The US-led coalition in Iraq is engaged in belated pacification on two fronts. On one, it has been fighting Ba'athists, including members of Saddam Hussein's presidential guard, in Fallujah and the "Sunni triangle". On the other, it is pressing for the surrender and disbanding of Moqtada al-Sadr's "Mahdi Army" in predominantly Shia suburbs and cities.
But even as he put up a united front on Iraq, Mr. Blair distanced himself a bit from Mr. Bush's new stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict....Mr. Blair signaled that he now wanted the emphasis to shift to helping the Palestinians achieve the promise of an independent, viable state.
The whole point in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, from my perspective, was to achieve those large possibilities right in the center of the Muslim world, where the ripples might lead in every direction........ But Mr. Bush muddied these issues long ago by putting too much emphasis on weapons in Iraq
"I don't think that reaction is going to stop progress because there are real benefits here for Palestinians, and they're going to see those benefits here clearly," said a senior administration official who asked not to be identified because he wanted to speak more freely. "The main benefit is that a Likud government of Israel is going to withdraw from settlements. Israel has not withdrawn from a settlement since 1967. This is therefore going to be a very big deal." Administration officials also held out hope that Mr. Sharon had embarked on a process of withdrawal that would be rejected by Mr. Sharon's far-right coalition partners, which would force him to bring the left-of-center Labor Party into the government and create a political climate the Palestinians might consider more hospitable.
I can't see how this compares to the attempt to partition and subjugate Vietnam, bomb its cities, drench its forests in Agent Orange, and hand over its southern region to a succession of brutal military proxies. For one thing, Vietnam even at its most Stalinist never invaded and occupied neighboring countries (or not until it took on the Khmer Rouge), never employed weapons of genocide inside or outside its own borders, and never sponsored gangs of roving nihilist terrorists. If not all its best nationalists were Communists, all its best Communists were nationalists, and their combination of regular and irregular forces had beaten the Japanese and French empires long before the United States even set foot in the country, let alone before the other Kennedy brothers started assassinating the very puppets they had installed there.
They know it is a historic struggle. They know their victory would do far more than defeat America or Britain. It would defeat civilisation and democracy everywhere. They know it, but do we? The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find.
Despite the fact that Sadr and his friends have spent vast sums of Iranian money, often entering Iraq in the form of crisp notes in briefcases, even the theological seminaries of Najaf and Karbala have kept their doors shut to his brand of religious fascism. Numerous opinion polls, including some financed by the opponents of the liberation, show that in any free election the overwhelming majority of the Iraqis will not vote either for the Saddamites or the various brands of Islamist fascism.
While a robust military response from the coalition is unavoidably the immediate requirement, Iraqis must be empowered to assume a more active role in protecting their country and taking responsibility for their own fate. Iraqi political leaders must be unequivocal in facing their responsibilities. There is no margin for political opportunism in confronting terrorism and extremism in our midst. If the terrorists and extremists are seen to win in any way, seen in any manner to inflict setbacks upon Iraq's burgeoning democracy, then the whole of the Middle East could be set ablaze. If the terrorists lose, then there is hope not just for the stability of the Middle East but for the rest of the world and our common battle against terrorism.
Clashes in Baghdad and Iraq’s south involving the followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and coalition forces cast Iraq’s future into doubt. Dozens of Shias and 20 coalition troops have been killed in the past 48 hours.
...this "Heart of Darkness" element is part of the case for regime-change to begin with. A few more years of Saddam Hussein, or perhaps the succession of his charming sons Uday and Qusay, and whole swathes of Iraq would have looked like Fallujah. The Baathists, by playing off tribe against tribe, Arab against Kurd and Sunni against Shiite, were preparing the conditions for a Hobbesian state of affairs. Their looting and beggaring of the state and the society--something about which we now possess even more painfully exact information--was having the same effect. A broken and maimed and traumatized Iraq was in our future no matter what.
This indecision is partially replicated in Washington, which is in no hurry to alarm its Turkish ally with too much talk of Kurdish self-determination in either Iraq or Syria. But "regime change," as those of us who favor it have always maintained, is not something that can too easily be manipulated. Colin Powell, who has always detested the policy, may have spent the past few days trying to reassure the Saudis that nothing too revolutionary is intended by American pronouncements about democracy. As usual, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Syria, and tomorrow in Iran, there are forces at work who intend to take these pronouncements with absolute seriousness. It would be nice if American liberals came out more forcefully and demanded that the administration live up to its own rhetoric on the question.
The conference named Barzani president of the NRC and decided to set up reconciliation committees in each of the country's 18 provinces.
The Bush administration`s criticism of the killing of Yassin as `very troubling` may have sounded mild - but considering that this is an election year, when presidents are keen to keep the Jewish lobby in America on board, and that Hamas is close to the top of America`s list of outlaws, it is striking that America expressed concern, rather than congratulations, about Israel`s actions. It has been the USA telling Israel to get the settlers out, and the USA making it very clear that the peace process is its only option for the future.
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