Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Moratorium

I am going to impose a moratorium on posts that are related to terrorism for the month of September. I never intended for this to be a single issue blog. For great updates from the world's foremost terrorism experts please visit the Counterterrorism Blog (address on the sidebar).

I will only post on terrorism if a major attack occurs. Thanks for your patience.

Bush: B-2 flights over Tehran for 'Peaceful Purposes'

From Scrappleface

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Understanding Muqtada Al-Sadr

To prepare yourself for the rest of this post, this article is a must-read (subscription required, but it's free). It goes into detail on Muqtada Al-Sadr's organization in Iraq, the Madhi Army, which is a large and violent militia - Shiite in nature, financed and encouraged by Iran, and which controls a number of seats in Parliament. In some of the poorer areas of Baghdad, primarily Sadr City, it is the only true governing authority. I have stated in a prior post that the Madhi Army is kind of an infant Iraqi version of Hezbollah - i.e. a terrorist group which has a political wing and also performs various social services to boost its popularity. This is an extremely effective methodology for a terrorist group to follow - so much so that Al Qaeda in Iraq is rumored to be attempting to do the same.

Muqtada Al-Sadr is one of the most influential men in Iraq. If Americans know of him at all, they think of him as simply a "thug" or a "firebrand". True enough, but I would like to delve a little deeper than that, courtesy of an excellent background article in the Middle East Quarterly by Nimrod Raphaeli. I will present a short synopsis below, but it will essentially not be my words.

A member of one of Iraq's most prominent religious families, Muqtada Al-Sadr is a man who saw his grandfather, father, and two of his three brothers assassinated by the Saddam Hussein regime. His one remaining brother buried himself in religous studies, leaving Al-Sadr (at a young age) to assume responsibility for his widowed mother and the widows of his two brothers who were slain. He lived under a constant threat of death prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the author speculates that the cumulative effect of these traumatic events coupled with the stress of being watched constantly by the secret police may have led to his radicalization.

His father was a leading religous authority figure, a status which Al-Sadr has been unable to acquire. However, he is still wildly popular because of his name and his rhetorical skills.

Followers of Al-Sadr, possibly including Al-Sadr himself, carried out two murders in the early days of Iraq's liberation from Saddam Hussein which sent shock waves throughout the Shiite Islamic world. The first was the assassination of the son of one of the most revered Shiite religous scholars on the planet. The father was the teacher of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the most influential man in Iraq, and the son was considered a rising star in the Shiite community. The second was the murder of another prominent figure, the keeper of the keys to the tomb of Imam Ali (one of the most holy figures in Shiite Islam).

An arrest warrant was issued for Al-Sadr, but it was not acted upon by the American authorities. This was by far the best chance that Iraq and America would have to undercut the Al-Sadr problem before it got out of control, and they completely squandered the opportunity.

In April 2004 Al-Sadr's followers attempted to take over Najaf, Karbala, and Kufa, causing a huge amount of fighting between his militias and coalition forces. Eventually the situation was defused by Al-Sistani (the only man with the power and influence to do so), with both sides withdrawing from Najaf.

There is a huge split between the majority of Iraqi Shiites, who have a strong interest in developing a successful peaceful democracy in Iraq, and Al-Sadr's followers (the Mahdi Army). In addition, tremendous animosity exists between Al-Sistani and Al-Sadr. Although Al-Sistani is far more influential and powerful at the moment, he is not immune to political posturing - as evidenced by his anti-Israeli statements during the recent war with Hezbollah. He made those statements so as not to lose political ground to Al-Sadr, who went so far as to pledge troops openly to Hezbollah.

It is important to understand that Iraqis are not united around Al-Sadr at all, and he is not truly representative of the Shiites at all. However, he has enough support from Iran and from his militia to wield a considerable amount of influence. His organization is a direct and existential threat to Iraqi democracy, and will turn into another Hezbollah if it is not stopped.

