Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 39

Qaddafi

I’m traveling today. I thought, when I got a break, I’d have a lot to say about Qaddafi’s demise. But I see now that my friend Jack David has said everything I wanted to say -- just better than I would have said it.

The "Moderates" Celebrate the Shalit Swap

Well, spring is certainly in the air today as the Middle East's ubiquitous moderate Muslim groups mark Israel's profoundly self-defeating exchange: a single Israeli soldier traded for the release of over a thousand prisoners -- nearly half of them convicted terrorists, as Daniel Pipes notes. 

I am loath to disagree with the estimable David French (or, for that matter, with Jonathan Tobin, who David cites and whose observations are always worth considering), but count me with Daniel. I respectfully suggest that there is an enormous difference between the “never leave anyone behind” ethos and paying ransom to terrorists. We don’t leave our soldiers behind, either, but it’s also U.S. policy (or at least it used to be) not to negotiate with terrorist organizations – because rewarding their extortion creates perverse incentives that dramatically increase the danger to soldiers and civilians.

Gilad Shalit was never left behind or treated as if he were expendable -- Israel has never forgotten him and has pushed for his return since his capture. But, while I concede Prime Minister Netanyahu the best of intentions, he has precisely treated Israelis as if they were expendable. 447 terrorists are going back to the jihad. They now have an even more powerful incentive to kill more Israelis and abduct more soldiers: a life sentence for terrorism, they’ve learned yet again, is not really a life sentence, and a single kidnapped soldier is a sure chit to be played for hundreds of soldiers. As Caroline Glick points out in this poignant post, many more than one Israeli will be killed because of what happened today -- we just don't know their names yet. And while we can appreciate the rejoicing of Sgt. Shalit's parents, many other anguished Israelis are now coming to grips with the fact that, though their loved ones are never coming home, the killers have been released to kill again.

Moreover, if Caroline is correct (as she nearly always is), the lop-sided swap is only one component of this foolish deal. It is reported that Netanyahu also agreed to give the leadership of Hamas safe passage from Syria to their soon-to-be new perch in [surprise!] Egypt. For years, Hamas has had sanctuary from the execrable Assad regime (since they are both supported by Iran). It has, however, become dicey in Syria for Hamas leaders because Assad’s main opposition is … the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch). It makes much more sense, then, for Hamas to set up shop in Egypt – the headquarters of the Brotherhood, which is already starting to run the place.

Obviously, Netanyahu is under great pressure from the Obama administration and Europe, which insist on pretending that the Brotherhood is a moderate, "largely secular" political party and on laying the groundwork for Hamas to be branded that way, too. But it is hard to see how it is in Israel’s interest to facilitate the safe transfer of the leadership of a group pledged to its destruction in order that this group can enjoy safe haven from its parent organization – which is similarly pledged to Israel’s destruction.

The indispensable MEMRI is watching reaction to the Shalit exchange. Here's a delightful little ditty from a website affiliated with Fatah. (You may recall Fatah as the heirs to Yassir Arafat who control Judea and Samaria -- they're considered the Palestinian "moderates" by comparison to Hamas):

This soldier was a waif born in a shelter as a result of the deterioration and disintegration of Israeli society. A Zionist soldier, he became seeped with Zionism to the bone... This monster joined the army of Zionist gangs, to carry on the legacy of his fathers, the apes and pigs of the Haganah, Irgun, Stern, and Palmach organizations, in order to carry out the orders of his fascist masters. That was the Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit, 19 years-old when he was captured by the Palestinian resistance.

This incompetent soldier became the most prized soldier in all the armies of the world. He entered the annals of history through the widest gate, and his name went down in the Guinness Book of World Records.... The world was in turmoil as the Arab leaders, the West, and the monstrous mini-state [Israel] waged a five-year publicity and marketing campaign throughout the world in an attempt to liberate the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.... He was a focus of interest for journalists and political and military analysts in all the electronic and printed media, while the conscience of those flaccid leaders remained unmoved by the [plight of] our courageous heroes and glorious prisoners hidden away in the dungeons of the enemy's strongholds.

