A year ago, the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad assured Gen. David Petraeus that it would protect the 3,400 Iranian dissidents residing at Camp Ashraf once the United States turned over the area to Iraq, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Last week’s bloody fighting between Iraqi police and the residents of the camp has left officials in Washington wondering whose side the Iraqi government is on. It simultaneously exposed just how little influence American officials now have in a country they largely controlled for almost six years.

It has also forced the Obama administration to confront some of the thorny issues that bedeviled its predecessor: how to prevent Iraq from falling deeper under Tehran’s influence, and how to fashion a tough Iran policy amid delicate negotiations to dismantle the country’s burgeoning nuclear program. …Officials in Tehran have called Tuesday’s police raid against Camp Ashraf “admirable.” …The American Embassy in Baghdad sent a delegation to meet with Iraqi authorities to remind them of their written commitment not to mistreat the dissidents or send them back to Iran.

But a senior State Department official said there was some skepticism that the Iraqis were taking these concerns seriously. “The Iraqis will tell you what you want to hear,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.

Iraq’s harsh crackdown on the Iranian dissidents, the Times wrote, has “exposed just how little leverage American officials now have in a country they largely controlled for almost six years” (emphasis mine). And as we wrote on Friday, it also reveals who is now pushing all the buttons in Iraq’s fledgling democracy: Iran.

What a colossal failure the war on terror in Iraq has been. The country America went to war to liberate is now a virtual puppet state of its Iranian masters. For the prophetic significance of this event, read “Is Iraq About to Fall to Iran?” from the June 2003 Trumpet.

“Moderates” Still Reject Israel’s Legitimacy

When the Fatah congress convenes on Tuesday, it will reaffirm its ongoing refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist. “Fatah links this refusal to its determination to protect the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes they fled at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948,” Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.

Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas also refuses to hold peace talks with Israel as long as it continues building Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem. Thus, as John Hinderaker points out at Power Line,

Israel can’t be a Jewish state, but the surrounding Arab states can be, and are, Muslim countries that drive out substantially all the Jews who once lived there. Jews can’t build homes—“settlements”—in East Jerusalem, but Arabs can build anywhere in the city, and do, all the time. Jews can’t move to areas that are occupied mostly or largely by Arabs, but Arabs have a right to “return” to places where most of them have never lived.

In other words, the “moderates” won’t be fully satisfied until Israel no longer exists.

Will Islam Conquer Europe?

Christopher Caldwell, author of the new book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, is worried that Islam will conquer Europe. The New York Times summed up his work with the following:

Through decades of mass immigration to Europe’s hospitable cities and because of a strong disinclination to assimilate, Muslims are changing the face of Europe, perhaps decisively. These Muslim immigrants are not so much enhancing European culture as they are supplanting it. The products of an adversarial culture, these immigrants and their religion, Islam, are “patiently conquering Europe’s cities, street by street.”

“Imagine that the West, at the height of the Cold War, had received a mass inflow of immigrants from Communist countries who were ambivalent about which side they supported,” writes Caldwell. “Something similar is taking place now.” Caldwell points out the speed at which Islam has taken root:

In the middle of the 20th century, there were virtually no Muslims in Western Europe. At the turn of the 21st, there were between 15 and 17 million Muslims in Western Europe, including 5 million in France, 4 million in Germany, and 2 million in Britain.

These figures, while alarming, do not mean Islam is quietly conquering Europe. In fact, as we have noted before, this rapid spread of radical Islam has started a chain reaction that will provoke a strong—even violent—response from Europe. For more, read what Ron Fraser wrote in this column from last year.

What Are We Doing to Our Girls?

“The post-feminist generation has made a complete hash of bringing up children, especially girls,” writes India Knight in today’s Sunday Times.

“The number of 15-year-old girls experiencing psychological distress is rocketing; the [highly credible recent study, “GHQ Increases Among Scottish 15-year-olds 1987–2006,” published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology] shows they are the most mentally ill group of people in the country, with 43 percent of them emotionally distressed and 27 percent suffering mental illness (severe depression or anxiety). What on Earth is going on?” she asks.

Knight paints a grim picture of girls suffering from insecurities, anorexia and self-harm. For many, cutting themselves is “a coping mechanism.” The statistics show that girls especially are suffering today:

The 1999 results [of a wide sample of 15-year-olds interviewed in Scotland] show that common mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks and loss of capacity to experience pleasure had increased since 1987 for girls from 19 percent to 32 percent. The increase for boys was a mere 2 percentage points, to 15 percent.The most recent 2006 results show a dramatic increase: Girls are on 44 percent, with boys on 21 percent. More than a third of girls agreed “they felt constantly under strain”; those who “felt they could not overcome their difficulties” had more than doubled to 26 percent. The number who “think of yourself as a worthless person” had trebled between 1987 and 2006.

Girls say they are made by their parents and teachers to feel that unless they get great grades and go to university, they will be a failure for life. Their peers and the glossy magazines make them feel that unless they have the perfect body, they are worthless.

To add to all of this, many girls have to worry about their parents divorcing. The loss of family stability leaves them searching for attention elsewhere. One described how, with no one to turn to, she’d try to get attention from guys. “The number of guys I hooked up with became ridiculous,” she said. “I would get with anyone who was remotely interested and it didn’t matter whether I liked him or not.”

This is a generation of daughters that desperately need family—fathers in particular. They need loving support at home, and are having these problems because they are not getting that love. For valuable instruction on how to help your daughters, see our article “Through Your Daughter’s Eyes.”

