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Russia creates too many questions about Polish plane crash

The Russian government's actions raise too many questions about the April 10 airplane crash that killed many of the most anti-Russian leaders of Poland. My recent conversations with informed Polish sources reveal so many irregularities with how the Russian government handled the crash that nobody should presume that the disaster was accidental until all the facts are in.

I knew four of the Polish officials who died in the crash and have a special interest in raising unpleasant questions and pushing for full answers. Here are the issues that surfaced in my recent discussions one month after the disaster that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and other senior Polish figures:

• President Kaczynski and his entourage were traveling to Smolensk, Russia, near the Katyn forest where the Soviet NKVD (Chekists) murdered thousands of Polish officers during World War II. Kaczynski was a strong critic of Moscow and its failure to repudiate its Soviet past. His rival, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has taken a much softer approach toward Moscow. Tusk was not on the plane.
• Tusk held an official observance of the anniversary of the Katyn massacre with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Tusk and Putin agreed in advance that Kaczynski would not be part of the official commemoration, and that Kaczynski would arrive separately on a "private" visit.
• In the hour or so after the crash, the Russian government officially blamed the disaster on "pilot error," before an investigation had begun. Russian officials said the Polish pilot did not speak Russian, when the pilot spoke excellent Russian.
• Putin has assumed personal control of the crash investigation.
• The Russian government has maintained total, opaque control of the crash investigation, in violation of the Chicago Convention that governs international air crashes and in violation of a bilateral 1993 agreement that joint commissions would conduct investigations of aircraft disasters affecting both countries.
• All 97 bodies of the crash victims, including the late Polish president, were removed from the crash site before Polish authorities could arrive, and brought to Poland.
• No independent autopsies of the crash victims was permitted, and Polish officials did not have the ability to be present during the autopsies.
• All personal effects of the crash victims were removed from the scene and taken to Moscow before any Polish official could arrive.
• Russian security officers interrogated Polish family members who traveled to Moscow to recover the bodies - sometimes for hours - and were denied access to the bodies until the interrogations were complete. The daughter of parliament member Zbigniew Wasserman, who oversaw the security services, went to Russia for her father's body but was detained six hours and interrogated. She was repeatedly denied the right to have a Polish official present for her interrogation.
• Russian officials required Polish family members of the victims to sign that they were satisfied that the personal effects were all in order or had been destroyed in the crash; those who did not want to sign were told that they would not have access to their loved ones' remains until they did sign.
• There has been no independent verification that all the bodies are accounted for. The bodies were returned to Poland in sealed coffins for burial. Families of the victims were not permitted to open the coffins. Under Polish law, official permission from the state prosecutor's office is required to exhume a body, and that office has denied family requests, apparently for fear of offending the Russian government.
• The Russian government has not turned over two of the plane's black boxes to Polish authorities, despite repeated formal Polish requests. Two of the three boxes aboard the Russian-made Tupolev 154 presidential plane were of Russian manufacture, and one was Polish. The Russian government briefly gave the Polish-made black box to the Polish government, then took it back. Russia has refused to hand over the two Russian-made black boxes.
• Russia's intelligence services have used the disaster as a spy operation against Poland and the NATO alliance. Russian authorities recovered laptop computers, flash drives, cell phones and other electronic gear belonging to the Polish president, senior military leaders, security chief and other top officials who died on the flight. Those items contained sensitive names, telephone numbers, correspondents, documents, and top secret military and diplomatic codes. The Russians delayed for days and sometimes weeks before returning the items. Some of the items, such as flash drives belonging to officials with responsibility for security and intelligence matters, are missing.
• Russian officials waited six days before returning President Kaczynski's Nokia cell phone to the Polish government.
• After Russian security officers removed what they wanted from the site, they left the site unguarded. Polish journalists discovered that the site was unattended. 
• A Polish aviation official who serves as a day-to-day interlocutor with the Russians on the matter told a Polish parliamentary commission, "We know everything that happened but the Russians forbid us to tell you." The official said that it could take as long as a year before Russia releases the information.
• Most Polish officials seem to believe that the Russian government played some role in the crash. Kaczynski was the most anti-Russian leader in Europe, and his entourage on the plane included similarly minded senior military and security officials. Kaczynski's twin brother, Jaroslaw, was supposed to have been on the plane as well. On the heels of years of Russian assassinations of Putin's internal opponents, the assassination by radioactive polonium of a top KGB defector in London, the attempted assassination of the anti-Russian leader of Ukraine, the Moscow-backed overthrow of the government of Kyrgyzstan and other actions, Polish officials can only presume that Putin may have had a hand in the April 10 crash. The disaster took place on Russian soil, with Putin's secret services in total control of the probe that he personally directs.
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who opposed the late president and is in charge of day-to-day affairs of state, appears fearful of Russia and does not want to say or do anything to upset Putin.  
• Tusk says that those who suspect foul play are motivated by "anti-Russian" prejudice, but sources close to him say he has never definitively called the crash an "accident."
• "Prime Minister Tusk, at every moment from the crash, says, 'We will do this or that because the Russian government wants it and we don't want to offend the Russians.' Tusk acts like he is in fear," a source close to Tusk tells me.