I will end with some good news (hat tip: Belmont Club):
Iraqi and US forces will conduct operations in Baghdad's Sadr City, a bastion of Shiite militia fighters, as part of the ongoing security crackdown, a US military spokesman said. Major General William Caldwell said operation Together Forward launched on June 14 would eventually move into Sadr City, a stronghold of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and a hotbed of anti-US fervour.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

A True Statesman

Tony Blair delivered a speech on the War on Terror to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council a few weeks ago (hat tip: Belmont Club). It's a fine synopsis of what the war entails and why we have no choice but to fight it. Let's just say, also, that it is quite a bit more eloquent than what Bush typically has to say on the subject. A few tidbits (but please, read the entire text):

There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other.

Still now, I am amazed at how many people will say, in effect, there is increased terrorism today because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. They seem to forget entirely that September 11th predated either. The West didn't attack this movement. We were attacked. Until then we had largely ignored it.

There is a host of analysis written about mistakes made in Iraq or Afghanistan, much of it with hindsight but some of it with justification. But it all misses one vital point. The moment we decided not to change regime but to change the value system, we made both Iraq and Afghanistan into existential battles for Reactionary Islam. We posed a threat not to their activities simply: but to their values, to the roots of their existence.

It is almost incredible to me that so much of Western opinion appears to buy the idea that the emergence of this global terrorism is somehow our fault. For a start, it is indeed global. No-one who ever half bothers to look at the spread and range of activity related to this terrorism can fail to see its presence in virtually every major nation in the world. It is directed at the United States and its allies, of course. But it is also directed at nations who could not conceivably be said to be allies of the West. It is also rubbish to suggest that it is the product of poverty. It is true it will use the cause of poverty. But its fanatics are hardly the champions of economic development. It is based on religious extremism. That is the fact. And not any religious extremism; but a specifically Muslim version.

Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time - in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iraq and add to that in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in a host of other nations including now some in Africa - it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it; it is about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs. Islamist extremism's whole strategy is based on a presumed sense of grievance that can motivate people to divide against each other. Our answer has to be a set of values strong enough to unite people with each other.

That is why I say this struggle is one about values. Our values are worth struggling for. They represent humanity's progress throughout the ages and at each point we have had to fight for them and defend them. As a new age beckons, it is time to fight for them again.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Why One Society Fails While Another Succeeds

Tigerhawk has an excerpt from Ralph Peters' new book, Never Quit the Fight, about the failure of Muslim society:


If we list the cardinal factors (out of a complex of thousands, large and small) that enabled the most-developed states, led by the robust, meritocratic civilizations of anglophone nations, to succeed beyond the dreams of even our own parents, we find that each enabling characteristic is anathema to most states with majority Islamic populations -- and nowhere more so than in the old Muslim heartlands.

We thrive and we compound our successes because of the degree to which we have broken down barriers of privilege, gender, race, and religion. Our societies cherish the freedom of information and have developed, over centuries, an innate sense of what is true and false. We are scrupulous bookkeepers (and the recent Enron scandal in the United States demonstrated what happens to those who cheat).

We minimize corruption throughout our societies and enjoy the mechanisms for pulling even the might down when their misbehavior becomes evident. We do not rely on bloodlines for protection and have broken the tyranny of the extended family (one of the greatest impediments to human progress). We have learned an astonishing degree of tolerance (excepting British football hooligans).

We value education and have struck a functional balance between extending its benefits equitably and ensuring that the most talented are not stymied. We view work as a virtue in itself, and last but not least, we have learned the painful art of self criticism: When things go wrong we sometimes lose our tempers, but soon enough we ask ourselves what went wrong, and then we apply sophisticated skills to fixing the problem.

If you turn each of these points into its negative, you have described Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, and many another state that is little more than a cultural prison. And here we must state firmly: Every one of these failures is homegrown. The Crusades are a worse excuse for nonperformance than "The dog ate my homework." Islam's blows against Europe were far harsher, enduring into the nineteenth century in the Balkins and on the marches of the Russian empire. Islam's failure is in no sense the fault of the West. The development of Muslim societies is crippled by their core values, by the lies they tell to each other and to themselves, and by the cruelty with which they have organized their societies.

