Yankee Station

Dual Book Review on the American Army's Experience in Vietnam (by me)

2007-04-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

Back to the Drawing Board

Revisiting Counterinsurgency and the Vietnam War

The study of low-intensity warfare is back in vogue, partly because of the protracted American-led counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would therefore be prudent to undertake a serious analysis of the American effort in Vietnam. The lessons from Vietnam are unfortunately often contentious, and the resultant policy prescriptions vary significantly depending on the analyst.

Controversy is not new to American military history; the Korean conflict, for example, has undergone numerous revisions. Viewed through the prism of historical overwhelming American military success, it was generally first considered a defeat. Subsequent reconsiderations, and the experience of Vietnam, contributed to a common reevaluation and many historians now see it as a successful limited war.

The historical debate over Vietnam has also been polemical. If defeat is an orphan, then the Vietnam War, in which a third world peasant society defeated a technologically savvy and physically imposing superpower, is a truly lonely child. Many interpretations of Vietnam reflected the individual and institutional temptation to pass the buck. Blame for the defeat has been placed on various sources, including the military, McNamara’s Whiz Kids, civilian politicians, hippies, the media, the South Vietnamese Army, or even sheer inevitability.

This difference in analysis was apparent when reading concurrently Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr.’s The Army and Vietnam and Harry G. Summers, Jr.’s On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Both books undertook to explain why America lost in Vietnam, and suggest diametrically different veins of policy proposal.

Krepinevich primarily addressed the Army’s failure to prepare for, or execute proper counterinsurgency [COIN] methods. Summers discussed what he labeled the environment in which that war was waged. Where Summers addressed military strategy, he lamented the harmful effects of civilian-pushed counterinsurgency dogma and geographical limitations imposed by the politicians. Summers made compelling arguments, but he ultimately missed the mark. The Army’s adoption of his line of thought prevented a more useful examination of its COIN approach in Vietnam.

Summer’s On Strategy used Karl von Clausewitz’s seminal work On War to portray an intricate web of mostly political and civilian failures that crippled an otherwise successful military effort into an ineffective strategy. The strategy was then executed by a piqued, but irresponsibly compliant military leadership. The upshot was a string of tactical and operational successes on the battlefield that floundered for lack of strategic exploitation.

Firstly, the Johnson Administration and limited war theorists, neglected to mobilize the American people, fearing that it would upset domestic reformation, and unleash uncontrollable national passions. The military failed to correct its civilian leadership with judgment, derived through its own experiences in Korea, that war could not be fought without the passion and full commitment of the American people.

Summers contended that a formal declaration of war should have been attained from Congress, as representative of the people. This would have “both insured public support at the outset, and created legal sanctions against dealing with the enemy, thereby creating impediments to public dissent” (Summers 14). Instead, the declaration was seen as a useless piece of paper, rather than the result of historical experience. This failure created a strategic vulnerability between the American people and the war effort, one that the North Vietnamese successfully exploited.

Furthermore, during the Kennedy administration civilian strategists had permeated the military establishment with a disastrous propagation of counter-insurgency doctrine. “Counter-insurgency became not so much the Army’s doctrine as the Army’s dogma, and stultified military strategic thinking for the next decade” (Summers 67).

Engrossed in this dogma, the Army wasted its resources fighting against southern guerrillas - the enemy’s secondary effort, and nation building exercises for which it was not prepared. Moreover, in a display of moral and political arrogance, the US intervened in the South Vietnamese political process to force reforms for which the country was not ready. Instead, Summers argued the US should have allowed the Republic of Vietnam [RVN] to handle its own internal affairs, allowing the Army to focus its efforts against the North’s conventional forces, which were the true threat to the RVN’s independence.

Fundamentally, Summers affirmed, Vietnam was not a failure of conventional methods, for “these conventional tactics were militarily successful in destroying guerrilla forces” (Summers 83). Owing to a misplaced faith in COIN doctrine and harmful geographical political constraints, however, the US lost track of its strategic objectives, and therefore forfeited its victories on the battlefield.

In The Army and Vietnam, Krepinevich attacked Summers’ assertion that the Army’s focus on counter-insurgency prevented a viable strategy. He argued convincingly that the Army’s commitment to counterinsurgency was in fact mostly cosmetic and did not alter its basic approach to the Vietnam War. Krepinevich said Kennedy’s attempt to push counterinsurgency doctrine could be described as a “revolution that failed,” for “the Army could not be forced to adopt his concern for counterinsurgency” (Summers 31). The Army’s rejection stemmed from its investment in what Krepinevich called the Army “Concept.”

The Concept described the Army’s perception of how its wars ought to be waged, and was derived from an organizational history that focused primarily on the Army’s big war experiences. It focused on conventional war, and the use of unlimited firepower to minimize casualties. According to the Army’s thinking, “there was scant difference between limited war and insurgency,” and attempts to make a distinction risked detracting from readiness for limited or general war (Summers 43). Most important was a potential war against the Soviets in Europe.

This led to an approach to Vietnam that was in many ways the antithesis of a successful counterinsurgency effort based upon “a primary support system anchored on the population” (Krepinevich 9). For instance, instead of designing a South Vietnamese army with a light force structure for internal defense, the Military Assistance Advisory group [MAAG] created a Korea-style force that looked, thought, and acted like the US Army. This handicapped the Army of the Republic of Vietnam [ARVN] throughout the war. Moreover, after the arrival of the first American divisions, the war was increasingly assumed by American forces, to the growing dependency of the ARVN. It also put a low-emphasis on the South’s Regional Force and Provincial Force militias, localized units most suited to protecting the people and pacifying the populated areas.

A mid-intensity war of attrition, supported by the lavish use of firepower killed many of the enemy, but guaranteed the replenishment of its ranks by alienating the rural South Vietnamese citizens. Moreover, large scale operations diverted substantial friendly troops away from providing security to the population. This “was exactly what the insurgents wanted.”

Summers’ claim that an obsession with a secondary guerilla effort doomed the South was therefore incorrect, because our strategy emphasized precisely the opposite. By blaming North Vietnam for the guerillas’ successes the Army failed to address the internal causes for the insurgency, in particular the decrepit state of the South Vietnamese government. According to Krepinevich, the Viet Cong was self-sufficient and not dependent on North Vietnamese assistance.

Contrary to Summer’s contentions that civilians dictated military strategy, Army leaders crafted attritional search and destroy tactics, and thereafter insisted they were working. The Army was given a free hand to escalate violence within the RVN. In doing so, it swept aside the doubts of its civilian leadership, Marines, British advisors, and many of its own lower-level officers and advisors, who saw firsthand the debilitating effects of the American tactics.

The rare attempts to operationalize COIN doctrine, such as the ill-fated Strategic Hamlets program, were usually badly implemented. Those attempts that worked, such as the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups [CIDG], were often the product of organizations such as the CIA, institutions not hostage to the Army’s “Concept.” Consequentially, they were seen as threats to the Army’s strategic monopoly, and hastily brought under its control wherever possible, usually to the detriment of the operations in question.

According to Krepinevich, Vietnam was essentially a failure of army strategy on the battlefield. Krepinevich considered Summers’ tactical and operational “successes” in killing the enemy, as counterproductive. He asserted that the army focused on destroying the enemy units, without alleviating the conditions that allowed their recruitment, the vulnerability and political grievances of the South Vietnamese citizenry. Summers was primarily concerned with the parameters within which the Army went to war, namely the lack of political mobilization and the geographical limitations. Krepinevich instead blamed the Army’s failure to apply COIN tactics and ultimately, his was a more constructive approach.

Summers elucidated many of the causes for the gradual loss of American support for the war effort in Vietnam. He failed, however, to explain why the Army did not make more effective use of the amount of time it was given, both to advise the South Vietnamese and fight its own war.

Nonetheless, his contention that civilian leadership erred by attempting to prosecute the Vietnam War “on the cheap,” is most likely correct. It is also, in this author’s opinion, a mistake that our leadership continues to do today in Iraq and the wider “war on Terror.” Defense spending today is still relatively modest in relation to GDP, and the Army is roughly as large as it was on September 10th, 2001.

On the other hand, in spite of the potential benefits of a declaration of war, it is unclear that it was truly necessary. As Max Boot has noted, historically, “declarations of war have been the exception, not the norm, when the U.S. committed its armed forces to combat overseas” (Boot 291). Summers treated dissent as an aberration. To an extent, however, the unanimity of World War II was the aberration. In the American system, dissent is generally a factor, and in our politically contentious times, it will remain prominent.

Also prominent will be problems with the press. In 1944 the military could appeal to press patriotism and the national interest to prevent leaks and critical coverage. The rise of multinational press corps and the 24 hour news cycle significantly diminishes the strength of these appeals. News organizations such as Al Jazeera are arguably more supportive of the enemy than US policy, and such cannot be counted on cooperating at all.

Amidst such trends, Summers’ advice not to sugarcoat warfare is perhaps perceptive (Summers 37). With news access directly to the battlefield, and all its tragedies, there will be no more “splendid little wars.” Civilian casualties, refugees, and enemy agents are no longer merely distant statistics and empty suits; they can be on the average American’s TV at a moment’s notice. How to square these images with the historic American view of war as idealistic crusades for peace and justice is unclear, for these idealistic goals often run crosscurrent with the extraordinarily messy realities of war.

A reduced emphasis on firepower during counterinsurgency could be helpful. Additionally, Americans will probably never fight as brutally as their enemies. Nonetheless, there is a limit below which wars cannot be sanitized, lest they be prolonged and result in failure. This suggests that the propaganda war should be more focused on the ends of American policy, rather than its means. How we fight is ultimately less important than what we are fighting for. Here, an emphasis on the fact that we fought World War II brutally when circumstances required it, yet did not lose our national soul, might be effective.

The military should also prepare itself for wars fought without public mobilization, for its current professional nature tends to lend itself to disconnectedness between a mobilized Army and a demobilized people. Arguably it is in part this ability to wage war in such a manner which provides much of a professional army’s attractiveness to politicians in the first place.

As an analysis, The Army in Vietnam’s best quality is its ability to set aside the reasons for the bottoming out of support for the war after the Tet Offensive It asked why the Army failed to make better use of its long involvement prior. Vietnam did not begin as an unpopular war. It only became unpopular after the Army’s strategy seemed bankrupt both to the public and its civilian leadership. The Tet Offensive caused the complete fallout of civilian backing for the Army’s attritional strategy. This finally brought leadership to the top who truly believed in integrating the war on the battlefield with the “other war” for the political support of rural South Vietnam.

Nevertheless, in spite of General Creighton Abrams reformist views, Krepinevich asserted that the long term Army commitment to the “Concept” proved too well entrenched. It should be pointed out, however, that there is revisionist scholarship, particularly Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, that suggests that Vietnamization, though late and rushed, could have succeeded and Abrams was more effective than Krepinevich suggested. Furthermore, Krepinevich omitted the major changes that occurred in South Vietnam’s position after Tet.

Certainly, the corrupt and vapid South Vietnamese government was a difficult tool with which to mobilize support. Political reformation could have nipped the insurgency in the bud in the 1950s or early 1960s. Nonetheless, by the end of American involvement immediate political reformation might not have been so critical.

The corruptness and brutality of Sygman Rhee’s government in Korea surpassed the RVN, and yet the South Korean government still won a conventional war in 1950, defeated a limited insurgency in 1968, and survived continued disgruntlement towards autocratic rule until its democratization in the late 1980s. The lesson here is that people will rally behind even a decrepit regime given an awful enough alternative.

There is evidence to suggest that the well-publicized [in Vietnam] massacres in Hue, and the increasing predominance of the North over the effort in South Vietnam, prompted a similar rallying of non-Communists to the South Vietnamese government’s colors. To quote Lewis Sorley, an ARVN with over a million men under arms and “four million members of the People's Self-Defense Force, armed with some 600,000 weapons, represented no threat to the government that had armed them; instead they constituted an overt commitment to that government in opposition to the enemy” (Sorley 217). Moreover, these numbers do not include the families of the men, nor the civilian participation in the government itself. They suggest a population with a stake in its government.

Summers cited evidence that in 1970, 80% of what was known as the VC actually consisted of NVA cadres (Summers 82). Although this exact statistic may be disputed, it is widely accepted that the effort increasingly took the image of a low-intensity Northern invasion, rather than an indigenous insurgency. This culminated in two conventional invasions that grew almost entirely out of the NVA in North Vietnam.

Krepinevich correctly noted note that by 1964, a largely indigenous VC was beating the ARVN without significant northern assistance. This was not true after Tet, however, when the Viet Cong was no longer a force independent of North Vietnam’s effort. Years of undercover infrastructure work and grooming of Southern Vietnamese cadres were thrown away, and replaced increasingly by northern infiltrators. Whether this was mere coincidence or actually intended by the North Vietnamese leadership is immaterial, but after Tet the insurgency in the South was probably dependent on North Vietnamese assistance, and the threat had changed from an internal to an external origin.

No matter the origin of the insurgency, COIN was still the proper strategy to enable the population to defend and police itself from what could now be portrayed as northern imperialism. However, Krepinevich’s description of the VC as self-sufficient was no longer correct. Within this context, Summers’ suggestions become more helpful, even if they would not replace COIN as the primary effort. In the face of external sanctuaries, it was likely that a proper COIN effort would require efforts towards both the interior and exterior.

Direct invasion of North Vietnam was always risky. We now know from post-Cold War evidence that Mao probably would have intervened in such an event, at least until the Nixonian Sino-American rapprochement. The Laotian and Cambodian sanctuaries were another story, and it is probably correct to call them a “self-inflicted wound,” as Summers does (Summers 95).

The Johnson Administration mistakenly allowed the North Vietnamese presence in these countries to be normalized in international and domestic opinion, a severe political defeat. The belated result was a half-hearted Cambodian Incursion that was prematurely terminated due to an emotive political backlash. This is something to consider today, when we are facing insurgents that sometime infiltrate into Iraq and Afghanistan from neighboring countries.

The bombing halts and geographical constraints were also probably self-defeating, and resulted from the Johnson Administration’s increasing conviction that since the war seemed un-winnable, a negotiated settlement preserving the South was necessary. Setting aside the question of whether the war was winnable, we failed to understand our enemy. Negotiation points were essentially worthless against an enemy who would accept nothing less than total victory.

General strategic thought and methods, such as gradual escalation, were misapplied to a local situation which we did not fully understand. From the very beginning, we thought that we could bring the enemy to accept something less than total victory. Our efforts took the form of carrots such as economic aid, or sticks such as the restricted Rolling Thunder bomber raids. All were feckless owing to the nature of our enemy. Here, the lesson for today is that American strategy and forces must be tailored specifically for the contingency in question, and to turn a quote, generals cannot be mere generalists.

According to John Nagl, On Strategy “quickly became the U.S. Army’s approved version of why it lost the Vietnam War.” He noted Summers’ argument that it neglected conventional strategy for counterinsurgency “was just the message the Army wanted to hear as it refocused attention on European style conventional war fighting in the 1970s and 1980s” (Nagl 206). As a result, it did not absorb the lessons of the failed counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. Even many who did see the need for proper COIN tactics decided that for all the Army’s assets and skills, it just was not built for such operations, and therefore should not even try.

The apotheosis of these sentiments was the Powell/Weinberger Doctrine which implied that if the Army could not and did not want to fight such a war, it would declare so ahead of time. The result was a declaration that the Army should never be placed into the harmful environment that Summers said plagued its efforts in Vietnam. The unfortunate result was that the Army did not learn its lesson after Vietnam.

Instead of truly taking to heart the lesson that it needed to learn how to fight outside of its box, it reacted by further strengthening the limits of the box. The Weinberger/Powell doctrine is a nice wish list, but it spite of American power it is never certain that the United States will decide the conditions under which it goes to war. How this mentality can harm American efforts is evident in the following example.

It is well known that post-Vietnam Army reforms followed the spirit of Summers’ writings by placing vital war-making capabilities within the reserves. This was based on the theory that mobilizing the reserves would require the political mobilization of the American people in cases of wartime. Although this seems a reasonable desire, the Army truly should not dictate the circumstances under which it would be called to fight, even indirectly. This is the prerogative of its civilian leadership, even if it can and does sometimes act unwisely.

The result of this force restructuring was that during the 1990s the reserves were rotated in and out of odd places throughout the world, forced to take part in what were really, minor efforts in places such as Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. This caused burn out in some vital reserve components even before they were needed for the war on terror. This was the result of an institution prepared to fight the wars that it wanted to fight, rather than the wars it might have to fight.

The Army may have to fight without international support, without the total commitment of the American people, and without an obvious exit strategy. It may lack any number of the presupposed conditions of the Powell/Weinberger Doctrine. Yet it may still be a necessary war, and it is the Army’s duty to fight that war to best of its ability. Today we are relearning the COIN lessons of Vietnam, because after three decades of pretending otherwise, we have again realized, to quote Leon Trotsky, that while we might not be interested in counterinsurgency warfare, our superiority on the conventional battlefield guarantees that counterinsurgency warfare is interested in us. We had better be ready for it.

Books Reviewed

1. Krepinevich Jr., Andrew F. The Army and Vietnam. (The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1986).

2. Summers Jr., Harry G. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. (Presidio Press: Novato, 1982).

Additional Bibliography

3. Boot, Max. The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. (Basic Books: New York, 2003).

4. Nagl, John A. Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. (The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2005).

5. Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (Harcourt, Inc.: 2000).

Hamas Wins, Everyone Else Loses

2005-12-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

HAMAS is on its way to control of the disputed territories:

"Hamas supporters on Friday celebrated a landslide election victory in major West Bank towns, the strongest sign yet of the Islamic militant group's growing political appeal ahead of Jan. 25 parliamentary elections.

Israel responded with concern, saying a Palestinian government dominated by Hamas — which calls for Israel's destruction and has killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks — would not be a partner for peace.

The results stunned officials from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas'
Fatah Party, whose internal disarray developed into a split this week when a group of young-guard leaders broke away.

Thousands of Hamas supporters joined victory marches after Friday prayers. In Jenin, where Hamas won a majority of local council seats, marchers chanted, "To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions!" and held up copies of the Quran.

Hamas' welfare programs — coupled with its fierce resistance to Israel's occupation — have won it grass-roots support among Palestinians fed up with Fatah's corruption and inability to rein in lawlessness."

