Ed Koch: Will Embarrassing the President Make Us Safer?

February 20, 2007
Will Embarrassing the President Make Us Safer?
By Ed Koch

Over the last few years I have written of my fears that we Americans, as a people, have lost our will to fight for our freedom.

We have come to expect that wars can be fought without casualties, even the relatively modest casualties we have suffered in Iraq. During World War Two, more Americans were killed or wounded on Iwo Jima in one month than have fallen in Iraq in almost four years. Of course, every military death and severe injury is a tragedy. Nevertheless, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that our army in Iraq is "about broken," which appalled and frightened me.

Added to those two disturbing dangers to our national security is a new and third factor: denial of a military threat to our armed forces. Such a denial allows us to avoid addressing the threat with an appropriate military response.

We are not at war with Iran, but Iran seems to be at war with us. In the last year we have suffered at least 170 American military deaths in Iraq and 640 American soldiers have been injured as a result of Iranian manufactured and supplied explosives supplied to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists. These explosives are planted at the side of the road and are activated when U.S. military vehicles pass by. They are especially dangerous because their high technology design allows them to penetrate armored vehicles and kill and maim the occupants.

All American leaders, including the President, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, agree that these weapons are manufactured in Iran. They are provided to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists by an Iranian military unit known as the Quds Force. What we are not able to state with certainty is whether, according to The New York Times, "senior leaders of Iran's government are directly involved in the attacks."
The Times states, "Based on evidence gathered inside Iraq, American intelligence analysts have concluded that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force is supplying Shiite groups with Iranian-designed weapons, called explosively formed penetrators."

The Times reported, "Because the Quds Force, which operates outside Iran, has historically fallen under the command of Iran's senior religious leaders, intelligence agencies have concluded that top leaders in Tehran are directing the attacks."

General Peter Pace is quoted in The Times as saying "that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but 'that does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.'"

The Times points out the [Iranian revolutionary] "Guard has also been accused of supporting terrorist attacks outside Iran, notably the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American service members. In December, a federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the Khobar Towers attack and ordered Tehran to pay survivors of those killed more than $253 million."

So what do we know with certainty? There are those in Iran, on a significant scale, supplying Iraqi insurgents and terrorists with deadly bombs responsible for killing and injuring 820 American soldiers in the last year. Is it reasonable to believe that is possible without the approval of sectors of the Iranian government? I refer to the civil government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the theocratic and supreme government of the religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dominant government official.

In dictatorships where dissidents seek to engage in activities prohibited by the state, those so engaged usually end up on the gallows. They are enemies of the state. It is beyond the realm of common sense to believe the Iranian government is aware of the supply activity as it is, the U.S. having made it public on several occasions, and is neither actively or passively, and knowledgably engaged in that activity. In fascist, Nazi, communist, theocratic and totalitarian states that extensively control the lives and political conduct of their citizens, there is very little crime, and practically zero crime against the state.

The Times reports why the Iranian government is engaging in this kind of behavior, writing, "Still American intelligence agencies have concluded that over the past year the Iranian government had adopted a new policy of directly confronting the United States inside Iraq. The policy officials assess is aimed partly at raising the cost of American involvement in the Middle East, teaching the Bush administration a lesson about the cost of regime change and putting pressure on American forces to leave.

"But another reason, they say, is to dissuade the Bush administration from taking a more confrontational policy toward Tehran by sending a message that Iran can ratchet up the attacks on American forces in Iraq."

It appears that Iran has succeeded in staring us down and preventing us from taking appropriate military action to protect our troops and punish those seeking to harm them. Iran will not be required to pay a price because our army is "about broken" and is not capable of responding. How awful and unnerving for the U.S., the sole remaining superpower in the world.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are seeking to humble, embarrass and, if they can, destroy the President and the prestige of his position as the Commander-in-Chief who is responsible for the safety of our military forces and the nation's defenses. By doing so, they are adding to the dangers that face our nation.

And so I ask again them again: do you think that leaving a power vacuum in Iraq will make us safer? If, as a result of the power vacuum, the terrorists are emboldened and God forbid we sustain here in the U.S. civilian casualties comparable to those caused in Iraq by car bombs, will you publicly accept responsibility?

Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City.
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AP: al-Sadr flees Iraq for Iran

Anti-American cleric flees Iraq for Iran
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
20 minutes ago

Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fled Iraq for Iran ahead of a security crackdown in Baghdad and the arrival of 21,500 U.S. troops sent by President Bush to quell sectarian violence, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

Al-Sadr left his Baghdad stronghold some weeks ago, the official said, and is believed to be in Tehran, where he has family. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. monitoring activities, said fractures in al-Sadr's political and militia operations may be part of the reason for his departure. The move is not believed to be permanent, the official said.

Word of al-Sadr's departure coincides with an announcement that Iraq will close its borders with Iran and Syria for 72 hours as part of the drive to end the violence that has threatened to divide the capital along sectarian lines.

The U.S. official said it is not clear how firmly the radical Shiite cleric is controlling his organization and the associated Mahdi Army militia from exile.
"The question for us is to what extent his organization is going to participate in the political process," the official said, referring to al-Sadr's on-again, off-again relationship with the fragile democratic government in Baghdad.

Al-Sadr's departure was reported by several television networks Tuesday.

Al-Sadr's militia is widely seen as the main threat to Iraq's unity and high on the list of targets for the Baghdad security operation.

A ragtag but highly motivated militia that fought U.S. forces twice in 2004, the Mahdi Army is blamed for much of the sectarian strife shaking Iraq since a Shiite shrine was bombed by Sunni militants a year ago. U.S. officials have for months pressed Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to move against the militia, but he has so far done little to comply, largely because he does not want to lose al-Sadr's support.

Al-Sadr rose from obscurity in the aftermath of the ouster of Saddam Hussein to lead a movement of young, underprivileged Iraqis united by opposition to U.S. military presence as well as hunger for Shiite domination.

The cleric, who is in his mid-30s, is a master of street politics, and his young lieutenants can rally tens of thousands of protesters at short notice. Once wanted in the 2003 killing of a key cleric, al-Sadr gained much influence when his parliamentary bloc of 30 of 275 deputies was instrumental in al-Maliki's election.

Dismissed by older Shiite politicians as a dangerous upstart, al-Sadr set up the Mahdi Army militia in 2003. It is suspected of being behind the abduction and murder of thousands of Sunnis in what are known as death squad killings.

Two key members of al-Sadr's political and military organization were gunned down last week, the latest of as many as seven key figures in the al-Sadr organization killed or captured in the past two months.

The deaths and captures came after al-Maliki, also a Shiite, dropped his protection for the organization.

Shiite leaders insist that the Shiite militias flourished because the U.S. and its allies could not protect civilians. They say if the Sunni insurgents were crushed, the threat from Shiite hard-liners would go away.

Shiite politicians have long maintained that Sunni militants pose a greater threat to Iraq's stability. Thousands of Shiite civilians have been killed in bombings and suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni groups.

Thousands regularly cross the porous Iraq-Iran border, and Iran has been a popular destination for elite Shiite Iraq exiles. In Saddam's time those exiles included al-Maliki, who like other educated and politically active Shiites feared for his safety in Iraq.