In a similar vein, Ralph Peters' column in the New York Post today says that Iraq is the last chance for the Arab world, and that no matter what we do the responsibility is theirs:

Iraq doesn't have a government. It has a collection of warlords, demagogues and thieves with official titles. It's time to put our own politics aside and face reality: If Iraq's elected leaders won't stop looting their country long enough to pull together and defeat the foreign terrorists, internal insurgents and militias killing Iraqis, we should not ask our troops to defend them.

Iraqi democracy hasn't yet failed entirely. But it looks as if it might. President Bush needs to face that possibility. Managing the regional and global consequences will be his responsibility. We will have to fight on elsewhere - with more realism and, regrettably, less idealism. The fools who hope Iraq will fail will face more wars, not fewer.

Meanwhile, the test for Iraq's elected government is straightforward: Can it excite Iraqis to a spirit of mortal sacrifice in defense of a constitutional system? The terrorists, insurgents and militiamen will die for their beliefs. If other Iraqis will not
risk their lives - in decisive numbers - to seize their unique chance at freedom, there is no hope.

And Iraq is the entire Arab world's last hope.

We've done what we could in Iraq, and we've done it nobly. We should not withdraw our troops precipitously, but the clock is ticking. It's now up to the Iraqis to succeed - or become yet another pathetic Arab failure. If Iraqis are unwilling to grasp the opportunity our soldiers and Marines bought them with American blood, it's their tragedy, not ours.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The Central Paradox of the War on Terror

Unlike any prior war in American history, including the Cold War, the War on Terror has little effect on the day to day lives of ordinary people. One might respond, of course, that gas prices are really high and that we have over 100,000 soldiers fighting and dying across the globe, and that the security lines at airports are longer, etc...

As I hope to show in a coming blog post, the price of oil is not related to terrorism in a material sense (although there is undoubtedly a small risk premium built into oil prices). Our military is an all-volunteer force, so if people don't want to fight they don't have to. Contrast this with, say, Vietnam, and you will see a large difference. Security lines at the airport are a little reminder of the threat we face, but we seem to have taken it in stride.

Think of the way that you felt on September 11th, 2001, and for maybe a week or so thereafter. That is what it feels like to be at war, and the American people have not felt that way for a long, long time.

Why have we not felt this way? Because of our spectactular successes in a war that is ongoing, and against an enemy that is every bit as vicious and hateful as the Nazis.

As such, the central paradox of the War on Terror is that increased success leads to decreased support for the policies led to success (i.e. made us safe).

What drives the paradox is the chasm between the dramatically quick and bloodless expectations for this war and the reality - namely, that is going to be a generational struggle more on par with the Cold War than WW2. Human nature being what it is, there is pretty much no way around it. The British angrily threw out Winston Churchill the instant that WW2 was over with, and the American people will likely throw Bush out with the same amount of vigor in 2008. He's not running again, of course, but the spirit will be reflected in the Presidential election.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a more personal note, this is one of the George W. Bush paradoxes that [roughly] inspired me to name this blog Catch-43 (Bush is the 43rd President of the United States, and a Catch-22 situation is a paradox of circular logic).

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Every Day is September 12th

A listing of recent major terror plots disrupted:

  • Australia - November 05 - a group of seventeen Muslims were arrested for planning to blow up targets in Sydney and Melbourne, including famous landmarks
  • Canada - June 06 - a group of seventeen Muslims were arrested for planning to blow up targets in and around Ontario via truck bombs (they had something like three or four times as much explosive as was used in the Oklahoma city bombing in 1995); also they were interested in beheading the Prime Minister
  • England - August 06 - a group of approximately 50 British Muslims of Pakistani descent were in the final stages of preparation for an attack which would bring down between 6 and 10 transatlantic flights in the middle of the ocean
  • America - July 06 - a group of seven men were arrested for planning to "blow up the Sears Tower and destroy FBI offices and other buildings in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington"

Every one of these victories are the equivalent of a major battlefield victory in a previous war, and we should treat them as such. Think the Battle of the Bulge, or Gettysburg.