Alrighty then. Next up, from moderate Jordan, we have those those moderate rascals from the Muslim Brotherhood:

The Hamas movement must secure a new prisoner in order to free additional [Palestinian] prisoners from the jails of the occupation, because those who will not be released as part of the Shalit deal now feel and understand that their salvation depends on [the capture of] a new prisoner. This great national duty must be fulfilled, if not by Hamas then by any other organization....

The latest exchange deal was great and magnificent ... a victory for the Hamas movement and the entire Palestinian people. It confirms that continuing the resistance is the [right] path and option [to take] until the Palestinian rights are restored in full, without exception.... The freed prisoners will be birds of freedom and torches to light the fire of resistance, and they are the incontrovertible proof that the Palestinian right[s] will only be restored through resistance....

Fabulous. As you’d expect, Hamas is obligingly weighing in:

As we say goodbye to Shalit, we hope to welcome a new guest, to capture a new soldier, to hurt the enemy in a way that will humiliate and distress him, to pull his soldiers from their tanks and even shoot down their planes, to destroy their vehicles and to lead them, handcuffed, to our jails. This, in order to ... liberate those whom the enemy is [still] holding in his prisons and whom he refuses to free because they have shed his blood, humiliated him, killed the best of his soldiers, rubbed the noses of his crack units in the dirt, and forced his leaders to surrender and accept their terms. Goodbye, Shalit, and hello to the new prisoner who will replace you and by means of whom we will humiliate your army and your leadership. We will not surrender, give up or disdain [our duty] until we get back the last of our prisoners and destroy the last of the detention facilities that the enemy has constructed on our own soil...

 

It's probably best to close, as Caroline did, with the cautionary words of a wise Israeli:

Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists by giving them the feeling that even if they are caught, their punishment will be brief. Worse, by leading terrorists to think such demands are likely to be met, they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse.

Those words were written by Benjamin Netanyahu. It was 1995, and I fear he was as prophetic then as he is foolish now.

Breaking Tehran

The Islamic democracy project is nothing if not beguiling. From Clinton’s Orwellian “peace process” through Bush’s cloying “freedom agenda” to Obama’s contortion of an Islamist ascendancy into “the Arab Spring,” the dream teems with self-congratulation, so much so that its debilitating downsides go unseen and unaddressed. Thanks to the Islamic Republic of Iran, that situation has just gone from dangerously delusional to dangerous, period.

The list of downsides is long. There is the rudimentary problem that democracy promotion does not work. As a national-security strategy, it is irrelevant to our threat environment.

#ad#Yes, democratic nations tend to avoid war with each other. If al-Qaeda were Afghanistan, it might make sense to spend tenfold Afghanistan’s GDP to drag it kicking and Allahu-akbaring 14 centuries forward. But principles fit for sovereign states are inapposite when it comes to global terror networks. The latter have no incentive to secure citizens and territory; for them, democratic freedoms are not values to be cherished but weapons to be exploited. To plot their gruesome business, Mohamed Atta & Co. found democracy in Hamburg, Madrid, Scottsdale, and Venice, Fla., perfectly suitable.

Then there is the unwelcome fact that promoting Western democracy in Islamic lands actually increases the threat to us. This owes to our enemies’ animating ideology -- the one doctrine that gets even less scrutiny than that of democracy promotion.

Under sharia, the law of Islam, non-Muslim forces that occupy Muslim territory must be attacked until they are driven out. It makes no difference that the non-Muslims believe they are engaged in a humanitarian effort to make life better for Muslims. In Muslim lands, Islamic doctrine holds that sharia is to be regarded as the supreme law, and it is a code that rejects core democratic principles, including the foundational conceits that people are free, equal, and at liberty to enact the laws of their choosing, irrespective of sharia.

