Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

I once read StratFor regularly. Sometime a year or two ago, they went to being a subscription service. I check there from time to time to see what kind of analysis they have available for use, as it is generally spot on.

Today I thought I would check to see what they might have in regards to Syria’s most recent moves toward civilization and ran across an analysis of the Najaf standoff with al-Sadr. They were pretty comprehensive in their detailing of Iran’s loss of influence, and Saudi Arabia’s problems which will now grow.

Their conclusions regarding the status of combat in Iraq fits well with mine, however, and not with the doom and gloom we hear from MSM.

The violence will drag on. In all three factions there are diehard elements that are committed to continued resistance. Indeed, as in other countries, it is altogether possible that some level of guerrilla violence will become a permanent feature of the political landscape. Consider the IRA or ETA in Europe, or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines. The wars are not strategic. They do not threaten the regimes or even have much opportunity to hold terrain. They are essentially forces of habit, unable to end, having no real negotiating platform, having no purpose, but continuing. The world is filled with such movements and there is every reason to believe this is happening in Iraq. But there is a vast difference between a purposeful, strategic campaign that threatens the survival of the regime and this sort of war by habit: The former makes history; the latter is history.

I think that optimism is well placed. How many suicide bombs have Israelis suffered in the last five years? That government isn’t in jeopardy. And the StratFor analysts see some potential for more movement in the months following our election. Maybe this is what Assad fears in Syria.

If the situation stabilizes in Iraq before elections, U.S. President George W. Bush will be more likely to win. However, win or lose, we must remember that on the day after the election, Bush will be president and will never face election again. He might be president for two months or four years, but he will remain president. In either case, he will be more concerned about his place in history and his own sense of what must be done than in political considerations. It follows that he will try to shape the war decisively in either case.

Al Qaeda will be facing, in either case, a world in which it has failed to ignite the Islamic masses and in which the general political tendencies in the Islamic world have not only not fulfilled al Qaeda’s hopes, but have moved against them. At some point, they will have to assert themselves somewhere. Al Qaeda has political goals and it must generate some movement toward achieving them.

With those two imperatives in mind, the decline in the importance of the Iraqi theater of operations will generate massive forces pointing to further military confrontations after the elections, quite apart from the threat of terrorist actions.

I don’t believe Bush worries about his place in history a la Bill Clinton. In fact, he has said history, rather than opinion, will be written decades from now. And I do believe he will follow his sense of what must be done. Assad has reason to worry.

Arthur Chrenkoff gives all of us Homespun Bloggers an early heads-up, but the guys at PowerLine have already beat me to it.

The good news is at Opinion Journal.

Wow! That’s a lot of links! Check them all. I dare you!

Americans are often confused about what is actually happening in Iraq. The news from military personnel in country is often in direct conflict with reports on the national news. Car bombs and beheadings vie with more optimistic reports from people like Allawi. John Kerry has now decided to focus his campaign on Iraq perhaps sensing an opportunity to dig into Dubya’s lead.

What are we to think about all this?

I see another indicator that many people may not be reading correctly, or are simply ignoring. In the last two weeks there have been two significant announcements from Assad’s government in Damascas. They received little coverage, but might just be the most telling indicator of success or failure in Iraq.

First, Syria announced they would be pulling troops from Lebanon, and would cooperate with US forces to patrol their border with Iraq. Last week, they were shopping around for a country to take the Baathist scientists who fled to Syria as the war began.

Assad knows he is on the hit list. And he has been playing the game as best he can to stay in power. Syria has been supportive, in an Arab sort of way, of our efforts to cut funding links to al Queda and other organizations while openly supporting groups like Hamas. They have done this quietly so as not to draw attention to themselves. Now they are becoming much more open, and it isn’t because they’ve have a change of heart about the use of terrorism.

Things in Iraq must be better than we hear. The “insurgents” must be on their last leg. Assad sees the potential for another US offensive sometime soon. Syria and Iran are prime targets. They both know that. Which one do you think Assad wants to see hit?

Arthur Chrenkoff has taken task with the media, BBC and ABC (Australia) in particular, regarding their perspectives on Rumsfeld’s comments about Iraqi elections.

I’ll leave it to you to read Arthur’s post. I want to add my own thoughts about Rummy’s words.

If there were to be an area where the extremists focused during the election period, and an election was not possible in that area at that time, so be it. You have the rest of the election and you go on. Life’s not perfect.

Some, including Kerry, are appalled. I think it comes from a lack of imagination. Rumsfeld is on to something.

The primary reason for the continuation of violence in Iraq is the fear many Iraqis have. It isn’t imaginary. They have lived in fear all their lives. In the past, they had no reason to take responsibility for bad things happening right next door. Involvement meant scrutiny by Saddam’s people. Scrutiny was bad. That is a tough mentality to break.

But it is precisely why it is so difficult to find the people responsible for the violence. The average Iraqi isn’t sure who to trust. A great concern is our own election. If Kerry is elected, do they really know what to expect from the US?

An incentive to push forward change in Iraq that will help to eliminate the terrorists, keeping those areas where terrorists thrive out of the election may force locals to begin turning in the miscreants. Their option is to be disenfranchised in the first real elections of their lives. And if these mostly-Sunni areas are concerned about losing a voice in future parliamentary endeavers and being overshadowed by Shia, perhaps they will come to their senses.

I check my Aussie friends’ blogs each morning, and am always treated to outstanding commentary. They get an early jump on us Yanks, so have had time to sift through many things out on the web while we sleep. This morning, Slatts had a pointer to something excerpted from a new book by P J O’Rourke:

Frankly, nothing concerning foreign policy ever occurred to me until the middle of the last decade. I’d been writing about foreign countries and foreign affairs and foreigners for years. But you can own dogs all your life and not have “dog policy”.

You have rules, yes – Get off the couch! – and training, sure. We want the dumb creatures to be well behaved and friendly. So we feed foreigners, take care of them, give them treats, and, when absolutely necessary, whack them with a rolled-up newspaper.

That was as far as my foreign policy thinking went until the middle 1990s, when I realised America’s foreign policy thinking hadn’t gone that far.

I think that’s the point Dubya was trying to make. He has a different approach.

As I read through Michael J. Totten: Terror and Victory, I kept nodding my head in agreement. Michael is one of my favorites, a site I check daily. He is also a liberal with a strong sense that our war on Jihadists must be carried through to the end. I applaud him for his intellectual integrity. He understands, far better than most who have a knee-jerk reaction one way or another on the topic.

My point here is that the pessimists among us were guaranteed to declare regime-change in Iraq counterproductive and/or a quagmire no matter what actually happened short of an instantaneous transformation of Mesopotamia into Belize.

In addition, he has some very knowlegeable commenters. And if the list isn’t too long, I linger to read them as well. One really caught my attention on this post. It was written by Samuel Freedman, and I asked his permission to post his comments here for all my readers who may not make it to Michael’s blog (although you should).

As a Jew I give much thanks to who I consider our first Jewish President George Bush (African Americans can have Clinton and Teresa). In truth Bush could have put a stop to this had he carried the mentality of a Carter. The right in Israel may have sought to proceed despite such lack of support but many more moderate minded Israelis that have backed Sharon would have weakened at the knees without our support.

Mr. Pessimist has never won a war, Mr. Resolute has. All of our Presidents that have presided over critical victories have two things in common. First, they all (Washington, Lincoln, etc) were declared losers early on. Second they all had high goals that trump the pessimism and discouragment others heap on them. I listened to Dubya at the UN and by golly if he didn

The Onion has the full story on jihadists’ concerns:

ASADABAD, AFGHANISTAN