Why has Prime Minister Tusk acted like in such a servile manner toward Moscow in the wake of the April 10 crash? If the crash was an accident, what is Tusk afraid of?

Iranian university students protest Ahmadinejad

Iranian students launched a sudden, apparently spontaneous protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on May 10, launching an outpouring of bitter invective against the authoritarian leader.

The surprise nature of the protest is important, as Ahmadinejad's planned presence was not announced and the Basij militia was not on the scene to smash the demonstrators. The incident took place at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Earlier that day, the regime hanged five Iranian Kurdish resistance figures.

The university protest is one more indication that young people's opposition to the regime is strong and emotional - underscoring the correlation of forces in Iran is such that the Islamic Republic can be toppled. All that's needed is moral support from the rest of the world, including the United States.

Which leads to the question, Why isn't America supporting the Iranian people?

Not getting it in time for Kandahar

It began as a brilliantly executed operation near the Taliban's main stronghold: the Marine-led campaign to take Marjah, Helmand province, Afghanistan, earlier this year.

Now we're finding that the operation is bogging down and that the Afghan people aren't helping us as we had anticipated. Somewhere along the way, the Marines apparently diverged from the playbook. They engaged the population very well in the initial successful offensive. But now, according to senior Pentagon officials who just returned from the area, they have failed to constructively engage the locals.

And Marjah was supposed to be a template for the much bigger Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

Here's what AP is reporting, based on leaks from two senior Pentagon officials who recently came back from Marjah:

"The drive this summer to secure Kandahar was supposed to build on the success of the much smaller Marjah operations.

"But so far the U.S. and NATO haven't achieved their goals in Marjah, military and civilian officials said, as the government has been slow to provide services and villagers have not rallied in large numbers to the Kabul-based government.

"'We're still moving forward more slowly than the people would like,' Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative, said on a trip to Marjah this month.

"Sedwill still sees overall progress, and other civilian reconstruction specialists said it was unrealistic to expect a smoothly operating local government little more than two months after the initial assault on Marjah.

"Two senior Pentagon officials who visited Marjah in recent weeks said the Marines who provide the backbone of security in the district are not getting enough tips from the villagers or spending enough time with local leaders.

"People are hanging back, afraid to throw their lot with the government even if they hate the Taliban, military officials said, and the opportunity to win their trust is fading.

"The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

"The worry among military strategists is that if their tactics don't take hold in Marjah, with a population of roughly 80,000, what will happen in Kandahar?"

The Marines appear to have missed a very simple formula that the Army appears to have learned: Build and maintain the support of the local population through confidence-building measures that will prove to the locals that they can trust us, that we won't abandon them, that they'll be safe from the Taliban once we're gone, and that we will deliver on our promises.

Corrective action is needed now. I'm becoming less optimistic now. US military commanders in Afghanistan are issuing contracts to badly-needed subject-matter experts - not hiring the best people available, but hiring the cheapest. That's a very bad sign. Not a way to win a war.

(USMC Photo: US Marines in Marjah, 10 March 2010)

See you at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday

See you at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday, where I'm part of a panel on "Public Diplomacy in the Private Sector: The Power of Individual Initiative."

I'll be joining Marc Ginsburg of Layalina Productions, Inc., David Nassar of the Alliance for Youth Movements, and Helle Dale of the Heritage Foundation on this panel discussion, which takes place on Thursday, April 29, from 10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Eastern time at Heritage's Lehrman Auditorium.

To sign in to attend in person, or to watch live online, click on the link above.

Bollywood pokes fun at Bin Laden - and us

Hollywood still doesn't dare make a mainstream film to mock Islamist terrorists, though as we've seen the British have recently come out with two: The Infidel and Four Lions.

Now from India comes Tere Bin Laden, about a young Pakistani TV journalist who wants to move to the USA to live the American dream. But he's foiled because homeland security won't allow him to get a visa. So he stumbles across a Bin Laden lookalike and makes a fake terrorist video . . . wait, the joke's on us. . . .