As I wrote 2 months ago:

"The Palestinian Authority as a monolithic organization is quite possibly doomed in unoccupied Gaza. Arafat had charismatic authority that noone else is going to be able to replace. As a whole, the organization was propped up by the Israelis themselves, under the pressure of the world, as the representative of the Palestinian people. The Israelis gave them 15,000 M-16s due to Oslo [which were later used against them], treated them as the only negotiating power, thereby giving them credibility, and scared off even more radical rivals such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In reality, the PA was merely a mafia that had little internal legitimacy besides being the world sponsored monopoly. They could be propped up when Gaza was under outside [Israeli] control, but now the UN and its affiliates aren't as effective so long as the Israelis are gone - they were the normalizing and deterring force.

So the PA has lost much of its international subsidation, and is forced to survive on its own credibility - a decades long legacy of corruption and violence. Only, if you want violence, and I believe the Palestinians do, there's more efficient killers than the PA. Furthermore, Gaza, as opposed to the West Bank, has traditionally been Hamas' stronghold. For these reasons, it is my opinion that Hamas or a derivative will likely be in control of Gaza before it is all over, absent external intervention."

At the time I was unsure at how much staying power Fatah had retained in the West Bank, traditionally an area of strength. Unfortunately, even there, Fatah is a mess. Without Arafat as a figurehead, it is likely to continue to fragment. Palestinian-Israeli peace is farther away than ever.

The blood that will flow lies not only on the hands of Hamas, but on the hands of the blind and unrealistic Israelis, Europeans, Americans, and UN members who turned a blind eye to the Palestinian Authority's failings, allowing Arafat to turn it into a personal mafia that was doomed upon his death. It lies on the hands of those who pretended not to see the corruption, and the continued incitement to violence, that carried on throughout Oslo. They had 8 years to address this, and they didn't - because it was politically difficult to do so. And they prepared the way for a more Islamic, but less corrupt alternative to fill the vacuum. It is symbollic, and directly correlates the rise of Islamic movements throughout the Middle East.

Unfortunately, there is little sign that anyone besides American and Israeli leadership is at all prepared to deal with the reality that there will be no deal between the Israelis and Palestinians so long as the latter is treated as a child that is beyond reproach for irresponsibility and bloodlust.

HT: Captain's Quarters.

Posted at Outside the Beltway.

2005-11-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

Indonesia set to cut radical cleric Bashir's sentence:

"Indonesia will ignore Australian protests and slash the prison sentences of 27 Bali bombers as well as their alleged spiritual leader, radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

Remissions for thousands of inmates are being handed down to mark the end of Islam's Ramadan fasting month.

Bashir is expected to get one month sliced off his sentence, meaning he could be free by next April.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer travelled to Jakarta last month to persuade President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to block reductions for those convicted of terror offences.

But Indonesia's Justice Minister Hamid Awaluddin says they'll go ahead according to existing regulations.

"The Republic of Indonesia, as a sovereign state, must not be dictated by the wishes of other countries," Awaluddin said this week. "... all prisoners will be given a sentence cut in line with their rights under prevailing laws and regulations."

Australian officials have been working with their Indonesian counterparts to re-draft laws and exclude terrorists from automatic remissions on major religious and national holidays.

But Indonesian justice ministry officials say the revisions will not be completed in time for Thursday's Eid al-Fitr Muslim holiday, known as Lebaran.

Bashir is serving what originally was a 30-month jail term for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, among them 88 Australians.

He also got a four-month cut as part of independence day celebrations in August.

Government officials say the jail terms of 27 of the 2002 Bali bombers will be cut on Thursday by around six weeks each."

This is what treating the War on Terrorism as a law enforcement matter really means. The bottom line is that if governments can't guarentee these people [responsible for the murder of 202 people!] will be locked up for good, we should kill them right off the streets, complications be damned.

At the same, [Australian] Clerics still preaching hatred of West:

"Muslim clerics in Sydney and Melbourne - led by radicals Sheik Mohammed Omran and Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud - are still preaching hatred against the West, urging followers in Arabic to resist peace and support insurgents waging war against Australian soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In open defiance of John Howard's proposed new terror laws and the Prime Minister's demand that Muslim leaders desist from inflammatory rhetoric, Lakemba cleric Sheik Zoud has used his Friday prayer meetings over the past month to praise Muslim fighters. "Allah yinsur el-mujaheddin fe-Iraq (God grant victory to the mujaheddin in Iraq)," he repeatedly screamed during a 35-minute Arabic sermon at Lakemba's Haldon Street prayer hall in Sydney's southwest last week.

In further contempt of Mr Howard, Sheik Zoud's high-profile counterpart in Melbourne, Sheik Omran, also declared last month: "No victory (for Islam's brothers and sisters) can be stopped by George Bush or Tony Blair or John Howard."

Under expanded sedition provisions, people face up to seven years' jail for promoting feelings of ill will or hostility between different groups so as to threaten the peace, order and government of the commonwealth. This would include urging another person to engage in conduct that supports an organisation or country at war with Australia.

A third cleric - Harun Abu Talha, editor of contentious newspaper Mecca News - has also used Friday prayers at Sheik Omran's Brunswick mosque in Melbourne to attack "the criminal government of Israel that has been hurting our brothers and sisters in Palestine for so many years".

And during a prayer meeting last month, Abu Talha said: "We should not compromise our dean (religion) for the sake of peace." He concluded his sermon: "May Allah help the mujaheddin in Iraq."

The message the fundamentalist clerics are delivering to their supporters - mostly in Arabic - is in dramatic contrast to their public statements.

Last month, Sheik Zoud told about 400 followers in Arabic: "God grant victory to the mujaheddin in Kashmir and Chechnya, and Palestine and Afghanistan."

Sheik Zoud, head of the Sydney arm of the Melbourne-based organisation Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah declared: "Inshallah (God willing), dark days will descend upon America soon."

But during a newspaper interview last year, Sheik Zoud said: "I'm against all terrorism over the world. I'm against all terrorists who kill civilian people.

"Let the Australian people relax. Why everyone make the Australian people scared from the Muslims?

"We left our countries because of all of the problems there, and we move to this safe country to live the rest of our life."

After Mr Howard singled out Sheik Omran earlier this year for not doing enough to denounce terrorism, the cleric wrote to The Australian: "We consider ourselves Australians working for the betterment of Australia. Those of us who came from other countries appreciate how the people of this country have accepted us with open arms.

"Islam teaches us to appreciate kindness, and we wouldn't do anything to betray this gesture."

2005-11-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Rather warns students of 'new' media.

"Longtime CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather on Tuesday called for a return to independent journalism, telling viewers to be critical of the plethora of "new" media outlets that feign objectivity while working to advance their own - or another's - agenda.

...

Cohen, a former U.S. senator from Maine and secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, echoed Rather's renewed call for a free and independent press, one whose members do not have to risk access to information if they ask tough questions.

"That is not the tradition of this country," Cohen said. "That is something all people should be fearful of."

As opposed to blogs. For some reason I'm getting this uncontrollable urge to shout... FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, WAR IS PEACE!

Whoops - almost lost it there.

I'm generally a pretty forgiving guy and I could feel some sympathy for someone whose entire career is ended by one misstep.

But Mapes and Rather deserved to be publically tarred and feathered, that this sort of people controlled the public agenda for so long is positively scary. Good riddance to these self-important hacks, who's next?

2005-11-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

Greyhawk of the Mudville Gazette goes after the New York Times for selectively quoting American military members :

"I've been to Iraq. And I characterized the Times disgraceful use of the words of an American hero as intellectually vacant moral cowardice. I was being generous.

Because I've seen numerous examples of such behavior on the part of the New York Times over the past several months. All involve selective quoting, misquoting, or simply claiming a GI said something without actually quoting them at all. Most range in repugnance from mildly annoying to grossly reprehensible - but in what I believe is the worst case they appear to attempt to frame a soldier for murder."

2005-11-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Facing draft, Alito joined Army Reserve.

""Sam looked like he was sure to be drafted. He said, 'If I'm going into the Army, I might as well be an officer.'"

Chickenhawk!

Don't Forget "Death to America" Day

2005-11-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

See here.

The Collossus:

"Here, in the land of the Great Satan, we have all kinds of deep, philosophical discussions over whether one may even pledge one's allegiance to America, especially if said pledge contains the odious words "under God." In Iran, there's no such lack of focus. You chant "Death to America" or else. I don't imagine students who opt to sit out the group chant there will be feted by the press there -- or here, for that matter -- as courageous heroes. I'm also thinking that the principal in an Iranian school isn't above the occasional caning of miscreants. Call it a hunch.

Well, I have a message for you little Iranian b*stards.

You want a piece of me? You think you're big and bad enough to tangle with the likes of me? I guarantee you -- you may think you're all big and bad when you're in a group of your friends, sitting there under your little Iranian flag, under a beaming portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, protected by the teacher, but if you want to mix it up with me, then walk on over to my playground. Anytime, kids.

These people have no idea what we are capable of when we feel truly threatened. Quran defacement? Torture? Hah! If Joe-sixpack and the Jacksonians kick our effeminate and self-apologetic elites to the curb, their eyes are going to open wide. It is a pity, but our State Department would probably serve us better by disseminating volumes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than peace videos that they spit back at us.

2005-11-02T17:23:00.000-08:00

Prince Charles to lecture Americans on tolerance towards Muslims:

"The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.

The Prince, who leaves on Tuesday for an eight-day tour of the US, has voiced private concerns over America's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam's strengths.

...

The Prince raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London in November 2001. The gathering took place just two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. "I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," the Prince said, according to one leader at the meeting.

...

Mr Mahmood and other Muslims present stressed that Prince Charles did not go so far as to criticise the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. More recently, he has been careful not to express his views on Iraq.

The Prince also spoke of his sympathy for America after the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people. He said he wanted to promote better relations between the different religions of the world."

From an International Pew Poll released in July:

Note that this poll was taken before the attacks in London, it would be interesting to see the new UK numbers.

Regardless, perhaps the Prince should take his act eastward, and lecture other people.

HT: Samizdata.

2005-11-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

"We have lost a lot of people":

"The Iraqi soldier wears a green mask over his face to work. He reveals only his brown eyes as he mans his checkpoint.

Dozens of Iraqis see Mahmud Abdul Karim when they cross the bridge he guards each day. He dons the mask because he doesn’t want them to recognize him when he goes on leave to his home in Nasiriyah south of here.

Insurgents have killed scores of other Iraqi soldiers for cooperating with the U.S. military. Karim said he knows of at least 70 fellow soldiers who have been killed while on leave.

“We have lost a lot of people,” said Karim, 24, who has served in the Iraqi Army for 15 months. “They stay in the street and wait for us.”

Suldog-O-Rama: How NOT To Write A Cover Letter

2005-11-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

Suldog-O-Rama: How NOT To Write A Cover Letter:

"I assumed that, since this was a creative type of business I was trying to get into, a creative cover letter would be appreciated. I failed to take into account the fact that, while the end of the business I was attempting to get into called for imagination, your average programming director has the imagination of a sea slug. And I might be doing a disservice to sea slugs by saying that...

"Person In Whose Hands I Am Placing My Life
Same Address As On The Envelope

Dear Form Letter Recipient:

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm the idiot who thinks that he can forego writing a personal letter, yet still believes he will receive a personal reply. My name is Jim Sullivan. I will more than likely commit suicide unless you offer me a job immediately.

Whew! That's quite a first paragraph, wouldn't you say? I'm willing to bet that this is the first cover letter you've ever received where the person applying for work states right up front that he is both mentally deficient and suicidal (not to mention egotistical enough to think that you'd care, even though he didn't take the time to find out your name.) Well, that's just the kind of guy I am!..."

As someone applying for Graduate Schools (offers accepted via e-mail), I can relate. The temptation to go for originality and admit my insanity is quite tempting, but I'll keep the results of this experience in mind - I won't dare mention I'm a Republican.

Suldog-O-Rama: A Halloween Story

2005-11-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

A worthwhile and entertaining Halloween story.

I would tell a story of my own, but it involves a sorority girl and a cat suit - and this is a family oriented blog (at least when I'm not quoting Kossacks).

"The Buck stops here."

2005-11-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

Man kills deer with bare hands:

"For 40 exhausting minutes, Wayne Goldsberry battled a buck with his bare hands in his daughter’s bedroom in Arkansas, USA.

Goldsberry finally subdued the five-point whitetail deer that crashed through a bedroom window at his daughter’s home.

When it was over, blood splattered the walls and the deer lay dead on the bedroom floor, its neck broken.

Goldsberry was at his daughter’s home when he heard glass breaking. He went back to check on the noise and found the deer.

“I was peeking around the corner when the deer came out of the bedroom,” said Goldsberry. The deer ran down the hall and into the master bedroom - “jumping back and forth across the bed.”

Goldsberry entered the bedroom to confront the deer and, after a brief struggle, emerged to tell his wife to call police.

After returning to the bedroom, the fight continued. Goldsberry finally was able to grip the animal and twist its neck, killing it.

Goldsberry, sore from the struggle, dragged the dead animal out of the house.

“He got kicked several times. He was walking bowlegged for a while,” Deputy Doug Gay said."

-No comment necessary.

2005-11-01T21:40:00.000-08:00

An Iraqi city becomes turnaround story:

"Last January, Baquba was symbol of everything going wrong in Iraq - and its neighborhood of Buhritz was a symbol for everything going wrong in Baquba.

This city just 50 miles north of Baghdad was crawling with Sunni Arab mortar teams, snipers, and bombmakers. They had made parts of the city their own, killing police when they found them and driving the rest into hiding. Their grip was so strong that only 60 percent of the region's polling places opened for Iraq's first post-Saddam election. In Buhritz, not a vote was cast; some polling sites were torched.

But today, US commanders are pointing to Baquba as a symbol of what might go right. Every polling place stayed open all day for the Oct. 15 referendum that approved Iraq's new constitution earlier this month. Violence was light, while voter turnout was high."

Of course, how they voted, and how committed the voters are to a political process that will not return them [Sunnis] to sole authority, is a different story, still...

"Asked why, Lt. Col. Rob Risberg, commander of the 1st Battalion of the Army's 10th Field Artillery Regiment, scratches his head, then says it hasn't been rocket science. "The Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police have really come along - they can handle most of what comes their way now,'' says Colonel Risberg, from DeLeon Springs, Fla. "We're here to back them up, but I think we're seeing the benefits of getting cops on almost every street corner."

There have also been heavy doses of force. In June, Buhritz - a tough neighborhood where kids swim in a murky, trash-strewn irrigation canal fed from the nearby Diyala River - was almost a no-go zone for Risberg's men. They didn't come down except in force, and even then were almost certain to be shot at.

Then on June 17, Lt. Noah Harris of Dawsonville, Ga., and Cpl. William Long of Lillburn, Ga., were killed when their humvee was hit by a roadside bomb in the area, and Risberg decided he'd had enough. "That was the straw that broke the camel's back," he says, pointing to the crater left by that earlier bomb as he rolled through Buhritz with just a three-humvee convoy.

The Army shut down the area for six weeks - basically letting no one in and no one out - and began major sweeps through the area. Risberg said the operation had a twofold objective: To capture fighters in the area and to persuade residents not to support them.

Risberg was helped by Capt. Bobby Ray Toon, from Grannies Neck, Texas, who was directly responsible for Buhritz. In the Army as an enlisted man for 18 years, he recently attended officer candidate school and was put in charge of a company of about 150 men. His experience made it easier for him to make the right calls in dealing with local civilians, problems that take as much political as military savvy.

Each time an attack originated in the area, Risberg would have a nearby palm grove shelled, sometimes as often as every 15 minutes the whole night. He'd also further restrict residents' movement. "We were trying to show them that you're going to help us clean up this area or you're going to pay the price,'' he explains. "I didn't care which."

When local families complained that the shelling frightened their kids, he'd tell them to help hand over insurgents - only then would the shelling stop. They also replaced the local mayor and the town council, who seemed sympathetic to the insurgency. Eventually, he and others in his battalion say, the approach got results."

Unfortunately, our idealistic goals make traditional counter-insurgency difficult. We can force them to keep their heads down so long as we make their lives miserable, but we cannot force them to willingly participate in a political process even after we have left. Iraq remains a country where political power originates out of a gun and the threat of force or reprisals, rather than voluntary participation. We can destroy the active insurgency, but still fail due to recalcitrant Sunni attitudes towards the political process. Ultimately, the biggest weakness of the neo-Conservative enterprise is that our goals can only be achieved willingly by other actors.

2005-11-01T21:34:00.000-08:00

Small units lure Taliban into losing battles:

"Much is made about the high-tech gear that US soldiers carry: body armor, rapid-firing machine guns, night vision goggles. But the chief advantage of the US military - especially in a low-intensity conflict, pitted against a crudely trained force like the Taliban - is training and air power.

Taliban fighters, meanwhile, appear to gain courage from numbers, the ability to swarm a smaller enemy unit. A sense of safety in numbers, however, is often the Taliban's undoing if a US platoon can fix an enemy's position long enough for aircraft or other infantry units to arrive. This is the backbone of US military strategy in Zabul, and one reason why the Taliban have lost so many fighters this year.

"We've had a lot of success with textbook tactics, getting the smallest element engaged, and then using other assets to just pile on," says O'Neal. "The Taliban are more willing to engage with us when we have smaller numbers."

...

"As night falls, American AC-130 Specter gunships arrive to engage Taliban fighters who have also decided to make a run for it. By the end of the day, 76 Taliban bodies are counted, and another nine Taliban fighters are captured.

To this day, the men of the 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company, can't figure out what the Taliban were thinking. Were they suicidal? Why did they gather so many Taliban in one place? Did they really think they had enough men to defeat the Americans?

"They called the BBC to tell them they had taken the district headquarters," says O'Neal. "They knew we were going to come."

2005-11-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

"There is no reason why the west should set its face against the vision of a reunited Islamic world [Caliphate]", so says a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain in the Guardian.

Well, except for the fact that most of its proponents are insane and want to bury us. He also puts in a nice plug for Sharia.

See here for its less glamorous side.

2005-11-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

A Kossack explodes:

"And I will be God Damn Fucking Dead And In a Hole In The Fucking Ground before I let you claim "Italian American" OR Roman Catholic as a fucking code phrase for batshit conservative reactionaries whose dismissal of womens' rights, civil rights, worker rights, and pretty much everything else that has made America great make it clear they think all those things are akin to something they would normally scrape off their shoes.

There's nothing fucking "Italian American" about being an ultra-far-right conservative jackass. You will not drag my heritage into this like you shoved Alito's well-groomed hand up Rosa Parks' corpse, or I will bury you, you loathsome little egg-humping fucker. And unlike most of the victims of your only-like-a-minority-when-they're-dead corpse huggings, I'm still very much alive."

With blood pressure like that, he won't be for long.

