ON A ROLL FROM KABUL TO BAGHDAD

I had a chance to visit with Porter Goss after he returned from Afghanistan last week. He was there to make personally sure everything was solidly OK for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to attend Karzai’s inaugural in Kabul.

He got the biggest kick when I told him there’s a name in town for what he’s doing to the CIA: Gossification. I got a big thumbs up when I said, “Now we have to make sure Condi gossifies the State Department.”

Then he gave his assessment of how we’re doing in Afghanistan: “Jack, I’m telling you, the place is humming, it’s sizzling. People have so much energy, they are so excited about their future. We have a fantastic success story in the making here, a tremendous victory for America and for the Afghan people. Funny how you never hear about it in the media, huh?”

Yes, big surprise to the both of us. All we hear about is the latest disasters in Iraq, and nothing about Afghanistan any more – because we’re winning.

Porter easily read my mind. “You know, Jack, it’s going to be the same in Iraq. We’re winning – and the media can’t stand it that we’re on a roll from Kabul to Baghdad.”

At last, at last – a CIA Director with the balls and brains to fill Bill Casey’s shoes. For Porter well knows that there is no such thing as an insurgency or guerrilla war in Iraq – as if the entire country was embroiled in it. We’ve secured 85% of the country in terms of population. This “insurgency” as the liberal media dishonestly calls it, is confined to the Sunni Arab part of Iraq – and the Sunni Arabs are 15% of Iraqis.

The key, of course, is the alliance between the Kurds and the Shias – and the key to the alliance is the Shia’s Grand Ayatollah, Ali Sistani. The Shias comprise 65% of Iraqis, they revere Sistani, who will not tolerate any delay of the scheduled January 30 elections.

The liberal media can bray all it wants about the “violence” making an election impossible, rogue weasels not yet kicked out by Goss at the CIA can leak an “analysis” to the New York Times on why elections must be “postponed,” Vladimir Putin can lecture Iraqi interim president Allawi on how Iraq cannot hold an election “under foreign occupation,” and it all means nothing. Since Sistani insists on elections with no delays, that is what will happen.

Sistani is a real Shia, not a phony heretic like Iran’s Khomeini and the mullahs in Tehran. Shias form one of the two main branches of Islam (Sunnis form the other – most Arabs are Sunnis), originating as “Shiat Ali” or followers of Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, married to Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima (Mohammed had no sons). Shias believed the Caliph, or Islamic Pope, should be a descendant of Mohammed, i.e., of Ali and Fatima.

But the Caliphate was seized when the army of Ali’s son, Hussein, was slaughtered at the Battle of Karbala (now a sacred city in Iraq) in 680 AD by rival Sunnis. The line of Imams, or Shia Calpihs, continued until the mysterious disappearance of Al-Askari, the 12th Imam, at age four in 873. Shias refused to believe he died, and he became revered as the Hidden Imam who would some day return to save the world as an Islamic Messiah.

This is why most Shias are “Twelvers” waiting for the return of the 12th Imam, for they deeply believe only he can establish true Islamic law on earth. It is thus an evil heresy to establish a theocracy – a government run by religious leaders – until his return. A mosque-state separation is a fundamental Shia conviction, which is why Iraqi Shias despise the Ayatollahs running Iran as heretics.

Exceptions like “Mookie” al-Sadr are paid stooges of Iran. The reason you haven’t heard much about Mookie lately is because Sistani is holding him under house arrest.

So forget about Iran being the real winner of the January elections. Shia or Sunni, Arabs despise Persians, and Iraqi Shias despise Iranian Shias for pretending Qom in Iran is the Shia Vatican when it should be Najaf in Iraq. Iraqi Shias are not going to be taking orders from Tehran. They believe that before very long, in terms of religious influence, it will be the other way around.

An Islamic country with a majority of Shias who adhere to their tradition of mosque-state separation has thus a pretty good chance of establishing an Islamic democracy – which is what we see coming into being today. Sistani wants to keep his country together. He knows he must bring Sunnis into the power picture, and is reaching out to them.

The result is the exact opposite of the media’s pessimistic portrayal: there is an explosion of enthusiasm and excitement for elections emerging throughout Iraq. The bottom Iraq line is the elections are going to succeed, and the Sunni Islamofascist terrorism is going to wither (in that order). This will greatly disappoint Moscow, Tehran, Paris, and the New York Times – but not the Iraqi people, including the Sunnis who are coming to despise the Islamofascists in their ranks.

Nothing is guaranteed. The whole place could disintegrate. Democratic freedom could be too intimidating to Arab tribal culture. The same fears were rampant over Afghanistan – and believe me, Afghanistan is far more medieval and tribal than Iraq. Yet we, the US together with the Afghans, are succeeding. The odds now are distinctly in our favor for succeeding in Iraq.

So I agreed with Porter, that we’re on a roll from Kabul to Baghdad. Did that imply, to complete the mission, we need to be next on a roll in the country that lies between Afghanistan and Iraq? He brushed that one aside with a wag of his finger: “Well, if Afghanistan and Iraq are two slices of bread, let’s just say Iran must feel like it’s inside an American sandwich.”