Discovery Blog

An unnamed State Department official says that Koshin Mohamed, a 28 year old small businessman in Seattle, “may know” President Yusuf of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia and may have a letter that supposedly designates Mohamed as a “Special Representative” of the President, but he “has no bona fides.” What would bona fides be? Maybe if Mohamed were named “ambassador”? Of course, but, you see, the United States—though it funded the TFG of Somalia’s efforts to oust the Islamic Courts group that held Mogadishu and had ties to al Qaeda—is not prepared to help the TFG govern. Aid is tied up and the State Department makes clear that it wants to deal directly with TFG offices in Africa, not through some representative in the U.S. There will be no official recognition of the government for at least several months.

All of this is spelled out in a rather objective article by Nina Shapiro today in the Seattle Weekly. What is lacking, however, is awareness that the reason the State Department doesn’t want to deal with anyone in the U.S.--such as Koshin Mohamed-- is that such a person would largely spend his time mobilizing U.S. political support for the Somali government. Most likely, the State Department would just as soon avoid dealing with that pressure. Under the present circumstances, the disorganized Somali community in the U.S. (it’s a typical new immigrant group , after all) has little way to influence the U.S. policy makers. Koshin Mohamed, moreover, is using his own modest funds to take Somalia's problems to Capitol Hill and, thanks to former Sen. Slade Gorton, is lining up support for the TFG there. The State Department would just as soon also keep Congress from meddling in foreign affairs, one supposes.

That’s all very well for the State Department. You can understand why they would like to conduct their diplomacy on Somalia without interference or influence from the U.S. Who needs to talk with foreign ambassadors anymore anyhow? We are in the real time communication world now and you don’t have to get President Yusuf’s views from a representative in the U.S. You can get it from him directly with a phone call. Given realities in Mogadishu, the TFG is vulnerable to whatever strictures the State Department wants to put on prospective aid. The TFG can hardly complain publicly, because the U.S. superpower is just about its only hope. The Yusuf government has support and recognition from the European Union and African and Arab states, but that doesn’t include hard cash.

Well, there would be nothing seriously wrong with this ambiguous situation if the State Department were moving fast to supply assistance to the TFG and if Somalis meanwhile were not suffering. But aid is not moving fast and Somalia is suffering. The anti-terrorist cause is to that extent imperiled.

Under U.S. influence, the TFG plans to hold a peace conference this spring that will include all the pro-democratic forces. But it appears that meanwhile very little aid is being provided to the TFG. Without timely backing the TFG could collapse as Islamist terrorists reorganize. At that point, there would be no need to recognize the Yusuf government, would there? The cause of freedom in Somalia would be lost and we could return to a strictly military approach in the Horn of Africa or, more likely, malign neglect.

Koshin Mohamed has no reason to be embarrassed that the U.S. State Department doesn’t officially recognize the government of Somalia or even unofficially recognize him. It is the State Department that should be embarrassed that its Somalia policy is so vague and confused. If they don’t want to deal with Koshin Mohamed, with whom do they want to deal? If they don’t want to help the TFG provide stable services in the struggling country, how do they think Somalia is going to become stabl--and when? Tell us: even “off the record”!

An op-ed by U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad in the Washington Post is an example of the kind of under-reported story that characterizes the current war. Most war headlines are about sectarian killings, but every shade of responsible domestic political opinion in America—that is, opinion that doesn’t intentionally seek a defeat for the United States and the Coalition—acknowledges that a political settlement is imperative. Those who want the U.S. to depart almost at once and those who want to stay as long as necessary to secure the country from chaos should all salute the progress over oil-revenue sharing.

The foes of the invasion said it was all about oil. They were wrong. It was and is about security. But oil is key to that security—within Iraq itself.

Photo: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad, July 18, 2006. (©AP/WWP)

For some reason, though the main political controversy in the U.S. is over whether the “Surge” to add 20,000 troops to Baghdad is a good idea, news reports by American media from Iraq make relatively little mention of new preparations to secure the capital city. Terrorist attacks inside and outside the city continue and are well-covered, as they should be, but we don’t hear much of the kind of information President Bush just shared with the American Legion’s annual convention in Washington, D.C.