HT: Protein Wisdom

2005-11-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

Translated [somewhat roughly] on Free Republic, originally from the South Korean Conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo:

S. Korean Lawmaker: "N. Korea demanded Hyundai Asan blueprints of a submarine (and an Aegis ship) in return for business deals."

Lawmaker Lee Ban-ho from (opposition) Hannara Party asserted on Oct. 25, "The reason why N. Korea declared the total scrapping of Hyundai Asan's N. Korean business venture is because N. Korea demanded to have blueprints for a submarine and an Aegis ship under construction at Hyundai Shipyard, but Hyundai Asan refused." Assemblyman Lee made such an assertion, saying, "The source close to Hyundai Asan passed this intelligence," during the questioning session on unification, foreign policy, and national security issues of government, and also during his conversation with Yonhap News.

However, he did not produce any evidence to back it up. Asked who passed such information along, he just said, "To protect the source, I cannot provide any detail on him."

During his questioning, he said, "Last July when Hyun Jong-eun, the President of Hyundai Asan, met Kim Jong-il, N. Koreans made such a proposition. However, President Hyun refused, saying, 'We could give you anything else you want, but my conscience cannot possibly allow me to agree to such a demand."

He continued, "Moreover, it is my understanding that American CIA already knows this, too. The submarine and the Aegis ship under construction by Hyundai Shipbuilding are for our navy to operate."

Unification Minister responded to this, saying, "(it is) a baseless allegation." When Assemblyman Lee pressed on, saying, "You can personally get confirmation from President Hyun. This outrageous fact....," he dismissed it again, saying, "This is no more than an unfounded rumor."

Depending on the veracity of his claim, this could touch off serious controversy.

If proven true, this could have grave impact on entire inter-Korean relationship, because N. Korea demanded military secrets which can shake the core of (S. Korean) national security, using N. Korean venture as 'a bait.' On the other hand, if proven false, Assemblyman Lee cannot escape the condemnation of practicing 'irresponsible bombshell announcement.'"

2005-10-30T15:56:00.000-08:00

Fantastic collection of Coalition military images.

2005-10-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

Wife arrested [for racism] after calling her husband 'lazy'.:

"Belgium’s history of linguistic bickering between Flemings and Walloons entered a new phase this week when police arrested a Flemish woman for calling her Walloon husband lazy, Belgian media said on Thursday.

The 48-year-old husband filed a complaint for racism against his spouse for scratching him and calling him “a lazy Walloon, a slave and an inferior creature,” De Standaard daily said.

The 47-year-old woman will appear before a magistrate later on Thursday to face charges of racism, the newspaper said."

Those goofy Europeans.

HT: Dean Esmay.

2005-10-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

4th Infantry better trained for Iraq return:

"The massive deployment of the "Ironhorse" division, with 71,000 pieces of equipment that include tanks, helicopters and artillery, was marked in a solemn ceremony Friday in which unit flags were rolled up and stored for shipment back to the theater of war. Tanks and other vehicles will be placed on railcars next week, and troops will leave in a string of flights into December.

The division served more than a year in Iraq before returning in April 2004, and 80 of its soldiers were killed in action during the early days of the insurgency. Only about one-third of the total 20,700 troops in this deployment have previous experience in Iraq because of extensive reorganization of the 4th Infantry, officials said.

...

The division will be based in Baghdad when it replaces the 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Ga. Also serving under him will be three divisions of Iraqi forces, bringing the total number of troops under his command to about 50,000.

"This is the largest heavy combat formation that our Army has and it is the most modern one that our nation has built," Thurman said, adding that, "I expect a lot out of the Iraqi forces."

He said the division has trained since January to fight a "tough insurgency" by using "full-spectrum combat operations."

Rather than prepare for a mellow peacekeeping role, soldiers were prepared for "a mid- to high-intensity land campaign," Thurman said.

Further, Thurman said, the Sept. 11, 2003 [sic], attacks "should never be forgotten ... That's what's at stake here, and prosecuting this global war on terrorism."

If I remember correctly, the 4th ID is also the most technologically advanced unit in the Army, featuring M1A2 SEP tanks.

2005-10-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

PETA officials collide with deer:

"There's plenty of laughter and a little sadness in the hunting community over an incident involving a deer that collided with an automobile driven by two animal rights campaigners who belong to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The folks who worship at the altar of animals now want to sue a New Jersey game department over the incident, claiming it's the state's fault that it happened."

Multiculturalism and the Repeal of Universal Human Rights

2005-10-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

Via Jeff Goldstein, in Australia:

"Police are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits.

Officers are also being urged to work with Muslim leaders, who will try to keep the families together.

Women’s groups are concerned the politically correct policing could give comfort to wife bashers and keep their victims in a cycle of violence.

The instructions come in a religious diversity handbook given to Victorian police officers that also recommends special treatment for suspects of Aboriginal, Hindu and Buddhist background.

Some police officers have claimed the directives hinder enforcing the law equally.

Police are told: “In incidents such as domestic violence, police need to have an understanding of the traditions, ways of life and habits of Muslims."

Says Goldstein:

"Sad to say, but this is the predictable result of a culture in which the kind of identity politics that follow from the institutionalization of multiculturalism as the foundation for a political system essentially forces lawmakers into treating each “Other” on its own delineated terms.

In such circumstances, there is no coherent method of governing that can appeal to a uniform equality under the law—other than the structural “equality” that comes from the premise that it is the right of each identity group to negotiate its compliance with the host country’s pre-existing laws."

In cases such as these, it is clear that for many, the notion of multiculturalism has effectively caused a rejection of the notion of universal human rights that came out of the Enlightenment. No longer do these people see natural rights of liberty, given by God, ones that cannot be taken away from you. Instead, natural rights are defined by the culture in which you developed. Indeed, even natural development is sometimes impeded by individuals who want specific group members more strictly adhere to their stereotype (i.e., Condoleeza and Powell are really black people "acting white", rather than a more intellectual black culture).

The irony is that by doing away with inalienable and natural rights elsewhere, these people undermine their own positions and liberty. If Middle Eastern women can be oppressed, why are our own immune? If there is nothing fundamentally and universally wrong with oppression of any sort, due to what notion of natural justice were woman or African Americans owed equality? Woman's liberation and the end of segregation no longer become a matter of justice, but war spoils, to be overturned when the opposition is stronger. Nothing relating to justice or morality stops Western culture from digressing ["progressing," since we're avoiding moral judgments].

In short, there's no longer any bedrock of universal rights that guarantee our own freedom - if the morality of other countries is not accountable to universal liberty and justice as understood by the Rights of Man or the Declaration of Independence, neither is our own.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway, Basil's Blog, Mudville Gazette.

Is Classical Liberalism Doomed?

2005-10-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Jeff Goldstein links to an extremely pessimistic post at the NRO Corner by John Derbyshire.

Says Derbyshire:

"There aren't going to be any more Coolidges or Reagans. It's over. Fuggedaboutit.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power not because people were fed up with socialism. People -- practically everybody, practically everywhere -- LIKE socialism. In Britain, people were fed up with the overweening power of labor unions, which were the vehicle for socialism in that age. The wheels of that particular vehicle were coming off, that was all. In the USA, the humiliations of Iran and Afghanistan, obvious mismanagement of the economy (though not a particularly too-much-socialism kind of mismanagement), and the unattractive personality of Jimmy Carter got the Presidency for Reagan. Not by much, though: in the 1980 election, Reagan only got a tad over 50 percent of the popular vote. (In 1984 it was 58.8 percent.) Thatcher I believe never made 50 percent.

All the windsocks are now pointing in the direction of more socialism. As the population ages, Americans will want more leisure, drugs, health care, nursing homes, security. As the Jihadist threat continues to metastasize (from the MidEast to Indonesia, Thailand, Africa, the Caucasus, Europe), we shall want the state to have more police powers, more scrutiny of us and our lives. The trend of the last 40 years away from the old Anglo-Saxon rights and liberties -- private property rights (google "tobacco settlement," "Kelo," etc.), freedom of speech, contract and assembly ("speech codes," anti-discrimination laws, etc.), limited government (is Washington DC shrinking? looking poorer and shabbier? not that I've noticed) -- will accelerate. And everybody will be fine with all this, because that's what everybody wants, except for a few freakish intellectuals like ourselves."

I hesitate to use the term "the Left," because it is really a lazy abstraction, ablbeit sometimes a necessary one. Furthermore, many people, especially centrist American Democrats, consider themselves part of "the Left," but are really not. To quote a commentator at Free Republic, Marron:

"Republicans are really not "conservatives" in the traditionalist sense. We are "conservative" only in the sense of adhering to the constitution, which is classic liberalism on parchment. We are God's troublemakers, we upset applecarts, overturn orthodoxies, regimes and dynasties, whole economic systems, just by breathing. Just by going about our daily affairs.

It astonishes me, but it is true, that while there are "conservative" parties in the world, there is no equivalent anywhere to the Republican Party, which is the blend of classic liberalism with moral principle. Most political parties outside the US, from right to left, would fit within our Democratic Party.

Rousseau won the argument in most of the world. Locke won his case only in America, and there only just barely. There aren't many of us, but there weren't many in Gideon's band either."

Even the American Democratic party has traditionally been isolated and distinct from the international left and socialist parties of Europe. Seperated by the Atlantic and archaic modes of travel, and drawing upon traditional American free market principles, American politics created almost an entirely different politically spectrum, much distinct from Europe's. This partially explains why the Communist Party and socialist movements in general never found large followings in the United States, while attacting large percentages of the electorates in France, Italy, Germany, and other European countries. Locke, not Rousseau, was the American deity, even on its "left".

However, this isolation changed somewhat in the past 50 years, as members of the "New Left" filtered through the Democratic party's leadership, the schools, and the intelligentsia. More pink than red, they eventually proclaimed themselves anti-anti-communists during the 1960s, and their views and agendas reflected it. They deeply distrusted American patriotism, the military, supported the advance of the nanny-state, peeling back American power and self-righteousness, and promoted multiculturalism, which in practice meant the subservence of American culture to that of its immigrants and unassimilated minorities. The American New Left made common cause with similar minded and also rebellious movements in Europe, movements which cultiminated in the almost continent-wide social disorders of 1968. These people continued to rise through the aforementioned institutions, and their views did evolve, but most did not break free from many of their original prejudices and beliefs.

By 9-11, the Democratic Party's transition to a party oriented alongside its socialist and post-modern compatriots in Europe and Canada was well underway, but not completed.

Where did they run into problems?

In the first place, as Marron stated, Europe's free-market and individualist tradition was already much weaker than America's from the start. When Friedrich von Hayek wrote his essay entitled "Why I Am Not a Conservative", he was disparaging European conservatism, which has often opposed capitalism as a threat to social stability and traditional values. In the second place, the Republican Party did not undergo the same moderation and ostracism that the true classical liberal parties in Europe and Canada underwent. These moderated themselves to deal with the social and economic entitlements promised by their opposition on the continent, a continent whose political thought was badly distorted by the strength of Communist and socialist influence, some of which was paid for with Soviet money and some of which was completely indigenous, drawing upon Europe's already deep socialist tradition.

The result of these conditions was that the classical liberal parties on the continent, the real counterparts of the Republican Party and the Old Democratic Party and believers in individual rights and free markets, found themselves on the defensive, and giving increasing ground to their opposition as they fought on the International Left's turf. Canada is perhaps the best example, and by the 1990s had effectively become a one party state, with a cowed, watered-down, and self apologetic Conservative Party.

The Republicans, drawing upon an American populace much more fiercely independent and self-reliant, was given the opportunity to go this route, but ultimately went the other way. In 1968, they were presented a choice between the East Coast liberal Republican Rockefeller wing of the Party and the more conservative (though hardly reactionary), and staunchly anti-Communist Richard Nixon. After Carter's disasterous Democratic presidential term, the stage was set for the even more conservative Reagan revolution. Britain too, underwent a similar revolution with Thatcher, but it was neither as complete, nor could British Conservatives as easily seperate themselves from mainland Europe's political thought.

Like Derbyshire, I can see the trends. Fundamentally, it is difficult to compete politically with bribery. For the average person, principles and abstract theory do not compete easily with outright financial bribery. De Tocqueville realized this early, saying that "the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

It's become standard to describe the core of Democratic problems to be its lack of message. Weeks ago, however, a Vodkapundit commentator described the problem much more accurately:

"I don't know where this meme that the Democrats have no ideas came from, but it's clearly false. It's easy to list off a bunch of positions the Democrats support that aren't just "hate Bush".

They're pro-choice on abortion.

They support race preferences.

They support transnationalism in foreign policy.

They want justices who are policy-driven.

They want to raise taxes.

They want to increase government control over health care.

They want to increase funding for education without imposing performance standards.

They want more stringent environmental policies.

They want weaker protections for property rights.

They want to prevent ANWAR drilling.

That's just off the top of my head. With a bit of research I'm sure I could double or triple that list.

The problem the Democrats have isn't a lack of ideas. Their problem is that the majority of their ideas are not popular with the electorate, and the Democrats have figured that out. That's why they typically don't state their views clearly and run on them proudly. Unfortunately, they aren't willing to abandon their unpopular ideas, and that leaves them without a positive program that they are willing to articulate. The result is that their public face becomes strongly negative -- "hate Bush".

Think of it another way. If the Democrats truly stood for "nothing", then we would have no idea what they would do if they came into power. But we *do* have a pretty good idea of what they would do if they had the power, and that's what they stand for."

This is why Dean's big mouth and Daily Kos can be such an embarassment - when candid they are a clear view into some of the core, but unpopular principles of the Democratic Party.

Another Democratic problem is that the transition to post-modernism got hit smack dab in the middle by blogs, the wider Internet, and 9-11. The first two badly handicapped at least one of the transition's one-two punch, as the New Left media no longer has the ability to set the agenda, as Canadian and European state-controlled media did 10-20 years ago. The last badly damaged the transition to transnationalism, resulting in anguished howls of "unilateralism", and "global tests", the "International Community", "illegal war", and various other sleights of hand meant to restrict American freedom of action.

It remains to be seen whether these factors will turn back the Democratic Party's descent into post-modernism. This fight isn't over yet, because the their own base is still divided, with much of the leadership having undergone the transition but not much of the rank and file. Even more dangerously, their opposition is not yet completely cowed, although it too has given ground to New Left dominance of the traditional media, academica, and intelligentsia.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette, Stop the ACLU, Basil's Blog, and Outside the Beltway.

On Crickets Chirping

2005-10-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

Jeff Goldstein has a fantastic summary of news coverage of the Iraqi referendum...make sure to read the selections all the way to the very bottom.

Latest News

2005-10-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

Run down of interesting links:

US, Syria border clashes reported.

"The New York Times says U.S. and Syrian forces have already been involved in skirmishes on the border, including one this summer that left several Syrians dead.

One official told the Times the United States has taken the struggle right up to the border but not beyond. Other officials said U.S. forces have entered Syria both by accident and design."

Happy hunting.

More Palestinians [than Israelis] killed in internal strife this year.

"In the report, the Palestinian Authority's Interior Ministry cited 219 deaths as a result of inner-Palestinian violence compared to 218 deaths at the hands of Israeli security forces over the course of the first nine months of this year. The statistics reflect the relative calm in the territories vis-a-vis Israel as well as the increasing anarchy in PA-controlled areas."

And the revolution swallows Robespierre...Some suggest that the anarchy is pulling in Egyptian administration, which would be the best possible outcome in my opinion. Otherwise, I believe the PA risks losing control to more efficient groups, specifically Hamas. The Egyptians administrated the Gaza strip from 1948 to 1967, so we appear to be coming around full circle, and the Palestinians have not failed to miss yet another opportunity to prove they are not hopeless.

[French PM Villepin defends French diplomatic honor.

"Prime minister Dominique de Villepin of France said claims that two former high-ranking diplomats exploited the corruption-riddled UN Iraqi oil for food programme should not be allowed to sully the reputation of French democracy.

Both men, including France's former ambassador to the UN, have been placed under judicial investigation -- the first stage toward possible charges -- on suspicion of benefitting from Iraqi money."

Meanwhile, in that bastion of common sense otherwise known as the UN:

"The US appears set on a collision course with the rest of the world, this time over a treaty to promote cultural diversity that Washington claims could provide protectionist cover for restrictions on US exports of films and television programmes.

... "The US is trying to do everything it can to reopen the negotiations when the rest of the world is in favour of the current text," said a Paris-based European diplomat.

"There is very strong support for the treaty, not only from Europe, but from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Arab nations and the Asia-Pacific region," he said, noting that the US was earlier outvoted on a related procedural matter by 158 to 1.

The US is worried that countries such as France and Canada may use the treaty to justify restrictions on US audio-visual exports as a way of supporting local cultural industries."

I don't know about you, but I was happy to know that the UN is debating issues of "cultural diversity". It made me almost as happy as when I heard of a UN attempt to internationalize control of the Internet. Worthwhile commentary at the Belmont Club - make sure to check the usually inciteful comments. It is noteworthy that as late as 2 years ago, the EU was supporting the American position. Welcome to socialism on a global level.

2005-10-12T23:16:00.000-07:00

The usual optimism from Strategy Page:

"Most Sunni Arabs are now willing to go along with a democratic Iraq, there being little enthusiasm for trying to vote the constitution down on October 15th. There is an increase in terrorist attacks to try and stop the vote, but the scale of these attacks are pathetic. All this terrorism is doing is reinforcing the hatred most Iraqis have for al Qaeda and the Sunni Arab terrorists. The enemy, as many Iraqis see it, is the Sunni Arab world. They can see this clearly by just tuning in the foreign Sunni Arab radio and cable TV news. These media outlets warp the news from Iraq to make it sound like the country is in an uproar against "foreign occupation." This sort of reporting is surreal to most Iraqis, who know very well that the Sunni Arab community simply wants control of Iraq, despite what the majority of Iraqis want, or how many of them are killed by Sunni Arab terrorists."

More detailed stuff here:

"October 12, 2005: Despite the controversy over independent operations certification, that has been in the news recently, the Iraqi military has clearly been coming into their own. Iraqi combat divisions have taken over security work in several parts of the country. On October 3, the 6th Iraqi Division assumed formal authority over Baghdad's central and northern districts, where it has been operating for several months. Also operating in the Baghdad area is the Ninth Iraqi Division (Mechanized), which has been teamed up with the U.S. 1st Armor in raiding operations over the major road networks. The Iraqi 4th Division has been conducting raids and cordon and searches along the Tigris River Valley north of Baghdad, up to Tikrit. The Iraqi 2nd Division has been operating with good success in extending control in and around Mosul out to Tal Afar. A battalion of the Iraqi 2nd Division was moved to Tal Afar at the end of August by the Iraqi 23rd Air Transport Squadron (operating C-130 airplanes). This was the first report of the new Iraqi Army supported by the new Iraqi Air Force.

