Category: Terrorism/Iraq

On Chris Hill in Iraq: “It was frightening how a person could so poison a place.”

I had long wondered why, after a difficult confirmation battle for the post, Chris Hill’s tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq was so brief. A friend (thank you) points me to this lengthy article in Politico, adapted from The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq, by Emma Sky, that does much to explain the brevity of Hill’s tenure, and much more. In it, Hill comes across like one of the caricatured out-of-touch diplomats from The Ugly American. For...

The Nobel Committee finally gets one right.

The ferocious intellect and powerful soul of Malala Yousafzai may inhabit the body of a little girl, but she’s a remarkable young woman who is wise beyond her years. Malala represents what I wish I saw so much more of in the Muslim world — the courage to stand up to the thugs and psychopaths who are taking over its streets and villages. This is where Malala is informative of our own arguments about Islam. Would conservatives who argue that Islam itself is...

Rand Paul: You people got me all wrong about this non-interventionism stuff.

Paul’s shift may be even less credible than Clinton’s, and just as mercenary. Unfortunately for Paul, isolationism, emotional authenticity, and financial puritanism are his brand image. Without those things, he’s just Mike Huckabee with better hair. It is Paul’s misfortune that we’re re-awakening to the dreary truth that the low characters of our world won’t let us ignore them away. I’m still waiting for someone — anyone — to advocate sustainable, plausible strategy for defeating ISIS. The only such strategy I can see is...

See, kids? I told you marijuana was bad for you!

There’s no audio, so you can’t hear him singing along to “Sugar Magnolia” and barking at his wives for more potato chips: At the risk of starting a global conspiracy theory here and now, this video looks like it could have been made at a homeless shelter in Oakland. OK, maybe none of the neighbors really did know they were living next to the world’s most wanted mass murderer, but anyone who got a look at this dude ought to...

Osama Bin Laden Thread

Just a few observations: 1. It’s particularly satisfying in some evil way to think of Osama bin Laden not as “elusive” or “shadowy,” but as “shark food.” 2. I don’t think the location where bin Laden was hiding leaves any question that Pakistan was sheltering him. This wasn’t some mountain cave in the tribal territories that the Pakistani government doesn’t control. It was a house near a military academy in a town right near Islamabad. I was on the fence...

Rumor: Chris Hill to Retire

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...

Your Feel-Good Story of the Year, So Far

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...

Were the Taliban Casing Yongsan?

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...

What, You Mean These Cartoons?

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...

Axis, Schmaxis, Part 11: Iran Equipping Terrorists With North Korean Weapons

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....

I Am Still Haunted by the Fact that I Didn’t Warn You. Oh, Right ….

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...

Commentary on the UAE Weapons Seizure

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...

Poll: Obama Too Soft on North Korea

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...

At The New Ledger: On the New Hostage Diplomacy

I have a new piece up at The New Ledger: 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...