Consequently, the sowing of Western ideas and institutions in Islamic soil is perceived as a hostile act by the Muslim mainstream -- strong majorities of which desire to live under sharia. That is why, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood’s influential jurisprudent, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, issued a fatwa calling for jihad against American personnel in Iraq. It is why, far from being grateful for our sacrifices, Iraqis say they want us out of their country yesterday. It is why al-Qaeda built a strong regional following when its signal cause was driving U.S. forces out of Saudi Arabia -- in accordance with Koranic scripture, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to set foot in Mecca and Medina.

There is also the perverse manner in which democracy promotion degrades democracy overseas and at home. Because Muslim countries do not want Western democracy, we have to inject it with sharia to carry the charade off. As a member of any persecuted minority in Iraq or Afghanistan might tell you, that is like injecting Superman with kryptonite. Meanwhile, in our own country, we are told the charade’s “success” requires the steady abrasion of our free-expression rights, lest the resulting slights to tender Muslim sensibilities -- and sharia’s strict ban on negative critiques of Islam -- engulf our troops and our homeland in reactionary violence.

Nevertheless, today’s most pressing challenge stems not from these consciously avoided perils of the freedom agenda, but from another.

For several years, I’ve contended that democracy promotion’s steepest downside would be the dissolution of our will to defend the United States from a determined enemy. As the American people became inured to the new calculus -- that victory is no longer our goal, that destroying enemies who endanger us is no longer sufficient, and that the price-tag of our security now includes spending thankless years, unrecoverable billions of dollars, and the precious lives of our best young people in rebuilding the aggressor nation -- they would resist actions vital to their own security.

We are there.

#page#Iran’s sharia state has been killing and plotting to kill Americans for more than 30 years. Critics who see that observation as war-mongering repeat the folly that gave us 9/11: When the other side is already at war with you, you cannot make the war go away by ignoring it -- that only emboldens the enemy. I don’t want war with Iran. I want to win the war Iran has instigated.

It was revealed this week that the Iranian regime plotted to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States -- inside our country and in a plot that blithely assumed scores of Americans would be collaterally killed. The Iranian-American dual citizen at the center of the scheme has been arrested. But this is an act of war, not a crime.

#ad#It is one thing to pretend that a jihadist campaign by a sub-sovereign terror network is just a crime spree for which trial in the civilian justice system is an adequate response. Iran, however, is a state actor -- not even arguably amenable to court prosecution. A state aggressor must get a political response, not a legal one. There is a range of possible political responses, of course, but given its three-decade campaign of aggression, the response to Iran must be military -- and decisive. The regime must be destroyed.

Iran proclaimed its war against the United States in 1979. Ever since then, “Death to America” has been its unceasing battle cry. Its forward terrorist militia, Hezbollah, has killed hundreds of American military and intelligence personnel. The mullahs have been training and arming al-Qaeda since the early 1990s.

In 1996, the regime orchestrated the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 members of our Air Force. The 9/11 Commission found “strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11,” including “future 9/11 hijackers”; its report adds that senior Hezbollah commanders actually accompanied these future hijackers on some of these transit flights -- although our government has studiously resisted probing whether Iran was directly complicit in the slaughter of almost 3,000 Americans or whether this was just, as the commission put it, “a remarkable coincidence.” What is certain, though, is that the regime gave al-Qaeda operatives safe haven when our armed forces were unleashed to attack their Afghan sanctuary in late 2001. As our generals have repeatedly acknowledged, Iran supplies and directs terror cells in Afghanistan and Iraq that target American troops. No surprise there: Iran has long been the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

In the greater scheme of Iranian atrocities, the affront revealed this week is comparatively tame. Nevertheless, it is a deadly serious continuation of the jihad. A host nation’s obligation to protect foreign diplomats is essential to peace, commerce, and stability. To attack foreign diplomats has thus, for centuries, been deemed a heinous violation of the law of nations. Iran obviously seeks to destabilize relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, against both of which it fights proxy wars through the terror factions it commands.

