The Hell of Hezbollah

Great demands are being made of our armed forces, and many of the forces in the UN. But we must be mindful that in winning this war on terror we do not turn a blind eye to Hezbollah. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah the leader of Hezbollah threatened Israel with open war two years ago and vowed that the end of the Jewish state was imminent. Nasrallah delivered his threat in the Hezbollah controlled southern suburbs of Beirut. This is a man with a long history of violence and terror to his name - he masterminded a series of kidnappings and terrorist activities that killed hundreds of US and French soldiers in Lebanon in the 1980s; that’s to say nothing of the truck bombing which called the former Lebanese prime Minister Rafik Hariri (murdered because he was an outward objector to Syria’s menacing presence in his country). Nasrallah is overseeing thousands of well-trained and equipped combatants who are ready for martyrdom because of what their holy book tells them. Syria is a major backer of Islamist extremists in Lebanon, supplying arms regularly. The hidden hand of Syria - the brutal hand - is the hand that is writing Lebanon’s’ tragic script, and we mustn’t overlook that, however tough things get elsewhere.

Although there was some success in forcing Syrian troops to leave Lebanon in 2005, one still suspects that the remnant pro-Syrian military intelligence continues to run Lebanon as a private fiefdom. How long can Lebanon continue to endure these assaults on its sovereignty? It seems to me that America can’t seem to decide whether it is more beneficial to remain allied with Syria and Mr Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime - a man whose position is cemented in many quarters by his continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas – or whether to take a risk and go for the jugular. I know which I would prefer, but it doesn’t appear that Barak Obama is a ‘go for the jugular’ type.

WMD or no WMD?

The anti-war folk who claim that we went into Iraq on a lie might have more credibility if they were not the ones vociferously claiming that if we went near Saddam Hussein he would most likely unleash his WMD on Israel. Did Bush and Blair lie? Think back to the time, virtually everybody believed they had WMD - they didn’t believe that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait until it became obvious to everyone (the Americans did nothing to prevent it) - a presumption of innocence would have been foolish and, indeed, dangerous, particularly with Saddam’s track record of genocide. In 1991 Israel was a target of Iraqi scud missiles - Israel did not retaliate.

The provenance of much of these missing WMD was the A Q Kahn network in Pakistan whose huge acquisition was paid for by the blank cheque that America gave them to combat the Russians (much of which was spent building up the Taliban). Incidentally America has been continuing to fund them in their attempts to pretend that the Taliban are their enemy and always have been. You don’t have to look very far to find these things out, these are all provable facts.

Also you don’t have to look very hard to read the works of several people who served under Saddam and openly testify that he had WMD - the most comprehensive of which is the testimony by Georges Hormiz Sada a retired general officer of the Iraqi air force a born-again Christian. He has had a book published (Saddam’s Secrets) in which he talks about Saddam’s plans to destroy Israel, his attempts to control the Arab world and how he aspired to command and occupy much more of it. Mr Sada also talks about his own role in supervising the removal of WMD to Damascus in Syria because Saddam was worried that the Western troops would find them. There have been many other sources which expose Saddam’s complex concealment plans, and the media have nothing credible to say on this.

Even if it does turn out that there never were any WMD (although that seems highly unlikely - probably more likely that we will never find them) it was universally accepted at the time that he did have them. Who in their right mind would risk such a blithe approach to something so serious? A chasm of tautology yawns at the feet of those who wish to have it both ways with their gross rhetorical and argumentative excess. Of course this path will never be a smooth one - the horrors of Abu Gharib should tell us that, it is extremely difficult to ask people to clothe themselves morally if those who are making the insistence are naked themselves, but on this point of WMD we do know, although we haven’t perhaps been able to prove comprehensively, that Saddam Hussein’s plans for WMD and the rest of the Middle Eastern region were enough to send a huge wave of foreboding across the waters. We also know, and now have provable evidence, that Saddam Hussein was in the process of buying nuclear missiles in Syria from none other than egregious rogue from North Korea - Kim Jong Il.

You might also like to know that Saddam once had a reactor but Israel blew it up - we knew he was trying to acquire them but we couldn’t prove it unless we went in. This whole legality factor is thrown in by the anti-war faction to help build up their weak (now moribund) case for objection. If there are still people who feel vindicated by their anti-war protestations back in 2003/4, I am certain that time will vindicate those who had confidence all along that this was the right thing to do.

A stable and democratic Iraq will have a reverberating effect on the rest of the Middle East too (one can hope), it will put pressure on Baathist Syria to democratise, and also give stimulus to the reform movement in Iran (with a little coercion from the West). Perhaps we can even hope for radical changes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Israel too. Incidentally, would Gadaffi have capitulated as he did in surrendering his arsenal to the US if he didn’t think that Libya might be next?

