Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Saddam Hussein, who only a week ago was seen as a murderous tyrant, is today seen as somewhat of a martyr in the Arab world. That transformation from murderer to martyr is emblematic of all that is wrong with George W Bush’s so-called "War on Terror".

The New York Times tonight reports on the refurbishing of Saddam’s image:

In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

That Saddam is emerging as a martyr after the spectacle of his execution is not much of a surprise - it was to be expected. It is the reaction of the White House to Saddam’s execution that I find very telling.

President Bush’s first public comment on the execution scandal emphasized justice:

"I wish, obviously that the proceedings had gone in a more dignified way, but, nevertheless, he was given justice that thousands of people he killed were not," Bush said after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder [Angela Merkel].

Earlier his press secretary, and erstwhile Fox News talking head, asked us to focus on the positives:

And I think — it’s interesting because there seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein’s life and less about the first 69 in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people. That’s why he was executed.

The reaction from President Bush and his press secretary nicely encapsulate this administration’s flawed sense of justice.

The Bush Administration does not particularly care about how justice is carried out - as long as their notion of justice is carried out. Saddam was an evil man; therefore, he had to be killed. Whether he was killed by a mob, lynched, or otherwise humiliated is irrelevant to this administration.

This type of ends-justifies-the-means justice leads to the abuses of Abu Ghraib. This kind of neglect for the rule of law leads to indefinite detentions of American citizens without charge and the torture of detainees. This kind of disregard for the niceties of civilized society leads to the innocents being held without charge at Guantanamo Bay. This kind of callous conduct leads to terms such as "enemy combatant" and to ill-advised utterances like "Bring it on".

"Bringing people to justice" is not only about capturing and killing your perceived enemy. It is also about the fairness of the process. It is this process that America has in the past championed. At the Nuremburg Trials over a half a century ago, Justice Robert Jackson spoke words that today the Bush Administration would be well advised to heed:

Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a Trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.

But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The Prosecution’s case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case, by one after another of the defendants, that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubt of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped write their own judgment of condemnation.

But justice in this case has nothing to do with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilization of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of international law had it not been utilized to goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge, and intent.

…

Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the Counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this Prosecution.

It was the process that exposed to the whole world the atrocities of the Nazis and the justness of our cause. That process has stood the "critical judgment of posterity".

So, yes, Mr. Snow and Mr. Bush, justice is about the last two minutes. The first 69 years of Saddam’s life defined who he was. The last 2 minutes of Saddam’s life defined for all the world who Mr. Bush is.

Nir Rosen at IraqSlogger is reporting on rumors that Moqtada al-Sadr was present at Saddam Hussein’s hanging. In fact, he might have been one of the hangmen. Apparently, that is the reason they were chanting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!".

The pro-Baathist website printed the following pictures showing similarities between the hanging pictures and Moqtada al-Sadr. These rumors have been flying around for a number of days now. However, given the circumstances of the hanging, it is not terribly far-fetched. So, here are the pictures for what they are worth.

So, what does everyone think? Ok, the pinky ring is just too funny

The New York Times just implicated Iraq’s Mr. Fix-it in the Saddam execution video debacle. Get ready for aftershocks.

In its report on Iraq’s alleged investigation into the Saddam execution, there is this startling passage:

As his aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry, one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.

In one casual passage, the New York Times drops a bombshell.

Mr. al-Rubaie is not just anyone in Iraq. He is the link between the Americans and the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. He is also the go-between to Moqtada al-Sadr. He has been involved with the Dawa Party since its days as a major terrorist organization. In the 1980s, he was the Dawa Party’s international spokesman.

In 2004, when George W Bush visited Iraq he reached out to Ayatollah al-Sistani through Mr. al-Rubaie:

American officials in Iraq are well aware of al-Rubaie’s ability to navigate in both worlds; when President Bush landed in Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner, clearly he’d been briefed. As al-Rubaie remembers their encounter, the president pointed at him and said, "Dr. al-Rubaie, I want you to convey this message to Mr. Sistani. Tell him that I pray to the same god he prays to… Tell Sistani I have nothing but praise for your religion. I have many millions of Muslims in my country back home."

Mr. al-Rubaie also was instrumental in getting Moqtada al-Sadr into the current Iraqi government. In 2004, Mr. al-Rubaie fell out with then Prime Minister Allawi over how to confront Moqtada al-Sadr:

The approach appears to be straining the Iraqi government as well. On Monday, the office of Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, had been relieved of his duties and replaced with a close ally of Dr. Allawi, Qassim Daoud.