The recently thwarted plot was choreographed by the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, an especially lethal component of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Quds Force reports directly to Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In an intriguing twist, Claudia Rosett points out that the objective may have been to have the Saudi ambassador rubbed out in late September, while the regime’s mouthpiece, Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was in New York for his annual rant at the U.N. And as Michael Ledeen observes, the regime’s attempt to conduct an attack on our soil does not -- as some claim -- raise Iranian audacity to a new threshold of brazenness: Tehran’s agents have been surreptitiously operating here for years, harassing dissidents and quite likely arming jihadists.

Almost all the attention and diplomatic energy futilely devoted to Iran in recent years has centered on its nuclear program -- to the exclusion of its terrorist aggression and the savagery by which it notoriously represses its citizens. Indeed, the dispersal of its nuclear installations in numerous secret, fortified locations throughout its territory is the ever-ready rationalization for refraining from military action: “We can’t count on destroying all the sites,” the explanation goes, “so what’s the point of trying?”

#page#The point is that the problem isn’t the nukes, it’s the regime -- and while there may be many sites, there is only one regime. Take the regime out, eliminate the world’s most destabilizing and incorrigibly evil force, and the challenge of Iran’s weapons program would get a lot easier. So would such challenges as the future of Iraq; the ground beneath Syria’s execrable Assad regime; and the supply lines of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and the mullahs’ other clients.

#ad#Most significant, gone would be today’s worst threat to American national security -- a threat that will become only more dire if these rabid, desperate men are permitted to become a nuclear power. That is an eventuality that will come about in short order if we fail to act. It is an eventuality that we should find unacceptable, as this week once again demonstrated. And it can be stopped only by military force; other options have been exhausted, and they only vex the mullahs -- they don’t stop them.

Yet, war-weary Americans seem, even now, to have no stomach for transitioning from toothless “unacceptable” rhetoric to purposeful action to prevent the allegedly unacceptable. In truth, however, we’re not war-weary. We’re freedom-agenda weary. We don’t want another “You break it, you own it” lecture -- as if it were an ironclad rule that attacking America somehow obliges us to fix your dysfunctional country. We don’t want to be in Tehran for a decade or two, spending another trillion or so to build a sharia-lite “democracy” that ends up despising us. We don’t want to sacrifice any more young men and women to the thankless task of tip-toeing through the IEDs to protect warring Muslims from each other.

All fair enough. Still, none of it changes the key facts on the ground: Iran is at war with us, and the longer we ignore it the more difficult it will become to do what needs doing. Millions of Iranians are already struggling to overthrow the tyrants, and if we’d given them the right kind of encouragement, they might have accomplished that by now. They are a proud and sophisticated people, with a rich history and their own ideas about what comes after the Khomeini nightmare. We don’t have to own Iran just because we have to break it. But we do have to break it.

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America .

Obama Energy Department: The Law Prevents Us From Doing What We Want, Therefore the Law Doesn't Apply

How absurd is the Obama DOE's explanation for violating the federal law against prioritizing private lenders ahead of taxpayers (i.e., sliding the president's Solyndra cronies ahead of the public)? As Andrew's post demonstrates, it is laugh out loud absurd -- or at least it would be if the scheme were not so outrageous.

Let's put aside for the moment that, by the administration's "reasoning," the public could be robbed on every loan by simply "renegotiating" it 10 seconds after it was finalized. What is truly priceless is the administration's claim that the law had to be ignored because "investors are unlikely to make an equity investment in a distressed company on commercially acceptable terms" if they're not given this protection, and therefore to execute the law faithfully (that little thing the executive branch is supposed to do) would "preclude the use of a common restructuring strategy." 

First, there is nothing "common" about these loans at all. They amount to the administration using public money to prop up an industry (not to mention a startling number of campaign contributors) that wouldn't need the propping if it were viable. In the private market, it is fine for distressed companies to attract investors by the common strategy of restructuring loans on favorable terms -- but even there, a company could not run roughshod over the contractual rights of other lenders.