The on-going Anbar (central Iraq) province campaign has been firmly anchored by the 1st Iraqi Division, which is also called the Iraqi Intervention Force (IIF). This Iraqi Division has and continues to conduct operations in and around the gateway cities of the Euphrates River Valley – Fallujah, Ar Ramadi, Rawah, and Al Khalidiyah. Units of this Division have a year or more of combat experience. The Division consists of 4 brigades (each with 3 battalions). The IIF has received intense training for urban operations including the art of street fighting and building clearing. In addition to the Intervention force, the Iraqi Army has two elite battalions. The Commando Battalion is a Ranger-type strike force. The Iraqi Counter-terrorism Battalion is trained for insertion and extraction to conduct hostage rescue or leadership raids. These elite forces are selected for experience and undergo extensive screening and background checks. The operations by their nature are more elusive to track.

The Iraqi 5th Iraqi Division has been undergoing training exercises in and near Kirkuk including raids and mass casualty training. The training includes actual operations. At the end of August, elements of the Iraqi 5th Iraqi Division performed six-day combined operations involving elite Iraqi Special Operations Forces. The 8th Iraqi Division operates and trains on the road network between the two rivers south of Baghdad. Several battalions of this Division have completed initial certification toward independent operations. The training is focused on counter-insurgency operations, cordon and search, check points, and patrolling. The training for independent brigade and division operations is continuing. Like all training beyond basic in the new Iraqi army, “live” action is involved, since Iraqi 8th Iraqi Division units have reportedly conducted over 100 operations capturing weapon's caches and apprehending suspected terrorists."

Gaza Developments

2005-10-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the reports of chaos in Gaza, gunbattles between the PA and Hamas, and lawlessness on the Gaza-Egyptian border with interest. The "international community" got what it wanted, and now the Potemkin Village of Palestinian responsibility is about to burn down in flames.

The Palestinian Authority as a monolithic organization is quite possibly doomed in unoccupied Gaza. Arafat had charismatic authority that noone else is going to be able to replace. As a whole, the organization was propped up by the Israelis themselves, under the pressure of the world, as the representative of the Palestinian people. The Israelis gave them 15,000 M-16s due to Oslo [which were later used against them], treated them as the only negotiating power, thereby giving them credibility, and scared off even more radical rivals such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In reality, the PA was merely a mafia that had little internal legitimacy besides being the world sponsored monopoly. They could be propped up when Gaza was under outside [Israeli] control, but now the UN and its affiliates aren't as effective so long as the Israelis are gone - they were the normalizing and deterring force.

So the PA has lost much of its international subsidation, and is forced to survive on its own credibility - a decades long legacy of corruption and violence. Only, if you want violence, and I believe the Palestinians do, there's more efficient killers than the PA. Furthermore, Gaza, as opposed to the West Bank, has traditionally been Hamas' stronghold. For these reasons, it is my opinion that Hamas or a derivative will likely be in control of Gaza before it is all over, absent external intervention.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

2005-10-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

Update: Weighed down in mid-terms, graduate school applications, and mononucleosis. Apparently that strep was only a part of something bigger. Such is life.

2005-10-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

WPost Insider: Colleagues "Cheer Unabashedly for the Democrats".

"Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions," an editor working for the Washington Post's Sunday "Book World" section charged in a contribution to a daily internal critique of the newspaper quoted by Howard Kurtz on Monday. Marie Arana disclosed that "if you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats."

2005-10-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

Media's coverage has distorted world's view of Iraqi reality.

So says an American Lt. Colonel in Iraq:

"The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq. The result is a further erosion of international support for the United States' efforts there, and a strengthening of the insurgents' resolve and recruiting efforts while weakening our own. Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy.

The fact is the Coalition is making steady progress in Iraq, but not without ups and downs. So why is it that no matter what events unfold, good or bad, the media highlights mostly the negative aspects of the event? The journalistic adage, "If it bleeds, it leads," still applies in Iraq, but why only when it's American blood?"

...

"I have had my staff aggressively pursue media coverage for all sorts of events that tell the other side of the story only to have them turned down or ignored by the press in Baghdad. Strangely, I found it much easier to lure the Arab media to a "non-lethal" event than the western outlets. Open a renovated school or a youth center and I could always count on Al-Iraqia or even Al-Jazeera to show up, but no western media ever showed up – ever. Now I did have a pretty dangerous sector, the Abu Ghuraib district that extends from western Baghdad to the outskirts of Fallujah (not including the prison), but it certainly wasn't as bad as Fallujah in November and there were reporters in there."

Things may not be as rosy as Mr. Ryan portrays it, but it is clear that we can't trust mainstream war coverage. Call it the Vietnam effect, everything must be taken with a grain of salt, the result of piss-poor journalism, sensationalism, local stringers, and ideological blinders.

HT: The Gun Guy.

The Bennett Flap

2005-10-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

"BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

A week ago, before this entire episode, I said the following:

"More and more, however, I realize that ultimate freedom is the ability to say what you believe, and let the pieces then fall into place as they may, accepting both the unfortunate and fortunate consequences of your words. Or in Orwell's prose, to admit that 2+2 = 4, and then allow it all to follow from there."

I believe the Bennett incident very much ties into this. Intellectually, there was nothing dumb or factually incorrect about what Bennett said. He's a philosopher, so he's used to dealing with hypotheticals. If anything, it was too sophisticated, leaving his words vulnerable to misquotation. Unfortunately, some on the right are so used to the predictable and perpetual outrage of race baiters that they're tolerating it, instead of pushing back for the sake intellectual sanity, honesty, and discourse.

The problem with Bennett's words wasn't that he proposed aborting black babies, there's no way that distortion can be sustained even among liberals. The problem with Bennett's words is that he noted the statistical correlation between African Americans and crime. That's a big no-no today, you're supposed to close your eyes and pretend the statistics do not exist in polite company, because racial discrepancies are to be poo-pooed, unless they can be used to justify affirmative action and racial pandering to minorities.

It is clear that Bennett said nothing about causation, leaving all this fluff about poverty and social condition irrelevant. They had nothing to do with his argument, and he merely stated the basic mathematical truth. If black crime rates are above the average, and you remove that outlier, the average goes down. Do you actually think that even liberal and urban Democrats are unaware of the crime rate disparity? The emperor has no clothes.

"In this climate we have to be careful...", so eff-ing what? The only reason we have to be careful is we've surrendered political discourse and language to people who are hostile to us. But alas, noone's willing to stand up to it, too afraid of the media...so we give more ground to fake charges, rake our own over the coals, apologize, and hope it will just pass over.

In a perfect world, Bennett wouldn't give an inch, and the White House wouldn't throw him under the bus for the real race baiters. We just had the opportunity of a lifetime to discredit their ilk. You think the majority of people in this country welcomed the Katrina racial demagoguery? I would have loved to see a Republican politician tear into the accusers for dividing Americans during a moment of crisis in such an opportunist and ridiculous way. Yet, once more the Republican Party took its licks, and swept it under the carpet with moderate language, too afraid of bad press to actually respond energetically.

Politically speaking, I don't think we're out of the mainstream here. Perhaps 10 or 20 years ago Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al, held the advantage, but I think today Americans are generally fed up with racial demagoguery. They just want to live and let live. And, furthermore, I suspect the average American would be insulted by the notion that he can't handle the truth with regard to crime statistics. But of course, few high profile people have the stones to actually say that that's the liberal party line. But that's exactly the argument you have to fight, because it is the most important element of the entire episode. The growing idea that we cannot say things that are true, but are also politically inconvenient.

I can't help but think that we're seeing the gradual change of the formerly libertarian-oriented and small government Republican Party into a big-government politically correct party very similar to more traditional Canadian and European Conservatives. They’re so gun shy of the media wing of the Democratic Party that they’re letting them frame the issue and are apologizing instead of fighting back.

Look, the open secret on the right is that George Bush may be right on the war and foreign policy, but he isn't really a small government conservative of the same cloth as Goldwater or even Reagan. Yes, it's true, we got tax cuts, and positioning on Social Security reform. At the same time, he's proven that he has no problem with big-government and high spending, so long as it is to support his projects and tie down Republican voters. He hasn't done a thing to enforce border laws, and he's taken a page from Democratic play books to pander Hispanics as Hispanics, rather than as Americans. Now, perhaps I'm archaic and simple, but I generally believe that you can neither outspend socialists, nor outpander racial demagogues [sombreros be damned] - and the Democrats have both covered. The only thing we've got is open political dialogue and values, and if we give that up by throwing people like Bennett under the bus, we're done for.

We'll pay down the line, after we’ve allowed the enemy to redefine what is politically acceptable to deny or assert. In my opinion, the end game is neutered and politically defensive classical liberal parties of Canada and much of Western Europe, in favor of big-government Conservative parties that try to compete with the leftists on their own turf, with the media stacked against them. As a libertarian small-government Conservative, that is very disconcerting.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway and the Mudville Gazette.

2005-10-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Arab World Jittery of Attacks Before Ramadan.

"The Middle East is jittery as it heads into Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and spiritual introspection that has become a time of increased attacks by suicide bombers who believe they receive extra blessings."

What? I could have sworn Muslim leaders were suggesting a Ramadan cease-fire 4 years ago...You're telling me that Islamists actually fight during Ramadan?

Oh-my...who would have thought. Someone better alert the Israelis.

On Hell and Good Intentions

2005-09-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

The following post may sound arrogant, but is not intended to be. It is the result of much thought, not a self-serving desire to pretend superiority or maturity. I don't mean hold the mantra of "reality based community" over the head of my opponents like a personal crutch born of snobishness. More and more, however, I realize that ultimate freedom is the ability to say what you believe, and let the pieces then fall into place as they may, accepting both the unfortunate and fortunate consequences of your words. Or in Orwell's prose, to admit that 2+2 = 4, and then allow it all to follow from there.

"Suzan – to whom I would love to devote some passionate words as being one of my great lovers – called me from Sydney, Australia, drunk, to tell me that Bush was the greatest threat to world peace. You shared a bed with someone like that, you had an enormous amount of fun with her, and now you have to endure the complete nonsense she dispenses and you tell yourself that really, Western civilization is built on the right to disagree with one another. It is a paradox though that a fifth column of peace birds, in which all the Suzans of this world march along compliantly, provide the exact proof that the values that are defended by Bush and Blair are of a higher standard than those of Saddam. How decadent do you have to be as a free person in the West to happily applaud at your own grave by protesting against America and not against the butchers in Baghdad?"
-Theo Van Gogh, killed 11-2-04, The Netherlands

I've read these words of Theo Van Gogh a good number of times. Mr. Van Gogh was raised in an environment completely alien to mine, I have no doubt that he and I would have clashed stridently on any number of issues. Yet I go back every few months, because it resonates personally and painfully, and it reminds me of the hurdles that we face. I've known my own Suzy. One of the kindest and charitable people I've ever met, who donated her hair to cancer victims, adopted single mothers for charity over the holidays. In other words, she did any number of wonderful things that yours truly was too self-absorbed and occupied to undertake.

She was raised in a suburb of Boston, I can imagine surrounded by the numerous gurus of tolerance and diversity that would embrace a gunman in the dark to avoid offending him. Her reaction to 9-11 was to council understanding for the attackers, something true to a wonderfully charitable character, yet horrifying in its naivety and implications.

Overall, not someone who seriously followed politics, yet still a "Why can't we just be friends?" Kerry voter. I doubt she could tell me anything substantial about John Kerry or his politics, rather than point to his image as a liberal democrat. In short, a voter by instinct rather than actual thought, groomed by the tolerance mongers and diversity police. Altogether, she’s the kind of person who votes for a candidate because he's 'progressive,' and because it makes them feel good to be “advancing” history. To be fair, she never declared Bush a greater threat than Osama, although after a few months in Europe, I wouldn't be surprised if she picked up such rubbish.

It has become almost cliché to remember Churchill’s description of political evolution:

"If a man is not a liberal [socialist] by the time he is 20, he has no heart.
If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain."

Naivety, innocence, and the substitution of emotion for thought - it is politics of the immature. I understand the attraction of such shallow thinking - we're the future, we're going to save the world, if only everyone was kind to one another, we are the world - the same shallow thinking that's attracted youth throughout history to utopian ideas such as Communism and pacifism. It is what Christopher Hitchens once summarized as the substitution of the "wish" for the "what is". I personally was never grabbed by "it". I "wish" I had been, I can imagine it's much more self-assuring and self-gratifying. Unfortunately, I always preferred my perceived reality to mythical optimism, no matter how pessimistic that reality. I was a natural born cynic, and I've got the lines on my forehead to prove it.

And yet it seems to me that more than any time in the past, many of the people who came out of the 1960s, on both continents, never grew up. Their views may have evolved minimally, but the same core childish outlook towards the world remained, even as they became the academics and elites who mold modern day public opinion through the media and future public opinion through the universities. It remains to be seen whether my generation will grow out of such naivety or will continue the narcissistic cycle. Will the trends of public opinion remain self-flattering and utopian, shielded from reality by the prosperous and largely unthreatened bubble that we occupy? Will we pass the next inevitable test? Or have we been so thoroughly humbled and emasculated that we can no longer muster the will to see the world as it is, rather than how we would wish it to be? There is bravey in breaking new ground, but also in recognizing unpleasant truth.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Why no 9-11 post?

2005-09-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

The shortest answer: I don't feel I can muster the ability at the moment to do that day the justice it deserves, so I'll leave it to others who are more capable.

This slideshow of the victims is also worth a somber moment.

2005-09-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

The Flight 93 memorial was evidently designed by an emasculated idiot. He's emasculated because he designed a touchy-feely spectacle where there should be a victory monument. If you can't muster triumphalism and pride by memorializing a moment when a random group of Americans defeated Al Qaeda's A-team, you're without hope. He's an idiot because he stuck an Islamic symbol, inadvertently or not, right in the middle of it.

"Crescent of Embrace" - what a maroon.

Moral Cowardice

2005-09-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

A month ago I suggested the tide of European appeasement showed some signs of turning in the wake of the London Bombings. Either I was premature, or some of Blair's advisors haven't yet received the memo:

"A team of advisors appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the cancellation of the British Holocaust Memorial Day in order to avoid offending the country's Muslim population.

According to the Sunday Times Blair has promised to respond to the plans, but the threat to the Holocaust Day has provoked a fierce backlash from the Jewish community.

The committee's proposal suggested that the memorial day's name be changed to "Genocide Memorial Day," thereby commemorating the large numbers of deaths of Muslims in Israel, Chechnya, and Bosnia, according to the committee's wording. It would encompass genocides of other peoples as well.

The proposals will be transmitted to the British cabinet ministers within 10 days.

The advisory committee was established following the July terror attacks on London, Army Radio reported, while tackling extremism was it's main goal."

Their response to extremist Islamic propaganda, which feeds on over the top rhetoric concerning Chechnya, Palestine, and any other number of Muslim "grievances", is apparently to ape it.

2005-09-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

From Free Republic, comes the response of a Marine NCO to Frank Rich's catagorization of America's soldiers as "have nots":

"To the Editor:

I am an infantry Marine with 12 years of service, and I am presently stationed in Falluja, Iraq. I am also a New Orleans native and my parents live in Mandeville, which is on the North Shore of Lake Ponchartrain. They have lost everything.

I take issue with "Falluja Floods the Superdome," by Frank Rich. Falluja is doing quite well. I know because my Marines are out on the streets every day. We've been here for almost seven months, and the difference is night and day since we got here.

Secondly, I have 20 other Marines in my battalion who are from Louisiana, and not one of us considers himself a "have-not." In fact every Marine in this battalion is proud of what we have accomplished, and we are proud to be Marines. Military service was a choice, not a last resort for us.

(Staff Sgt) JEFF HARILSON
Falluja, Iraq, Sept 5, 2005"

Mr. Rich is just another one of our enlightened elites that assumes because they are a nihilist, so too is everyone else. After all, who'd actually be stupid and foolish enough to fight for such a corrupted system and country, if they actually had a choice in the matter. Thankfully, many haven't yet gotten the memo.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway and the Mudville Gazette.

"Japan will propose cutting UN contributions"

2005-09-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

According to Reuters, Japan will propose cutting UN contributions due to its failure to acquire permanent Security Council status.

"With little prospect of a seat, the government believes it will no longer be able to ensure public support for shouldering almost 20 percent of the UN budget, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing government sources. Japan is set to demand that permanent Security Council members should make financial contributions to match their status, an argument that is likely to face opposition from China and Russia, whose contributions would rise, the paper said.

Assuming that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi wins Sunday's election, which polls indicate he is likely to do, his foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, would make a speech on the need to review U.N. contributions at a General Assembly meeting in New York starting on September 19, the Yomiuri said.

The government plans to submit a formal resolution on U.N. contributions in the spring, and to try to enlist the support of other countries that contribute relatively large amounts, such as South Korea and Germany, the report said.

The U.N.'s total 2005 budget was $1.83 billion, of which Japan provided 19.47 percent and the United States 22 percent, the Yomiuri said."

Let's hope the UN doesn't come asking Uncle Sucker to pick up the slack.

2005-09-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

Blogging's been light cause I've simply been too drained recovering from strep. David Frum says just about everything I want to say about the administration's hurricane critics. I spent much of yesterday reading left-leaning boards and it flat out disturbed me. These people have simply lost it, if space aliens invaded the Earth tomorrow they'd back ET to get rid of Bush.

Going back up to school tomorrow, so posting will continue to be light for a few days while I get everything in order.

September 24 Counter-march

2005-09-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

The anti-war movement is apparently mobilizing for an especially large anti-war demonstration on September 24.

In response, RightMarch, Protest Warrior, Move America Forward, and Free Republic are trying to assemble a counter-march. I just stumbled across this:

"The past four years since 9-11 has seen several important and contentious elections. In the West, where the peaceful transfer of power can often be taken for granted, voters returned to power statesmen like Bush, Blair and Howard, who's War Against Terror is being waged also in support of global political liberty. Elsewhere, entire nations selected their own leaders for the first time. In Iraq, where political liberty remains under threat, many died exercising their right to vote while eight million succeeded in spite of the danger posed by terrorists and the disapproval of Western elites.

But in the United States, the Social Justice movement has shown a dismaying lack of faith in Democracy. Because the antiwar proposition lost the election, a mob intends to surround the White House this September 24th to demand President Bush's removal.

This demonstration, like other large anti-war and anti-Bush demonstrations, is being organized nationally by the usual professional activists from the extremes of the Left. It deserves a national response, both from supporters of President Bush and from people who simply oppose the destructive trend of filibusters, judicial activism, reflexively contested elections and elections disregarded altogether.