I am quite familiar with the temptation to dismiss arrests such as these as so much silliness, because no major crimes were actually committed and often those arrested appear to be a ragtag bunch of losers - "how could they do that much damage? They don't look like Mohammed Atta." Think, though, how it would have appeared if we had captured the 9/11 hijackers in August of 2001, for example. Would it have been very impressive? Probably not. Would people have been skeptical? Probably so. Would it have altered the course of history? Without question.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Where Are the Hurricanes, Al Gore?

Remember when we were told that 2006 would be an even worse year for hurricanes than 2005? Remember when Al Gore put out a movie that said that global warming caused Katrina and Rita, and that worse things were to come? Remember how the movie premiered right around the beginning of hurricane season?

Q: How many major hurricanes have struck the United States in 2006?
A: Zero

Q: Was the estimate of hurricane activity for 2006 overstated, by the admission of the Washington Post and the National Hurricane Center?
A: Yes (subscription required, but it's free)

Q: Why has there been less hurricane activity this year than in 2005?
A: "The seasonal forecasts are based on an analysis of sea-surface temperatures in areas where hurricanes form, as well as wind conditions and other factors. The warmth in the ocean is, in essence, the fuel for hurricanes. This year, ocean waters are a half a degree to two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average. That likely will help generate above-average tropical storm activity, but not as much as last year, when comparable ocean temperatures were two to three degrees warmer than average."

Q: How could ocean waters be cooler this year than last year, as global warming is supposed to be increasing?
A: There is no answer, except to say that global warming fears are overblown and outrageously hyped both for political gain and to justify the continued existence and budgets of radical environmental groups

I would imagine that the lack of death and destruction from massive hurricanes is rather inconvenient for Mr. Gore, so I rather enjoy pointing it out. Fortunately for him, there have been plenty of hot days lately - which clearly means that global warming is about to destroy the world. He'll continue to be paid handsomely to smugly distribute his message, and the hurricane narrative will be abandoned as quickly as it was adopted.

See Tigerhawk's post for more detail.

Decline of the West?

Mark Steyn gave a speech to an Australian audience the other day in which he presented at length his thesis about the decline of the West. Put very briefly, he has four main points:

  • Western society no longer believes in itself - "As for many teachers, they regard the accumulated inheritance of western civilization as an unending parade of racism, sexism, imperialism and other malign -isms, leavened only by routine genocides. Even if this were true – which it’s not – it’s not a good sustaining narrative for any nation unless it’s planning on going out of business."
  • The West, and in particular Europe and Japan, is in a strong demographic decline
  • Socialism will eventually fail in a state with a large elderly and dependent population
  • Radical Islam is an opportunistic threat, capitalizing on the weakness of Western society - "radical Islam is only the top-eighth of that iceberg – it’s an opportunist enemy taking advantage of a demographically declining and spiritually decayed west. The real issue is the seven-eighths below the surface – the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and call into question the future of much of the rest of the world."

It's certainly an interesting and provocative theory. I am sympathetic to his theories, particularly with respect to the spiritual malaise of Europe. However, I have read some thought-provoking rebuttals of this argument as well - but I am having trouble finding them. As I have been unable to post anything for the last several weeks, I am just going to go ahead and throw this one out there. Feel free to disagree!!

Friday, August 04, 2006

Good News and Bad News From Iraq

First the good news - Al Qaeda has been thoroughly defeated in Iraq. Ever since Zarqawi's death, the network has been quickly rolled up and rendered ineffective. They are not doing anything newsworthy nowadays. That is significant, and should be trumpeted by the administration. Per usual, they say nothing about it and receive no credit whatsoever. Whatever you think of Bush, can we all just agree that his team is poor at communication?

