Just a year after the Senate confirmed failed North Korea negotiator Chris Hill as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, NHK is reporting that Hill plans to retire this summer. There has been occasional grumbling about Hill’s performance in office in Baghdad, though nothing approaching the criticism of his performance as a negotiator with North Korea. One of those who apparently didn’t much care for Hill was Gen. Ray Odierno, one of the architects of the military strategy that stabilized Iraq in 2007-2008. I presume that Hill would not have left a position he’d occupied for such a short period of time, after such a difficult confirmation, if the Obama Administration had been completely pleased by his performance there.
Hill’s retirement is some consolation for the fact that Senator Sam Brownback, who held up Hill’s nomination for several weeks, will retire from the Senate this fall to run for governor of Kansas.
Korean-American Richard Cho has been hailed as a hero for helping subdue a terrorist and putting out a fire aboard a U.S. airliner heading for Detroit last Christmas. Cho, 40, immigrated with his family to the U.S. at age seven, and went to high school in Chicago. He majored in political science and sociology at Iowa State University, and since graduation has been working as a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines.
On Dec. 25, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian with ties to al Qaeda, attempted to detonate a bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253, which was traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit with 290 passengers.
Jasper Schuringa, a director from Amsterdam, was the first to subdue Abdulmutallab after hearing a bang and seeing smoke. Cho rushed to help Schuringa. When the blanket that was covering the bomb caught fire, Cho quickly put it out with a fire extinguisher and prevented a major disaster aboard the flight.
U.S. President Barack Obama sent Cho a handwritten letter thanking him for his heroic act. Obama said in the letter that Americans will “forever remember” his heroism in saving the lives of passengers and protecting the U.S., and he offered his gratitude for Cho’s “dedication and courage.” [Chosun Ilbo]
I wonder if Cho had self-defense training. I will say this: passengers and crew certainly seem to been more effective than Federal Air Marshals at stopping things like this. Maybe instead of taking pointy things away from passengers, we should issue them.
Surely even the most determined opponent of the Iraq War would agree that this is a far better way for a war to end than this, or this. It’s not quite over, of course, but there’s no reason for it to go on. No one in Iraq wants it to go on, and most importantly, no one is afraid:
One of trite bumper sticker slogans that became vogue in the last five years is that you can’t export democracy at gunpoint. From where I sit, it looks like we just have. Mind you, Iraq is one of those extraordinary cases — the only case I can envision today — in which direct foreign military intervention was an appropriate way to accomplish that. I submit that the intense unpopularity of the war in the terrible years of 2004-2008 was not so much that the casualties exceeded what our politicians expected before they voted to send the troops in. It was unpopular because the people could not see the outcome we see here. How else could this result have been achieved? Not without violence, certainly, and had it not been achieved, Iraq would be in a state of unrestrainable genocide, proliferation, and aggression.
To all of those who served and to their families, there are not enough occasions when the rest of us thank you for what you have done. Let this be one of those occasions. Thank you.
The AP is reporting that Pakistani security forces have captured Scummy Hippie Traitor Number One, Adam Gadahn, in Karachi.
Grain of salt: this, from Pakistani sources, which don’t have a terribly good record for reliability.
And in related news, there’s some sweet red-on-red fighting reported in eastern Afghanistan, with the forces of ex-Marxist, ex-mujahid and thorough scumbag Gulbuddin Hekmatyar fighting against the Taliban. Some of Gulbuddin’s people are said to be getting the worst end of the fight and defecting to government forces. While I don’t doubt that Gulbuddin himself could bring over plenty of valuable intel, he is after all the man primarily responsible for destroying Kabul, and who got his start throwing acid into the unveiled faces of women at Kabul U.
During the Soviet war, mujaheddin groups fought each other frequently, the but Soviets’ arrogance and brutality prevented them from exploiting those divisions successfully.
By what unhappy accident did the muses of Seoul’s urban planning put a large mosque with a significant population of Pakistani fundamentalists in its congregation smack-dab on top of Hooker Hill? Walking through Itaewon shortly after 9/11 and shortly before my DEROS date, watching chitrali hats and shalwar kamiz coexist uneasily with spandex mini-dresses, Dimple scotch, and crowded nightclubs frequented by U.S. military personnel, I confess to having thought: it’s just a matter of when.