We must raise our voices and speak at this crucial time to demonstrate to the nation and the world that we are still a Republic in which the political process is respected and a plurality of views can coexist without hatred."

Spread the word. I could see myself heading to this. My father was himself a hard hat demonstrator in NYC during the Vietnam War. God, I can't believe how much I reflect him as I age.

2005-09-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

A typically fantastic entry from the Right Wing Nuthouse on the political opportunists taking up the opportunity for their normal race-baiting. As far as I'm concerned, these people are scum.

HT: Third Wave Dave.

"Just Damn"

2005-09-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

School bus comandeered by renegade refugees first to arrive at Astrodome:

"About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.

The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.

"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there."

For some perspective, look at this post on what the New Orleans authorities did with their other buses - absolutely nothing. They've been deep sixed by the flood.

More on Gibson:

"Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome. But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.

"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."

If only our politicians and bureaucrats had his guts.

2005-09-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Bill Roggio with some important stuff on battles between pro-government Sunnis and Al Qaeda in Western Anbar.

"Further details emerge on the fighting in Western Anbar between pro-government and pro al Qaeda tribes. The Washington Post’s Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar Fekeiki report that of the 56 thought to be killed Tuesday, the majority are very likely to be al Qaeda; “Forty-two of them wore the black training-suits and athletic shoes favored by Zarqawi's fighters.” Al Qaeda has openly admitted to 17 of its members killed.

The clashes came after insurgents kidnapped and killed 31 men belonging to the Albu Mahal tribe because they had joined the Iraqi security forces, said Sheikh Muhammed Mahallawi, one of the tribe's leaders. "We decided, either we force them out of the city or kill them," with the support of U.S. bombardment, Mahallawi said. His tribe also had asked local residents not to aid or house Zarqawi's fighters, he said. Some of the local people refused the request, in a show of support for Zarqawi, he said."

2005-09-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

Being a less than accomplished cook and fan of Chinese food, I've ordered out the past few nights. Oddly, both delivery men had heavy Eastern European accents. I asked the second guy tonight where he was from. Lithuania, he says. I then asked him if he was going back. He looked at me like I was nuts, and said he'd been here for 8 years and was staying. Well, welcome aboard, buddy - anyone who refers to me as "boss" is good enough for me.

Living La Vida Loca

2005-09-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Well, my first published piece in a newspaper, the Seattle Times. It is a section of my previous posting on appeasement and the Left.

Why the Seattle Times?

Beats me. You'd have to ask the guy who sent it in and had it published in the letters section under the name Jim Glendenning.

Good to know that someone out there likes my stuff enough to pass it on, even if in a dishonest way.

2005-09-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Count me in with Isaac Schrödinger, this is certainly one of the funniest Yahoo stories I've ever come across: Brits driving Austrians bonkers over rude village name".

For those offended by rude language, it may not be your cup of tea, but others will get a kick out of it. You can tell the reporter had a hell of a good time writing it.

Václav Klaus Slams "Europeanism"

2005-09-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

The two most important Czechs in the post-Cold War period both happened to be named Václav. The first is the better known Cold War dissident playwright and first Czech PresidentVáclav Havel. The second his successor President Vaclav Klaus, a man known as a relatively odd political bird.

Officially a staunch free-marketer, commonly compared to Thatcher, he's also been accused of dragging his feet on the actual deeds. He's also generally pro-American, but backed out of supporting the US Iraq War, for domestic political reasons - not quite the most heroic performance, but not everyone can be an Aznar. Klaus is also a well-known Euroskeptic who holds few punches, and it is for this reason that I link to this story in the Brussels Journal titled "Czech President Warns Against 'Europeanism'". In it, Klaus attacks the well-advanced European strain of what John Fonte has called "Transnational Progressivism", a collection of interests whose goal is to "undermine the liberal democratic nation-state in general and the American regime in particular." [It is suggested you read that entire article in full, if you have not already done so.]

Some highlights from the Brussels article:

“Fifteen years after the collapse of communism. I am afraid more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution.”

...

“Illiberal ideas are becoming to be formulated, spread and preached under the name of ideologies or “isms”, which have – at least formally and nominally – nothing in common with the old-style, explicit socialism. These ideas are, however, in many respects similar to it. There is always a limiting (or constraining) of human freedom, there is always ambitious social engineering, there is always an immodest ‘enforcement of a good’ by those who are anointed (T. Sowell) on others against their will, there is always the crowding out of standard democratic methods by alternative political procedures, and there is always the feeling of superiority of intellectuals and of their ambitions.”

...

"As substitutes of socialism, Václav Klaus cited “environmentalism (with its Earth First, not Freedom First principle), radical humanrightism (based – as de Jasay precisely argues – on not distinguishing rights and rightism), the ideology of ‘civic society’ (or communitarism), which is nothing less than one version of post-Marxist collectivism which wants privileges for organized groups, and in consequence, a refeudalization of society […], multiculturalism, feminism, apolitical technocratism (based on the resentment against politics and politicians), internationalism (and especially its European variant called Europeanism) and a rapidly growing phenomenon I call NGOism.”

“These alternative ideologies […] are successful especially where there is no sufficient resistance to them, where they find a fertile soil for their flourishing, where they find a country (or the whole continent) where freedom (and free markets) have been heavily undermined by long lasting collectivistic dreams and experiences and where intellectuals have succeeded in getting and maintaining a very strong voice and social status. I have in mind, of course, rather Europe, than America. It is Europe where we witness the crowding out of democracy by post democracy, where the EU dominance replaces democratic arrangements in the EU member countries, where [some people] do not see the dangers of empty Europeanism and of a deep (and ever deeper) but only bureaucratic unification of the whole European continent. They applaud the growing formal opening of the continent, but do not see that the elimination of some of the borders without actual liberalization of human activities ‘only’ shifts governments upwards, which means to the level where there is no democratic accountability and where the decisions are made by politicians appointed by politicians, not elected by citizens in free elections."

Suggested to be read in full. Although Klaus has the reputation of a political opportunist on some issues, he's coming out hard, fast, and accurate on this one.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway.

"President Bush's strategy on Iraq is un-American."

2005-08-31T15:19:00.000-07:00

"President Bush's strategy on Iraq is un-American."

So reads the odd pre-registration byline of this Francis Fukuyama editorial from the New York Times [Online registration required].

Setting aside this odd choice of words, Mr. Fukuyama makes some observations that I consider cogent, but combines them with some pure doozies. A frat boy fisking an internationally renowned intellectual, well, might as well be someone expendable like me.

"As we mark four years since Sept. 11, 2001, one way to organize a review of what has happened in American foreign policy since that terrible day is with a question: To what extent has that policy flowed from the wellspring of American politics and culture, and to what extent has it flowed from the particularities of this president and this administration?"

It is tempting to see continuity with the American character and foreign policy tradition in the Bush administration's response to 9/11, and many have done so. We have tended toward the forcefully unilateral when we have felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor any underlying domestic pressures or constraints have determined the key decisions in American foreign policy since Sept. 11.

It is tempting to see continuity with the American character and foreign policy tradition in the Bush administration's response to 9/11, and many have done so. We have tended toward the forcefully unilateral when we have felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor any underlying domestic pressures or constraints have determined the key decisions in American foreign policy since Sept. 11.

To begin with, the implication from the byline is that if it had not drawn upon American traditions, it is somehow alien and therefore suspect of being incorrect. This is juvenile - the world does not conform itself to American habits and traditions. There was no precedent for the widespread international commitments that American took up to contain the Soviet Union - an isolationist power turned into the guardian of the democratic West through necessity not out of habit or history.

Political culture and domestic pressures? The Bush administration inherited a collossal problem out of thin air, one that Republicans, Democrats, most think tanks and the China obsessed military, had not seriously considered in depth - the 1990s had been a decade-long air walk so long as the problem of Islamic extremism was concerned, some feet have yet to hit the ground. There was no political culture or domestic pressures for any particular way to deal with radical Islam because few people had ever talked about it and those who did were ignored. Even more ominously, there was no discussion of America's place in the post-Cold War world, although a certain intellectual suggested we didn't even need to discuss it. After all, "history had ended," liberal democracy had won, and the big questions needed no longer to be answered. Uh huh, well apparently, it wasn't so, and we're now dealing with reality. But alas, I'll try not to be so snarky with my distinguished elders.

"In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Americans would have allowed President Bush to lead them in any of several directions, and the nation was prepared to accept substantial risks and sacrifices. The Bush administration asked for no sacrifices from the average American, but after the quick fall of the Taliban it rolled the dice in a big way by moving to solve a longstanding problem only tangentially related to the threat from Al Qaeda - Iraq. In the process, it squandered the overwhelming public mandate it had received after Sept. 11. At the same time, it alienated most of its close allies, many of whom have since engaged in "soft balancing" against American influence, and stirred up anti-Americanism in the Middle East."

In the first place, for the most part, the United States did not alienate its "allies". They alienated themselves, for cynical political reasons and a moralistic self-righteous and fundamentally unserious European political climate. The Europeans were not on board for any serious long-term effort, many were barely tolerating us as soon as they discovered innocent people were actually dying during the War in Afghanistan. Civilian casualties in a war? Gee, who would have thought? "Allies" are not countries whom you change your goals to placate, but countries that help you achieve your own goals, mostly because they themselves support your aims. Much of the political class and the public opinion making organs within "Europe" do not support America's general well-being. For the time being we must recognize and deal with this. Anti-Americanism in the Middle East needed little stirring, it goes together about as well as peanut butter and jelly.

Iraq, as tangentially related to the threat from Al Qaeda - OK, I might buy that. Iraq was not a war of choice, the war was brought to us on 9-11, but it most certainly was a theatre of choice within that war, much as North Africa or Burma were during World War II. But where exactly would Mr. Fukuyama or the administration's many critics suggest that we have headed next after Afghanistan? Once Afghanistan was liberated there was no where else the USA could go but Iraq. There were no grounds, nor political consensus, to deal with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Iran [with Saddam unconstrained on our flank, nonetheless]. And considering our military difficulties, I consider it a miracle we did not have that consensus. We have learned many things from Iraq, and possibly the most important is this - to deal with the root of this problem directly, "we're gonna need a bigger boat [military]."

There were no strategies painstakingly developed to deal with the situation presented to the Bush administration, make no mistake we are at war with a branch of one of the world's greatest religions. Not the entire religion, but one well funded and increasingly influential branch, mostly originating in Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Mecca and Medina. We recognize that now, but back then many of us did not even realize this most basic pillar of our situation. The administration started from scratch, looking for a strategy, and the neo-Conservatives provided one where few others could - turn the place upside down. Al Qaeda wants to be revolutionary? Okay, we're the most revolutionary country in world history - the original shot heard round the world.

Will it work? Maybe. Is there a feasible fallback grand strategy visible on either the left or right? Not that I've yet seen, besides a horrific and confused total war against an enemy we can't accurately place and is surrounded by non-combatants.

The Bush administration could instead have chosen to create a true alliance of democracies to fight the illiberal currents coming out of the Middle East. It could also have tightened economic sanctions and secured the return of arms inspectors to Iraq without going to war. It could have made a go at a new international regime to battle proliferation. All of these paths would have been in keeping with American foreign policy traditions. But Mr. Bush and his administration freely chose to do otherwise.

In a perfect world, all of Mr. Fukuyama's suggestions seem so clear. The problem is the state of the world, with its so many opposing interests. An alliance of democracies? Oh how simple, one must think Mr. Fukuyama has been sleeping through the past few years of Europe's utter obstructionism and self-righteous condemnations. They don't understand our war, and they don't want to understand our war. On the most basic level, they resent us and what we stand for, and they lack the self confidence to ever accept such a mission. It is common knowledge that by the late 1990s, economic sanctions on Iraq were held down by the rear-guard action of two countries - the UK and the US. For this, we received the ire of the world, blamed for 1 million deaths cynically allowed by a wily dictator. Suddenly we would receive this consensus? The French and Russians were suddenly just going to give up on their oil contracts? Sell it elsewhere. We didn't want Hussein contained, at the expense of our image and our effort - we wanted him gone and that is entirely in line with American foreign policy traditions.

Fukuyama, does however, make a very accurate [to my mind] observation:

"The administration's policy choices have not been restrained by domestic political concerns any more than by American foreign policy culture. Much has been made of the emergence of "red state" America, which supposedly constitutes the political base for President Bush's unilateralist foreign policy, and of the increased number of conservative Christians who supposedly shape the president's international agenda. But the extent and significance of these phenomena have been much exaggerated.

So much attention has been paid to these false determinants of administration policy that a different political dynamic has been underappreciated. Within the Republican Party, the Bush administration got support for the Iraq war from the neoconservatives (who lack a political base of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from what Walter Russell Mead calls "Jacksonian America" - American nationalists whose instincts lead them toward a pugnacious isolationism.

Happenstance then magnified this unlikely alliance. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the inability to prove relevant connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda left the president, by the time of his second inaugural address, justifying the war exclusively in neoconservative terms: that is, as part of an idealistic policy of political transformation of the broader Middle East. The president's Jacksonian base, which provides the bulk of the troops serving and dying in Iraq, has no natural affinity for such a policy but would not abandon the commander in chief in the middle of a war, particularly if there is clear hope of success."

Jacksonians traditionally support muscular foreign policy, but only because it is in our best interests. The problem is that the President never initially made the neo-Conservative case for this war, explaining why exactly a democratic Iraq was in this nation's long term interests. He didn't need to, opting instead to use WMD as a reason that would more easily attract domestic American support and make an international case, one that we believed was airtight even when we realized we'd be forced to deal with European obstructions. In the end, they'd end up with that much egg on your face as we paraded chemical weapons past the Security Council.

In retrospect, we suffered the most crippling intelligence failure in this nation's history. Decades of political correct bullshit, the elimination of our human intelligence capabilities, and institutional group think delivered one of the biggest surprises of this country's political history. There's plenty of blame to go around for that one, and I don't plan on dealing with it any more here. The point is, in my opinion, neo-Conservatism wasn't sold.

The exportation of democracy was of course a major goal for the invasion of Iraq from the very beginning. It was not the only goal: a short description also includes the need to set an example and prove we could act, to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his weapons, there's a number of them and they've been outlined much better by people much more intelligent than I. Neo-conservatism, Iraqi democracy, was, however, the big tomale - it links Iraq to the War on Terror, our bigger problem. When the easy to grasp rationale of WMD fell through, the administration was left using vague statements supporting the spread of freedom, but we'd never set the context for this apparently [especially to an willfully stupid political opposition] sudden shift.

The problem that Fukuyama correctly observes is that since the neo-Conservative argument - why this was in America's best interests - had never been set, too many Jacksonians, the key to America's war-making potential, may see it as spreading freedom for its own sake, rather than as a necessary step for American security.

"This war coalition is fragile, however, and vulnerable to mishap. If Jacksonians begin to perceive the war as unwinnable or a failure, there will be little future support for an expansive foreign policy that focuses on promoting democracy. That in turn could drive the 2008 Republican presidential primaries in ways likely to affect the future of American foreign policy as a whole."

I agree with Fukuyama, Jacksonians will not buy an apparently losing effort merely for the "noble Iraqi people". Selling this war as a humanitarian venture is a losing proposition for them. Furthermore, if we fail in Iraq, and possibly even if we succeed, I don't think the Bush doctrine will survive. We may generally support liberalization and democratization as we always have, but it will not nearly be as active and direct an effort. There will not be an Operation Iranian/Pakistani/Saudi Freedom. If anything, the lesson the military and political establishment has learned from Iraq is that this sure as hell isn't anything we want to do again lightly.

I myself am a Jacksonian, but one who has adopted neo-conservatism as a tactic - but importantly, not an identity. It is a tool in the toolbox, not an all encompassing mindset. The question for me isn't whether the neo-conservative effort in Iraq is theoretically in line with America's interests. I think it is. The problem is the state of the world, with its so many opposing interests, the sheer retrograde state of much of the Islamic world and the so many factors working to keep it there, including Europe's utter obstructionism. With this imperfect world, it may not be a viable tactic. Iraq's a test case, due to many reasons it presented the only offered place to start. So if neo-conservatism fails, where would we go next? If it fails, we're back to step 1, except in an even worse position than where we started, and with our primary strategy needing replacement.

A Democratic foreign policy is much harder to predict, because it is unclear whether the loons of the Dean wing will retain their control or the more realistic Clinton moderates will retake back the Party. I’m not too optimistic of the latter occurring at the moment. However, a Republican fall back position is more easy to grasp. I would expect the temporary evolution of some sort of self-interested muscular foreign policy, with a touch of isolationism. This would be accompanied by the end of politically correct and obsolete diplomacy, pretending that traditional "friends" will always be so and finding some new friends, ones with similar interests to ours. I'd also expect the mothballing of the "you build it, you break it" line of warfare. Where possible it should be done, but I suspect in most cases it will be merely self-defeating and draining. We'll never against suspect that we can redo thousands of year of indigenous culture so easily. In the absence of this carrot, stick-driven gun boat diplomacy will be a likely substitute.

We'll find ourselves still acting in the worst places, but it'll be for much shorter term goals and shorter-lasting efforts. It also won't be a total isolationism, although it most certainly will include a general reduction of American military commitments in non-essential areas. It will be a much more selfish foreign policy. We'll keep ties with helpful allies such as Japan, India, Australia, Eastern Europe, and possibly the UK [depending on if they go EUnuch]. Most importantly, however, we will work with countries that are willing and able to actually contribute to our efforts, and who are not just are looking to be taken seriously and courted for their stamp of approval. Does it mean we'll abandon the field to the enemy? No, but absent emergency contigency scenarios, our commitments will be low-scale, often not well publicized, and in places most Americans have never heard of.

Plenty of controversial things for readers to comment on, and I gladly welcome them to. It’s obviously a work in process, a necessary evil with a world we’re only beginning to reengage after a decade of sleepwalking.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway.

Survivor

2005-08-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today I made another visit to the clinic because my condition seemed to be getting worse, to the point where I began researching deathbed quotations [My favorite: "I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist."].

The clinic discovered that my strep strand somehow developed a resistance to penicillin. Apparently, even my bacteria are overachievers. This led to a "peritonsillar abscess" in the back of my throat and a voice resembling the stereotypical Italian mob boss. It isn't too serious, but it means I'll be out of action a little longer while putting down liquids, watching T.V, and trying to make sense of my drug induced hallucinations [the French aren't worthless!]. The good news is that they massively increased my dosage, so I should be feeling better relatively soon. Thanks for the kind comments and emails, but if you can spare the time, this mother could use some as well.