Now the bad news - Sunni vs. Shiite violence has gone through the roof lately, and represents a much greater threat than Al Qaeda and their merry band of headhackers. John Abizaid, Commander of all US forces in the Middle East, had this to say:

"I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in
Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped it is possible that Iraq could
move toward civil war,"

The problems all stem from Baghdad, where the insurgency relocated after successful efforts to kick it out of Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, and various strongholds along the Tigris and Euphrates all the way to the western Syrian border. The term "insurgency" is kind of an umbrella, in that it is composed of Sunni insurgents, Shiite militiamen and death squads, and Baathists. Notice I am not even including Al Qaeda in the mix anymore (even though they are still hanging around). All parties realize that whoever wins the Battle of Baghdad wins the nation. It has one quarter of Iraq's population, and its symbolic value is much larger than that.

Anyhow, Baghdad is a complete mess. The Iraqi Army has done a decent job, but the Police are rife with corruption, infiltrated to the max by Iranian agents and Moqtada al-Sadr's militiamen.

Which brings me to my next point of bad news - Moqtada al-Sadr has a fearsome milita, the Mahdi Army, which resembles Hezbollah in Lebanon circa 1983. In other words, it is Hezbollah part 2 in its infancy. We should strangle the Mahdi Army in its crib. With the passing of Zarqawi, it is the single biggest threat to Iraq today. It is powerful enough that the most influential and powerful man in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani (Shiite), must strongly condemn Israel's war on Hezbollah just so he does not lose ground politically to al-Sadr. Iran's hand in building up and supporting the Madhi Army is strong, to say the least. Iran wants stability in Iraq, but on its own terms. In the near term, Iran is committing to sowing the seeds of violence in Iraq - and its campaign has been successful. This is why I consider Iraq to be similar to the Spanish Civil War. It is a proxy way, just like Israel's war with Hezbollah.

The next phase of cleaning up Iraq will consist of an all-out war on Shiite militias, which will be much more difficult than combating Sunni insurgents. Not a reason to quit and pull out, but a strong reason to stiffen our spines and respond with fortitude.

History Repeats Itself

Victor David Hanson notes that the world is partying like it is 1938:


When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia,
the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and
Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese
murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak
years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and
condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of
Western liberalism.

It is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and
Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’]
greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in
our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father
Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the
Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and
baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has
never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven
utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike
back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill
civilians.

Finally:


Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground;
yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and
more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a
humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself
against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt
world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic
terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies
under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe
in 1938, just look around.
Commentary:
Father Coughlin's quote above is particulary resonant today, as the world questions the Bush-Blair axis as much or more than they question the Iran-Syria-Hamas-Hezbollah axis. The world can only be upside-down for so long before it starts to crumble. Down is not truly up, although we can convince ourselves of it for a while.

However, we have an able ally in Israel - perhaps they can deal a decisive blow to Hezbollah in spite of world opinion. If they can pull that off, they will immeasurably help our war on terror. Perhaps Bush has some tricks up his sleeve, and maybe he can defuse WW3 or 4, depending on your viewpoint. The greatest thing about realizing that this time in world history is akin to 1938 is that we still have time to do something about it.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Catch-43 on the Campaign Trail in Cuba

Breaking news from Scrappleface: behold, Castro's successor!


This Just In: UN #2 is Out of Control

Well, Mark Malloch Brown (deputy secreretary-general of the United Nations) has struck again. Apparently Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization per se:

"It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism.
Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics; it is an organization, however, whose roots
historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda."
So what? Its goals are similar to Al Qaeda's (only on a slightly smaller scale). Its tactics are roughly the same. In addition, this is an organization which has carried out attacks throughout the Middle East, but also in Argentina and London. I might add that a number of their attacks in the Middle East killed (and specifically targeted) American, French, and British citizens and military personnel - adding a certain... international flavor? See the Wikipedia entry on Hezbollah here. For dinosaurs like Brown, the fact that Hezbollah has a political wing makes reconciliation possible, and makes US and Israeli actions unacceptable and immoral. One shudders to think what he would say about Al Qaeda if they got some nutjob apologist elected in south Waziristan - but of course that would never happen because the people of Pakistan don't have the right to choose their leadership anyway.