Here, by contrast, we are dealing with a situation in which many of the companies will naturally be distressed. If the ventures were viable, investors could avail themselves of private lenders and wouldn't require taxpayer help. That is, the green energy investor already gets a huge break: access to low-interest credit guarantees he wouldn't get in common business arrangements. The government, in defiance of the market's common functioning, has already picked him as a winner even though his business is apt to be a loser. Even if there weren't a statute prohibiting it, why would we want public officials, at the public's expense, to give him the windfall of a "common restructuring strategy" available to investors who take risks from which government intervention has spared him. 

Second, remember when President Bush ignored the letter of FISA to monitor enemy communications in wartime? Unlike wading into "green energy" venture capitalism, that episode involved an actual obligation of government (national security) and a constitutional power of the president (foreign intelligence gathering) that the highest federal surveillance court had said Congress could not diminish by statute. Yet congressional Democrats, the media, Eric Holder and the rest of the Lawyer Left, howled -- with some even calling for Bush's impeachment. Now they're apparently ready to give Obama that "blank check" they used to tell us presidents had to be denied lest our Constitution's delicate checks and balances be destroyed. Funny that we haven't heard many Holder lectures about the vaunted "rule of law" when it comes to Solyndra.

Friday News Dump: We're in another war

President Obama has notified Congress that he has unilaterally decided to begin sending what will eventually be about 100 combat troops to jump into the war in ... Uganda.

The objective is "the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield." Kony heads up a faction called the Lord's Resistance Army, a terrifying militia that has long waged civil war against the regime of -- well, why am I explaining? I mean, you must know all this stuff. After all, the president's letter says our national security interests are at stake. And didn't Kony just try to rub out the Saudi ambassador or something? This'll teach him to mess with us. Oh, he didn't mess with us? Well, whatever -- "duty to protect," right? I'll just add that our troops will be supporting the regime of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who seized power in 1986, has held it ever since, and is widely believed to have fixed the last, er, election. African Spring, I guess.

Here are reports from USAToday and AFP. Anyway, glad we don't have to worry about that crazy cowboy Bush anymore.

Not So Ugly Debate Moment

I don't often disagree with James Taranto, particularly on legal issues, but I think he's overreacting when he says it was "outrageous" and "ugly" for Newt Gingrich to suggest starting with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd in any discussion about who ought to be in jail over the financial meltdown.

Gingrich made this observation after the WaPost's Karen Tumulty asked why no Wall Street execs "have gone to jail for the damage they did to the economy." James is correct to point out that it is Ms. Tumulty who started the discussion down that road. She did this, of course, because she was dutifully pushing the Democratic narrative that the private financial sector, not irrational government policy, triggered our economic woes.

I don't think even Tumulty was really intimating that people -- even villainous businessmen -- should be sent to jail without due process of law. That's the main thrust of Taranto's complaint, but I imagine most people took her question about why no one had been sent to the slammer to assume the usual criminal process. That's how I understood it. By her lights, a massively damaging fraud occurred, executives profited from it, that ought to be a crime, and someone ought to have been indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison for it by now. In reality, I don't think she gave much thought at all to the criminal process -- she's a left-winger trying to shift blame for a catastrophe toward business and away from government. The image of capitalists exchanging their pinstripes for prison jumpers was just meant to be a powerful rhetorical device, not an assertion that we should bypass the usual rules.

That's obviously the spirit in which Speaker Gingrich took the question. He was not saying that Rep. Frank, Sen. Dodd, or anyone else should be sent to jail without due process. He was positing a competing narrative (actually, building on a competing narrative that Michele Bachmann had posited). He was saying that, if Tumulty wanted to play this game of who ought to be in jail, she should start with the politicians, not the businessmen.

Further, even taking all this at face value, I don't think it is outrageous to make an argument that a politician should be in jail despite not having "been charged with, much less convicted of, any crime," as James puts it. Politicians who are key allies of the executive branch are not like ordinary Americans.