Update

2005-08-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

Strep it is, with a crushing earache. Haven't slept the past two nights so blogging will be light until I feel better.

2005-08-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the relatively light blogging. I haven't been feeling too great the past few days - think it might be strep throat. Will be back ASAP.

Al Qaeda and Fourth Generation Warfare

2005-08-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Pentagon plans for 'long war' on terror.

"The obstinacy of the Iraqi insurgency and the sudden surge in violence in Afghanistan may make it appear that the US military in the region is spending all of its time fighting a war on two fronts.

But senior officers within US Central Command, the Pentagon body responsible for the Middle East and surrounding regions, have already begun planning for what one top commander terms “the long war”: the battle that will come once Iraq and Afghanistan are finally pacified.

According to Major General Douglas Lute, who as director of operations for Centcom is responsible for near-term planning, the long war amounts to an offensive from the Horn of Africa to the borders of Afghanistan to ensure that al-Qaeda and its affiliated terror organisations do not find a safe haven once they are forced out of their current bases."

...

“We're concerned in our area of operations about what happens to Zarqawi when Iraq is stabilised, which we believe it eventually will be, and the path of least resistance takes Zarqawi somewhere else,” Maj Gen Lute said. “It is clear that even a network as I've described, which is not fundamentally state-based or state-sponsored, still requires some sort of physical sanctuary where they can organise themselves, train themselves, marshal forces, marshal assets, and then proceed from there.”

For Centcom planners, those safe havens are both physical and virtual. On the physical side, the main concerns lie in the Horn of Africa, where vast ungovernable spaces would provide ideal homes for Mr Zarqawi and his associates.

From Yemen across the Arabian Sea into Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, local forces have already seen stepped-up US efforts to train and strengthen elite counter-terrorist units to combat any al-Qaeda affiliate that might emerge. Their efforts also include work with border control and immigration agencies to modernise their approaches to tracking those moving across their borders.

But perhaps more interestingly, Maj Gen Lute noted that Centcom was increasingly looking to fight its campaign on the internet, where Islamic radicals have found ways to recruit, train, and raise funds for their cause. He said terror networks had become so sophisticated that they had begun to use otherwise prosaic commercial applications such as PayPal, the internet payment system, to collect donations to their cause.

“These guys are sophisticated in their use of what we call the virtual safe haven, the virtual sanctuary,” he said.

“One of the things that we are hot on right now is how to contest that virtually safe haven.”

Interestingly, no mention of Waziristan, which already serves as a Taliban and Al Qaeda safe haven on the eastern border of Afghanistan. Perhaps made lazy by their former Afghani sanctuary, Al Qaeda literature emphasizes attaining a "core state," where the organization can act freely and train openly. Prior to 9-11, they literally owned Afghanistan, where the Taliban relied on Al Qaeda shock troops to retain control.

From Wikipedia, the simplest definition [of fourth generation warfare] includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent ideological network. Fourth Generation wars are characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian, peace and conflict, battlefield and safety." Prior to 9-11, Al Qaeda was effectively a fourth generation animal wedded to a state. The Taliban acted as a front group, giving Al Qaeda plausible deniability to avoid responses to its acts of wars against the United States.

More worrisome to me than Al Qaeda's attempt to replace Afghanistan would be a full commitment to fourth generation warfare. This would mean ditching its doctrine and avoiding any attempt to concentrate and coopt a physical sanctuary, instead relying on methods similar the internet communications and dispatches noted in the article. A transition to fourth generation warfare would mean an end to Al Qaeda's operational control, because there are inherent limits to cellular structure, beyond which the leadership can no longer maintain cohesion and purpose. The result could be a militant anarchism as unwelcome to Al Qaeda's traditional leadership as it is to us.

Al Qaeda's commitment to reacquiring a sanctuary is partially motivated by its plan of action and pie in the sky goals. If Al Qaeda's goal was merely to destroy the United States, it could much easily move to a more fluid and de-centralized organization. However, because Al Qaeda sees itself as the core of a soon to come Islamic reformation and restored Caliphate, it must not only destroy, but prepare to build. This requires a higher and more cohesive profile, and for the reins of power to remain firmly in the leadership's hands.

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Comments would be great, I'm just theorizing here and would enjoy any contributions.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway.

Why Iran's a major problem

2005-08-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

The following post will be controversial in friendly circles. It is merely an honest attempt at analysis. Perhaps it will advance the debate in some way, or at least demonstrate the sheer scale of the problems facing us. Wishing for a silver bullet may be emotionally satisfying, but not necessarily helpful. The decisions will only get harder as the 21st century continues and nuclear proliferation continues to fall apart. Iran and North Korea will not be the last.

I’ve already said that I think Iran will get nuclear weapons. Absent a major attack or another wild card event which leads to our dismissal of nation building (i.e. total warfare), I believe our only option for the foreseeable future is waiting them out and maintaining our nuclear deterrence. We do not have a credible military option and either sanctions or military attacks risk the future coup that we seem ultimately guaranteed.

The Iranian youth do not hate us. Approaching half the country was born after the 1979 revolution. They have very little reason to hate America and do not like Muslim fundamentalism; the Great Satan rhetoric is alien to them.

Give it 10 to 20 years and it'll be a much different Iran, and I agree with Ralph Peters, a possible American ally. The trick is of course surviving 10 to 20 years with the Mullahs, but MAD is the only answer absent total war or nuclear preemption, and the forfeiture of the pro-American sympathies of Iranian youth.

Not a popular answer, but we’ve run into the limit of our capabilities in subduing a country 1/3rd the size of Iran, aided by a Kurdish population with strong American ties and allies such as Great Britain. So long as we are committed to rebuilding these countries better than they were before, we cannot due it with our current Army.

My personal opinion is we'll covertly help the internal Iranian political dissidents, but will try to avoid doing anything to give the Mullahs an excuse to crack down and use us as a scapegoat. Iranians like us, but they will rally against outside interference, and the nuclear bomb is a popular acquisition. It is one of the few areas in which the Mullahs have majoritarian domestic support - the natural consequence of a country surrounded by enemies and with a historical fear of outside interference. Even a democratic Iran would likely be a nuclear Iran.

It is an old program, one in which we originally acquiesced. America trained thousands of Iranian nuclear engineers when the Shah planned to have 22 reactors installed by the late 1980s. These plans were of course interrupted by Khomeini. Some of these nuclear workers emigrated moved to the West and the rest await the Iranian industry. It is a popular national program in Iran which not only promises Iran a deterrent against outside interference, but is also strongly connected to Iranian economic plans, which are to sell natural gas and oil but use nuclear power for domestic consumption. The Mullahs will have a field day blaming America for killing Iranian economic ambitions.

Some suggest that the Israelis will take the problem out of our hands, indeed that perhaps we should act before they do so. This strikes me as a grasp at straws, and I fear its predictors will be as shocked as those who couldn’t believe the efficient Germans did not have a contingency plan at Munich.

Some of my own hypotheses:

A. Considering the state of our HUMINT, I am not convinced we have enough intelligence to directly attack the program from the air, and even this option is merely a delay, not a solution. 10 years after Osirak the Iraqi nuclear program was on the verge (a year) of constructing a weapon, only to be derailed by the Gulf War.

B. Some will say that the Mossad and IAF can do so, but the Mossad isn't the wonder weapon it once was either. Its initial edge was given to it not only by its ruthlessness and skill, but also the wide variety of refugees that Israel accepted from all over the world. It was an intelligence officer’s paradise, and the primary reason that when we wanted a copy of Khrushchev’s speech condemning Stalin, we asked the Israelis get it for us. To do so they used a rat line of Jewish agents reaching behind the Iron Curtain. Israel had contacts. Those contacts were destined to run out as time passes, and if you remember, Sharon made some declarations on Libya's nuclear program last year that turned out to be far from the mark. It makes me wonder if the Mossad is becoming as puffed up as the once dreaded and mythical CIA.

C. The Iranians are not fools, they've had 20 years to digest the lessons of the Osirak bombings. I find it impossible to believe, and I've heard many people more informative on the Iranian nuclear program than me state this, that the Iranian nuclear program is organized so that air strikes can take it out so easily. It is likely decentralized throughout the country. With regard to the Israelis, Iran is a much more difficult flight than Osirak, which was itself a complete strategic surprise. The Iranians have had 20 years to plan for this eventuality.

The combination of these factors makes me think that the only really good Israeli military option is to preemptively nuke Iran first, conventional arms won't do it. But this sets them, in my opinion, down the road to full international sanctions and the exploitation of this event to the extent that even Americans no longer support the nuker of millions. Whether this is fair or not, considering the circumstances, will most likely be irrelevant.

I don't know what they are going to do, but I don't see an attack in the cards. Their whole series of options all around the board, from Gaza and the West Bank, to Iran - all of them are horrible.

So Iran gets nuclear weapons, what are the implications?

I'm not sanguine about the current Iranian leadership's intentions. They are an enemy. However, we Western analysts often downgrade to our detriment the Sunni-Shiite Muslim divide. Iran works with Al Qaeda, yes. They’ve provided sanctuary and even logistical support. You'll never see me spouting off the BS about Hussein's secularism or Iran's Shiite population meaning they'd never work with Al Qaeda. They do hate us more than each other.

In spite of this, Iran and Al Qaeda are the champions of two different branches of fundamentalism, often at odds with each other. The Iranian branch is limited by factors outside its control - the majority of the Muslim world is Sunni. This is ultimately why Khomeini's movement petered out, save in a few odd places such as Lebanon. His own fundamentalism prompted calls for religious renewals in other countries, but Sunni renewals. The Iran-Iraq war became a proxy war between most of the Sunni Powers against newly resurgent Iran. Ideologically, Iran is much less of a threat to us than Sunni Saudi Arabia or Pakistan – its reach is limited by the Sunni-Shiite structure of the Muslim world.

Militarily, it is a mid-sized state actor which we can threaten with full retaliation. It isn't a shadowy ideological movement spread within 1 billion people. If we win in Iraq it'll probably be gone within the decade. If we lose in Iraq it'll probably still be gone within a generation. Sunni Islam is our biggest problem, not the decrepit and even domestically unpopular heirs of Khomeini.

So what about the Israelis?

Honestly, I am glad I don't live in the Israelis' shoes. I read a very prescient report by an Israeli think tank last year that dealt with the emergency of Iranian nuclear power. The think tank came to the conclusions I did regarding the limits of a conventional attack. It said that considering these limits, the Israelis had no choice but to use nuclear weapons first on Iran; they couldn't afford allowing this existential threat to materialize.

I don't know what I'd do in their situation. As an American I feel we could afford to wait the Iranians out, and rely on deterrence, given our present options. If I was an Israeli I'm presented with some awful options, ones that could ultimately kill me in the end anyway. In the worst case scenario I predict that they will rely on their own nuclear deterrent.

Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Iran mean the end of the limited nuclear club. We delayed the inevitable and kept nukes out of the authoritarian third world for as long as we could. In retrospect it was not long considering how short the nuclear age has been, but nukes are a useful tool and valuable deterrent. Expect Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states to investigate expanding their own nuclear programs, looking to Pakistan in particular for technical aid. It means a more dangerous world, but given the current circumstances, I don't see any way to stop it.

Would this all be different had we not attacked Iraq? Setting aside the notion of finding invasion points absent the Iraqi border, be grateful we did not deal with a country 3 times the size of Iraq while still under the notion it would be easy to rebuild these societies, and before we realized the extent of our HUMINT and general intelligence problems. No, Iraq has been far from perfect and is far from a guarenteed success. Even if the Neo-Conservatives are ultimately vindicated, I do not believe it will prevent nuclear proliferation. It will, however, make it safer, putting the weapons in the hands of democratic leadership rather than unchecked authoritarians.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

American Muslims

2005-08-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

Dean Esmay links to a Wall Street Journal piece profiling the average American Muslim.

"Whatever the real figure, what's reasonably clear is that Muslim Americans, like Arab-Americans, have fared well in the U.S. The Zogby survey found that 59% of American Muslims have at least an undergraduate education, making them the most highly educated group in America. Muslim Americans are also the richest Muslim community in the world, with four in five earning more than $25,000 a year and one in three more than $75,000. They tend to be employed in professional fields, and most own stock, either personally or through 401(k) or pension plans. In terms of civic participation, 82% are registered to vote, half of them as Democrats. Interestingly, however, the survey found that 65% of Muslim Americans favor lowering the income tax."

American Muslims actually have a higher mean income than the rest of the country. Even with the attacks on the melting pot, we've done a fantastic job integrating our new citizens compared to Europe and some other countries. It is my own hypothesis that we might have at least one potential weakspot, however. The less affluent indigenous black Muslim population, with its origins in the more politically radical Nation of Islam. Here's hoping I'm wrong, but if I was Al Qaeda, that's who I'd specifically go after.

Another Roundup

2005-08-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

More good stuff:

Winds of Change remembers when American propaganda was good, before the dirty Cold War and decades of leftist propaganda dulled both America's innate self-righteousness and its international reputation. Will we ever get it back?

Damian compares Australia to Canada and concludes:

"Aside from our having fewer weird animals with crazy names, the biggest differences between Canada and Australia are Canada's large French population, and our country's closeness to the United States. In many ways, French-Canadians see the world very differently from their English countrymen (never mind our differences over the Iraq war, look up the 1942 conscription referendum results), and history shows that you simply cannot form a majority government in this country without electing a significant number of MPs from that province. And Canadians have reacted to the colossus next door by defining themselves almost exclusively in opposition to the uncouth, warmongering Yanks.

Below the Beltway asks, have we become a bunch of wimps?

Say what you want for the nuance and intellectual sophistication of modern patriotism, but I agree with De Gaulle. During wartime I'd take 1 jingoist and martial Jacksonian over 5 reasoned patriots.

The Wunder Kraut writes about a Belgian soccer team that lost 50-1 because its goalkeeper was at a film festival.

He also talks about his plans to adopt a foreign orphan, something I've myself thought about for the future.

Swaziland women celebrate the end of a national ban on sex for women under 18.

"As part of the end of ban, the girls in private burned the tasseled scarves that symbolized their chastity. About 30,000 girls then later joined the king in a two-hour ceremony in Swaziland's national stadium."

Humor aside, this statistic is staggering:

"Experts said the rite did little to slow AIDS in Swaziland, a country of about 1 million where 42.6 percent of pregnant women and up to 40 percent of adults are infected with the virus — the highest rate in the world."

Public's Confidence in Military News Wanes

2005-08-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

To take a deeper look at Confidence in Military News Wanes:

On a recent Belmont Club thread, a commentator [Trish 11:27AM] laid out the difficulties our leadership faces in promoting its efforts in the wider War on Terror:

The difficulty of assessing the wider war - er, struggle - outside Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is much unseen, much unknown. Hell, this is true inside of OIF and OEF.

What's being done about Syria? What's being done about Iran?

We ourselves may never know.

I think this is a genuine problem when a vocal minority demands some kind of show - some reassurance, some concrete evidence, that you are indeed doing something - and you cannot give it to them.

...

It's a classified, compartmentalized war - made worse, public perception-wise, by unreliable or absent, reporting of that which can be known.

And any civilian leader is going to have a hell of a time compensating for these in his effort to keep support and confidence high.

Indeed, we elect representatives to make decisions based on information that we do not know and sometimes cannot know. We try to find the most capable and informed, and appoint them to act in our stead. It is anti-democratic, but we are not a democracy.

Our lack of access to the shadow war is juxtaposed with an overflow of highly politicized information provided by the 24/7 news cycle. The increased capability of news media to give us bits and pieces means that voters are now judging events so relatively inconsequential as individual IED attacks and small-unit actions. We of course do this without the background information and context to which our leadership has access, but we're starved for any information, so these events stand in for and replace the efforts we do not and cannot know about. We're given a puzzle, and find that we not only lack the means to put it together, but are also missing most of the necessary pieces.

Commentator Annoy Mouse expounds:

"We the people own the ball team and we have hired the general manager. The general manager has hired the coaches and helped select members of the team. Now its fourth and inches and we demand from the high stadium seats: “What is the play?” Better yet, give us the damn playbook so we can nod our collective heads as the game unfolds.

But instead, we are left to look at the score on the board, the body counts, what 20lb explosive got flung into the sea, by whom, and ponder from these meager resources, the meaning of life from the shadows on the wall.

Where is Walter Cronkite to give us a daily dose paltry pablum? The sedating effects of the media has withered into obscurity with the innocence of that era, embodied in the nostalgia of simpler times, when people power was the answer and the press was our mentor. Now we the people demand answers and we must seek it ourselves because those we trusted to inform us are now corporate conglomerates that know their business is to entertain us. Bring us up and set us gently down again like a predictable weekly series that begins and ends with all things back in their place, only a shallow moral to carry us through the commercial break for Paxel."

Traditional news sources cannot fill in the blanks for us. They themselves do not know the answers and have their own institutional and ideological limitations. We're now dealing with the complexities of the world unfiltered. In an age where people do not trust their politicians, they must take a back seat, all the way back in the upper decks.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway and the Mudville Gazette.

Roundup

2005-08-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

There's lots interesting stuff out there today:

Confidence in Military News Wanes:

"According to a McCormick Tribune Foundation/Gallup poll scheduled for release today, Americans are more interested in national security than they were in the past. But only 54 percent of Americans say they feel the military keeps them well informed, down from 77 percent in 1999 -- before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similarly, the public grew increasingly skeptical of the news media's efforts, with 61 percent of Americans saying that the media keep them well informed on military and national security issues, down from 79 percent in 1999. More than three-quarters of Americans also believe that the military occasionally provides false or inaccurate information to the media, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,016 adults during the first two weeks of June."

The New Trojan War:

"Today the Pentagon faces a similar situation. Adversaries have been attacking Defense Department computer networks in attempts to bypass the United States' formidable defenses and attack from the inside out.

Defense and industry officials describe DOD networks as the Achilles' heel of the powerful U.S. military. Securing military networks is even more critical in an increasingly transformed military in which information is as much a weapon as tanks and assault rifles...

Top U.S. military cyberwarriors recently said that adversaries probe DOD computers within minutes of the systems' coming online. The cyberwarriors described DOD's computer network defense strategy as a battle of attrition in which neither side has an advantage. Retired Army officers and industry officials say Chinese hackers are the primary culprits."

Victor Davis Hanson and Arianna Huffington to Debate US Foreign Policy:

"New York Tribune Media Services columnists Victor Davis Hanson and Arianna Huffington will square off in a debate about whether the U.S. is "internationalist or imperial."

