The Iranian Tet Offensive

It is 1968 all over again with a weakened presidency and growing public unrest with the direction of the World War III against Islam, so Iran opens the summer vacation season with its own version of the Tet Offensive.

Most commentators on the Hamas takeover of Gaza are missing the real story. They miss it for the same reason that they have missed the real story in Iraq. They miss it because they think they are looking at a civil war—Sunnis versus Shiites in Iraq, Hamas versus Fatah in Gaza—when the real story is a regional war, with Iran at its center.

The Islamist takeover of Gaza is really the first stage in Iran's new summer offensive against the West.

The Hamas takeover was not factional rivalry that spun out of control. It was clearly a deliberate, planned military campaign. In the Gaza town of Khan Yunis, for example, Hamas fighters destroyed the headquarters of the Fatah-controlled security forces by detonating a one-ton bomb buried in a tunnel under the building. This is more than a civil war: it is a carefully planned, well-executed revolutionary putsch against the Palestinian Authority.

What happened after the Hamas military victory is even more telling. Stories have been filtering out about Fatah supporters being rounded up into prison camps, of Fatah fighters being bound and thrown off of high-rise rooftops or subject to summary executions in the street. Having taken power by brute force, Hamas is making it clear that it intends to rule by fear. Summing up all of these events, a spokesman for Hamas declared, "The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived."

This should all be familiar. The same kind of "justice" and Islamic rule arrived in Iran in 1979—and now Iran has finally managed to export its Islamic Revolution into the Sunni Arab world. Gaza is now an outpost of Iranian-inspired totalitarian Islamic rule.

And there is a good possibility that this won't stop in Gaza. Fatah is a leftover of the old era of the quasi-secular nationalist Arab "strongman." But Fatah's strongman Yasser Arafat is dead, both literally and metaphorically: his type is losing out, in the Muslim world, to the revived Islamist movement represented by Hamas. One side in this conflict is tired and dispirited—while the other is fanatically devoted and believes that it has the forces of history on its side.

While jubilant Hamas fighters stormed the last remaining Fatah redoubts in Gaza, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas responded by calling for new elections. The overall sense coming from Fatah spokesmen is not one of defiance or resolve, but a sense of resignation and despair. "There is no future for us," one Fatah supporter told the New York Times, while a Palestinian Authority official concluded, “We Palestinians are writing the final chapters of our national enterprise.” It should be no surprise to hear that hundreds of Fatah officials have already fled to Egypt. Fatah is a sinking ship, and the rats who make up its crew are deserting it. At this rate, Fatah will ultimately lose, not only Gaza, but the West Bank as well.

Seeing Fatah thugs dragged into the streets and shot by a rival gang of terrorists may not cause us to shed any tears—it couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people—but we shouldn't be deceived into thinking of this as a purely internal, factional struggle. During the first Palestinian intifada, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most of the people killed by Palestinian terrorists were other Palestinians—those who were considered "collaborators" or advocates of peace with Israel. It was necessary for Arafat to eliminate all Palestinian opposition, so that he could take over the Palestinian territories (with our help, alas) and use them as a base from which to attack Israel.

This time, it is Iran—the main financial, military, and ideological sponsor of Hamas—that is seeking to take over. So, too, in Lebanon, where Iran's satellite, Syria, is also using factional fighting as an excuse to liquidate opposition—as in the latest assassination of an anti-Syrian politician. Syria seeks to break Lebanon between a new Sunni Islamist uprising in the north and the Shiite Islamist Hezbollah militia in the south—all with the goal of reasserting Syrian and Iranian control.

Add to this the continuing Iranian support for insurgents in Iraq and new evidence that Iran is providing weapons and training to the Taliban in Afghanistan—an act of war against the United States, not to mention the entire NATO alliance—and we can see the whole regional picture. In Lebanon, Iran has used Hezbollah to establish a base against Israel on the north, which is now matched by Gaza as a base against Israel on the South. Iraq is under siege from both sides, with Syrian and Iranian support pouring in to both Sunni and Shiite terrorist gangs—while Iran has now begun to strike out eastward against the US and NATO in Afghanistan.

In short, Iran is bent on regional domination, and it is advancing on all fronts.

This is exactly the picture that emerged during Iran's last summer offensive: Hezbollah's rocket war against Israel in July and August of last year. The only thing that has changed in our strategic position since then is that things have gotten worse: Iran has been emboldened to make further advances, while a Democratic victory in the US election has reassured Iran and Syria that America will eventually retreat and abandon the region to their control.

