by Michael Rubin*

It’s been nearly two months since the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) sparked an international crisis with a major attack inside Turkey, and more than six weeks since President Bush promised Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Washington would aid Turkey’s fight against terrorism. Heady talk of intelligence sharing and cooperation followed and, indeed, may have been a factor in this weekend’s Turkish air strikes on PKK targets in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yet at the same time the Bush administration — more precisely its increasingly assertive State Department — has embraced an ill-advised diplomatic strategy toward the PKK that will likely backfire on our long-standing NATO ally, and could serve to undermine what is left of President Bush’s “global war on terrorism.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I’m almost willing to believe pigs can fly:

… Fresh from a four-day visit to Iraq and Kuwait, John Murtha said: “I think the ’surge’ is working.” …

Why would Murtha think the surge is working? From the AP:

The number of Iraqis killed last month fell to 718, an Associated Press tally showed, the lowest monthly death toll since just before the 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine provoked a vicious cycle of retaliatory sectarian violence. …

It was the third consecutive monthly decline in the death toll of Iraqi civilians and security forces since August, when a massive suicide bombing targeting minority Yazidis in northern Iraq helped push the figure to at least 1,956. …

The number of U.S. troop deaths also declined for the sixth consecutive month, with at least 37 recorded in November, according to an AP tally based on military figures. That was the lowest number since March 2006, when 31 American service members died. …

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By Jonathan Spyer

The possible emergence of a nuclear-armed, Islamist Iran committed to the destruction of the Jewish state is the key security issue currently occupying the attention of Israel’s political and security elite. It is one of the few issues upon which there is near (but not total) consensus. Israel has watched the growing power of radical elements within the Iranian ruling elite in the last half-decade with concern. These elements, of which President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the most prominent representative, openly reject Israel’s right to exist. Ahmedinejad’s comments advocating Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust are part of a larger project to recover the original fervour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The expansion of Iran’s regional role is also part of this, and Israeli strategists note that the influence of Iran in all areas of key strategic concern to Israel is being felt, in a negative way. Iran’s alliance with Syria underwrites Damascus’s increasingly bellicose stance. Iran’s creation and sponsorship of Hizbullah has enabled it to come to constitute the powerful militia opponent seen in last year’s war. Iranian assistance to Hamas and Islamic jihad may be in the process of turning these organisations into analogous forces.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

After suffering through endless reports of bad news from Iraq, it has been gratifying to hear some good news over the last few months. Civilian deaths are down, U.S. troop casualties are down, Sunnis are turning away from al-Qaeda, Iraqi refugees are coming home, the Iraqi government is starting to reign in Shiite militias, and this weekend, a Sunni group won a battle against al-Qaeda:

A Sunni faction has killed 18 al-Qaeda militants in an attack on a compound near the Iraqi city of Samarra, police have said.

Another 16 al-Qaeda members were said to have been captured in the attack.

The Sunni Islamic Army of Iraq - once part of the insurgency against US-led forces - said its fighters attacked the compound east of the city.

The faction is one of several Sunni former insurgent groups that have now turned against al-Qaeda. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… such direct and public allegations are unprecedented and may indicate growing confidence on the part of the [Iraqi] authorities that they can take on the [Sadr] militia. …

Is the BBC acknowledging that the Iraqi government is starting to reign in Shiite militias? I’ll take this as good news:

Iraqi police say the powerful Mehdi Army militia has been involved in killing of hundreds of people in the mainly Shia Muslim province of Karbala.

Maj Gen Raid Shaker told a public meeting the militia of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr had brought four years of terror and anarchy causing 670 deaths.

His allegations were backed by scores of angry people attending the meeting. …

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by Daniel Pipes*

The surge of U.S. troops in Baghdad is succeeding but deeper structural problems continue to plague the American presence in Iraq. The country’s largest dam, 40 kilometers northwest of Mosul, near the Turkish border, spectacularly symbolizes this predicament.

Just after occupying Iraq in April 2003, a report found that Mosul Dam’s foundation was “leaking like a sieve and ready to collapse.” A more recent, still-classified report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concludes that “The dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability.” More explicitly, the corps finds the current probability of failure to be “exceptionally high.” A senior aid worker calls the dam “a time bomb waiting to go off.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

While it is too soon to make a judgment long-term, short-term Dubya’s troop surge is working. Civilian deaths are down, U.S. troop casualties are down, Sunnis are turning away from al-Qaeda, and now, Iraqi refugees are coming home:

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

… the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal al-Qaida control — the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.

The uprising originated in Iraq’s west and flowed into the capital. Earlier this year, the Sunni tribes and clans in the vast Anbar province began their own revolt and have successfully rid the largely desert region of al-Qaida control. …

And as 30,000 additional U.S. forces arrived for the crackdown in Baghdad and central Iraq, the American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, began stationing many of them in neighborhood outposts. The mission was not only to take back control but to foster neighborhood groups like the one in Khadra to shake off al-Qaida’s grip. …

We call it “neighborhood watch.” Iraqis are sharp. They’ll catch on.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Good news from Iraq. Fewer U.S. troops and fewer civilians are being killed. Support for both Shiite and Sunni terrorists seems to be on the decline, also. First, the Beeb:

The number of violent civilian and military deaths in Iraq has continued to drop, figures for October suggest.

There is no single reliable source for statistics but a number agree on a marked improvement, correspondents say.

They say this is generally attributed to the US and Iraqi troop surge in and around Baghdad that began in February.

