Columnist.
American troops are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011 --but don't bet that all of them will leave. There are several reasons to maintain a residual, combat-capable U.S. military presence in Iraq, the most obvious being the proxy war on Iraq waged by Iran's tyrannical regime. That proxy war has gone on since 2003, but within the last year, as U.S. forces have withdrawn, Iranian troublemaking has increased. The Obama administration has noticed. This week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a group of American soldiers in Iraq that Washington is "very concerned about Iran and the weapons they're providing to extremists in Iraq."
Since the middle of June, Berber rebels based in western Libya's Nafusa Mountain region have launched what is arguably the most successful and sustained rebel offensive action since NATO intervened last March. Berber fighters have secured a supply route from Tunisia and now hold positions south of Moammar Gadhafi's military and political bastion in Libya's capital, Tripoli. So far they have managed to retain their territorial gains. The war was supposed to be short, NATO air power was supposed to be decisive, and Gadhafi was supposed to skedaddle. Instead, the battlefield stalemated and a war of military, political and financial attrition began.
What links the Arab Spring rebellions with political agitation in China and at least another five dozen simmering or emerging crises? If your answer is "the Internet," you have identified one of the key information technologies that spread the flames. However, the common human fire in these disparate struggles is intense disgust with embedded corruption. Tyrants maintain control by isolating and intimidating their subjects. However, since the advent of the printing press and increasing public literacy, preserving tyrannical isolation has become a bit more difficult.
Based on current trends, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is losing his war against his own people. That's good. Gadhafi's defeat will be another significant victory in the struggle against tyranny. However, inept coalition leadership, especially from the Obama administration, means the war is far from won. In late April, Gadhafi faced a war on five military fronts. A sixth front is now emerging. Gadhafi must divide his forces and devote resources to each sector.
Last Friday, in a tough-minded speech delivered in Brussels, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told NATO that money talks, and unless European members cover their fair share of alliance defense costs, America may walk. Over the last five decades, numerous American leaders have faulted our European allies for failing to meet agreed-upon alliance defense commitments. Gates' critique, however, was extraordinarily direct. "The blunt reality," Gates told the audience of NATO ambassadors, "is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress -- and in the American body politic writ large -- to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense."
2011's Arab Spring is an astonishing moment. Yes, somewhere on the calendar of the next decade's history a fall of lowered expectations will occur and a winter of cold disappointment -- but the hopes and passions powering it will not disappear. Michael Totten's new book, "The Road to Fatima Gate" (Encounter Books, 2011), provides a first-person look at Arab Spring's immediate predecessor, Lebanon's Beirut Spring of 2005. Totten then moves to a detailed discussion of Hezbollah's increasing power within Lebanon, followed by a compelling, on-the-ground look at the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war (the July War, in Lebanese parlance). Totten portrays the war as an Iranian-Israeli war, with Hezbollah as Tehran's proxy.
Hack the United States with a crippling computer virus, and the Pentagon may respond with smart bombs and commando teams. The military and intelligence communities have known for at least two decades that "cyberwar" is war. Everyday experience has confirmed that the digital fight is very real, as cyber-attackers probe and occasionally crack the digital communications and data storage systems of military organizations, intelligence agencies, financial institutions and, frankly, just about everyone with a networked digital device.
President Barack Obama has violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution. That is a good thing. The War Powers Resolution was constitutionally dubious when it was passed -- by a Democratic Party-controlled Congress intent on obstructing the powers of a Republican president. Instead of taking a principled stance against a questionable law, however, President Obama chose to mask his violation with cleverness -- a corrosive, shallow cleverness smacking of the worst in partisan skullduggery.
This week, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors announced that they intend to indict Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi on an array of charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Gadhafi's regime immediately dismissed the ICC investigation as imperialist propaganda. For possibly better, but likely for worse, ICC criminal warrants -- or at least the threat of warrants -- are now a weapon in the Libyan Civil War.
The Arab Spring popular revolts caught al-Qaida by surprise. The revolts are not al-Qaida's operational handiwork, and they certainly do not fit the ideologically driven historical narrative spun by al-Qaida elites, such as the late Osama bin Laden. Of course, militant Islamists are exploiting the revolts. Egyptian Islamist extremists have launched attacks on Coptic Christians, seeking to ignite a sectarian civil war and derail Egypt's transition process. Al-Qaida's Musab al-Zarqawi attempted the same ploy in Iraq, pitting Sunnis against Shias.
Osama Bin Laden's death is the result of American persistence and American military professionalism. For at least a century, America's enemies and their propagandists have portrayed the United States as lacking the will to engage in an extended struggle. The roots of this myth actually extend into the 18th century, but with the 20th century and the global proof of America's economic, political and cultural success, the accusations of spinelessness and fecklessness became more elaborate and insistent.