If we're not going to surrender to this Iranian onslaught—if we're not going to forget the lessons of September 11 and allow terrorist-sponsoring Islamist regimes to metastasize across the Middle East—we need to start fighting back immediately.

Tired, discredited, and possibly broken by his failures in Iraq, President Bush seems to have given up on providing any leadership against the Iranian threat. Fortunately, we still have Joe Lieberman, who has established himself as the only political figure willing to lead in this crisis by declaring that we should start an air war against Iran in retaliation for its acts of war against US troops in Iraq. What is really new in Lieberman's declaration is that he has proposed the use of military force against Iran, not as potential future measure to pre-empt Iran's nuclear weapons program, but as an immediate act of retaliation in response to the war Iran is already waging against us.

Our enemy in that war is already on the offensive in the farthest-flung corners of its would-be empire, from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas—but it is vulnerable at the center. There is still time for an air war against Iran itself, targeting terrorist training camps, nuclear facilities, assets of the Iranian Revolution Guard, and the gasoline supply lines that keep the Iranian economy moving, all with the aim of bringing down the regime.

It's that—or surrender the greater Middle East to a nuclear-armed Islamist empire headed by Iran.

Why President Bush Has Failed In The War

It has become increasingly clear that the Bush approach to fighting what is de facto a Third World War between Islam and Western Civilization is a failure. The time has come for a new direction that promises victory -- a victory that can only be achieved by a massive and brutal application of total war.

The article below is a long read, but well worth the effort.

A Strategy for Security?

The attacks of 9/11 exposed the magnitude of the threats we face, and, ever since then, one question has become a depressing fixture of our lives: Are we safe? Scarcely two years ago, many Americans believed that our salvation was imminent, for the means of achieving our security was at hand; no longer would we have to live in dread of further catastrophic attacks. These people were swept up in euphoric hope inspired by the Bush administration’s new strategy in the Middle East. The strategy promised to deliver permanent security for our nation. It promised to eradicate the fundamental source of Islamic terrorism. It promised to make us safe.

The strategy’s premise was simple: “[T]he security of our nation,” President Bush explained, “depends on the advance of liberty in other nations”;1 we bring democracy to the Middle East, and thereby make ourselves safer. To many Americans, this sounded plausible: Western nations, such as ours, are peaceful, since they have no interest in waging war except in self-defense: Their prosperity depends on trade, not on conquest or plunder; the more such nations in the world, the better off we would be. Informally, Bush called this idea the “forward strategy for freedom.”2

By January 2005, an early milestone of this strategy was manifest to all. Seemingly every news outlet showed us the images of smiling Iraqis displaying their ink-stained fingers. They had just voted in the first elections in liberated Iraq. Those images, according to breathless pundits, symbolized a momentous development.

Commentators saw reason to believe Bush’s grandiose prediction of 2003, when he declared: “Iraqi democracy will succeed—and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran—that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”3 At the summit of the Arab League in 2004, according to Reuters, Arab heads of state had “promised to promote democracy, expand popular participation in politics, and reinforce women’s rights and civil society.”4 By the spring of 2005, several Arab regimes had announced plans to hold popular elections.

Even confirmed opponents of Bush applauded the strategy. An editorial in the New York Times in March 2005, for example, declared that the “long-frozen political order seems to be cracking all over the Middle East.” The year so far had been full of “heartening surprises—each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing [chief among them being Iraq’s elections and the prospect of Egyptian parliamentary elections]. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances.”5 Senator Edward Kennedy (of all people) felt obliged to concede, albeit grudgingly, that “What’s taken place in a number of those [Middle Eastern] countries is enormously constructive,” adding that “It’s a reflection the president has been involved.”6

Washington pursued the forward strategy with messianic zeal. Iraq has had not just one, but several popular elections, as well as a referendum on a new constitution written by Iraqi leaders; with U.S. endorsement and prompting, the Palestinians held what international monitors declared were fair elections; and Egypt’s authoritarian regime, under pressure from Washington, allowed the first contested parliamentary elections in more than a decade. Elections were held as well in Lebanon (parliamentary) and Saudi Arabia (municipal). In sum, these developments seemed to indicate a salutary political awakening. The forward march toward “liberty in other nations” seemed irresistible and “the security of our nation,” inevitable.