There is, of course, a question that ought to be tackled - why weren’t the WMD found?

The Iraqi government did present an inventory to the UN stating which weapons they did have, none of which have been found since the invasion - so that’s not a substantive case for arguing that they never were there. As the old maxim goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

1. If the Iraqi government destroyed the WMD that would have been a breach of the UN resolution.

2. We do know now, which we wouldn’t have known without the intervention, that Saddam had a nuclear centrifuge - or at least it was in its incipient stages, which was found by US troops thanks to compliant scientists.

3. It could be that the bombing of Baghdad under the Clinton presidency destroyed more than we realise (or indeed in the early stages of bombing in 2003 under Bush). The consequences of which could be that Saddam had been lying about what he really did have, so the Arab world still saw him as a formidable force in the region. Another interesting theory is that Saddam’s own scientists were lying to him - there was nothing in the realm of torture and humiliation that Saddam did not try, perhaps they were too scared to tell him that the weapons had been destroyed.

Moreover, there has of course been emergent information recently about a plutonium-producing reactor in Syria which had been hit following Israel’s air-strike; it was a reactor being built by the Syrians with the help from expert North Korean engineers. Now this incriminates North Korea and makes the culpable for their actions in securing nuclear knowledge to rogue leaders. It is quite worrying that America seems so impotent in the face of North Korea’s nuclear proliferation, and that they have faced no penalties for their criminal activities. And here of course we have the most trenchant argument against reticence when it comes to nuclear weapons in the international community. The much derided doctrine of pre-emption still stands over counter-arguments – and it is supported by the realisation that once a country acquires nuclear capacity it is that much harder to do very much about it. Any exaggeration regarding Saddam’s capability does not detract from the fact that inaction would have been too risky, and any misjudgement on the subject of WMD should not make our case against murderous fanatics any less urgent.

Don’t get too comfy in your armchairs - it looks like we are going to go through the same thing with Iran soon enough. One thing that seems self-evident is this: a fanatical Islamic theocracy with a mission to restore the caliphate and exterminate Israel and other ‘infidels’ must never be allowed to acquire thermonuclear weapons – and I must be pushing at an open door when I say this.

Hillary's In Town

Hillary Rodham Clinton has the most artificial smile I have ever seen, and I must say, bogus displaying of choppers aside, I have never been very enamoured with Hillary Clinton or her husband, and I have never trusted either of them. Bill Clinton's tenure was riddled with mediocrity; he achieved nothing spectacular in his eight years in office. His policy of cutting defence-spending was itself a good thing, but the American government grossly underestimated the insidious rise of Islamic fundamentalism that was burgeoning in the nineties (his government also failed to capture Osama bin Laden after the attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 - a mistake which has had brutal consequences ever since), and also the dreadful error of judgement in bombing Khartoum.

Hillary Clinton's implication that in voting for her the American people will get her husband too might have contributed to her downfall. To her credit she was instrumental in getting her husband to intervene militarily in Bosnia and Kosovo (although why he failed to see it for himself is, or was, perhaps a more significant point to be addressed). But there are several black marks against Mrs. Clinton. In the first place, the enchanting smell of power and prestige was enough for her to put up with her husband's infidelity (one of the biggest black marks against his name). In the second place, she has been trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people regarding Iraq. Without actually repudiating her original support for the war, she has strived hard to dissociate herself from the situation.

Mrs. Clinton, as the author of some of the more judicious arguments to justify the regime change in Iraq, is now being coerced into repudiating her original position - a repudiation which exposes her as weak and dishonest, particularly as her original support for a regime change was both unequivocal and unambiguous (she almost certainly doesn't believe privately that America's position in the Middle East should be ceded).

In 2006 President Jalal Talabani of Iraq met with George Bush and Bill Clinton and thanked them both for their efforts in helping to liberate Iraq (a man who knows the situation better than most, and a man of whom any country would be proud to call its leader). With this in mind, for Hillary Clinton to repudiate her initial support for the war was disingenuousness of the worst kind

At a time when support for the Iraq war is likely to cause dissonance amongst much of the electorate, it would be impossible for Hilary Clinton to accede to such demands without impugning the methodology of her husband's previous position and, of course, her own original position. The behaviour of Bill Clinton has been there for all to see - he has lied about his original position, claiming that he was against the war from the start just to help his wife in her campaign, a contemptible action, and one that hinted very loudly that a repeat of the Clintons in the White House would be a bad thing.

Now it does not especially matter whether you did agree, or still do agree, with her about the regime change in Iraq (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position with a squalid manoeuvre designed to disassociate herself from her original standpoint. We have seen her these past few weeks try, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it.