The debate is scheduled for Sept. 14 at the Gerald R. Ford Museum Auditorium, Grand Rapids, Mich. It's the first in a series of events (also taking place Oct. 6-7 and Nov. 17) on "War and Empire" hosted by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University.

Huffington and Hanson are also authors, and Huffington is the namesake behind the high-profile Huffington Post group blog/news site.

-Talk about a mismatch.

Brain Droppings and Viking Pundit eagerly await Kos' attempt to "radiate" the moderate Democrats of the DLC.

Brain Droppings also includes this accurate description of left-wing patriotism:

"The problem with the liberal concept of 'patriotism' is that they are patriotic only to their personal conception of what the country should be. This renders the idea of patriotism meaningless - it is trivial to say that one has a loyalty to one's own world views. Their unbridled criticism results, then, from the failure of the country to satisfy their individual tenets about what it should be.

This of course, renders the whole conception of patriotism moot, because these tenets can be applied to any nation. It is a loyalty to ideas and concepts, not a nation state. That is not to say that I think this is necessarily wrong or evil, but I'll call a spade a spade - Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore aren't patriots in the traditional sense. And although it is a unavoidable aspect of democratic discourse, dissent is not inherently patriotic. The guy standing outside Borders with a sign blaming America for every ill imaginable is not the Grand Poobah of patriotism.

Vietpundit asks if America's racist, and answers:

"Sure some Americans are racist. But you know what? I’ll let you in on a little secret, ok? Some Vietnamese are racist, too. Yup, that’s shocking, ain’t it?

The truth is that there’s less racism in America than anywhere else on earth. Just from the little corner of Asia where I came from: the Vietnamese hate the Chinese, who can’t stand the Japanese, who despise the Koreans, who of course loath the Japanese, and you can complete the circle yourself. Even amongst Vietnamese, Southerners hate Northerners, and vice versa. Even in my tiny hometown of Da Nang, people from District One consider those in District Three (on the other side of the Han River) backward and stupid.

Am I making too broad a generalization here? Of course I am. And that’s the point. There’s prejudice everywhere you go. There are good people everywhere you go, too, and there are plenty of them in America. Just go to any American embassy abroad and look at the long lines of people waiting to apply for a Visa, and tell them that America is a racist country."

Journalism

2005-08-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Dean Esmay defends journalist Jay Rosen, who closed down his comments section after an avalanche of negative feedback during a discussion with Austin Bay.

I can see his sympathy for Jay Rosen, who at least was making an attempt at discussion. I can also see why Rosen took the attacks on his profession poorly. However, in general is hard for me to have much sympathy for the media business. They've been raking everyone over the coals for decades to the detriment of our political system. If it wasn't for the relentlessly critical press organs I find it unlikely our politicians, CIA, and military would have been so timid in dealing with so many of our current problems. Fear of exposes and self-righteous condemnation was most certainly on their minds. Considering the state their product [journalism] they could use a couple hundred good tongue lashings.

2005-08-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

Worthwhile post on Chinese-Russian wargames, and their proximity to North Korea, from the always entertaining Frank Martin.

Iraqi Constitution

2005-08-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

Instapundit with an interesting collection of Iraqi Constitution links.

As for my views, I'm waiting this thing out to see where it goes. The vast majority is unprecedented. Whereas Attaturk forcibly separated Islam from Turkish democracy, the Iraqis are now debating its compatibility. This will be a hell of a process, filled with public relations pitfalls and minefields, as our media leaps at the inevitable laws that bruise our sensibilities. Knowing how generally messed up the region is, I'm cautious, but nevertheless this is a historic process that does provide at least some hope. At the very worst, granted a great opportunity, the Arabs will have noone else to blame for their failure but themselves.

2005-08-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

2005-08-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

I thought this had to be a parody, but apparently it isn't - from a letter in the British Times:

"Sir, I turned teetotal having seen, as a barrister, many lives destroyed by alcohol: those of both otherwise law-abiding citizens, who committed acts of violence when drunk, and their victims.

Like Judge Charles Harris, QC, and the Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges (report, August 10), my many Muslim friends also see large-scale loutish alcoholism, and the society which permits it, as decadent.

Allowing pubs to open round the clock will increase Muslim disaffection and support for those fighting such decadence. Extended drinking hours may cause more terrorism.

ANDREW M. ROSEMARINE
Salford, Manchester"

I'm still trying to figure out whether this guy is trying to be ironic.

HT: Harry's Place.

Nefarious Jews 1 - Saudis 0

2005-08-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

Israeli Paper Cups Spark Outrage.

"Paper cups made in Israel have caused a storm of protest in a Saudi hospital, the Saudi newspaper Arab News reports. Officials at the King Khaled National Guard Hospital says they are investigating after the catering subcontractors for the coffee shops in the hospital ran out and began using Israeli paper cups with Hebrew writing on them, sparking outrage among the customers."

What will the Jewish pigs do next? Is nothing sacred?!

HT: Fjordman.

2005-08-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

Iraq TV's 'Cops' Breaks New Ground.

"Shattered glass, body parts, a blood-splattered blue sedan: the grainy video pans over the scene as Iraqi officers comb the site of a drive-by assassination.

It's "Cops" Iraqi-style, minus the "Bad Boys" soundtrack but otherwise roughly modeled after the American TV show.

Created to make government more transparent, "The Cops Show" featuring Kirkuk officers in action is the first of its kind in the country and is breaking new ground in Iraqi television. A live call-in portion gives the public the chance to praise the security forces or gripe about them.

Screened weekly on Kirkuk Television, which broadcasts in this northern city of nearly 1 million people, "The Cops Show" has opened the floodgates in a community long suppressed.

"During Saddam Hussein's time, it was very different," station manager Nasser Hassan Mohammed said. "You were unable to ask questions. You couldn't say anything bad about police.

"Now people can call in directly. Anyone has the right to do this. This is the difference now. This is freedom."

The call-in portion, initially a novelty, has become a staple of the show, and panelists field up to 30 calls per segment, Mohammed said. And because Kirkuk is ethnically mixed, the show switches among the languages spoken by Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen or Assyrians..."

"Baath Boys Baath Boys - What ya gonna do..."

2005-08-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

Steven Vincent's wife goes after Juan Cole.

Her letter includes an explanation for the honor killing rumors:

"And yes, he was planning to to convert to Islam and marry Nour, but only to take her out of the country to England, where she had a standing job offer, set her up with the friends she had over there, divorce her, and come back to New York. He had gotten her family's permission to do so (thereby debunking the "honor killing" theory), but more importantly, he had gotten mine. He called one night to say that it had been intimated to him that Nour's life was essentially going to be worthless after he left; since he was an honorable man (a breed you might want to familiarize yourself with), he then asked what I thought he might do to help her. I told him to get her out of the country and bring her here to New York. However, the only way she could have left Iraq was with a family member or husband. Since her family had no intention of going anywhere, Steven was her only recourse, and it would have been perfectly legal for him to convert, marry her, then take her out of Iraq to give her a chance at a real life. (Now that that avenue is closed to her, I have made inquiries to the State Department about the possibility of my sponsoring her in America. Do you perhaps labor under the misapprehension I am such a spineless cuckold that I would put myself out thusly for the woman you believe my husband was traducing me with? If so, I'm guessing you don't know much about the Sicilian female temperament.)"

Less Than Good News From Down Under

2005-08-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Australian schools blamed for US bashing.

"New Zealand topped the list with a 90 per cent positive rating, followed by the United Kingdom with 75 per cent; but the US scored a miserable 19 per cent.

Mr Costello said the resentment against the US was based partly on its economic and military dominance and its actions in places such as Iraq, but also on Left-wing bias.

"It's clear in my mind that for a long time in the universities there was a general Left-wing bias," Mr Costello said.

"I think many of our teachers who were trained in universities at a time when Left-wing bias was at its height in the '60s and '70s carry a lot of ideological baggage with them."

The most distressing aspect of the Cold War is that while the US won it economically and militarily, it lost the propaganda war throughout most of the world, even within its own academia. For decades it was the flagship and prime defender of the West, target of abuse and one-sided commentary from both its enemies and friends. We are now, and will be dealing with the consequences for decades, if not forever.

-
I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind
I left my body laying somewhere in the sands of time
I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon
I feel there is nothing I can do

I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon
After all I knew it had to be something to do with you
I really don’t mind what happens now and then
As long as you’ll be my friend at the end

If I go crazy then will you still call me superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be there holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with my superhuman might
Kryptonite

You called me strong, you called me weak, but still your secrets I will keep
You took for granted all the times I never let you down
You stumbled in and bumped your head, if not for me then you would be dead
I picked you up and put you back on solid ground

If I go crazy then will you still call me superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be there holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with my superhuman might
Kryptonite

In Memory

2005-08-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Worth reading: Email From A Team Member of the SEALS Lost June 28th.

For more on James Suh, see this prior post.

More heroes here.

Thank God we're able to find such men.

Then and Now

2005-08-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

If the press aired these types of things support for the war would jump 10 points. They would have done it during World War II, but of course, back then the press was on board the war effort.

2005-08-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

"An Iraqi medic (center-right), an American chaplain (left), and an American medic (far right) console Spc. Bryan Walczer at FOB Summerall's aid station following an IED attack which injured Iraqi soldiers on a vehicle Walczer was driving. Walczer is from Allentown, Pa., and belongs to Company A, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry. The chaplain is Capt. Michael Hart, and the medic is Sgt. Robert Hildreth, both from 313th Field Artillery."

HT: Blackfive.

Scaling Back American Military Commitments

2005-08-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

From the CATO Institute, "The Pentagon's Surprisingly Sober Look at China":

"After numerous delays reflecting disagreements within the Bush administration, the Pentagon has finally released its Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. Previous reports conveyed a very hawkish, worst-case portrait of the PRC's capabilities and intent. The 2005 version, however, presents a reasonably even-handed assessment of the PRC military, and of China-U.S. relations generally.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the latest report is its tone. It lauds a "cooperative and constructive" relationship that has emerged between the United States and China since the 2001 EP-3 spy plane incident. At the same time, it seems to acknowledge the seriousness of China's warnings about Taiwan. It recognizes China's recent anti-secession law as "a rhetorical counter to the U.S. Taiwan Relations Act," and cites a Chinese general who worries about Taiwan for strategic reasons. In the general's view, reunifying with Taiwan is of "far reaching significance to breaking international forces' blockade against China's maritime security"

America's interest is in managing China's inevitable rise to great power status without needlessly embroiling Americans in a war. Doing so requires a dispassionate assessment of China's views on Taiwan. The DOD report is a good step in that direction. The report acknowledges that controlling Taiwan is a "core interest" for China, and for good reason: aside from the motive of national pride regarding reunification, roughly 80 percent of China's energy imports pass through the waters adjacent to Taiwan."

Even accounting for CATO's predisposition to play down potential problems with China to play up business potentials, I agree with the authors. We're beginning to realize the very real limits to our influence and power, compared with our commitments. As the Belmont Club has noted, our defense spending has not increased as much as many hoped it would. Furthermore, large portions of the increases went to make up for spending shortfalls and the decline of equipment requisition during the Clinton years and have also been cut into by emergency spending to fund the Iraq War.

At the same time, we're looking at overly large commitments that seem without end. I don't think we can manage the Middle East, potentially deal with China and North Korea in Asia, and do our normal traffic stops in Africa and elsewhere. Other things we have to look at include Venezuela and Columbia, with Russia as a wild card. To be sure you cannot draw exact parallels from Iraq to all of these potential conflicts, but the difficulties our military is having holding down merely one moderate sized country makes our contingency planning look very perulous. We can expect some aid from Japan and Australia, but I wouldn't expect much out of South Korea or Europe. They're more likely to be a net-loss, doing economic and arms deals with our enemies while we're in the line of fire. Something is going to have to give.

The Pentagon realizes this, and is beginning to suggest looking to disengage from places where our "allies" will not share the burden. Our reduced commitments to South Korea and Germany are just the beginning:

"From a strategic standpoint, the most significant new component of the report is an effort to put the problems China's military modernization poses in a regional context. Previously, the report has been framed in the context of a United States struggle with China over Taiwan; by contrast, the 2005 report notes that the decisions China makes "will have significant implications -- not just for the United States, but for China, the Asia-Pacific region, and the world." In particular, China's military modernization could "accelerate a shift in the regional balance of power, affecting the security of many countries."

This reframing is long overdue, and could be useful in shaking other countries in East Asia from their security slumber. Until now, such regional powers as Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia have been able to shrug off China's growing power because of the assumption that the United States would do whatever it took to balance against China. With a costly and distracting war continuing in Iraq, the Defense Department may have come to the recognition that its resources are not infinite, and that China's neighbors must share the concern over its growing power and prepare their own responses. The new DOD report, coupled with the recent joint U.S.-Japan security declaration adopted in February, may signal a growing recognition that regional powers must step up to help shape China's rise.

On the issue of regional military capabilities, Taiwan gets a well deserved drubbing for its complacent approach to its own security. "Taiwan defense spending has steadily declined in real terms over the past decade, even as Chinese air, naval, and missile force modernization has increased the need for countermeasures that would enable Taiwan to avoid being quickly overwhelmed." DOD officials have been increasingly frustrated over Taiwan's recalcitrance, and the sharp words in the report should be taken as a sign that the United States is not infinitely patient with wealthy allies who seek to free ride on an increasingly overstretched United States. If Taiwan's opposition parties continue to succeed in blocking adequate defense measures, China could be emboldened, thus making a U.S.-PRC military confrontation more likely."

The sheer amount of our commitments means we're looking at either a substantial increase in US defense spending, or an attempt to patch up some of our more spotty relationships. I believe we shoul do both, and combine this with massive pressure for some of our deadbeat allies to either substantially increase their own efforts, or sink or swim according to their own capabilities. We can't do everything.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

2005-08-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Priceless.

HT: Area417.

Inside the Asylum (UN)

2005-08-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Interesting read that gives some idea on the freedom of debate and information flows within the UN. It is reportedly a transcript from the "UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion & Protection of Human Rights: 57th session, plenum (26 July 2005, 5:43-6:03 pm). Four interventions were made on "points of order" by three of the 26 members: Mr. Abdul Sattar (Pakistan), twice by Ms. Halima Embarek Warzazi (Morocco); and Mr. Miguel Alfonso Martinez (Cuba). Mr. Vladimir Kartashkin (Russia) was in the chair."

Some highlights:

After Mr. Littman begins speaking on the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and the jihadists it spawns, Mr. Sattar interrupts him, declaring:

Mr. Sattar: "I just want to recall the ‘ruling’ that was given by the Chairman last year that members of the NGOs will not engage in casting aspersions on other religions. We start with the statement this afternoon: “radical Ideology of Jihad.” Now this statement is totally unacceptable. First of all, Jihad is a concept, it’s not an ideology, and then calling it “radical” already condemns the concept of another religion and, therefore, I’m just reminding you of the decision that was made last year, and I hope that you will urge the members of the NGOs to observe the principle that was enunciated by the Chair last year."

Mr. Littman responds by saying that with "the right of freedom of expression of all NGOs" he will continue and hopes he won't be interrupted again.

Before he finishes a sentence, the Moroccan delegate intervenes:

"Ms. Warzazi: Mr. Chairman, I regret that the NGOs have joined in this sort of defamation…defamatory declarations. Freedom of expression has limits and in all the international instruments there are limits to freedom, when the freedom constitutes what is condemned by the United Nations; that is to say, an Islamophobic act – then no one can continue to speak!..."

When Littman is finally able to continue, he begins by referring to the Hamas charter.

This is too much for the Cuban representative:

"Mr. Martinez: There are already two charges that we cannot tolerate by the speaker. First, citing something that none of us has the possibility of confirming if it is an accurate text [i.e. Hamas Charter, art. 8 quote], or if it is one more invention by Mr. Littman – it would not be the first time. [The Hamas Charter may be found on various web sites via Google; in 20 years no State or other delegate has ever been able to show that Mr. Littman has provided inaccurate data.] Mr. Littman is a person who has been coming to the Commission and pretending to speak for “all the Jews in the world” – but I can assure you that at least in the name of my Jewish wife he doesn’t speak for her!"

Well, in that case... Read the rest, the objections and interventions took so much time from the speaker that he was given a paltry two minutes to complete his speech, forcing him to omit entire paragraphs.

HT: The Big Picture.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Good News From Down Under

2005-08-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

From the Toronto Post comes, "Australia, America's "Deputy Sheriff," Punches Above Its Weight And Criticizes Canada For Not" Doing The Same.

10 points for a title longer than the average Atrios post. The story isn't bad either.

"Solomon Islands -- Federal agent Simone Kleehammer dons a helmet and flak jacket before linking up with an army escort for her nightly police patrols. This is where her police colleagues were shot late last year -- one killed, one injured -- after local gunmen targeted Australian police on this anarchic South Pacific island nation 3,000 kilometres northeast of Sydney.

The shootings "felt like all of us getting kicked in the stomach," admits Kleehammer, 31, as she drives past the shooting scene. "But we were all here to do a job and we knew this could happen."

The deadly ambushes sent a chill through this dusty tropical town, demoralizing Australian police deployed here on a precedent-setting mission: to rebuild a failed state by reviving its faltering police force.

Australia reacted to the shootings by airlifting combat troops and arming its cops on the beat. Now, nighttime patrols are still tense, but by daybreak Kleehammer dumps her body armour, ditches her military escort and leaves the safety of a police outpost blanketed in barbed wire.

Relying on a smile and a nine-millimetre Glock handgun, she patrols with her local partners -- fresh recruits from the discredited Royal Solomon Islands Police. Hunched in a rickety cruiser, they begin a bone-jarring sweep through "Borderland," the deadliest district in this ramshackle capital.

Despite the threats, most residents of this dirt-poor island chain look upon the strapping Australian men and women in blue as saviours.

Two years ago, these outsiders rescued the islanders from themselves -- from the chaos of a failed state riven by ethnic cleansing and gang violence culminating in the government's collapse. In fact, Kleehammer is one of 300 foot soldiers in an Australian experiment that has redefined her government's approach to global trouble spots. The police deployment is the centrepiece of a massive, decade-long intervention launched in mid-2003 with an amphibious landing by 1,700 combat troops.

As they restored order, the $1 billion operation was bolstered by squads of elite civil servants reviving the moribund machinery of government, ranging from treasury economists to customs agents patrolling the airport. It is a virtual takeover of a sovereign country -- albeit by invitation. The Solomon Islands rescue mission has served as the inspiration for an equally ambitious police deployment in Papua, New Guinea -- another crime-infested, corruption-ridden troublespot off Australia's northern coast."