The Surge already is getting underway and about half the 40 new 24 hour “Joint Security Stations” for U.S. and Iraqi soldiers already have been erected. Sadr City, the poor Shia district of 1,000,000 presided over by Muqtada al Sadr, is no longer off limits to the G.I.’s and the Americans are finding plenty of ammunition and weapons caches there and have arrested 700 suspects. Elsewhere a number of Sunni terrorists have been arrested (and this is making the news). Overall, killing within Baghdad is lower than in earlier periods.

The President calls it the “Battle for Baghdad,” and it is vitally important to the outcome of the war. It deserves a great deal of fine grain attention.

I hate taking “news” straight out of a White House “Fact Sheet,” but some of this is just not appearing in the MSM yet.

It is hard for people who live in an opinion balloon to see that they do. All they see is what’s inside the balloon. The current case is the relentless, daily media and political assault on American prosecution of the war in Iraq, and, really, all parts of the war on terrorists. The innuendo, the mood, the leitmotif of every single day’s newspaper and broadcast is that America is in a hopeless war in which our very involvement is both imprudent and immoral, and that Americans’ rights (thanks to the Patriot Act, etc.) are being undermined, as are the human rights of accused terrorists. There is no satisfaction in these quarters when criminal terrorists are captured, tried and convicted. Those are small stories and almost insignificant. The same goes for U.S. achievements in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. The major success in Somalia has been nearly ignored.

And there is no alternative scenario. Once we stop going after terrorists, they, presumably will just go away.

One of the oddities is that when American troops kill terrorists the new stories sometimes only refer to them as “Iraqis”, or even “civilians”, or maybe “suspected terrorists.” As mentioned before in this space, days when there is no news of American deaths in Baghdad should be noteworthy; but they are ignored.

Ours is a civilization increasingly manipulated by people on the cultural left who disapprove of it profoundly. They have support in the media, academia, the foundations, the courts and even the bureaucracy. But they are all living in a balloon, a kind of malign Truman Show. They are not willing to confront the real challenge—well-funded and varied forms of Islamist extremism—so they turn on their own government and society, a target they can’t miss. Their government and fellow Americans don’t fight back the way the real enemy does. So, if you lack the resolve and courage to criticize the true foe, criticize the people who do fight them. It’s like a scene where neighbors attack the firefighters trying to put out a house fire, or the occasional incidence of swimmers heedlessly grabbing hold of a lifeguard who is trying to rescue people in the water. Odd, perverse, but it does happen.

Senator Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, alluded to this perversity in a speech just made to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (brought to my attention by Peter Wehner in the White House). Contrary to his recent press treatment, Sen. Lieberman has long been a staunch Democrat, and a real partisan when he ran for Vice President with Al Gore. But we are at war. He knows it. He is not confused about the difference between the fireman and the fire.

“There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism. There is something profoundly wrong when there is so much distrust of our intelligence community that some Americans doubt the plain and ominous facts about the threat to us posed by Iran. And there is something profoundly wrong when, in the face of attacks by radical Islam, we think we can find safety and stability by pulling back, by talking to and accommodating our enemies, and abandoning our friends and allies. Some of this wrong-headed thinking about the world is happening because we're in a political climate where, for many people, when George Bush says "yes," their reflex reaction is to say "no." That is unacceptable.”

The biggest US domestic objection to the war in Iraq has been the number
of US military fatalities. Even with more forward operations by US troops in
the past month, and even though the full complement of added US forces has
not been attained yet, the number of US fatalities is down. In other words,
the Surge is working.

You can read about it in the Kuwait News service, where else?

Rumors are growing stronger that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg really will run for president in 2008 as an independent . The New York Sun had fun with Hizzoner in an article on the economy yesterday, but political observers (a vaguely denominated group akin to "high ranking officials" and "well-connected sources") also are chewing on more specific stories about a possible sign-up of David Gergen, former political advisor to presidents Republican and Clintonian. Mayor Bloomberg, a Wall Street multi-billionaire, further is said to have earmarked $500 million of his own money for the cause. That is enough to buy whatever money can buy in politics, though that’s not everything. Regardless, the Bloomberg cash alone must give the GOP and Democrats pause.