A Pakistani man who claims to be a member of the Taliban has been arrested for passing through South Korea 17 times on a fake passport, police said Friday, revealing problems with the country’s immigration control ahead of a summit of the world’s 20 major economies in November, according to Yonhap News. [….]
“He entered Korea with his own passport in 2001 and stayed through June 2003. He confessed that he was asked by Taliban leaders to collect information about the U.S. military bases in Korea,” an office with the Seoul police said. [Korea Herald]
The 31 year-old man entered Korea under the false pretense of being a religious leader of “a local mosque in Korea.” This isn’t the first report of Taliban and other al-Qaeda-linked groups operating in South Korea, either. This is from 2008:
A total of 74 foreigners were arrested or expelled by the National Intelligence Service over last five years in 19 terror-related cases, on charges of plotting attacks, goading anti-American sentiment and spying on the U.S. Forces Korea, according to classified documents released Sunday. Some of them allegedly had connections to al-Qaeda. “We obtained secret information that some Muslim extremists planned an attack on U.S. Army bases in Korea, so we expelled the people related to the plot,” an NIS official said. [….]
According to the NIS report, eight members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a Southeast Asian militant Islamic organization, were expelled from Korea after a plot to attack foreign embassies in Korea had been discovered in Oct. 2004.
Expelled, mind you, not waterboarded — and if the tales told to me by Army CID or fellow prosecutors are at least partially true, that would mean these guys got off lighter than suspected drug dealers in the hands of the Korean National Police.
Recently, the NIS has arrested a number of people involved in illegal foreign exchange transactions and drug smuggling linked to the Taliban. In Feb. 2007, 10 South Asians were arrested over illegal foreign exchange transactions worth W40 billion in collaboration with a global hawala or informal money remittance network. In May, four Arabs were arrested for smuggling in drugs from Afghanistan linked to the Taliban. In July, two Arabs were arrested trying to supply the Taliban with acetic anhydride, a key material for heroin manufacture, via Korea. [Chosun Ilbo]
Aside from putting most of Hooker Hill — and the awful King Club in particular — off limits, I’m not sure how one mitigates this risk consistent with the principles of basic human equality, and generally not punishing whole groups for the actions of a repellent few. Besides which, if you shut down one club, the soldiers will overcrowd some other place. Curfews will work to some extent, but I suspect this risk will exist as long as Seoul is full of American soldiers.
Another dangerous facet of these reports is that if North Korea wanted to hit Americans in South Korea, reports like these offer the North Koreans plausible deniability.
An ax-wielding Somali man with suspected al-Qaida links was charged Saturday with two counts of attempted murder after breaking into the home of a Danish artist whose Prophet Muhammad cartoon outraged the Muslim world three years ago. The suspect, who was shot twice by a police officer responding to the scene, was rolled into a Danish court on a stretcher, his face covered. [AP]
Wow. Could it possibly have been these innocuous cartoons that he’s all upset about? People are willing to kill and die over these … cartoons?
This Washington Post article, in addition to being an interesting and entertaining read, confirms my immediate suspicions about that shipment of North Korean arms recently interdicted in the Persian Gulf:
Inspectors from the United Arab Emirates quickly swarmed the ship and uncovered a truck-size container packed with small arms made in North Korea. Concealed deeper in the ship was the real find: hundreds of crates containing military hardware and a grayish, foul-smelling powder, explosive components for thousands of short-range rockets.
The nature of the cargo, seized in July and described for the first time in interviews with officials and analysts in the UAE and Washington, has raised fears that Iran is ramping up efforts to arm itself and anti-Israel militias in the Middle East. Israeli officials have warned that they may use force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The freighter seized in this port enclave was one of five vessels caught this year carrying large, secret caches of weapons apparently intended for the Lebanese group Hezbollah, the Palestinian organization Hamas or the Quds Force, a wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that supports insurgents in Iraq, according to U.S. and U.N. officials and intelligence analysts. In three cases, the contraband included North Korean- or Chinese-made components for rockets such as the 122mm Grad, which has a range of up to 25 miles and which Hamas and Hezbollah have fired into Israel.