Even if someone is as guilty as the day is long, he cannot be charged with a crime unless the executive branch is of a mind to charge him. Ordinary Americans who do not have connections in the executive should expect to be charged if there is sufficient evidence of some crime; therefore, it makes perfect sense to argue that they should not be maligned in the absence of criminal charges. To the contrary, it is entirely possible that connected pols elude charges not because they are innocent but because their connections induce the executive to abdicate its duty to prosecute.

Since no one, in any event, is going to be jailed without due process, and since people of Dodd and Frank's stature are easily able to defend themselves in the media if Gingrich's assertions are groundless, I don't see what the big deal is. 

With Holder, the Politicizing Never Stops

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be underwear bomber who tried to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and kill its 292 passengers and crew on Christmas Day 2009, has pleaded guilty in Detroit to all eight counts of the federal indictment against him. This is a very good thing for the country. He is looking at a potential term of life-imprisonment and, given the appropriately heavy sentences our civilian judges have imposed on convicted terrorists, he is likely to get it.

Not content to make those worthy points, Attorney General Eric Holder took time out from his masterful management of the Fast & Furious fallout to add:

Contrary to what some have claimed, today’s plea removes any doubt that our courts are one of the most effective tools we have to fight terrorism and keep the American people safe. Our priority in this case was to ensure that we arrested a man who tried to do us harm, that we collected actionable intelligence from him and that we prosecuted him in a way that was consistent with the rule of law. We will continue to be aggressive in our fight against terrorism and those who target us, and we will let results, not rhetoric, guide our actions.

Where to begin? I guess I'll start with the attorney general's disingenuous framing of the controversy. In point of fact, no one doubts that our courts are "one of the most effective tools we have to fight terrorism." In most cases -- particularly those involving material support to terrorist organizations and jihadist cells that spring up in the U.S. and are not operationally connected to al Qaeda -- we want prosecution in the civilian courts. The judges have handled terrorism cases expertly, and those terrorism cases do not pose any danger of shielding the enemy with due process protections and providing the enemy with voluminous intelligence during wartime.

The controversy is strictly about a narrow category of terrorist: enemy combatants against whom Congress has authorized the use of military force (such that Holder supports killing even American enemy combatants without any judicial intervention). It is this category of terrorist for whom Congress -- at the Supreme Court's urging -- has designed a system of military detention and trial. That system is consistent with the laws of war which, contrary to the attorney general's suggestion, have always been the "rule of law" applicable in wartime.

Secondly, if there were doubt about the effectiveness of the civilian court, Abdulmutallab's guilty plea would do nothing to clarify it, let alone "remove" it. Abdulmutallab committed his act of war, or "crime" if you prefer, in front of nearly 300 witnesses. His conviction was never realistically in doubt, which is clearly why he pleaded guilty. This is not a case in which a prosecutor needed a confession or accomplice testimony; this was what we in the biz call a slam-dunk.

The issue with Abdulmutallab was never whether you could get him convicted and given a life-sentence; the issue was whether handling his case under civilian due process rules maximized the government's opportunity to interrogate him and use him as an intelligence source. Manifestly, it did not.

An enemy combatant may be detained indefinitely, and it is not necessary to give him either Miranda warnings or the assistance of counsel during interrogation. Holder says making Abdulmutallab a civilian case allowed agents to obtain "actionable intelligence." The pertinent question, however, is not whether we got some quantum of information from him but whether we got the most information we could have gotten.

Under civilian due process rules, Abdulmutallab's questioning was very short, and FBI director Bob Mueller conceded that he invoked his right to remain silent and to counsel as soon as agents advised him of the Miranda rights. That he may have resumed providing information at some later point, in an effort to pursue a more favorable plea deal, is not a point in Holder's favor: It means that there was needless delay in getting important information; that we may not have gotten all of his information; and that the immediate civilian prosecution gave him negotiating leverage he would not have had if he'd been treated as an enemy combatant rather than a defendant.