Starring Pakistani artist Ali Zafar, who we saw on this blog a few years ago as one of the performers in the Urdu pop video against Islamist extremism, Yeh Hum Naheen (This Is Not Us).

(Thanks to Mr Stone for the tip)

Washington Times likes my Iran idea

Defense Secretary Bob Gates recently did some more truth-telling when he appeared to say in a memo that the US lacks a strategy to deal with the threats posed by the mullahocracy in Iran. Before the New York Times leaked the contents of the memo on April 18, the Washington Times editors picked up on an extemporaneous talk on political warfare and psychological strategy I gave at the Institute of World Politics on April 15.

Here's the Times editorial, penned by James Robbins, and published April 16:

A counterrevolution in Iran may be the last, best chance for peace in the region, but it can only happen with American help.

J. Michael Waller of the Institute of World Politics argues that the best way for the United States to promote change in Iran is not via sanctions or military action but by helping the Iranian people overthrow the Islamic regime. After the proper preparation, "revolution could happen in a matter of days," he said at a briefing yesterday at the institute's Washington headquarters.

Iran is poised for radical change. The ruling mullahs are widely viewed as illegitimate and corrupt. The people are disaffected and increasingly willing to stand up to the government. The student movement has shown a degree of fearlessness in confronting the regime. And, perhaps sensing change in the air, the Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun to show cracks in its once-fierce loyalty to the Islamic state.

Mr. Waller says he thinks the United States could facilitate an uprising in Tehran with comparatively little effort. Washington could help the opposition communicate with inexpensive prepaid cell phones and proxy Internet servers and supply Flip video cameras and other means of recording and publicizing the course of the rebellion. Voice of America's Persian News Network could focus reports on regime misdeeds and spread inspirational accounts of insiders turning against the power structure in hopes that others might join them. Tehran's state-controlled media regularly ignore such stories, so VOA would report, and the Iranian people would decide.

Most important, the United States could supply strong moral support. A critical factor keeping Iranians from making a decisive move against the theocracy's religious leadership is a sense of doubt that America would back their play. A clear signal to Iranian dissidents that Washington would support a revolt would go a long way toward making it happen.

Mr. Waller contends, however, that the U.S. government is stymied by "a lack of imagination." The checkered history of American-backed coups, such as the one that brought the shah of Iran to power in 1953, have placed any discussion of destabilization off limits. But the type of political warfare Mr. Waller recommends is akin to what American politicians do on a routine basis. "Would [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton dig up dirt on a political opponent to destroy them?" Mr. Waller asked rhetorically. "Well, if so, she could also do it to the Supreme Leader of Iran."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is very sensitive to charges of corruption, yet he reportedly is worth $30 billion, a handsome sum for a humble cleric that must have been amassed through illicit means. The Supreme Leader also reportedly suffers from crippling bouts of depression that could be exploited to paralyze his ability to make decisions during a crisis. "Mrs. Clinton should [apply] the government-wrecking talents she picked up during the Watergate hearings to the Iran issue," Mr. Waller quipped.

Helping overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran would significantly advance U.S. interests in the Middle East. Iran is actively promoting violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Iran supplies anti-American insurgents with arms, materiel and intelligence support. The Islamic republic is directly and indirectly responsible for more American military deaths than any country since the Vietnam War and has yet to be called to accounts for it. The price of a destabilization operation is minuscule compared to the costs of American vehicles destroyed by Iranian improvised explosive devices and the rehabilitation of warriors wounded in those attacks. Unlike the sanctions President Obama is pursuing, this plan will get results.

Some members of the audience urged me to write about this idea in the mass media, so I'll get to work on it and see what happens. It's the best, lowest-cost, most humanitarian way to avoid a war to stop the mad mullahs from building nuclear weapons and to keep them from killing our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's best for the people of Iran, most of whom have goodwill towards the United States.

COMOPS Journal picks up on ridicule as counterterrorism weapon

COMOPS Journal has picked up on the theme of using ridicule as a weapon against our terrorist and extremist enemies. The idea has been slow to take root, but it is gradually doing so in certain parts of the US government.

Kristin Fleischer writes in her COMOPS Journal article, titled "Ridicule as Strategic Communication":

"Although the suggestion that ridicule and satire are legitimate tools of strategic communication might receive some – dare I say it – ridicule, Waller’s argument is a good one. Ridicule and satire have a long history in warfare, and they have been deployed both offensively and defensively. In the U.S., ridicule was used in the Revolutionary War, both to mock the British troops and to raise the morale of the American fighters. In WWII, domestic use of ridicule targeted Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito."