The precise reasons for Dr. Rubaie’s dismissal were unclear, but he and Dr. Allawi disagreed sharply over how to quell the insurgency and, in particular, how to deal with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric. While Dr. Rubaie favors coaxing Mr. Sadr into the political mainstream, Dr. Allawi is demanding Mr. Sadr’s surrender first.

Mr. al-Rubaie has since played a crucial role in positioning the Dawa Party in the center of the Iraqi governmental pie. Last summer he wrote a Washington Post op-ed sketching out a "road map" for an American withdrawal from Iraq while leaving the keys with the Dawa Party.

In short, Mr. al-Rubaie is a powerful man in the current Iraqi government with all the right connections. If he is implicated in the Saddam execution fiasco, it will also implicate the Dawa Party and Ayatollah al-Sistani. If al-Rubaie falls, so falls the Dawa Party. With Maliki weakened and al-Sadr targeted by the Americans, this could be the beginning of a coup attempt in Baghdad. The only Shia party that can gain from such a coup is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Suddenly, Mr. Bush’s photo-op with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim comes into focus.

Update: The New York Times has removed the reference to Mr. al-Rubaie from the web edition of the article. The changed passage reads:

A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.

MSNBC reports that Mr. al-Faroun, who was quoted in the New York Times article, is now retracting his accusation:

On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of possible responsibility for the leaked video. “I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press. “But I saw two of the government officials who were … present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces,” al-Faroon said in a telephone interview. … The New York Times on Wednesday reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper “one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser.” The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him Wednesday. His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.

The plot thickens.

The title of this post is a statement of fact. Before the hate mail starts to pour in, let me explain…No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

When I wrote my previous post, the ghastly cell phone video [CNN’s sanitized version is here] of Saddam Hussein’s execution had not yet surfaced. I had argued then that the execution would make a martyr out of Saddam. Now I am certain of it.

Saddam died reciting the Shahada, which is the first of the Five Pillars of Islam. The Shahada is the Muslim testimony of faith: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger." Saddam recited the longer form: "I testify that there is no god but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is his messenger." To become a Muslim, one has to recite the Shahada, usually in front of two other Muslims. Muslims will also recite the Shahada, as Saddam did, moments before death.

Every Muslim, including myself, knows the Shahada, in its original Arabic, by heart. The spectacle of Saddam Hussein, while he was being taunted by masked men moments before his death, reciting the Shahada had the effect of humanizing him to the Muslim world. The fact that the execution took place on Eid-ul-Azha did not particularly help his executioners’ cause with the Muslim world. The timing of the execution was an affront to Muslims - protestations that it was the Iraqis, and not Washington, who decided the timing will fall on deaf ears in the Arab and Muslim world.

Before Saddam’s execution, I did not think it was possible to humanize the Butcher of Baghdad - I was wrong. During Saddam’s rule, he sent many people to the gallows and torture chambers. His cruelty was well known throughout the Arab world. Yet, by putting him to death in such mafia fashion, with his executioners in death squad garb, the thugs of Iraq and their benefactors in the Bush Administration have managed a Herculean feat. Through the power of video, they have managed to humanize a tyrant.

Perhaps it is a sign of the times. Already in Iraq many long for the stability of Saddam’s rule. It is not difficult to imagine that the men who executed Saddam, while chanting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!", are the same men who deposit tortured corpses of Sunni men, with drill holes in their heads, all around Iraq. The grainy execution video made it quite clear to anyone who was not paying attention that George W Bush has handed Iraq over to sectarian militias and death squads.

By some estimates, this new Iraq has already cost over 650,000 lives. Those numbers suggest that the thugs that rule Iraq today are far outpacing the deaths caused by Saddam Hussein’s regime. By comparison, Saddam looks good. This is a fine legacy for George W Bush and his war of choice.

In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, on July 8, 1982, members of the Dawa Party, at the behest of Iran, tried to unsuccessfully assassinate Saddam Hussein in the town of Dujail. On December 30, 2006 the Dawa Party finally got their man.