The vehicle for the Bloomberg campaign supposedly will be something called the "Unity Party”. Mayor Bloomberg, under the rumored scenario, would be "unified" further with a vice presidential candidate from another part of the country. Perhaps a cranky, rural Southern Democrat conservative would be recruited to balance the Mayor's high spirited and very liberal and nominal Republicanism.

The John Anderson independent ticket in 1980 started out strong, but died away, and Ross Perot's independent populism succeeded mainly in taking votes from G. H. W. Bush, thereby electing Bill Clinton president in 1992. Ralph Nader indirectly helped elect G. W. Bush in 2000.

Bloomberg is no echo of Anderson, Perot or Nader. His particular peculiarities are all his own. The Unity Party would advance strong business management, high spending, liberal social issues and and an eclectic mix of foreign policy stands. It is hard to see how he might effect the Republican/Democratic contest, and that uncertainty would make a Bloomberg candidacy the potential wild card of 2008. It is even harder to see how Mr. Bloomberg, even with a 500 million dollar war chest, could win more than five percent of the vote. He is said to outpoll Rudy Giuliani in New York, but so what? As Manhattan goes, so goes....Queens? You can’t build a national campaign on an urban Eastern persona alone. Giuliani, for example, has the terrorism and homeland security issue that made him a household word in the hinterlands.

The prospective Bloomberg campaign, meanwhile, should make political reformers blush. This is what campaign finance “reform” has done for us. Ordinary citizens can only give a couple of thousand dollars to their favorite candidate, no matter how committed they may be to him (or her). But a billionaire can announce himself and be taken seriously because the law does not limit what he can spend on his own campaign. Michael Bloomberg apparently is a good mayor of New York. But there is no way he would be a presidential candidate if he didn’t fund fund the race himself. The word “oligarchy” rings truer than “democracy” in such cases.

The nonpareil blog "Iraq the Model" contains a fascinating and encouraging analysis (see March 16 post)--drawn from local Iraqi media--about the problems Iran is having in Iraq now that the government is becoming tough with Shia as well as Sunni terrorists. I especially like the way that Mohammed Fadhil ties the falling prestige of Iran to its other troubles, such as with the United Nations nuclear sanctions.

Even Shia Iraqis are getting fed up with Iran. That is NEWS. We are not getting enough of this in the MSM in America.

We did get a story yesterday that the Surge is leading to reduced violence in Baghdad, but this account--which should have been on page one, where the MSM editors instead placed the latest wrinkle on the U.S. attorney firings--was relegated to ho-hum treatment well inside the nation's newspapers and broadcasts.

It is too soon to declare a shift in the direction of the war, but not too soon to start to sniff the air.

Think of this one encouraging anomaly. While there is furious opposition on the U.S. left to the troop surge in Iraq, and the Senate is narrowly voting down (50-48) a call for a pullout of U.S. troops in 120 days, you are not hearing much criticism of the Surge from the Middle East and almost none from Iraq. In Iraq only the terrorists could mind--and the Iranians.

Let us be thankful again for the Internet!

The London Times reports on a public opinion poll that shows Iraqis feeling better off than they did under Saddam, despite their present hardships, and optimistic about security progress. Let's see if you find this poll reported in the MSM.

Meanwhile, Iraq the Model this weekend provides an interpretation of the chemical explosions in Anbar province that probably will escape most MSM consideration, too (click here to read the March 17th post). Al Qaeda increasingly is at war with fellow Sunnis; hence, Al Qaeda's desperate chemical attacks that are less likely to terrorize the populace than to infuriate it.

Increasingly, Iraqi Sunnis (especially the tribes in Anbar province) seem to recognize Al Qaeda as their enemy, a chiefly foreign influence that does not have Iraq's real welfare in mind. Since many Shia have come to a similar conclusion about the Iranians' role in Iraqi violence, a backlash against sectarian warfare may be strengthening among both Sunnis and Shia. The drop in attacks on U.S. forces since the Surge began suggests further that Iraqis have less and less fear that the United States aims to stay on as a permanent occupier. On the contrary, Iraqis daily can watch TV broadcasts from America that show how eager U.S. public opinion is to finish the war in Iraq and bring American troops home.