Among the weapons components discovered aboard the ANL Australia were 2,030 detonators for 122mm rockets, as well as electric circuitry and a large quantity of solid-fuel propellant, according to an account given by UAE and U.N. Security Council officials. The materials were bought from North Korea and shipped halfway around the globe in sealed containers, labeled as oil-drilling supplies, that passed through a succession of freighters and ports. [Washington Post]
The supreme irony here may be that it was Christopher Hill who made it his single-minded mission to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for a list of predictably broken promises. To reward Hill for this stellar accomplishment, President Obama made him the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, a country where North Korea’s sponsorship of terrorism may very well be killing Americans and Iraqis even today. Christopher Hill should have resigned a long time ago. If any further reason were needed, and as if his lackluster performance in Iraq were not enough, this is yet another reason to call for his head.
The Post goes on to tell us something about the volume of this arms trade and the lengths to which the Axis of Misunderstood Nations goes to conceal it:
The route chosen by North Korea to deliver the rocket components eventually seized by the UAE was hard to track. According to shipping records, the 10 large cargo containers left the North Korean port of Nampo on May 30 on a North Korean vessel, and two days later they were transferred to a Chinese ship in the port city of Dalian, in northern China.
From there, the containers were ferried to Shanghai, where on June 13 they were moved to a third ship, the ANL Australia, a Bahamian-flagged freighter owned by a French consortium. Spokesmen for the freighter’s owner and operator say they received sealed cargo containers along with manifests that listed the contents as oil-well equipment.
By mid-June, the cargo had left Shanghai on the ANL Australia, which followed a meandering course through East and Southeast Asia, pausing in mid-July in Dubai, one of the world’s largest seaports. Then it left on the final leg of its journey, to Shahid Rajai, on the shores of Iran’s Strait of Hormuz.
Speculate for yourself as to why the Chinese didn’t allow an inspection of the cargo in Shanghai. Though hardly conclusive proof by itself, in the context of plenty of other evidence, it’s more reason to suspect that China is trying to help North Korea evade the effect of international sanctions.
The Post’s article strongly suggests that North Korea continues to sponsor terrorism to this very day, probably knowingly. Clearly, President Bush erred when he removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism without securing any verifiable assurance that North Korea would end that sponsorship. It was, of course, the broken promise of denuclearization that induced Bush to commit that error, a promise that was obliterated with North Korea’s last nuclear test. Now, President Obama is compounding Bush’s error by not restoring North Korea even after the North makes its sponsorship more flagrant than ever, and even despite North Korea’s use of its official state media as an instrument of terrorism.
The report said there were “several indications that the DPRK (North Korea) is engaged in trade, transactions and activities proscribed by (U.N.) resolutions … and is seeking to mask these transactions in order to circumvent the Security Council measures.”
The six experts said there were several different techniques employed by the isolated communist state to conceal its involvement.
“These include falsification of manifests, fallacious labeling and description of cargo, the use of multiple layers of intermediaries, ’shell’ companies and financial institutions to hide the true originators and recipients,” the report said.
“In many cases overseas accounts maintained for or on behalf of the DPRK are likely being used for this purpose, making it difficult to trace such transactions, or to relate them to the precise cargo they are intended to cover.”
The experts said North Korea likely also used correspondent accounts in foreign banks, informal transfer mechanisms, cash couriers “and other well known techniques that can be used for money laundering or other surreptitious transactions.” [Reuters]
Separately, a new report by the Congressional Research Service informs us that Iran buys $2 billion — yes, with a “b” — in North Korean “military equipment” each year, including midget submarines.
Who supposes that this shadowy international proliferation racket only came into being after Agreed Framework II finally fell apart, or after North Korea was removed from the terror-sponsor list?