The Obama Doctrine

Barack Obama spent the first six months of his presidency pursuing a fundamental and deadly change in American foreign policy, noted Jeffrey Kuhner in the Washington Times July 25. Kuhner called it the Obama doctrine, and wrote that “if it continues to be pursued, it will mark the decline and fall of the United States as the world’s superpower.”

[I]ts very objective is to undercut America’s preeminent global role, reducing its great-power status to that of a multilateral partner equal to Russia, China or the European Union. At its core, the Obama doctrine maintains that all societies and cultures are morally equal. More important, promoting democracy and human rights has been abandoned in favor of “improving America’s standing in the world.”

Ever since the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a key function of U.S. foreign policy has been promoting democratization and human rights, argued Kuhner. Although this policy was not without its pitfalls, the quest to ensure political freedom in distant lands strengthened American national interest.

“This tradition has been ruptured by Mr. Obama,” wrote Kuhner. “As a result, freedom is in retreat. Our enemies have become emboldened. America is weaker.”

Mr. Obama’s approach to China and Russia provide two pertinent examples.

On China, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have deliberately put human rights and Tibet on the back burner, refusing to raise these issues for fear of angering Beijing. Instead, Mrs. Clinton insists that the “global financial crisis,” the supposed “climate-change crisis” and the “security crisis” are more important. Hence, China’s democrats and persecuted religious minorities no longer look to Washington for support.The same applies to Russia. Mr. Obama has publicly praised Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. This is done despite Moscow’s war of aggression against the Republic of Georgia and its attempt to bully Ukraine.

But the clearest example is Obama’s course of action on Iran. “The recent street protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s sham ‘reelection’ presented a golden opportunity for the Obama administration to trigger regime change,” Kuhner wrote. But rather than defending Iran’s persecuted, Mr. Obama sat on the fence, lending support and legitimacy to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his militiamen.

There was a time when America would rise to defend its moral and political principles. That era is now over, said Kuhner; the president is a “transnational leftist who believes American power must be restrained, not enhanced. More important, he is a cultural relativist. He is convinced the United States is not a singular force for good in the world, but an imperial, jingoistic nation that must be chastened—and humbled—on the world stage.”

With leadership like this, says Kuhner, America’s future will be full of “disgrace, defeat and ruin.”

Elsewhere on the Web

India launched its first nuclear submarine last Sunday, becoming one of six nations to have built one. Also last week, Capt. Alok Bhatnagar, director of naval plans at India’s Ministry of Defense, announced plans to build around 100 warships over the next decade.

Russia continues to draw its former Soviet republics back under its influence. This past week, President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Kyrgyzstan has agreed to host a second Russian military base in the south part of the country (it already operates an airbase near the Kyrgyz capital). The announcement came on the eve of a Collective Security Treaty Organization (csto) summit in Kyrgyzstan on Friday. The csto security bloc links Russia with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. “Russia’s security strategy until 2020, recently approved by President Dmitry Medvedev, envisions the csto as ‘a key mechanism to counter regional military challenges and threats,’” Ria Novosti reported. “The leaders of the post-Soviet security bloc signed on June 14 an agreement on creating a joint rapid reaction force, which will comprise large military units from five countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.”

Seven men were arrested last Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina, on charges of conspiring to provide assistance to overseas terrorist organizations. The arrests highlighted the menace of homegrown Islamic terrorists, wrote Oliver North in today’s Washington Post. “Prosecutors maintain that [the alleged ringleader, Daniel Patrick] Boyd—who goes by the name ‘Saifullah,’ meaning ‘Sword of Allah’—is a ‘veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan’ and that he recruited his sons and other U.S. citizens to travel overseas for waging ‘violent jihad.’ An eighth conspirator is being sought in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Surely it’s a mark of the terrorists’ success that they are successfully recruiting Americans to fight alongside them on faraway shores. It seems it’s only a matter of time before these terrorist leaders convince their American soldiers to wage war on the U.S. homeland.

July ended with five more bank closures in the U.S., bringing the total number of failed banks so far this year to 69. “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named the receiver of the five banks, the regulator said yesterday in e-mailed statements,” Bloomberg reported. “The seized banks, with total assets of $2.69 billion and deposits of $2.56 billion, will cost the fdic’s insurance fund about $911.7 million.” So far this year, the fdic’s deposit insurance fund has been drained of over $14.4 billion.

And Finally …

Apparently, President Obama’s “beer summit” with Henry Gates and James Crowley—intended to sooth racial frictions—unintentionally created some hard feelings … among American brewers.

The beers served at the event were all foreign products: Red Stripe and Blue Moon are imports from England, and the president’s choice, Bud Light, comes from Anheuser-Busch, which was bought last year by a Belgian-Brazilian company. The Wall Street Journal reported,

Among rival brewers, the news fell flat. “We would hope they would pick a family-owned, American beer to lubricate the conversation,” said Bill Manley, a spokesman for the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., a California-based brewer that happens to be family-owned.Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams, decried “the foreign domination of something so basic and important to our culture as beer.”Genesee Brewery, Rochester, N.Y., released a statement congratulating the president for having beer at the meeting but adding: “We just hope the next time the president has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, and an American-owned brewery like Genesee.”

You just can’t win, can you? The president never should have been involved in this matter, and the beer summit was ridiculous theater. But you’ve got to feel a little sorry for him when even the choice of beverage creates … well … brouhaha.