Moreover, as I argued at the time, let us grant that the president won the election and that he was committed to reinstating civilian prosecution as our default approach to dealing with captured enemy combatants. There was still no reason why the civilian prosecution had to happen immediately. Abdulmutallab could have been detained for months or years as an enemy combatant, interrogated very extensively until his useful information (particularly about al Qaeda in Yemen) was exhausted, and then turned over to the civilian system for trial -- just like Jose Padilla, among others, was. Doing that would have posed no risk for the ultimate civilian trial because, again, Abdulmutallab's case was straightforward and did not require confession evidence -- even if his post-apprehension statements had been suppressed by the civilian judge, he would easily have been convicted based on the eyewitness testimony. That is, the administration could have gotten all the available intelligence by using the military detention system and then still tried him in a civilian court in satisfaction of its political commitment to civilian due process.

Finally, the attorney general stressed the fact that Abdulmutallab pled guilty to all eight counts, as if that crucially adds to our consideration of whether all doubt has been removed about the effectiveness of civilian prosecution. Shall we then take Holder to be implying that the fact that Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted on 284 of the 285 counts at his civilian trial raises grave doubt about the effectiveness of the civilian system? I don't see how the attorney general gets to have it both ways.

The guilty plea and the virtual certainty of a life sentence for this atrocious terrorist is an excellent result -- one that Mr. Holder is right to celebrate, that we should all celebrate. But it is not a victory, much less a dispositive victory, in the political debate over how we should be processing war criminals. There was no reason for the attorney general to politicize this law enforcement success ... other than that politicizing law enforcement is the only way he knows. 

Iran Plot

I was traveling yesterday and didn't get caught up on the news until last night. A few thoughts.

1. Trumped up case? There are conspiracy theories floating around claiming that this bizarre plot -- the Iranians recruit a Mexican drug cartel guy who just happened to be a DEA informant to rub out the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. -- was probably cooked up by the Justice Department to deflect attention from the Fast & Furious debacle. No way.

To be sure, Attorney General Holder has only himself to blame: under his stewardship, law enforcement has been thoroughly politicized, and when you run the ship that way people are apt to be suspicious of your every move. But this Iran case is not being run by Main Justice -- and I don't mean to cast aspersions at Main Justice, where many fine people work; I'm simply pointing out that if you were an AG trying to pull off a scam, you'd keep it close to home with as few people in the know as possible. The case is being handled by my old office (the Southern District of New York), where the U.S. attorney is a very honorable guy and the prosecutors are notoriously resistant to micro-management by Main Justice. The FBI director is also a straight arrow, as are the vast, vast majority of agents. There are just too many people involved -- good, hardworking people, who would take no part in a charade designed to take the heat off the AG.

Two other points on this subject: (a) If you were of a mind to trump up a spectacular case, you could gin up something without involving international relations, the potential of provoking a war, and the involvement of top government officials who don't have much incentive to go out on a limb for Eric Holder (i.e., the Justice Department does not have its usual free reign when a prosecution implicates the responsibilities of other agencies); and (b) the attorney general knows that Fast & Furious is not going away, so it would be pointless to try to make it go away with a case that will only get a few days' attention before fading from our notice.

2. Stranger things have happened. Would the Iranians turn to Mexican narco-gangs to kill Saudis in America? The Iranians have shown that they will work with anyone if it means working against American interests. Al Qaeda is a Sunni terrorist organization that is not overly fond of Shiite Muslims. The Taliban was Iran's nemesis when it was running Afghanistan. Yet, the Iranians have colluded with al Qaeda and armed the Taliban for what they see as the greater good of making trouble for us.