For almost seven weeks, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists and mercenary soldiers have besieged the city of Misrata. Rebel fighters and Misrata's citizenry have suffered brutal assault after assault, but with the aid of NATO and coalition air power, they have denied Gadhafi's regime a key military and political goal: complete control of western Libya's coastal cities and towns. Reports began to circulate on April 25 that Gadhafi's forces, after a bloody fight in a key neighborhood, had retreated to the outskirts of Misrata. The city, however, remains surrounded.
It may rank as one of the most ill-timed feature articles ever published. Peel away the gobs of glamor lingo, and Vogue Magazine's recent article lauding Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, is little more than haut couture propaganda. Vogue described Mrs. Assad as "young and very chic -- the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," who "is on a mission ... to put a modern face on her husband's regime."
April 12, 2011, marked the anniversaries of two extraordinary historical events. One hundred fifty years ago, on April 12, 1861, rebels in Charleston, S.C., fired on Fort Sumter, igniting the American Civil War. That war had complex economic, political and social origins, but taking seriously the Declaration of Independence's premise that "all men are created equal" was definitely one of those complexities. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's space flight on April 12, 1961, is the other extraordinary anniversary. Fifty very short years ago, Gagarin, in a Vostok 1 spacecraft, made a one-orbit trip around the Earth, and became the first human being to fly into space and return.
Within the last 10 days, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's loyalist forces have modified their combat tactics. Gadhafi's henchmen are now using trucks instead of tanks for transport. This shift was forced upon them -- coalition air power has turned Gadhafi's tanks into death traps. However, another new tactic his thugs are employing -- so-called human shields -- is a war crime, pure and simple, and an example of the tyrant's calculated depravity.
Once again, it's time for Candidate Obama, circa 2007-2008, to condemn President Barack Obama. For that matter, the April 2009 Obama avatar should also sneer at the current version -- if he can't find the time to attend a Washington-area protest demonstration. So why should Candidate Id kvetch about President Ego? Let's start with the third paragraph of Obama's speech addressing Libya's War of Liberation. The paragraph begins his argument for intervention: "For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world's many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act."
Stopping mass murder in Libya requires regime change. The first step toward achieving modern stability in Libya -- not the brittle and brutal false stability of tyranny -- is regime change. The international coalition (yes, that Iraq word again, coalition) now aiding Libya's rebels is pursuing regime change because actually winning Libya's War of Liberation means getting rid of Moammar Gadhafi. Despite the White House writhing, the U.N. squirming, the screaming hypocritical silence of the usual media suspects -- toppling Gadhafi is regime change.
In March 1941, Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps broke out of western Libya (Tripolitania) and attacked to the east, into Cyrenaica. By the mid-April 1941, the Germans reached the port of Tobruk and surrounded it. Moammar Gadhafi's March 2011 offensive isn't precisely following Afrika Korps' tank tracks. However, the principal objectives of a military offensive in Cyrenaica have not changed: Libya's coastal cities. Rommel had targets well beyond Cyrenaica -- he intended to blitz Egypt and seize the Suez Canal. Fantasists in Berlin suggested Rommel might continue on toward Persia (Iran).
In 1941, air power gave Japan significant military and psychological advantages in its war against China. Japanese bombers pounded Chinese ground forces. They also targeted defenseless civilians. The Nanking Massacre (1937) demonstrated that the thugs running Tokyo's China war regarded terror, atrocity and mass murder as tools to intimidate and control the Chinese populace. Imposing a no-fly zone wasn't an option for President Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Japanese military might eliminated the choice. FDR opted for a covert operation: the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG), better known as the Flying Tigers. The AVG would give China a nominal air defense capability and signal U.S. political sympathy for its war-savaged people. Now for the overt fact: Most AVG pilots were U.S. Army and Marine officers who conveniently resigned their commissions. However, their public status as volunteers provided a thin veil of deniability that made the operation politically feasible. It wasn't a black op, to use the jargon for covert action, but a gray op.
Libyan rebels on the outskirts of Tripoli foreshadow the demise of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's four decades of dictatorship. But Gadhafi's not gone -- yet -- and the Libyan Civil War of 2011 may or may not end even if he goes in a coffin or on a jet into Venezuelan exile. In comparison, Tunisia's and Egypt's revolts were quite restrained. Popular protests broke Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's Tunisian regime. Ben Ali essentially ran a family mob operation. Skimming billions was his objective. Can't spend it dead. When the Tunisian Army refused to back him, he fled to Saudi Arabia.