All of this militates toward development of patriotic feeling in Iraq, support for the current government's policies, implicit acceptance of the Coalition (temporary) presence and anticipation of a non-sectarian future.

Back in Washington, D.C., however, the dominant mood of political opposition to the U.S. role in Iraq is bizarrely distracted and neurotic. Just ask yourself, exactly what does Valerie Plame, the weekend's pathetic peace march against the Pentagon, the U.S. attorney firings or the assorted Congressional resolutions--the stuff that fills the front pages and newscast leads--have to do with the reality in Iraq?

The United States and our Coalition partners, including especially the democratically elected government of Iraq, can prevail against Al Qaeda, on one side, and the Sadrites and Iranians on the other. But that victory will occur only if support for the war can be maintained at least at present levels here. Whether that is possible is now as big an issue as anything going on in the field. The one group that fears the success of American policy and arms as much as Al Qaeda and the current Iranian regime is the American far left.

(John R. Miller is a former U.S. Congressman from Seattle and chairman of the Discovery Institute Board of Directors. Most recently he was the U.S. Ambassador at Large on Modern Day Slavery. He now teaches international relations at George Washington University’s Elliott School and is a Senior Fellow for International Affairs at Discovery Institute.)

“Amazing Grace” continues to do a good business in American movie houses and is destined for a creditable run elsewhere in the world and then in DVDs for families, students and churches. Although abbreviated in the film’s telling, “Amazing Grace” is a great story, and well told. Through the film many millions will be introduced to William Wilberforce, the evangelical reformer who spent a large part of his life seeking the abolition of the slave trade and pushing the British Admiralty to use force against the slavers. This spring marks the 200th anniversary of Wilberforce’s success.

But there is a bittersweet aftermath to this affirmative story: Numerically, there are likely more slaves today than there were in Wilberforce’s day. The real shame in this is that more people are not aware of it.

To their credit, the producer, Walden Media, has acknowledged in materials distributed on the Internet, that slavery still exists and that there is plenty of room for modern day Wilberforces.

The existence in every country in the 21st century of slavery comes as a shock to many citizens of this country who believe that slavery ended with the American civil war. It came as a shock to the UN General Assembly when President Bush devoted over twenty per cent of his 2003 speech to that body to the subject of modern day slavery. Of course, legalized slavery did end in the U.S. with the civil war, and legalized slavery has ended in every nation of the world, although in some cases such as Mauritania and Saudi Arabia, legal abolition did not come till the second half of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, today, while slavery is not legalized, it flourishes. The international slave trade along with internal slavery reaches into every country in the world and involves millions. In the so called “advanced” countries, the largest category of slavery is sex slavery linked to prostitution that is either legalized or tolerated. In the Near East the largest category is domestic servitude slavery fed by huge migrations of young women from South Asia. On the Indian subcontinent the largest category is bonded labor slavery of the lowest castes in rice mills, carpet factories and brick kilns. In Uganda and Sri Lanka the largest category is probably child soldier slavery.

Most of the victims are female and a large percentage is girls, making modern day slavery more gender based than race based. Much of the slavery is linked to organized crime and the increased travel and communications that have come with globalization. Except for bonded labor slavery, rarely does one find a victim in her home town; she has been trafficked from another part of the country or across international borders.

Along with greed and attitudes toward gender, inequality of income is a major factor as many, whether impoverished or not, see and hear of material pleasures in other places. A family in Thailand that can support a child, albeit in modest circumstances, sells her to buy a TV. A family in Nigeria looks at televised images of Western Europe and turns its girl over to an “auntie” who takes her to Italy. A high school or college student in Russia reads of a glamorous life in Sweden and answers a deceptive ad.