Analysts say other key factors are the halt in operations by Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr and the abandonment of al-Qaeda by some western Sunni tribes.

The BBC’s Jim Muir Baghdad says different sources do have different casualty figures for October but they all agree that the number of Iraqis killed by violence was again at a much lower level, as it had been in September. …

Then, the AP:

The monthly toll of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq is on track to being the lowest in nearly two years, with at least 36 troop deaths recorded as of Tuesday…

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by Daniel Pipes*

About 100,000 Turkish troops, backed by aircraft and tanks, are poised to enter Iraq for counterterrorism purposes. But once there, they might just stay permanently, occupying the Mosul area, leading to dangerous regional consequences.

To understand this danger requires a refresher in Turkish irredentist ambitions harking back to the 1920s. The Ottoman Empire emerged from World War I on the losing side, a predicament codified in 1920 by the Treaty of Sèvres imposed on it by the victorious Allies. The treaty placed some Ottoman territory under international control and much of the rest under separate Armenian, French, Greek, Italian, and Kurdish control, leaving Turkish rule to continue only in a northwest Anatolian statelet.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

…When they [Iraqi women] learned recruits were being sought, Genan, Kadmia, 35, and Fatma, 27, said they jumped at the chance. …

They also felt emboldened, they said, by seeing women among the U.S. troops patrolling and fighting in Ramadi’s streets.

“They left their children at home, not a few houses away, but thousands of miles away,” Genan said. “If American women can do it, we can do it.” …

- AP

These brave Iraqi women have overcome Islamic cultural taboos to serve their nation and bring home the bacon (not the PC term for making money, I’m sure) — $500.00/month. U.S. attempts to recruit new soldiers into the Iraqi security services are going well in Ramadi in Anbar province. The new recruits include fourteen women:

… One of the trainers at the academy, 2nd Lt. Kristy Goddard, 29, of Oscaloosa, Iowa, said she and her colleagues weren’t ready for the women to be so well-prepared and enthusiastic.

“They studied ahead of time,” she said. “They were way motivated. They knew there would be a lot of obstacles to overcome and they wanted to do it anyway.” …

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By Phyllis Chesler

So, there I am, sitting in what I had hoped might be an escape movie when I realized that I was watching one more extended Hollywood commercial against the war in Iraq. Alright, it’s a free country for those who’ve got money to burn and this movie, “The Valley of Elah,” was brilliantly acted by three Academy-Award winners: Tommie Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon.

War is hell and it wounds both the victims and perpetrators; this is the film’s focus. War robs human beings of both their humanity and their sanity. Soldiers and combatants become less-than-human; many can never recover from this infernal assault. What war makes people do is something they cannot easily, if ever, recover from. This is the film‘s major point. At film’s end, Jones hoists the American flag upside down to signify that American foreign policy and the armed forces are “upside down,” screwed up, and that we need to be rescued from ourselves.

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by William Bache*

The President of the United States expressed his desire to build a democratic Iraq that could serve as an example to the rest of the Arab and Islamic nations. The American military was the instrument chosen to build an Iraqi security structure that could fight terrorism and still promote ethical leaders and democratic values. However, efforts to transfer American military values to Iraq have been a failure. The leaders of the Iraqi Joint Security Forces have politely listened to what the Americans have determined is best for them and then have gone back to doing what they feel is best for them—namely situational leadership, corruption, and human rights violations.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The number of American troops and Iraqi civilians killed in the war fell in September to levels not seen in more than a year. The U.S. military said the lower count was at least partly a result of new strategies and 30,000 additional U.S. forces deployed this year. …

More dramatic, however, was the decline in Iraqi civilian, police and military deaths. The figure was 988 in September — 50 percent lower than the previous month and the lowest tally since June 2006, when 847 Iraqis died. …

- AP, 10/1/07

Despite the constant bad news, there have been indications that the troop surge is helping to stabilize Iraq. But politicians like Joe Biden haven’t let facts get in the way. He’s thrown gasoline on the fire, suggesting Iraq be Balkanized into Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni regions. Even the top Democratic contenders for the 2008 presidential race have “conceded [that] they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013,” affirming how important Iraq’s stability is to the American people. Biden is already back-peddling:

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by Bill Levinson

There is an outstanding scene in one of the Karate Kid movies in which a corrupt martial arts instructor’s students finally recognize his dishonesty and lack of character, throw their belts at his feet, and walk away in disgust. Almost half of the Senate’s Democrats and two thirds of the House’s Democrats have just done the same with MoveOn.org. These include former MoveOn.org candidates Bob Casey (PA), Bill Nelson (FL), Patrick Murphy (PA-08) and Nick Lampson (TX-22). This is the long-awaited break in the ranks that marks the end of MoveOn.org. It shows that many if not most Democrats are now more afraid of public opinion and common decency than they are of MoveOn.org’s organizing capabilities and George Soros’ money.

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by Ibrahim Al-Marashi*

In 1921, the Iraqi Army was established in the British mandate, which had weak democratic institutions at the time of the first insurgency. The Iraqi public saw that its destiny was controlled by the British, whom it believed sought to exploit the country’s natural resources. In a backlash of nationalism, the public projected its aspirations for complete independence on the growing army. After 2003, the Americans reestablished an army in a state with weak democratic institutions during a period of civil internal conflict, and 82 years after the British mandate, the United States controlled Iraq’s destiny. Both the United Kingdom and the United States faced the same difficulties and produced the same reactions among the Iraqi public as they tried to create an Iraqi Army from “scratch.”

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