Saddam Hussein’s hanging after a deeply flawed trial is not likely to increase the violence in Iraq. However, the hanging is likely to make the already remote possibility of political reconciliation that much more distant. The death of Saddam at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia will also rehabilitate Saddam Hussein’s legacy in the Arab world. The erstwhile Butcher of Baghdad will become a martyr of sorts - an Arab nationalist who resisted Western forces and died at the hands of an unholy alliance between Iranian and Western powers. Saddam will be remembered as a bloodier version of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Saddam Hussein will represent to Iraqi nationalists what Mohammed Mossadeqh represents to Iranians - a nationalist leader who was overthrown by Western powers for a few more barrels of oil.

There is simply no way around this fact - the United States of America allowed Saddam Hussein to be killed by the very pro-Iranian Shia party that is responsible for killing hundreds of Americans in terrorist bombings. The United States allowed Saddam to be killed for a crime he committed while he was an agent of America against Iran. These are the ironies of the American involvement in Iraq today. The occupying power has served up the head of Saddam to one of the warring parties engaged in a civil war. If the goal is to push Iraq further into civil war, today’s hanging will help achieve it.

While Mr. Maliki of the Dawa Party and Mr. Jabr, the death squad leader of SCIRI, were cooling their heels in Damascus in the Spring of 2003, they probably could not have imagined that just over 3 years later America would hand over Iraq and the head of Saddam Hussein to them and their Iranian backers. After all, they had fled to Syria and Iran because of their attacks against Saddam Hussein and American interests in Kuwait and Lebanon. After trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein in Dujail, the Dawa Party, on Iranian orders, exploded truck bombs at the American and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983:

The driver of the truck that exploded in an attack on the United States Embassy in Kuwait on Monday has reportedly been identified by Kuwaiti investigators as a pro-Iranian Moslem fundamentalist from Iraq.

According to diplomats in Kuwait and press reports there, the driver, who was killed, was 25-year-old Raad Mouchbil.

An Iraqi Embassy spokesman said in a statement issued in Kuwait that Mr. Mouchbil had already been condemned to death in Baghdad for what the statement said were ‘’criminal activities.'’

The Iraqi spokesman said Mr. Mouchbil was a member of the banned Moslem fundamentalist pro-Iranian Al Dawa group in Baghdad. He described Mr. Mouchbil as having been a strong supporter of Iran’s policies.

The United States stepped up support for Saddam Hussein after the attacks by the Dawa Party. Iran and the Dawa Party terrorists were the enemy. And of course Saddam Hussein had oil and there was money to be made:

Another key element in the growing American involvement here is the planned construction of a $1 billion oil pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk refinery through Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba. The project, now under negotiation, would include a $570 million contract for the Bechtel Corporation.

From the American point of view, the pipeline, along with a second planned line through Saudi Arabia, would help tie Iraq to what are regarded as moderate pro-Western countries in the region. The Iraqi perspective is that having an American equity in the project - particularly that of Bechtel, whose former officers are prominent in the Reagan Administration - will guarantee its protection from Israel.

Iraq is now pumping about 700 million barrels of oil a day through its Turkish pipeline. A second pipeline through Syria, which supports Iran, was shut off by Damascus.

The United States has also granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years. Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi President here.

While Donald Rumsfeld, as the representative of the American President,  was negotiating for Bechtel and giving out map coordinates for chemical weapons attacks, there was no mention of the killings in Dujail or the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran.

So, now 14 years after Dujail, Saddam has been hanged for his response to an assassination attempt by the Dawa Party. Saddam’s response at the time was to kill over a hundred Shia of Dujail as retribution - and the United States turned a blind eye. Fourteen years after the fact the Butcher of Baghdad has himself been butchered by terrorists who themselves have American blood on their hands. Today’s killing does not look like justice to me - it looks like an assassination.

The verdict is in. Saddam Hussein has been found guilty of crimes against humanity. News flash: the Butcher of Baghdad is guilty of being a butcher.

From the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the United States faced a conundrum. It could either fight the fierce Iraqi nationalism or it could undermine it. However, undermining Iraqi nationalism required a disintegration of Iraqi society into sectarianism. The Bush Administration chose to try to undermine Iraqi nationalism. Weakening Iraqi nationalism meant that it was easier to enter Iraq, however, creating sectarian strife means that it will be harder to leave Iraq. Today’s verdict is another milestone in the dismemberment of Iraqi nationalism.