American insiders in Baghdad say the relationship between the top U.S. commander there, Gen. Raymond Odierno, and the top civilian official there, Amb. Christopher Hill, is deteriorating rapidly. Old hands say the chill between the two brings to the bad old days of Sanchez vs. Bremer, when those two unfortunates barely would speak to each other as the American position fell apart in early 2004, along with Iraq itself.
What I am hearing is that Odierno is profoundly frustrated with Hill, who despite knowing almost nothing about Iraq has decided after a short time there that it is time to stand back and stop influencing the behavior of Iraqi officials on a daily basis. In addition, I am told, the ambassador believes the war is an Iraqi problem, not something that really concerns Americans anymore, despite the presence of 125,000 American soldiers. [Tom Ricks, Foreign Policy Blog]
But hey, who is this Odierno guy, besides being Petraeus’s right hand in making The Surge work and doing what no one in Hill’s world thought could be done? Hill’s record, on the other hand, speaks for itself. Don’t miss the comment by Joel Wit.
The shipment of RPG’s and detonators to Iran being akin to shipping snow to South Dakota in February, I continue to be curious about the ultimate destination for those weapons. Like GI Korea, I think it makes sense that Iran might have been using North Korea as a plausibly deniable source for weapons it planned to give to Shiite militias in Iraq, or to al Qaeda. Iran, after all, is a major manufacturer of antitank missiles, including RPG’s, in its own right. It gives me cause to fear that Iran is planning some kind of Easter Offensive for Iraq. The more I think about this, the less sense it makes that this could have been anything but a willful effort by both Iran and North Korea to arm terrorists.
President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss.
But the reason I’m posting this is simply to link to some commentary by Claudia Rosett and Don Kirk on the story.
Update:Here, on the other hand, is the kind of baseless conspiracy theory I don’t even like to see printed in an adult publication. I’m no fan of Vlad Putin to be sure and put very little past him, but I think it’s unbecoming of Time to go to print with a story based entirely on one guy’s speculation.
For the record, any POTUS who would pass up an opportunity to assassinate the terrorists who want to kill me, my family, and my fellow citizens in our own homes and offices should be impeached.
No wonder the New York Times is tanking. After all, don’t we already have one Village Voice?
Admittedly, I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I’ve noted signs that Obama’s North Korea policy is headed in the right direction — a far better one than Bush’s, if carried out in a sustained and comprehensive way — although I think Obama will probably do a Chris Hill and buy the same horse all over again the minute North Korea offers to sign Agreed Framework III. Still, my idea of “loyal opposition” extends an elected president and its fellow citizens the benefit of reasonable doubts and objective criticism, as opposed to binary zero-sum rancor.
I also recognize what Obama’s supporters on the left have learned — words are only that until they translate into action, and polls like this push Obama toward taking action:
A FOX News poll released Monday finds more than two-thirds of Americans say Obama has not been tough enough on North Korea (69 percent), while some 15 percent think his actions have been “about right” and 3 percent think he has been too tough.
Sizable majorities of Democrats (65 percent), Republicans (78 percent) and independents (61 percent) agree Obama should be tougher on North Korea. Among those voters who backed Obama in the 2008 presidential election, 59 percent say he has not been tough enough. [Fox News]
Let me just pause here to say what an odd position it is to be on the far-left fringe of public opinion. And if by “tough enough,” some suggest that direct military action is the solution, I’m not budging on that one. Still, give the people credit for recognizing the real danger:
People are most concerned North Korea will sell nukes to terrorists. Twice as many say their main concern is North Korea selling nuclear weapons (41 percent), as say attacking the United States (18 percent). For 1 in 10 the top concern is North Korea attacking a nearby country (10 percent) such as Japan or South Korea. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24 percent) says they are equally concerned about all of these possibilities.
The poll, taken before the recent protests in Iran, also showed that the people think Obama has been too soft on Ahmedinejad.