But has the democracy crusade moved us toward peace and freedom in the Middle East—and greater security at home?

Consider three elections and their implications for the region.

The Complete Article at The Freedom Fighter's Journal

'Military plan against Iran is ready'

This article has been reprinted from The Jerusalem Post. Go Sen. Joe! At least someone is watching...

By YAAKOV KATZ

Predicting that Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon within three years and claiming to have a strike plan in place, senior American military officers have told The Jerusalem Post they support President George W. Bush's stance to do everything necessary to stop the Islamic Republic's race for nuclear power.

Bush has repeatedly said the United States would not allow Iran to "go nuclear."

• Israel successfully launches Ofek 7 spy satellite.
• JPost special: US candidates talk tough on Iran.

A high-ranking American military officer told the Post that senior officers in the US armed forces had thrown their support behind Bush and believed that additional steps needed to be taken to stop Iran.

Predictions within the US military are that Bush will do what is needed to stop Teheran before he leaves office in 2009, including possibly launching a military strike against its nuclear facilities.

On Sunday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut said the US should consider a military strike against Iran over its support of Iraqi insurgents.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," he said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

According to a high-ranking American military officer, the US Navy and Air Force would play the primary roles in any military action taken against Iran. One idea under consideration is a naval blockade designed to cut off Iran's oil exports.

The officer said that if the US government or the UN Security Council decided on this course of action, the US Navy would most probably not block the Strait of Hormuz - a step that would definitely draw an Iranian military response - but would patrol farther out and turn away tankers on their way to load oil.

On Sunday, the Israel Air Force held joint exercises with visiting US pilots, but IDF sources dismissed speculation that the drills were connected to an attack on Iran.

The US officer said that perhaps even more dangerous to Israel and the Western world than Iranian nukes was the possibility that a terrorists cell associated with al-Qaida or global jihad would acquire a highly radioactive "dirty bomb" or a vial of deadly chemical or biological agents. The officer said al-Qaida was gaining a strong foothold in the Middle East and that Israel was being surrounded by global jihad elements in Lebanon, Jordan and Sinai.

"Iran is a state-sponsored type of terrorism that can be dealt with," he said, adding that it was far more difficult to strike at the source of an isolated terrorist cell.

To combat this threat, the US Navy has come up with a plan for a "1,000-ship navy" - a transnational network composed of navies from around the world that would raise awareness of maritime threats and more effectively thwart sea-based terrorism and the illicit transfer of arms by sea.

"The idea is to allow free trade and to prevent criminal and terror activity at sea," the officer said.

A smaller-scale example of the US Navy's vision is NATO's Active Endeavor antiterrorism operation based in Naples. Israel plans to send an officer to be stationed there in the coming months. NATO launched Operation Active Endeavor in wake of 9/11 and has succeeded in bringing together a number of Mediterranean countries to work together in Naples to share information on naval terrorism and suspicious vessels in the region.

Sarkozy leads first election round

By BREITBART.com.
Jun 10, 2007.

Voters in France have resoundingly endorsed President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to overhaul the French economy, giving his party a commanding lead in the first round of elections for parliament.

Mr Sarkozy's UMP party won 39.6% of the vote, while the opposition Socialists had 24.7%, the Interior Ministry said.

Mr Sarkozy's conservatives have a strong advantage heading into the decisive runoff next Sunday, on track to expand their absolute majority in the 577-seat parliament.

Control of the National Assembly is central to Mr Sarkozy's agenda of tax cuts, labour reforms, and other plans to try to shake France out of its malaise.

The election sapped support from the fringes -- including Jean-Marie Le Pen's once-influential extreme right National Front and the Socialists' farther-left allies -- and leaves France facing a parliament tilted unusually deeply to the right.

Turnout sank to a record low of 60.4%, which pollsters blamed on lack of suspense.

The UMP has been widely expected to win since Mr Sarkozy's strong victory over Socialist Segolene Royal in the president election last month.

Socialists tried to rally backing for the second round -- and tap fears of an all-powerful "Sarko state" if the president's camp gets a lopsided majority.

"There are crushing majorities that crush, dominant parties that dominate, absolute powers that govern absolutely," Socialist leader Francois Hollande warned.

Mr Sarkozy's backers say a convincing mandate is the only way to get the French, eager to strike and wary of globalisation, to reform.