With all the reading and writing of reports that I did as the U.S. Ambassador at Large on Modern Day Slavery, nothing moved me as much as the meetings I had all over the world with survivors. I did not believe slavery could exist in a democratic country until I met Katya in The Netherlands. Katya had left a failing marriage and a two year old daughter in the Czech Republic when a “friend of the family” suggested she go to Amsterdam where she could make money waiting on tables. Driven with other young women by a Czech trafficker across Europe who linked up with a Dutch trafficker, Katya’s passport was soon taken from her and she was driven to a brothel in Amsterdam’s red light district.

“I came to work in a restaurant”, said Katya. “You will work here”, said the traffickers, “you owe us 20,000 Euros for bringing you across Europe”.

“I won’t do things like this”, replied Katya. “Yes you will”, replied the traffickers, “if you want your two year old daughter back home to live”. And so Katya succumbed as many have in Western Europe, Japan, the United States and other destination countries.

Then there was Lord, the Laotian teenager who I met in Thailand. At the age of eleven, Lord had been sold by her parents and resold and finally deposited across the border in a Bangkok embroidery factory. Unable to go out, given minimal food and clothing and no wages, Lord with other children sewed fourteen hours a day. Beaten when she rebelled, Lord was banished to a closet as an example and the slave owner poured industrial chemicals on her.

Or there was Nour, the young Indonesian woman who came to Saudi Arabia to help support her family at home and found herself locked in a home and beaten to a point where she lost fingers and toes from gangrene.

Katya, Lord and Nour are the lucky ones. Katya was rescued with the help of a friendly taxi driver, Lord was rescued by the police, and Nour was discovered at a hospital where she had been taken by her “owners” for “repairs”.

While the estimates of those in slavery run into the many millions (there can be no exact count for victims do not stand in line and raise their hands), there are signs of belated progress. When the U.S. passed its anti-trafficking law in 2000, there were only a handful of countries with such laws. In just the last two years, eighty countries have passed such legislation. Several years ago the number of traffickers sent to jail numbered in the hundreds. Last year according to the U.S. State Department, the figure was 4,700. Hundreds of shelters have been set up to care for survivors over the last few years all around the world. The news media coverage of modern day slavery (and the growth in public awareness) has risen exponentially. And yet so much more remains to be done in every country, including the U.S.

What can Americans do to carry on Wilberforce’s legacy? Find out if there is a nongovernmental organization caring for survivors in your community. Find out if the local police are sensitive to and search out victims. Find out if local anti-pimping ordinances are being enforced. Find out if a local church or civic group helps fight modern day slavery abroad. Find out from the state legislator in your district whether there is a state anti-trafficking in persons law. Join with friends or local churches or civic groups to accomplish the foregoing objectives.

Wilberforce and his friends thought they had abolished slavery in the British Empire. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe thought they had abolished slavery in the United States. They nurtured a 19th century abolitionist movement, We, their descendants, must nurture a 21st century abolitionist movement.

Tom Till is Co-Director for Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center, a hub for policy development and leadership on transportation and energy issues.

In early March, the Province of British Columbia announced a $4.5 million project grant that will add another daily round trip to operate between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., by fall of next year. It will also enable same day rail travel between Portland, Ore. and Vancouver. An op-ed on the issue that I wrote with my colleague and fellow Co-Director, Bruce Agnew, can be found here.

Largely unknown in the rest of the country, but vitally important for the Pacific Northwest, this service will not only aid business and commerce but will do even more for one of the prime drivers of the region’s economy — tourism. Just look at these numbers:

• The Amtrak Cascades service, of which this second train will be a part, began in 1994. As of 2005, that service had achieved a 330 percent increase in riders.
• In 1999, a study based on an estimated 47,000 riders going to Vancouver, B.C., reported that the service brought $11 million into the province’s economy. A second train would likely increase the number of inbound riders to 90,000, with a commensurate increase in benefits.

That the numbers are impressive should not be a surprise. Canada is a strategic partner in so many ways. As reported by the U.S. State Department, the world’s longest peaceful border supports a daily flow of $1.4 billion in bilateral trade between the U.S. and Canada. That’s real money. Those are real lives.

There is still much work to be done in our region, including resolving the contentious “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative” requiring passports or “pass cards” for Canadian-US travel (our op-ed points out many others). But, this additional Amtrak Cascades service to British Columbia is an important step in the right direction.

