Joe's Winds of War: 2004-01-19

Welcome! Our goal is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. In addition, we also have our in-depth Iraq Report.

TOP TOPICS

• What indicators would tell us that we were making significant progress in the War on Terror? What kinds of future events would tell us that our success in this war was in serious jeopardy? Our readers step forward to answer 'Praktike's Questions.'

• Making the world safe for discrimination against women? Team Stryker has a long article covering "sexual apartheid" in the Islamic world, and asking if the USA is doing enough to eliminate it as part of its efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq et. al. Intsapundit has more about Iraq moving family law toward shari'a. Is U.S. forbearance a necessary concession that avoids forcing these issue too soon and picking a fight the USA cannot win - or a kowtow to multiculturalist political correctness that will leave half of these populations enslaved? You decide.

• Armed Liberal takes dead aim at Jeffrey Record's Army War College article criticizing the Iraq war as the wrong move in the War on Terror. The key problem? Mr. Record, he says, fails to acknowledge that 9/11 scale terrorism is a binary agent. Our readers comment.

Other Topics Today Include: Democratic showdown in Iran; Container security; American jihadi arrests, cases & tribunals; Free speech zones - feh; Shari'a in the PA; The Fence; Canadian op in Kabul; US, SK agree on Korean base move; NK famine; French headscraves; Murad Kalam's illusions; Islam & the left.

IRAN REPORTS

• Pejman discusses the latest political showdown in Iran, in the wake of The Guardian Council's decree invalidating over half of the candidates for Iran's Parliamentary elections. Hint for the U.S. State Department: rule by decree from an unelected "Guardian Council" of theocrats is not democracy.

• A student at the Iranian University in Tehran pens an open letter to President Bush.

• Kaveh thinks the Iranian Reform Movement is done for. The respected editors of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper think the Iranian muillahs are done for. I lean toward Kaveh's view.

U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING

• Looks like there's some hope on the horizon re: "smart" shipping containers. Good. Container shipping is one of our most serious domestic security vulnerabilities, and Sen. Bob Graham (D-FLA) has been right to focus on it over the past couple of years.

• Lebanese citizen Mahmoud Youssef Kourani has been charged by federal prosecutors in Michigan of fund-raising for the Hezbollah terrorist group of Lebanon. Kourani used a corrupt Mexican official and Mexican smugglers as a path into the United States illegally. Parapundit talks about this case, and the larger trends it's tied to.

• Another arrest for jihadi activities in America... and this one is an annoying blog-troll whom Tacitus remembers well.

• "Tribunals" are planned for individuals like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who were thought to have a direct role in planning and executing the Sept. 11 attacks. Phil Carter looks at what happens next, and the likely role of the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Phil also offers a quick summary of what's up re: the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case, and the Supreme Court's likely decision to take the Padilla v. Rumsfeld case as well.

• Right winger Kim du Toit is mad as hell about the so-called "free speech Zones" for protesters. Rightly so. Tacitus points out, however, that they began before Bush took office.

THE WIDER WAR

• Canadian soldiers launched an early-morning raid Sunday on a compound in Kabul, arresting suspected terrorists and seizing drugs, cash and weapons in their first offensive action since arriving in Afghanistan last August.

• The "Palestinian Authority" has formally imposed Islamic law in Judea and Samaria. ChicagoBoyz describes it as "the end of secular nationalism in the PA," and probably means more persecution of Palestinian Christians, many of whom have already fled over the years. Remind me again why another Talibanesque terror state in the Mideast is a good idea?

• "Extreme Peace Missions" indeed: a joint Israeli-Palestinian team in the Antarctic has been successful, resulting in "The Mountain of Israeli-Palestinian Friendship." The team even has a blog.

• Some recent changes in the planned path of Israel's Security Fence.

• Beirut Calling has a Lebanon 2003 year-end report, covering developments in that region.

• "Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." ChicagoBoyz analyzes the lesson to be learned from Libya's recent decision to play nice.

• The North Korean famine, and some of its potential implications for the situation in Korea. This is about the true face of the North Korean regime. Have the courage to look at it.

• Agreement is reached to move U.S. troops out of Seoul. Or is it?

• Hours after up to 40,000 Muslims marched against a planned ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools, a carbomb attack on a newly appointed prefect of Algerian origin dramatically underlined the scale of France's problems.

• Oh, and guess who organized that little demonstration? Winds affiliate WATCH/ offers a translation of Blandine Grosjean and Olivier Voge's exposé in Libération.

• UNESCO in Paris invites Hani Ramadan to give his opinion on stoning during their conference on the clash of civilisations. Hani supports stoning of women according to shari'a law. Good thing that international multilateral instituions exist so we can discuss such things.

• American Muslim Murad Kalam visits Egypt - and has his illusions shattered like glass. "I fled home the next week, leaving all my illusions of the Arab world in my Cairo flat.... On the long flight home, I promised myself I would never accept anything less than full democracy for my fellow Muslims in the Arab world or apologize for the tyranny that now masquerades as Islam." ...I say we finance more of these trips!

• Meanwhile, ties between radical Islam and the neo-Marxist left continue to grow. The 2003 Cairo Conference is just the latest example of a larger trend.

• See this Irish incident as well, wherein a prominent pro-Palestinian IRA member objects to Belfast's Holocaust Memorial Day.

Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know