New York Post

IRAN'S PLANS: STICKS & CARROTS

By AMIR TAHERI

January 24, 2007 -- CONFRONTATION or accommodation? As the U.N. Security Council's latest deadline for the Islamic Republic draws closer, that perennial question of Iranian politics is back at the center of debate in Tehran.

The confrontationists, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believe that the Bush administration, in its sunset phase, won't dare launch any major military operation against Iran. The most Bush can do is to order air and missile attacks on Iran's nuclear installations.

That would damage the project, perhaps setting it back by a year or two. But it would also, in this view, enable the revolutionary faction within the Khomeinist regime to marginalize its conservative rivals and consolidate its hold on power.

The New York Sun

The Second Holocaust
BY BENNY MORRIS
January 22, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/47111

The second Holocaust will not be like the first. The Nazis, of course, industrialized mass murder. But still, the perpetrators had one-on-one contact with the victims. They may have dehumanized them, over months and years of appalling debasement and in their minds, before the actual killing. But, still, they were in eye- and ear-contact, sometimes in tactile contact, with their victims.

The second Holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or 10 years' time, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convoke in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Ahmadinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go ahead.

The Wall Street Journal

Making Lenin Proud
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
January 22, 2007; Page A14

"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

-- Vladimir Lenin

Mexican historian and author Enrique Krauze has written that he believes that the "last Marxist in history [will] die at a Latin American university." At a minimum, Mr. Krauze seems to have gotten the geography right.

Most of the rest of the world has stuffed communism into the dustbin of history but, as events over the past week remind, Latin America has not. Earlier this month, President Hugo Chávez officially took control of Venezuela's central bank and declared himself a communist. He then traveled to Ecuador to attend the swearing-in ceremony of his latest and perhaps most promising protégé, Rafael Correa, as that country's new president. Mr. Correa has lost no time emulating his mentor.

The Wall Street Journal

Will Al Gore Melt?
By FLEMMING ROSE and BJORN LOMBORG
January 18, 2007; Page A16

Al Gore is traveling around the world telling us how we must fundamentally change our civilization due to the threat of global warming. Today he is in Denmark to disseminate this message. But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the best facts, not just the convenient ones. This was the background for the biggest Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore. And for this, the paper thought it would be obvious to team up with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," who has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore's tune.

The interview had been scheduled for months. Mr. Gore's agent yesterday thought Gore-meets-Lomborg would be great. Yet an hour later, he came back to tell us that Bjorn Lomborg should be excluded from the interview because he's been very critical of Mr. Gore's message about global warming and has questioned Mr. Gore's evenhandedness. According to the agent, Mr. Gore only wanted to have questions about his book and documentary, and only asked by a reporter. These conditions were immediately accepted by Jyllands-Posten. Yet an hour later we received an email from the agent saying that the interview was now cancelled. What happened?

The Wall Street Journal

Petraeus Time
By REUEL MARC GERECHT
January 17, 2007; Page A19

Can one back President Bush's new strategy in Iraq? Yes. For all its serious faults, his new approach is the first one since the fall of Baghdad to offer a chance to reverse the radicalization of Iraq. But it needs revision quickly.

Too much of this new plan leaves unchanged the disastrous approach of John Abizaid and George Casey, the two top generals on Iraq. The new offensive, assuming it doesn't peter out through a slow arrival of soldiers, or become enfeebled by "Iraqi leadership" in its execution, envisions a too-small U.S. force doing too much. Recent remarks by Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- predicting troop reductions within a year, and saying that we might not need an additional five brigades in Baghdad for a successful operation -- are a frightening echo of the self-defeating, undermanned optimism that came from the U.S. military under Mr. Gates's predecessor.

The New York Sun

The Pfaffs Of the World
BY HILLEL HALKIN
January 17, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/46845

Besides oppressing the Palestinians, turning the Arab world against the West, being responsible for Islamic terror, and getting America into Iraq, Israel and the Jewish lobby, according to veteran International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff, are now doing their best to instigate an American attack on Iran.

Never known for his friendliness to Israel, Mr. Pfaff says in a recent column that the Jewish state has been conducting a "propaganda campaign against Iran, accusing it of developing nuclear weapons … to convince the American public that the United States should go to war against Iran to eliminate its power to threaten Israel." Israel, Mr. Pfaff believes, is about to sucker America again. Already, he writes, American "fleet units have been ordered to the Gulf, together with troops not part of the Iraq reinforcement. An admiral has been named theater commander. The Israelis are ready to go."

Bush's Address to the Nation
January 10, 2007

Good evening. Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror – and our safety here at home. The new strategy I outline tonight will change America's course in Iraq, and help us succeed in the fight against terror.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. The elections of 2005 were a stunning achievement. We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together – and that as we trained Iraqi security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

The Weekly Standard

The Consequences of Failure in Iraq
They would be awful. But failure can still be averted.
by Reuel Marc Gerecht
01/15/2007, Volume 012, Issue 17

What would be the consequences of an American withdrawal from Iraq?
Trying to wrap one's mind around the ramifications of a failed
Iraq--of an enormous, quite possibly genocidal, Sunni-Shiite clash
exploding around American convoys fleeing south--is daunting. In
part, this is why few have spent much time talking about what might
happen to Iraq, the region, and the United States if the government
in Baghdad and its army collapsed into Sunni and Shiite militias
waging a battle to the death. Among its many omissions, the Iraq
Study Group's stillborn report lacked any sustained description of
the probable and possible consequences of a shattered Iraq.

The Wall Street Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

A Heavier Iraq 'Footprint'
January 8, 2007; Page A16

President Bush is set to announce his new strategy for Iraq this week, and the early signs are that it will include both more American and Iraqi troops to improve security, especially in Baghdad. We think the American people will support the effort, as long as Mr. Bush treats this like the all-in proposition it deserves to be.

The Wall Street Journal

'Our Only Hope'
By BING WEST and ELIOT COHEN
January 8, 2007; Page A17

President Bush has appointed a new Iraq team, including one of our best counterinsurgency generals, David Petraeus, to take command in Iraq; he is also about to unveil a new Iraq strategy. The apparent problem is uncontrolled sectarian violence in Baghdad and the apparent solution is to send more American soldiers to restore order. The actual problem is a dysfunctional, sectarian Iraqi political system. Here at home, the imminent debate between the Congress and the administration about the number of American forces is a diversion. We may need more resources, but first we need a strategy.