing more damage than it (or Powerline) realizes. As Boot points out, Alusi was elected to a seat in Parliament. What does it say to those who support his party that the United States isn’t willing to speak up for them?

Israel Matzav also refers to the story of an Egyptian boy, who’s being denied medication on account of: that it will have to be imported from Israel, with much the same reaction:

Israel signed a ‘peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, and completed the turnover of every last inch of the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. As a result of that treaty, Egypt is now the third largest recipient of American foreign aid after Iraq and Israel. One has to wonder about the purposes for which the Americans are spending their foreign aid money, and what advantage is to be gained by Israel out of making peace with an Arab country (let alone the ‘Palestinians’) if this is the result.

Nearly 30 years later, Egypt despite the fact that it receives plenty of aid from the United States for making peace with Israel, still, in many ways treats Israel as an enemy. The United States remains quiet, not attaching any conditions to its aid. And this doesn’t even gain the United States goodwill on the Egyptian street.

If the United States really wants to see change in the Arab world, when will it start insisting on a change of attitude towards Israel instead of simply accepting Arab hatred of Israel as the natural order of things?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.