By the way, here’s more reason for caution about any optimism about Obama: the administration has decided that its robust enforcement of UNSCR 1874 goes no further than asking North Korean WMD ships to pretty please stop and give us a peek:
In discussing President Obama’s strategy on Monday, administration officials said that the United States would report any ship that refused inspection to the Security Council. While the Navy and American intelligence agencies continued to track the ship, the administration would mount a vigorous diplomatic effort to insist that the inspections be carried out by any country that allowed the vessel into port. [N.Y. Times]
Including Iran, Syria, and Burma, I presume (let alone China)? God help us all. The administration responds that North Korean ships don’t have the range to go long distances. I’m sure the North Koreans are welding new fuel compartments into their ships as we speak.
And now, we rejoin the mainstream with a screedy vengeance!
As President Barack Obama basks in the adoration of the media, the captivity of three of their colleagues — one in Iran and two in North Korea — now looks very much like a calculated test of whether terrorism will be restored to its former place as a tolerated method of diplomacy. The new administration’s reaction thus far has seemed paralyzed and unprepared for the test that Joe Biden, after all, foretold months ago. Behind the gauzy curtain of atmospherics, apologies, and sanguine rhetoric about outreached hands, the fists of the thugs who mean us harm remain firmly clenched when they are not grasping for new weapons to use against us. [Me, The New Ledger]
A few more interesting items on this. First, I’m happy to report that President Obama has at least expressed concern about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, even if I wish (a) the language had been stronger and (b) he’d have done it before I submitted the piece for publication. Oh well.
Also at the New Ledger, this very insightful piece by Ted Bromund on the opposed ideological forces within the new administration that could paralyze it.
According to my latest information, which is just short of a day old now, the nomination of Chris Hill was to go to the Senate floor yesterday, where it was expected to get more than enough votes to close debate. Under Senate rules, Senator Brownback now has his chance to go to the floor and speak, to see if he can change a few more minds. I’ve passed him as much ammunition as time has allowed. Now, the rest is up to the Senate. The odds heavily favor Hill’s confirmation today, but Brownback is prepared to go down fighting.
I often hear conservatives say that their party has run aground because it doesn’t know what it stands for. Christopher Hill typifies the rudderless, unprincipled, and failed Republocrat foreign policy that mislabels itself as “realism.” Brownback was the man who tried to stand in its way then, when Bush was in office, and he’s doing the same now that Obama is in office. Plenty in the press see fit to ridicule Brownback for being principled, because they happen to disagree with the principles themselves. History will continue to reveal that Brownback is right, and the rest of them are wrong.
I’m going to contact both of my liberal Democratic senators today, knowing full well that it’s unlikely to matter and that Hill — America’s most conspicuously unsuccessful diplomat — will probably be confirmed anyway. If this quixotic cause matters to you, I hope you’ll do the same. Here’s what I will be writing:
Dear Senator Mikulski, Please vote against the confirmation of Christopher Hill as Ambassador to Iraq until you have an opportunity to study Hill’s extensive record of disregard for the law, for dishonesty with Congress, and for professional incompetence in his dealings with North Korea that have made North Korea a greater danger to the United States. Some of Ambassador Hill’s efforts to mislead Congress about his diplomatic efforts to deal with North Korea are detailed at this article:
Among Ambassador Hill’s deceptions furthered his efforts to avoid raising the issue of North Korea’s horrific concentration camps with that country’s government, which you can learn more about here:
http://freekorea.us/camps/22
I am also gravely concerned that Hill’s nomination results from his personal friendship with Richard Holbrooke, rather than his record or qualifications. Ambasador Hill has no middle eastern experience and speaks no Arabic. His prior qualifications do not suggest that he is prepared for the political, military, or cultural challenges he will soon confront. Many other, better qualified candidates could do this job better than Christopher Hill. I urge you to study Ambassador Hill’s record of failure carefully before voting on his confirmation.
I agree that we need an Ambassador in Baghdad as soon as possible, but let’s choose the best qualified person for such an important job.
Why no post yesterday? In part, because I was pulling together all of my arguments against Christopher Hill’s confirmation for a long rant in The New Ledger. I know — it’s a quixotic crusade. Hill will probably be confirmed anyway, but now I can tell myself that I did what I could. The lack of information about Hill’s poor performance or lack of candor won’t be the reason Hill slides through. Permlink here.