The Bush Administration has actively pitted the Shia and Sunni against each other in a bid to defeat the insurgency. The ascendancy of the Shia led government in Iraq is no accident - it was anointed by the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration has equipped a massive police force in Iraq comprised largely of the Shia militias (the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade). Faced with a rising insurgency, the Bush Administration has reportedly resurrected the Reagan era "Salvador Option" to try to deal with the Sunni insurgents:

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

As in El Salvador, the option of pitting one group against another in Iraq has also been a "success". It has transformed the war in Iraq from one that was primarily a nationalist struggle against occuppiers to a much more complicated affair that features a bloody sectarian civil war between Iraqi Shia and Iraqi Sunni. One can argue that this strategy, the "Salvador Option", succeeded spectacularly with the attack on the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra on February 22, 2006. Iraq has been spiraling into chaos ever since.

Iraqi nationalism, within the larger Arab nationalism, has always been a counter-balance to tribal and religious sectarianism. What bound Iraqi Shia and Iraqi Sunni together was that they were Arabs and Iraqis. Iraqi Shia are distinct from Iranian Shia in that the former are Arabs and the latter are Persian. That distinction is significant and has historically been the key to the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. When Iraq and Iran fought a bitter eight year war, Iraqi Shia fought along side their Sunni countrymen against the Iranians.

The rise of the Ba’th movement ( or "renaissance" ) in Iraq and Syria was an attempt to unify the Arab nation under a secular banner. For all its ills, the Ba’th party in Iraq represented the supremacy of Iraqi nationalism over religious sectarianism. The Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq and then later de-ba’thification of Iraqi society unleashed tribal and religious forces that have now led to the near collapse of Iraqi society. Without a strategy to fill the vacuum of the Ba’th party, the Bush Administration opted for sectarian dismemberment of Iraq.

In the context of the ongoing sectarian violence, where Shia and Sunni are butchering each other, the Saddam Hussein trial and verdict will offer the last little push to Iraqi society on its path to chaos. Allowing the Shia leadership of Iraq to try the Sunni leader Saddam Hussein while a sectarian war is raging was a monumentally stupid decision by the Bush Administration. It has compromised the validity of the trial, which should have been held under an international tribunal, and it has poured fuel onto a raging sectarian fire. The guilt of Saddam Hussein was never in doubt. What was on trial was the trial itself. This trial and verdict will further divide Iraq’s Shia and Sunni populations.

Iraq’s future is being sacrificed at the altar of American domestic politics today. Mr. Bush is so intent on capturing the news cycle on the weekend before the mid-term elections that he has sacrificed untold American and Iraqi lives in the process. Vice President Cheney asserts that the violence in Iraq has increased because the insurgents are trying to influence the elections in America. The notion that Shia and Sunni are butchering each other to influence congressional elections in the United States is absurd. Yet, Mr. Cheney and his boss are quite content to add to the sectarian violence in Iraq for their own political purposes.

Mr. Bush has always looked at Iraq through the prism of domestic politics. Today the verdict is in on Saddam Hussein. On Tuesday, the American people will deliver a verdict on Mr. Bush.

[Cross posted on Taylor Marsh]

"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels." - Albert Einstein

In Salt Lake City yesterday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned against moral confusion in George Bush’s crusade against reason. Mr. Rumsfeld asked his fellow citizens to avoid confusion:

Every war involves mistakes, setbacks and casualties, Rumsfeld acknowledged, and every army has members who do not live up to high standards. However, those negative factors cannot overshadow the hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women who serve with humanity and decency in the face of constant provocation, he said.

“That is important in any long struggle or any kind of long war, where any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere,” he said.

The Secretary went on to counsel resolve in combating what he called "a new type of fascism." This new "fascism", or "Islamofascism" as the Bush Administration likes to call it, is apparently similar to the old fascism of quainter times (as Alberto Gonzales likes to refer to most of human history). Mr. Rumsfeld urged all of us to keep our inner Neville Chamberlains in check in these trying times:

Drawing parallels to efforts by some nations to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, Rumsfeld said it would be "folly" for the United States to ignore the rising dangers posed by a new enemy that he called "serious, lethal and relentless."

