Heads and Platters

[preemptingyou03]

Heads and Platters
Refining the Hit List
By Nicholas M. Guariglia
April 5, 2006

Some two years ago, the elderly quadriplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was being wheeled across a Gaza street when an Israeli helicopter, suddenly hovering above the narrow avenue, blew the terrorist leader away (purportedly to paradise) –– his torso reduced to residue, his limp limbs strewn across the road. His immediate successor, Abdel Aziz al Rantissi, joined the chorus of condemnation that included all of the Arab world and most of Europe. Dr. al Rantissi echoed Palestinian sentiments and promises of perpetual reprisals and retaliatory attacks, where all sorts of ghoulish things were to be done –– “hellish gates” were apparently on the verge of at once “opening.”

Three weeks later, before a much promised Palestinian effort to avenge Yassin’s death, al Rantissi, verbally posturing for days, was taken care of as well –– also by an Israeli airstrike. Within the span of a few weeks, the two godfathers of the fascistic Hamas were sent to their afterlife ecstasy. Rather than at last finish off the Jewish state, what followed was a period of uncharacteristic wound-nursing on behalf of the now leaderless jihadist network.

For all the gabbling about an unending “cycle of violence,” and the often repeated warnings of “higher stakes,” more “fuel to the fire,” and the oh-so-scary “blowback” which will “create martyrs,” what became of Ariel Sharon’s decision to assassinate specific individuals was a crossing of both a moral and tactical threshold, achieving what many of the so-called experts and CNN counterterrorism analysts assured was unachievable: Israel found a workable military solution to Palestinian terrorism. The professional slaughterers of the terrorist-turned-political party have dropped like flies, both prior and after the Yassin takedown: Ismail Abu Shanab, Salah Shahade, Izz el-Deen Sheikh Khalil, Adnan al Ghoul, Ibrahim al Makadmeh –– all now thankfully no longer with us due to Israeli initiative.

What has become of this tactic? The answer is twofold: a militarily impotent, yet more politically inclined Hamas. Many were stunned at the ascendancy of Hamas in Western-inspired Palestinian elections (and almost no one expects this to be anything other than a one vote-one time exercise that installed theocratic punks). But now Hamas itself has reached a crossroads: they have come to realize they cannot survive without subsidies from those they want to destroy, as they now have a constituency they must answer to in the Palestinian population.

Palestinian problems that were once the responsibility of the former Palestinian Authority –– pleading with the evil Jews for more money, medicine, and humanitarian aid –– must now be handled by the martyrs and suicide bombers themselves. If it didn’t mean more bloodshed, we in the U.S. could sit back and laugh at the irony of it all: an illiterate, unemployed, and hungry Palestinian man, who elected his own doom, must now wonder how proponents of the year 637 are going to feed his family.

Should this tactic of targeted assassination be copied in other theaters –– or repeated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip? One of the primary problems the U.S. is going to come across in its effort to democratize Arab societies is in dealing with undemocratic populist combatants who opt to put down their weaponry until democratic mechanisms propel them to power, where they in turn shut down all of the liberal institutions that brought them to the forefront to begin with. It is a unique Hitlerian gambit, employed by the likes of elected tyrants from Il Duce Mussolini to Yasser Arafat.

Therefore thuggish theocrats like Muqtada al Sadr represent a gargantuan threat to infant and illiberal democracies like Iraq. Militiaman turned parliamentarian, the U.S. is in a state of de facto peace with the warlord in southern Iraq –– a kind of “I won’t shoot you, if you don’t shoot me” unspoken agreement that could evaporate the moment things get hot with Iran. We have already warred against the firebrand cleric, crushing two of his puny uprisings in 2004 and humiliating his ragtag Mahdi rebels in an ancient Najaf cemetery (an appropriate battleground for such a lopsided exhibition). In the aftermath, we sought rationales for establishing a truce, as we foolishly tried to distinguish pesky insurgents like himself from the “real bad guys” in the Sunni Triangle. The logic was trite: Muqtada al Sadr is a “Shi’ite that loathed Hussein” (his father was killed by the Ba’athists); he “constitutes the majority ethnicity” of Iraq; he also “opposes the Sunni-led insurrection” (at least those that target Shi’ites). “Why not then lure him away from the blazin’ guns, allow him some say and sway, and bring him along with the political process?”