Here is the full transcript of the interview.

On June 6 of this year, he spoke out against the US again:

Multilateral compromise has always been difficult to justify in the American
political debate: too many speeches, too many constraints, too few
results. Yet it was not meant to be so.
A summary dismissal of our culture. Upside down because our entire political system is built on the principal that slow slow compromise will frustrate bad legislation, and that a government that moves too rapidly is probably a dictatorship.

Today, we are coming to the end of the 10-year term of arguably the UN’s
best-ever Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. But some of his very successes --
promoting human rights and a responsibility to protect people from abuse by
their own Governments; creating a new status for civil society and business at
the UN -- are either not recognized or have come under steady attacks from
anti-UN groups.
Kofi Annan is the best ever? Ever heard of the multibillion dolllar Oil For Food scandal? Surely you remember - it's the one that made Enron look like child's play? Kofi was the head of the organization at the time of his scandal, and his son Kojo appears to have profited from it directly.
More broadly, Americans complain about the UN’s bureaucracy, weak
decision-making, the lack of accountable modern management structures and the
political divisions of the General Assembly here in New York. And my response
is, “guilty on all counts”.

But why?

In significant part because
the US has not stuck with its project -- its professed wish to have a strong,
effective United Nations -- in a systematic way. Secretary Albright and others
here today have played extraordinary leadership roles in US-UN relations, for
which I salute them. But in the eyes of the rest of the world, US commitment
tends to ebb much more than it flows. And in recent years, the enormously
divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to
define an unhappy marriage.
So of course it is America's fault that the UN is a ridiculous, corrupt, and ineffective organization. Well Mark - the UN is about as multilateral as things can get on this lonely old planet of ours - so if it's a failure... maybe that speaks to the inadequacies of multilateralism? The inadequacies of treating all nations equally no matter what they do to their own populations and how they deal with their neighbors? The inadequacies of giving veto power to tyrannies, not to mention prominent roles on the Human Rights Commission?

As someone who deals with Washington almost daily, I know this is unfair to the
very real effort all three Secretaries of State I have worked with –- Secretary
Albright, Secretary Powell and Secretary Rice -– put into UN issues. And today,
on a very wide number of areas, from Lebanon and Afghanistan to Syria, Iran and
the Palestinian issue, the US is constructively engaged with the UN. But that is
not well known or understood, in part because much of the public discourse that
reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest
detractors such as
Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. That is
what I mean by “stealth” diplomacy: the UN’s role is in effect a secret in
Middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of
the world.
Of course it is the conservative media's fault that the UN is not highly esteemed in America - not its repeated ineptitude and pervasive corruption. I see.

Exacerbating matters is the widely held perception, even among many US allies,
that the US tends to hold on to maximalist positions when it could be finding
middle ground.
But the French never do that though, do they Mark? The US is the only country on the face of planet earth that holds on to "maximalist" positions - everyone else is happy to subordinate their interests to the UN, is that it? A much truer statement would be that there is a widely held disagreement with the US on matters of global interest. Followed by cry-baby tactics when these other countries don't get their way. Followed by Mark Malloch Brown's obnoxious antics.

In summary, Americans are stupid (for not accepting the founding principles of the UN), selfish (for advancing their own interests), easily fooled (by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News), and have caused the UN to fail from a lack of commitment and leadership. Oh, and don't forget that we're stupid for calling Israel's war on Hezbollah a part of the international war on terror, because Hezbollah is not really a terrorist group. They're legit.

For a much better and more in-depth analysis of the June 6 speech, see the Belmont Club.