I completely agree with Donald Rumsfeld. We should not ignore dangers posed by new enemies, nor should we be morally or intellectually confused about the rightness of our cause. Because I agree with Mr. Rumsfeld, I urge Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss, George W Bush, to abide by this advice or step aside and let those who can meet these challenges carry the burden.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush have ignored the real enemy in this war, a certain bearded man named bin Laden, in favor of pursuing their neo-con fantasy of making the Middle East safe for oil exploitation. While we wallow in the quagmire of Iraq, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts enjoy the benefits of a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. By any standard, allowing the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to roam free 5 years after that horrible day is a dereliction of duty on the part of our leaders. It is also a symptom of intellectual confusion, if not intellectual dishonesty, that in response to the 9/11 attacks the Bush Administration attacked a country, which by Mr. Bush’s own admission, had nothing to do with those attacks:

Q What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

There you have it: al Qaeda attacks us and we attack Saddam Hussein. It is the superpower equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush led us into the war in Iraq with images of mushroom clouds in our cities and flowers at our soldiers’ feet as they liberate Iraq. Either they were intellectually and morally confused when they sold us this quagmire or they were lying. Since the invasion, the Administration’s moral confusion has grown by leaps and bounds. After their initial casus belli of WMD fell apart, the Administration trotted out the "freedom is on the march" argument. To this day they claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do even when the very rationale for the invasion has been so thoroughly discredited.

Mr. Rumsfeld has been morally deficient in his handling of the Iraq invasion. He was morally obtuse when looting broke out after the invasion due to lack of security (a fundamental moral and legal duty of the occupier); he was morally obtuse when the abuses took place in Abu Ghraib; he has been morally obtuse as Iraqi civilians are being butchered at alarming rates; he has been morally obtuse while massacres like Haditha and rapes of little girls occur on his watch; and, he has been morally obtuse as he signed death letters of fallen American GIs using an autopen. Mr. Rumsfeld and the boss who continues to employ him have demonstrated ample moral confusion in the past 5 years.

We as citizens have a right, and indeed an obligation, to question our leaders’ actions when they do not appear to serve the interest of the people. If we abdicate our duty as citizens to hold our leaders accountable, even in a time of war, especially in a time of war, we will have aided in the descent of our society into fascism. When our leaders have marched us into a quagmire as a result of a war of choice, we are entitled to moral and intellectual clarity from those very leaders. We must demand of our leaders the truth at all times - "trust me" does not work in a democracy. A demand by a leader of blind loyalty from the citizenry is the primary ingredient in the soup of fascism.

Now is the time for a leader and statesman to lead us out of the dangers of our time and into a more peaceful world. Now is the time for intellectual and moral honesty. Now is the time for great ideals buttressed by sound execution. A generation ago, John F. Kennedy called upon the world to shoulder the burden of his time:

Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

His call to America and to the world remains as urgent today as it was in his time. This country and this world is yearning for a leader of vision and intellect who can rise above the talking points and the politics of division to lead us out of the moral confusion that this Administration has thrust us into. Sadly, George W Bush is not that leader.

[Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

Since September the 11th, 2001 President Bush has been telling us that they hate us for our freedoms. However, he has never really been able to define who "they" are. He has never been able to go beyond his talking points to understand who it is that attacked us. His failure to know the shape of the enemy has led us into a major foreign policy blunder in Iraq and away from the struggle before us. His foreign policy and his rhetoric have been hijacked by the neo-cons with damaging consequences. Five years after 9/11 we are still under threat from extremists. In fact, the threat has grown significantly during the last five years in large part due to Mr. Bush’s inaction and his charged rhetoric.

President Bush never misses an opportunity to paint any foe as part of the collective "them" in the War on Terror. Saddam Hussein was "them" so he had to be taken down. Now it is Hezbollah and Hamas, it is Iran and Syria. They must be taken down. Today in his radio address Mr. Bush once again saw red and painted with his broad brush:

"The terrorists attempt to bring down airplanes full of innocent men, women, and children," Mr Bush said.

"They kill civilians and American servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they deliberately hide behind civilians in Lebanon. They are seeking to spread their totalitarian ideology."

While Mr. Bush plays politics to justify his Iraq and Middle East policy the real threat is closer to home and getting stronger.

In the United Kingdom a small but media savvy political party named Hizb ut-Tahrir started to take root in the 1990s. Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation in Arabic) is an Islamist party dedicated to creating an Islamic Caliphate in the Arab and Muslim world. Though it was founded in the 1950s in Jerusalem it really started to mobilize globally in the age of the Internet. Since that time it has started to spread its tentacles across Europe and the Arab and Muslim world. Today Hizb ut-Tahrir has presence in Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Russia, Australia, United Kingdom, the Sudan, Denmark, Germany and other European countries. In some European and Arab countries the group is banned. However, they continue to operate freely in Britain and in many Muslim countries.