Fleischer quotes from my 2007 monograph, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War and from this PoliticalWarfare.org blog, and also highlights the creative work of blogger Jarret Brachman who coined the term "jihobbyists" as a way of ridiculing armchair terrorists who do naughty things online.

COMOPS Journal is an online publication of the Consortium for Strategic Communication, an initiative of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

100 million people laugh at Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Circulating on YouTube since 2007, the 10-minute ventriloquist routine of Jeff Dunham and his "Achmed the Dead Terrorist" has now surpassed 100,000,000 views. The skit cleverly mocks Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers, and pokes fun at others as well. Dunham lampoons the enemy in a light-hearted, naughty way - a good model for taking down the enemy by laughing at him and his cause. Dunham's skit also adds a fun twist on the supposed terrorist reward of 72 virgins in the afterlife. Take a look. Also, visit Dunham's website at www.jeffdunham.com for more Achmed the Dead Terrorist videos and other funny stuff.

Preview of farcical look at home-grown jihadists

Here's a first look at the upcoming British film that makes fun of home-grown jihadist terrorists. The Four Lions, which I wrote about last month, premiered a few weeks ago at the Sundance Film Festival. Writer-director Chris Morris brilliantly researched Islamist extremism and discovered a lot to laugh at. He's bringing it to us in his comedy. Take a look at the dark, quiet humor in this short clip.

Early reviewers call The Four Lions:

• "an outrageous farce about a quartet of numbskull Islamic terrorists in the north of England,"
• "both laugh-out-loud funny and as serious as a bullet through your artery," and
• "daring and potentially offensive . . . it seems certain to be labeled anti-Islamic and irresponsible."

Only terrorist fronts like CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood fronts like ISNA would call it anti-Islamic, as the movie parodies extremism, and not Islam. But then, to CAIR and ISNA, both are one and the same.

I can't wait to see it!

The Taliban's Abu Ghraib

WARNING - GRAPHIC, DISTURBING VIDEO

There's no better way to take down an ultra-pious enemy than to prove that its leaders and members are depraved sociopaths. Here is one of the greatest vulnerabilities of the Islamist extremists who preach rigid morality but often act quite differently. Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exploiting that vulnerability to help the Taliban tear itself apart.

The target: The notorious Haqqani Network, based in northern Waziristan, Pakistan, and active in eastern Afghanistan.

The US has yet to exploit its full capabilities in this area, with terrabytes of damning captured videos under lock and key.

Fortunately, conservative clergy in Afghanistan and Pakistan have not been so reticent. Key Taliban leaders - Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Siraj Haqqani - had their own personal pornography ring. The Haqqani Network offered free "medical care" to rural Afghan women and girls, and then Haqqani's people raped them on video. Other Taliban figures, including a physician, were involved.

Once discovered, the Haqqanis tried to cover up their crimes. They had all the women and girls murdered, as well as their physician. However, they couldn't destroy all the video evidence, which enemies recovered. A Pakistani mullah produced a DVD, currently being distributed in Afghan and Pakistani bazaars, to discredit the Haqqanis. Click here for a downloadable link to the video. Even though the worst scenes have been blacked out for modesty reasons, the videos are graphic and disturbing. All the women and girls pictured in the video are now dead. An English translation of the transcript is available here.

The video is of low production quality by Western standards, but is entirely appropriate for local standards. Making media products to discredit the enemy in rural South Asia is not an expensive undertaking.

Here's the payoff from a political warfare point of view: Under local interpretations of Islamic law, the Haqqanis and all others involved must be killed as punishment, with worse torments to follow in the afterlife.

The mullah called for a jihad against the "House of Haqqani" - the leadership of the Haqqani clan.

This is exactly the type of product the US and its allies should be producing as part of their information operations and psychological operations in the AfPak theater and around the world. The Taliban is mainly Pashtun, and many rural Pashtuns have peculiar depravities that, if more widely known, could turn many devout Muslims against the movement and compel conservative mullahs to issue edicts ordering the imposition of traditional Islamic punishments.

A properly run psychological warfare campaign along these lines would also stigmatize Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda due to their decade-old "adoption" by the Taliban - with the terrorists' new fascination with butt bombs as a case in point. The campaign should be designed to morally compel some of those sheltering the terrorists to betray them or hand them over to the mullahs for old-fashioned sharia justice.