The desire to live a "normal" life is the longing of an Iraqi tribal leader quoted in the indispensable "Iraq the Model" blog. It is a sentiment reminiscent of the expressions one heard from Russians and other Eastern Europeans as the Gorbachev era matured and the Wall fell.

"Normal" means opposition to al-Qaeda by Sunni leaders, not support. A poll further shows that only four percent of ordinary Iraqi Sunnis want to see an Islamic state, so "normal" also means an end to sectarianism.

So who does support sectarianism? Iran and Syria is the answer. As the domestic political situation begins to swing against extremism by both Shia and Sunni, the terrorist cadre is shrinking to those fighters who are foreign-backed. Slowly news is filtering out about the Iranians' extensive role in and financial and military backing for Iraqi terrorists. They and the Syrians also are even suspected of aiding the insurgent Sunni. What Iran wants above all is to tie down the US as much as possible.

One would think that the US government would do what various critics have been urging for some time: match the aid and training Iran is giving Shia (and Sunnis) insurgents in Iraq with support for the budding insurgency against the mullahs in Iran.

What insurgency inside Iran? Stay tuned.

If you have not yet bookmarked the blog by Omar and Mohammed Fadhil, "Iraq the Model," do it now. Day after day it has the courageous merit of posing the clear choices facing Iraqi politicians, and also those facing ours. In the March 23 post, for example, "The Real Front in the War on Terror," the blog dismantles the justification given for the recent House of Representatives vote to extricate America from Iraq by this time next year. Our media herald a largely political victory for Speaker Nancy Pelosi--who was all smiles on our front pages over the weekend--and for her ally, Rep. Jack Murtha.

Mohammed, following all this closely, challenges the US "peace" advocates to say what exactly they propose to do with the chaos that would follow a US retreat. He skewers the euphemism of Reps. Pelosi and Murtha that the US troops should merely "redeploy" to some more suitable locations. "Walking away from the main war is not redeployment," he states, "it's quitting."

Quitting won't work. Iraq as a new al Qaeda state-base would be an enormous and imminent risk for us at home in our beds in Pennsylvania or San Francisco as much as for the poor souls left to terrorist depredations in the Middle East.

There was a choice for the opposition party to make a while back when the going got rough in Iraq. First, it could have settled for criticizing the management of the war. That would not have been very damaging to the country. In certain tactical respects, it would have been warranted, and, therefore, even helpful.

Instead the left has made complete opposition to the war the leitmotif of its political score. The only conflict within the liberal band is conducted off-stage between those who want to get out of Iraq right away and those who want a timetable set a bit in the distance. Either way, it is a message that is being heard world wide, and maybe not in the manner that the Democrats intend.

The domestic reaction, meanwhile, is mediated by organizations like MoveOn.org and CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations). To a remarkable and largely unnoticed degree, they are public relations creatures of the far-left Fenton Communications group. In a just world the media by now would be looking into these groups and asking about their activities, funding, etc. If they were conservative groups, that certainly would be happening, wouldn't it?

Still, those of us who support the war in Iraq at least can ask the opponents, repeatedly: What do you propose to do when you pull out American troops (or "redeploy" them)? How then should America react when Iraq becomes a killing field for terror and mass murder? What will we do when al Qaeda International adopts Iraq as its new headquarters?

Let us discuss real choices, not fantasies.

The choice for America has never been, Should we war against the terrorists in Iraq or not? It is (and has always been), Should we war against the terrorists in Iraq or run the high risks of facing them here in America and in other regions where America has vital interests?

General David Petraeus' Surge is generally a success already, and it is not yet in full force. If the left had had its way, however, none of the past six weeks' progress in the war would have happened. The Surge would have been stopped in its tracks.

Ask the war opponents about it. Granted, the greatest work is ahead, but since the Surge in Baghdad so far is reducing US casualties and increasing relative Iraqi security, why do you still oppose it?

It would be nice to hear some of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders asked such questions rather than quizzed breathlessly about their television advertisements, personal lives and fundraising prowess.

There's a war on, folks.