Hizb ut-Tahrir claims to be a peaceful nonviolent movement. According to the FAQ on their information website, they plan on achieving an Islamic Caliphate through peaceful means:

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political party whose ideology is Islam. The party works throughout the Islamic world to resume the Islamic way of life by re-establishing the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate). The party adheres to the Islamic Shari’ah in all aspects of its work, and takes its methodology from that of the Prophet Muhammad that he used to establish the first Islamic State in Madinah. The Prophet Muhammad limited his struggle for the establishment of the Islamic State to the intellectual and political domains. Hence the party considers violence or armed struggle against the regime a violation of the Islamic Shari’ah.

However, this group has a history of spreading hateful propaganda all over Europe:

In March and April 2002, Hizb Ut Tahrir handed out leaflets in a square in Copenhagen, and at a mosque. The leaflet, which also appeared on the Danish groups internet site, makes threats against Jews, using a quote from the Koran urging Muslims to ‘kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have been turned you out.’ The leaflet also said, ‘The Jews are a people of slander…a treacherous people… they fabricate lies and twist words from their right context.’ And the leaflet describes suicide bombings in Israel as "legitimate" acts of "Martyrdom".

The appeal of Hizb ut-Tahrir lies in its carefully planned and calibrated message. In the West, they try to stay just on the margins of the law. They highlight all the issues most Muslims care about: the Palestinian problem, the war in Iraq, the war in Lebanon, U.S. support for Israel, etc. On cursory observation they appear like any other leftist anti war political party with a pro-Muslim message. However, on closer examination a profile of a hate group emerges. To stay within the law in the U.K. the group has cleaned up some of its official statements. However, a look at their past publications sheds some light on their plans. According to Hizb ut-Tahrir’s since sanitized manifesto (cached page from 2004):

As for the political struggle, it is manifested in the struggle against the disbelieving imperialists, to deliver the Ummah from their domination and to liberate her from their influence by uprooting their intellectual, cultural, political, economic and military roots from all of the Muslim countries.

The political struggle also appears in challenging the rulers, revealing their treasons and conspiracies against the Ummah, and by taking them to task and changing them if they denied the rights of the Ummah, or refrained from performing their duties towards her, or ignored any matter of her affairs, or violated the laws of Islam.

…

Based on this, the Party defined its method of work into three stages:

• The First Stage: The stage of culturing to produce people who believe in the idea and the method of the Party, so that they form the Party group.
• The Second Stage: The stage of interaction with the Ummah, to let the Ummah embrace and carry Islam, so that the Ummah takes it up as its issue, and thus works to establish it in the affairs of life.
• The Third Stage: The stage of establishing government, implementing Islam generally and comprehensively, and carrying it as a message to the world.

The above goals should be familiar to most readers. These are the goals advocated by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda: the removal of western influence from Muslim countries and then the overthrow of the governments of the Muslim countries in favor of a Caliphate.

While bin Laden hides in caves Hizb ut-Tahrir takes its message freely to the young people of the Muslim world. It targets colleges and universities in the Muslim world looking for recruits to its idea of jihad and of an enduring Caliphate. For example, in Bangladesh, which is a largely secular Muslim majority country, Hizb ut-Tahrir is starting to make inroads with university students and intellectuals.

The group’s presence as a political party in Bangladesh is small but nonetheless vocal. It markets itself as a discussion group to university students and openly holds weekly meetings at the country’s leading universities. It feeds on political unrest in the country and presents itself as a utopian alternative to all the country’s ills. It capitalizes on Muslim grievances and focuses hate and anger toward the West and the country’s own government. The Iraq War offers easy ammunition:

The illegal occupying forces of America and Britain have again unleashed a devastating series of attacks upon the Muslims of Iraq. Intensifying their attack upon innocent civilians they have systematically targeted mosques, bazaars, hospitals, marches and demonstrations. They use missiles, tanks, helicopters and planes to carry out these attacks. They have turned the cities of Karbalaa, Al-Najaf and Al-Kufah, its south and north, and "Al-Falujah" into battlefields destroying whatever stands in front of them. They hound the Muslims in their houses and mosques. Thousands have been mercilessly killed by the kafir [infidel] occupying forces.