We forgot that the pen is mightier than the sword. Imagine for a moment an Iraq ten years down the road: U.S. commitment long since diminished; senior clerics like the Grand Ayatollah have passed away and can no longer offset Mr. al Sadr’s uncouthness; the Shi’a community, dealing with Sunni insurrectionists, seeks a return to ironfisted justice and views the Shi’a warlord as just the right man for the job. A perspiring, overweight toad that stood no chance in combat suddenly obtains illegitimate power through means we encouraged him to take. This nightmare scenario is not out of the question if we were to allow the ascendancy of such men in a democratizing Iraq. It would constitute an Iranian satrapy in Baghdad, as well as the potential for yet another war with Iraq in the future.

What are we to do with these semi-adversarial iffy-targets? Are we to encourage their inclusion of poisonous antidemocratic views into a democratic process –– for the sole reason of dragging them away from armed hostilities? We must make sure that when the last three outs are at hand, we have an adequate closer who can finish the job without letting it roll on to extra innings. And that requires confronting fascists within societies seeking to hijack their country through means only we, in our good nature, endorse… such as consensual elections.

Dealing with these kinds of individuals must be a primary concern for American policymakers, and we have seen a rise in suggestions amongst U.S. commanders in Iraq for the Iraqi government to establish a policy on its militias. We ought to use every ounce of influence we have to encourage states like Iraq and even Lebanon to disband militias not dedicated to an elected national government. Political blocs ought not to have independent armed wings. If they do, which is commonplace for exile groups, they ought not to be maintained for a prolonged period of time and should be encouraged to incorporate themselves into the new national army. Imagine for a moment an exclusively Republican-backed militia roaming the streets of liberal American towns enforcing conservative values on the populace, or vice versa. It is inherently undemocratic and particularly unhealthy for newborn democracies.

We should hope Iraqi police end up one day arresting Muqtada al Sadr, who is wanted for murder after all. But if the Iraqis do not take up this initiative and disband, disarm, or incorporate his militia, a policy of targeted assassination for the cleric and his top aids may be called for –– either immediately prior, during, or instantly after the bombs start raining down on Iran. This could fall to us as our responsibility, whereas the Israelis may be forced to make the same decisions yet again for the new Hamas chief, Ismail Haniya, as well as Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. One could assume there would be a joint agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv, and each respective killing would occur near simultaneously.

Could we assassinate such people –– and would we? Taking out Haniya is an option the Israelis have already publicly considered. Nasrallah, on the other hand, has seats in what we consider a successful story of Lebanese democratization. And of course there are those in Dawa, the Iraqi political party, with ties to al Sadr and his band of cohorts. The question of who’d fill their vacuum must first be answered before we consider such an option. But any question as to whether we can is different: we are not dealing with al Qaida-like characters, where we are looking for them and may not know where they are. We know exactly where these people are, where they eat, where they pray, and what houses and wives they frequent. We have thus far opted to spare them, hoping their militant ties to Iran could be undermined if they were to partake in politics.

But the hour is drawing closer. In a perfect world, uranium enrichment by the mullahs would cease, Arab warlords and militiamen would suddenly experience spiritual epiphanies and become overwhelmed with values derived from the Enlightenment, and we could all work together, achieve our commonalities, and perhaps even roast some marshmallows. Sadly the world is imperfect and this postmodernist view of war as something that it is not is highly perilous.

Iranian-armed, funded, and subsidized proxies and surrogates –– in Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, and elsewhere –– wholeheartedly oppose a mature Middle East, as well as Shi’ite governance that distances itself from Khomeinism (which explains all their vexing over a constitutional Iraq). We need to accept this with a sense of soberness, while understanding those under the influence of Tehran will go bananas in the immediate aftermath of a potential conflict. Without realizing it, we are steamrolling toward a Michael Corleone dilemma, where if we fail with these rogues diplomatically, we may end up having to settle family business quite violently.
http://www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/Guariglia_20060525_01.htm

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