Remember, too, it was only a few years ago that Qaddafi tried to rub out then-crown prince (now king) Abdullah by retaining the services of Abdurrahman Alamoudi -- an American-based, well-connected financier of terrorist organizations. The current plot can't be dismissed out of hand just because the scenario is bizarre. Once you get past the ostensible weirdness of the plot and dig into the details, you learn that the Iranian-American who tried to recruit Mexican assassins actually is related to a Quds operative; he apparently received a down-payment from an IRGC-Quds bank account (i.e., this was not an imaginary $1.5 million scheme); he spoke with Iranian officials on the phone (in calls the FBI monitored); and he correctly identified a known Quds operative from a photo-spread. Again, given the international ramifications, I can't imagine the Justice Department and the FBI going forward here absent confidence that the case is solid. 

3. Iran's brazenness. It is surprising to hear suggestions that Iran has suddenly crossed a line by -- allegedly -- plotting to kill a Saudi diplomat on U.S. soil. As Iranian provocations go, this one is pretty tame. I related the history here a couple of years ago, and the best accounting is found in Michael Ledeen's books -- most recently, Accomplice to Evil. To highlight just a few things: Iran killed 19 members of our air force at Khobar Towers in 1996; it has had a working relationship with al Qaeda since the early nineties; it was likely complicit in the 9/11 attacks (a matter the 9/11 Commission strongly suggested -- but on which neither the Commission nor anyone else in government followed up); and Iran has been plotting against and killing American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for a decade. Compared to that rich record of direct attacks against Americans, the current plot is no more than par for the course.

4. The Holy Grail. Regardless of how atrocious Iran's behavior gets, the State Department for 30 years -- under administration's of both parties -- has continued to tell itself, and us, that the grand bargain with the mullahs is right around the corner. We're already seeing that dynamic at work again. Attorney General Holder asserted that the murder plot was "directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds Force," and that "high-up officials in those agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot." But, as night follows day, the State Department and other administration officials are out throwing cold water on these claims with their usual tap dance: Iran is very complicated; the IRGC is like a government within a government; there are various rogue elements, so this was probably a rogue operation; just because somebody in the Iranian government may have been complicit does not mean muckety-mucks like Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei were involved; diplo-blah, blah, blah. It looks like we will keep chasing the Holy Grail -- rationalizing inaction in the face of ever-mounting provocations while we keep searching for "moderates" embedded somewhere in the regime who will somehow maneuver Iran into a new era of good relations with the Great Satan. Continued good luck with that.

Issa Responds to Holder's Letter

Michelle Malkin has Rep. Darrell Issa's missive in response to Attorney General Holder's letter about Fast & Furious from last week. The post at her site is here. Suffice it to say that Chairman Issa's letter is not in the nature of, "Oh, thanks for explaining that. Now I understand ..."

Egypt's Coptic Christians

Kurt Werthmuller's post about the worsening situation in Egypt for religious minorities, Coptic Christians in particular, is extremely alarming. Unfortunately, it is not surprising if you've been watching with an eye fixed on what Egypt actually is rather than what we wish it were. Two points to make -- or reiterate.

First, what is happening in Egypt is not, and has never been, an "Arab Spring"; it is an the Islamist Ascendancy. That has boded ill for non-Muslims from the start.

Second, it has always been naive to hope that the Egyptian military -- which has now gone from passive observer to active participant in the persecution of religious minorities -- would thwart the Islamists. As I've argued for months, the Egyptian military is a reflection of Egyptian society. Its upper ranks have been working with American counterparts for 30 years, but (a) as you move down rank and file, what you find are soldiers drawn from Egypt's predominantly Islamist population (which is why, for example, so many prominent jihadists are Egyptian military vets); and (b) even in the top tiers, Egypt's military worked with the Pentagon because that was what deposed President Hosni Mubarak wanted it to do; once collaborating with the U.S. and the West against Islamists was no longer a regime priority, we were certain to see a change in the military's behavior. 

This is not to say that there are no real democrats or secularist/pluralists in Egypt. But, again, we should be realistic: they are probably outnumbered by about 4:1 -- which is why they got wiped out 78-22 percent in the referendum held a few months back about the course of the upcoming elections.

We are seeing dark days, and I fear there are darker ones ahead.