…

However the greatest tragedy today is the role of the rulers of the Muslim countries. While the Muslims of Iraq have demonstrated their bravery due to their iman [faith] in Allah fighting with their bare bodies, our rulers have demonstrated the extent of their cowardice and treachery. These 50 or so rulers stand by while our lands are destroyed and our brothers and sisters are slaughtered. These rulers like obedient servants of America watch the slaughter preventing the sincere and strong Muslim armies to aid the Muslims of Iraq. Rather our armies are used by these traitor rulers to guard their thrones and palaces. These rulers are appointed over the Muslim Ummah to safeguard only the interests of the colonialists and enemies of the Muslims. [Translations by me.]

The tactic is always the same: blame the West and then find a way of tying the country’s government to the West. In many cases, the grievances are legitimate. That is exactly where Hizb ut-Tahrir’s appeal lies. It first voices a legitimate grievance and then pivots the rhetoric into hate.

Hizb ut-Tahrir are masters at capturing the media spotlight and magnifying the smallest hint of a controversy. During the Danish cartoon controversy, it was Hizb ut-Tahrir in Bangladesh and elsewhere that engineered the protest marches for the benefit of Western cameras:

Look closely at the banners in the above photographs. This group never misses an opportunity to market its goals.

In a largely secular country like Bangladesh, Hizb ut-Tahrir will not garner much support and will likely remain in the fringes. However, it need not have a huge following to mobilize hate. Its target audience, university students who are looking to channel their frustration, are the engine that fuel the armies of hate. It is not groups like Hamas or Hezbollah that produced the September 11th terrorists. It was not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that produced the London bombers of 7/11 or those that are detained in the current terror plot. In all cases it was educated middle class Muslims in their 20s that were the killers. These young men were schooled in an ideology that began with groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir. While the group claims non-violence, its rhetoric green lights violence with a wink and a nod.

No amount of bombing in Iraq and in Lebanon will make us safer while we ignore hate groups such as these. Instead of tackling these groups, the Bush Administration is busily driving new recruits into their fold. While we bomb "them", we let these groups fester in so-called "friendly" countries. The tired "you are either with us or against us" rhetoric of Mr. Bush does not begin to address the terrorist factories in clear view of the world. So, when we say that Mr. Bush’s foreign policy has made us less safe by ignoring the real threat in favor of his neo-con escapade in Iraq, we should point to groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir as clear evidence.

This is not a war we can win with F-16s and Tomahawk missiles. It is not a war for the soul of Islam. It is a war against a small group of extremists with a powerful propaganda machine. Our goal should be to outmaneuver them and isolate them. To do that we need a leader who understands the world beyond the confines of his talking points.

[As a footnote, if you want to get a small taste of how easily Hizb ut-Tahrir is able to appeal to the young people in countries like Bangladesh, read the comments attached to this post about Hizb ut-Tahrir from a Bangladeshi blogger based in London.]

Update: The Guardian is now reporting that 10 of the 19 suspects arrested last week in London may have been targeted by Hibz ut-Tahrir and its off-shoot al-Mujaharoun.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was laying down the law today on how to deal with Iran. She said that Iran was "playing games". She said that "[t]hey’ve had plenty of time to cooperate."  Then she said something that took me back to the good old days of 2002:

"The international community’s credibility is at stake here," Rice said Saturday. "We can either mean what we say when we say that Iran must comply, or we can continue to allow Iran to defy."

I wondered where I had heard that before. Then it hit me. I vaguely remember a lot of talk about the credibility of the United Nations and the international community being at stake before the Iraq invasion.

President Bush on September 13, 2002 said the following about Iraq:

This man has had 11 years to comply. For 11 long years, he’s ignored world opinion. And he’s put the credibility of the United Nations on line. As I said yesterday, we’ll determine — how we deal with this problem will help determine the fate of multilateral body, which has been unilaterally ignored by Saddam Hussein. Will this body be able to keep the peace and deal with the true threats, including threats to security in Central African and other parts of the world, or will it be irrelevant?

It is ironic that an Administration that ignores the international community on most issues should be so concerned about the international community’s credibility when it wants to invade or bomb another country.

On September 23, 2003, President Bush at the United Nations gave this rationale for invading Iraq:

Iraq was now free "because a coalition of nations acted to defend the peace - and the credibility of the United Nations", President Bush told the UN General Assembly.

On April 13, 2004, President Bush from the East Room of The White House declared American credibility and his credibility were intact:

One thing is for certain, though, about me — and the world has learned this — when I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.

On December 18, 2005, President Bush from the Oval Office cited loss of credibility (without using the word) as a reason not to withdraw from Iraq:

It is also important for every American to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done. We would abandon our Iraqi friends — and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word.

We would undermine the morale of our troops — by betraying the cause for which they have sacrificed. We would cause tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve, and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us — and the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever before.

To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor and I will not allow it.

Credibility is apparently a big deal to this Administration. We invaded Iraq to defend our credibility, we are fighting in Iraq to defend our credibility, we cannot leave Iraq because of our credibility. This Administration is trapped in a vise of credibility. Now credibility is the reason we are being given for an impending attack on Iran.

Talking about credibility is not the same as having credibility. This Administration lost credibility with the rest of the world a long time ago. It has now also lost all credibility with the American people.

As the Bush Administration spins and spins to prepare the public for an attack on Iran, the same tired rhetoric is being used. Will the American public be spun into another war before this Administration leaves office? This time it is not the credibility of the Bush Administration that is on the line; this time it is the credibility of the American public that is on the line.

The tireless Daniel Pipes has solved the mystery of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Mr. Pipes argues that the reason we failed to find Iraq’s WMD is that they were moved just before the war. The answer was so simple - it was right there in front of us. Thank heaven that Daniel Pipes was on the case even when the last man from the Iraq Survey Group had packed his bags.

Daniel Pipes writes in his latest column:

The great mystery of the 2003 war in Iraq - "What about the WMD?" has finally been resolved. The short answer is: Saddam Hussein’s persistent record of lying meant no one believed him when he at the last moment actually removed the weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Pipes does not tell us where the WMD were removed to - he leaves that as an exercise for his cerebral readers. He offers this explanation as an update to his column:

I have received many questions about the disposal of the WMD - Syria? Belarus? - and wish to clarify that I purposefully did not deal with this question in the above article (just as the Iraqi Perspectives Project did not). The topic here is exclusively the functioning of the Saddam Hussein regime in relation to the WMD mystery. Any thesis of what was done with the WMD is compatible with the above background explanation.

Mr. Pipes has "solved" the mystery of the WMD by stating that since they were not found they must have been removed. The more obvious explanation that perhaps Iraq possessed no WMD does not seem to resonate with Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes is a glass-is-half-full kind of thinker. He posits that if the bottom half of a glass contains no water that must mean that the top half of the glass contains water that is suspended in mid air. Who am I to argue with logic as powerful as that.

Daniel Pipes cites (without any hint of irony) the Iraqi Perspectives Project report to show how Saddam Hussein’s Government was disconnected from reality. Saddam Hussein demanded only good news and this led to a lot of misinformation being propagated throughout the Iraqi regime. Pipes claims that the confusion extended to WMD as well. Perhaps even Saddam was not sure if WMD existed or not. This is Mr. Pipes’ fallback argument. If the WMD were there they were moved. However, if they were not there then even Saddam thought they were there and therefore it was tantamount to Saddam actually having WMD. Either way the WMD, fictional or not, were removed by Saddam Hussein. Daniel Pipes thus ties his circular argument with a nice tidy bow:

The same situation extended to the military-industrial infrastructure. First, the report states, for Saddam, "the mere issuing of a decree was sufficient to make the plan work." Second, fearful for their lives, everyone involved provided glowing progress bulletins. In particular, "scientists always reported the next wonder weapon was right around the corner." In such an environment, who knew the actual state of the WMD? Even for Saddam, "when it came to WMD there was always some element of doubt about the truth."

So, it appears that Mr. Pipes has embarked on a two-pronged defense of this Administration - one prong using the fantasy argument, the other prong using the delusion argument. Using equal doses of fantasy and delusion Mr. Pipes has "solved" the WMD mystery. I am sure his followers will now tout this as "evidence" that Saddam had (real or imagined) WMD and the (real or imagined) WMD was removed prior to the war. Now all Mr. Pipes has to do to complete the circle is "find" the WMD. I will wait anxiously for the day when Daniel Pipes "finds" Saddam’s lost Weapons of Mass Destruction.