This is all part of a much broader trend:

"Saving the day is becoming a habit for Australians. The federal police have set up an "international deployment division" as part of its "core business," says Will Jamieson, who ran the division before relocating here to run the Solomon Islands police mission. Australia's biggest and boldest intervention came in late 1999, when its military deployed decisively into nearby East Timor as it was struggling for independence from adjacent Indonesia in mid-1999. While Western countries stood by paralyzed, the global spotlight was shining on 5,700 Australian troops as they stared down Indonesian-backed militiamen.

Today, Australia projects its power from Iraq and Afghanistan in the West, to the Solomon Islands and other South Pacific nations in the East. Beyond the sheer sweep of territory, Australia's increasingly muscular and activist strategy suggests a country that is

punching far above its weight. Bruised by the 2002 Bali bombing that claimed 88 Australian lives and left the country reeling, it emerged more determined to ally itself with Washington's war on terror.

An early clue to Australia's inclinations came when Prime Minister John Howard famously agreed with an interviewer that he was America's "deputy sheriff" in the region; he created an even bigger stir by threatening pre-emptive strikes against terrorists plotting against Australians from neighbouring countries. But Australia's influence is about more than muscle and sabre-rattling. Australians beat the rest of the world to the punch by donating a remarkable $1 billion within hours of last December's tsunami, and sending in the first waves of military rescue teams.

Compared to Canada -- with a similarly modest population and compact military -- Australia is emerging as a global player and diplomatic powerhouse. It is often said that there no two countries more similar than Canada and Australia in terms of size and British parliamentary traditions, but on defence and foreign policy the two countries are following distinctly different paths.

While Canada concentrates on peacekeeping and emphasizes multilateralism, Australia opts for rapid responses to shore up failing states -- even without United Nations approval. Canada proudly wears its multilateral memberships on its sleeve and heralds the United Nations as the foundation of its foreign policy, while Australia's government is openly dismissive of Security Council consultations that go nowhere."

The reporter mentions Canada's now mythical reputation on peacekeeping, although it now ranks 38th in the world for UN participation. Australia is of course doing much of the same thing, absent huge amounts of self-congratulation and at higher cost to itself.

"The political will comes from a commitment to try to make a contribution to dealing with some of the world's problems," Downer says. "Sometimes we can do it alone -- at least lead the operation, as we did in East Timor," he continues. "We did the heavy lifting. Same in the Solomon Islands. With Papua New Guinea we do it alone with the PNG government.

Australians are unabashed about flexing their muscle. "We're all very proud to be punching above our weight," says Susan Windybank, head of foreign policy research at Sydney's Centre for Independent Studies. "We don't want our backyard to become a junkyard."

Canadians used to be the same way, at one point owning the third largest navy in the world at the end of World War II. Their transformation is irritating and regretable.

Echo Chambers

2005-08-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

John at Brain Droppings responds to Dean's statement that women were better off under Saddam Hussein by saying:

"Whenever they [the Democrats] try to say something meaningful, its negative and/or demonstrative of the fact that they are living in an alternative reality."

He also asks rhetorically:

"Is it good politics to contend that Iraq was better off under Saddam than even a flawed Islamic republic? Does it make sense politically to tell Americans that more than 1,800 troops have died to make life worse for half of Iraq's population?"

To most Americans, the answers to these two questions are obvious. As usual, the leaders of the Democratic Party get them wrong.

The Democrats have known for some time that their strategy is hurting them more than the Republicans. Yet they persist. Why?"

To an extent, I believe it is a result of their long dominance of the major media. Their inability to control themselves is linked to the degeneration of leftist political thought on college campuses. When you're not used to being called on your outrageous statements, you start to play loose with the facts and overreach.

Why "the Left" Supports Appeasement

2005-08-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Wretchard with a typically well written post compares the mindset of many within "the West" to that which inflicted Britain and France prior to World War II.

What is appeasement? Appeasement is placating an enemy for the sake of peace, stability, or some other prize. Seperated from its negative historical connotation, it is not necessarily evil; it can be simply another tool in the diplomatic arsenal. There are enemies who can be appeased, whose demands are legitimate and finite. The chief error of British and French policy in the 1930s was that they assumed, in spite of Mein Kampf and other signs, that Hitler could be placated. Churchill’s genius was recognizing the enemy for what he was, one with insatiable desires, and ultimately one with which the Western democracies could not co-exist.

With this in mind, Churchill's quote that "appeasement is feeding a crocodile so that he'll eat you last" is misleading. From their point of view the appeasers don't think they'll actually be eaten; they aren't suicidal - they're just selfish.

The appeasers then made the same mistake that appeasers do now. They assumed that the opposition was somewhat reasonable, had a limit to his demands, and would become responsible when those demands were at least partially met. In reality, Hitler had and militant Islam has ultimate goals that are unreasonable and cannot ever be made right. We fundamentally cannot coexist with either of them, therefore they must be destroyed.

You can look at European relations towards the Islamic world and the US and Israel in the same light as 1930s appeasers. Modern day Europe doesn't actually think they'll ultimately be eaten; they think once we're gone or de-fanged, the Islamists will be happy and will merely terrorize Muslims. From this point of view, it is reasonable, although really idiotic and ignorant. The fact that they get rid of the arrogant, materialistic, and too powerful Americans in the deal is just a gift.

A poster in the comments section states:

"The left doesn't want to concede that terrorism is murder -the deliberate anihilation of innocents. They prefer to shower the terrorists with an unearned credibility by crying out root causes."

Who is "the Left"?

I hesitate to use the term "the Left," because it is really a lazy abstraction, ablbeit sometimes a necessary one. Furthermore, many people, especially centrist American Democrats, consider themselves part of "the Left," but are well to the right of Leftist parties throughout the world. This explains why many anti-American foreigners insist on labeling Democrats and Republicans two peas of the same pod. History cannot be rewritten, anti-Americanism flourished throughout the 1990s and the Clinton presidencies. I trust the now empowered radicals in the Democratic Party (Howard Dean and Daily Kos) much less than I trust the moderates (Bill Clinton and the DLCC) but I still believe it can be distinguished from many of our international ideological foes.

For the most part, when I use the term "the Left" I mean the International Left with its origins in the many historical and modern socialist movements of Europe, some of which were or are a part of the various Socialist Internationals, and some of which were not, but adapted many of their ideas and prejudices.

The problem with the International Left isn't their quest for root causes. I have as large an interest in the root causes – I want to understand my enemy. I want to know that militant Islamism is in large part a result of the failure of secular Arab nationalism. I want to know exactly how it came to be significant. I want to know their grievances and desires – it tells me their goals. The problem with the people in question isn’t their obsession with root causes - it is their agreement and sympathies with the root causes. And ultimately, if you believe that American enforced sanctions caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, and that Israel is truly committing genocide against the Palestinians, then on some level, 3000 Americans is a mere footnote, even a justified one.

I can identify with Al Qaeda as incensed at our Israel policy, Kashmir, Chechnya, every where else they see, in their paranoid minds, Muslims being oppressed by a worldwide conspiracy. I even partially agree with Muslim views towards 1 or 2 of these conflicts. I can understand Bin Laden feeling slighted by the Saudi monarchs when they didn't let him become Saladin and throw back Hussein in 1990. I can understand why Bin Laden, bigot and retrograde he is, is angry that our dirty infidel feet are on Saudi land and protecting Muslim holy sites, holy sites they can't even muster the arms to protect themselves. I can see why this is infuriating. I can also see why delusions and even some realities infuriated other bigots and madmen throughout history.

But I see all this, and I ask myself, "are their non-negotiable demands reasonable? Can we deal with these people?" Are we ever going to statisfy Al Jazeera? Can we get the Russians out of Chechnya, the Indians out of Kashmir, and the Israelis out of Palestine? Is there likely to be a Muslim state in the Phillipines? Would they be satisfied without Muslims in the United States living under Sha'riah? Would they simply ignore the inevitable interference with their plans of Western materialism and ideas? The answer is "HELL NO", so kill them, marginalize them - whatever the cost.

Says another commentator, Ash:

"We acknowledge there is legitimacy to their desire yet we will attack them for trying to fulfill it?... so we go off on an arms race, but does that justify our denying others what we claim for ourselves? No, and fighting for such a dubious moral cause would be folly."

Ash is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I can acknowledge the desires of our enemies and the reasons they do what they do. I can understand why North Korea wants nuclear weapons. Our ultimate policy goal is [justly!] ending them as a despotic and Stalinist nation. I still don't want them getting nukes! To believe that North Korea should morally be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons is to ignore the realities of the regime itself and its past behavior, or to at least forgive it.

The ideological leadership of the Left looks at our enemies demands and says they are negotiable, if not already reasonable. The most ominous development of the War on Terror has been the fusion of these people with the more innocent minded and honest members of our political opposition, worldwide and domestically. This latter group is the type who ignores militant Islam's true nature, instead transmuting their own guilt on our enemy. This is how I can have a young European co-worker imply that Bin Laden is in part motivated by our refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty, since "global warming affects the third world most". It is what Ralph Peters labeled, 'Whitey's guilt,' which can be traced at least as far as the proletarian and noble savage third world nations of Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

On Krugman and Map Reading

2005-08-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

I recognize that this guy is seen by some as a brilliant economist. We even read a number of his articles in one of my econ courses. They were predictably located in a textbook oriented as the socialist response to our more conventional textbook. However, in the wider focused world of punditry, he couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map.

Japan and India: American Allies for the 21st Century?

2005-08-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

This good post from Westhawk talks about the importance of Japan to America's future national security arrangments.

I agree with his description of Japan as a major pillar in American security arrangements in Asia. However, I believe he neglects to take into account that Japan itself will be suffering a population decline similar to or worse than the one that Europe is already experiencing. Japanese xenophobia makes immigration an unlikely option to close this gap. As a result, absent an unforseen baby boom, Japan will be an American ally, but it will also be a much weaker Japan relative to China and the United States.

I also thought it bizarre that he described America's interests in Asia without even once mentioning India. It is too early to proclaim a match made in heaven, but to quote former Ambassador to India, Robert D. Blackwill, "no bilateral relationship in George W. Bush's first term improved as much as that between the United States and India."

Democratic and at war with Muslim fundamentalism, the million-man Indian army actually fights, unlike the whithering and post-modern militaries of many of our European allies. Reflecting this, we've made signs that we're ready to substantially increase American arm sales to India, following in the footsteps of the Israelis to replace the Soviets as India's main arms dealer.

Besides fighting Muslim fundamentalism our interests also show signs of converging elsewhere. Indian nuclear weapons are a done deal. On the negative side, it is just one more arrow in the corpse of nuclear non-proliferation. On the other hand, India will not be at the mercy of a nuclear armed China and shares our desire to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially to terrorist groups, as Kashmir has obviously become one of fundamentalist Islam's war grievances.

India's relationship with China is well covered in Mr. Blackwill's recent article, "The India Imperative," featured in The National Interest's latest publication:

"Like some in Washington, India is enormously attentive to the rise of Chinese power. Let me make clear, however, that this will not leave to joint U.S.-Indian containment of the PRC. Worrying that this could be self-fulfilling, no Indian politican of any conseqence supports such a policy. But it does mean this: Behind the elevated rhetoric that emits from New Delhi regarding relations between India and China, the Indians understand better than most that Asia is being fundamentally changed by the weight of PRC economic power and diplomatic skill.

In the short term, the Indian military is not alarmed with China's military buildup because it is primarily focused on the Taiwan Strait. However, the Indians have noticed that China is also constructing airfields in Tibet, which is not especially near the Taiwan Strait. China is also assisting in the construction of a major port in Pakistan and is deeply involved in Myanmar...

...the Indian military thinks strategically, its contingency planning concentrates on China. It is partially in this context (as well as energy security) that India plans a blue-water navy with as many as four aircraft carriers."

There are of course still problems for Indian-American cooperation. These include suspicions left over from our historical antagonism and bureacratic intertia. On the American side, this is fueled by nuclear proliferation fears and officials unable to view India outside a Pakistan-India perspective. Ironically, considering our role as the premiere anti-colonial power, Indian colonial history makes it extra sensitive to outside influence, and so does remnants of the non-alignment movement. We also have conflicting interests, something perfectly understandable considering a 50 year divergence of our respective foreign policies. Among the worst problems is Indian support for Iran and our need to placate an increasingly radical and dangerous Pakistan.

In spite of all these problems, I think both India and the United States see each other as too big a price to rule out a much warmer relationship in the future. 50 years of self-defeating and unnecessarily cold relations have made the alternative that much more attractive.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Wizbang.

A Compilation of Sheehan Quotes

2005-08-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm going to wade into the sewer for a moment. Just in case anyone was interested, I thought I'd make a compilation of Cindy Sheehan statements:

From here

"I do this for all of our brave souls (American or Iraqi) who have been murdered by the Bush crime family.
I told my Congressman that he needs to speak out against the lies and murder, because I am going to...when George Bush killed my son, they finally killed the wrong person.
If anything I do can shorten the war by one minute or save one life, or bring discredit to the evil bastards in the administration, my life will have been worthwhile..and Casey's sacrifice meaningful..."

From here.

"You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."

"My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

"And now I'm going to use another 'I' word - impeachment - because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."

Illegal Immigration News

2005-08-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

Juxtapose this:

"Four out of every 10 Mexican adults would migrate to the United States if they had the means and opportunity to do so, according to a poll released Tuesday.

And two in 10 Mexican adults say they'd be willing to live and work illegally in the United States, the Pew Hispanic Center reported in what is believed to be the first snapshot by U.S. pollsters of Mexicans' views on migration.

With about one in every eight Mexican adults already living in the United States - and 40 percent of the nation's nearly 70 million adults willing to migrate if the opportunity presents itself - the findings could hold implications for U.S. policymakers."

...With this:

"Arizona ignored pleas for greater cooperation from Mexican President Vicente Fox to become the second US state to declare a state of emergency on its border due to rising illegal immigration, violence and smuggling.

Four days after New Mexico declared a 90 day state of emergency for border areas, Arizona did the same for its four counties on the Mexican frontier, citing uncontrolled illegal immigration."

Also interesting:

"A majority of Latinos born in the United States don't think illegal Hispanic immigrants should be given drivers' licenses, according to a new poll.

Most foreign-born Latinos disagree, according to the polling for the Pew Hispanic Center.

Six in 10 Latinos born in this country approve of measures to prohibit illegal immigrants from getting drivers' licenses, while two-thirds born in another country disapprove of such measures.

The difference between foreign-born Latinos and native-born Latinos on the driver's license issue highlights the disparity between the two groups on several issues."

VDH on Sheehan

2005-08-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

Via Brain Droppings.

For the most part I've been staying out of the Sheehan circus, but this piece from Victor Davis Hanson touches upon much more noteworthy issues in American society:

"No one should trivialize Ms. Sheehan's grief, nor fail to understand why she is angry and wants to hold someone accountable. Yet the media's eagerness to publicize and exploit a grieving mother's anger and sorrow can be criticized, for it points to a larger pathology in our culture — the privileging of the suffering victim as someone who possesses superior insight and so must be heeded and catered to.

This elevation of the victim into a combination sage and secular martyr reflects conditions peculiar to the modern world. Most important is the simple fact that compared to the vast majority of humans who've ever lived, we in the West today have been freed from the everyday suffering and misery that earlier generations accepted as part of human existence.

...

As much as we respect and sympathize with Ms. Sheehan's grief, then, we are under no obligation to respect her opinion about the necessity or justice of this war, or give it any more of a hearing than anybody else's.

Those reasons should be debated and discussed through the political process, and they should reflect as much as possible fact and rational argument. Presenting those facts and arguments is the job of a responsible media. Unfortunately, exploiting suffering and indulging their political prejudices are often more important to the media than providing their fellow citizens with the resources needed to make the best decision."

Worth reading in full.

VDH of course goes right to the crux of the matter. Even if Sheehan was not a political moonbat, we still could not run our foreign policy based on raw emotion. Cold, but necessary. We elect politicians to make decisions. Many are based on information we do not even have access to, and many also concern issues that are much larger than individuals.

WC

2005-08-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

Please excuse this interruption from our regularly scheduled broadcasting...
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As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Some Military Doctrine Revisited

2005-08-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

Over at the comments section of the Belmont Club, someone tipped me off to this blog by military member Bobby Bran. From what I can see, he's seriously interested in military history, and his commentary reflects it - definitely going to visit again in the future.

His latest post interestingly and skillfully draws comparisons between the pre-war debate over the Peloponnesian War and our war in Iraq, something I've not seen before. At times, the similarities are somewhat eerie.

Mr. Bran uses the second part of the debate, in which critics tried to use the magnitude of the task ahead to discredit it, to talk about American military doctrine:

"The parallel I wish to focus in on is the second part of Nicias's speech-- his intention to dissuade the Athenians from taking on what was clearly a risky expedition by inflating its costs and requirements (this also had the secondary effect of maximizing the security of the forces if they were deployed, something that was in the interests of Nicias, the mission's co-commander). It is there, I think, that we can find a suitable comparison to the present.

The US Army, after escaping Vietnam with its pride in hand, stood at a crossroads. It could have engaged in some serious soul-searching, examining what it had done wrong, and set out to ensure that in the future it would be appropriately configured-- conceptually, doctrinally, organizationally, and technologically-- to win those kinds of wars. Or it could instead choose to re-interpret Vietnam as an example of tactical brilliance, but strategic failure-- a campaign the Army lost not because it was fighting its battles the wrong way, but because it was unable to fight the way it really should fight: with overwhelming force, superior firepower, advanced technology, and shock effect. If only we had more firepower, this school argued, we could have been successful. I'll let you decide which path you think the Army more closely approximated (the Marines are something of a different case interestingly enough).

Out of these ashes eventually rose the cautious phoenix of the Weinberger Doctrine and (later) the Powell Corrollary which shaped post-Vietnam American foreign policy more than any other strategic formulation. The six points of the Weinberger Doctrine simply state:

1. The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
2. U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
3. U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
4. The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
5. U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
6. The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.

While the Powell Corrollary added:

1. Force should be used only as a last resort.
2. Military force should be used only when there is a clear-cut military objective.
3. Military force should be used only when we can measure that the military objective has been achieved.
4. Military force should be used only in an overwhelming fashion.

If you know me, you know that I have mixed feelings about the Weinberger Doctrine and Powell Corrollary. There are aspects of it that make a lot of sense, and I empathize with why they were implemented. But I wouldn't be the first to point out that they "become more problematic upon closer examination," not to mention they overstate the conditions needed to accomplish some missions by applying them to all missions (in other words, they needlessly narrow the dimensions of "the box" that I so despise). And at the same time, both were deliberate efforts to re-craft strategic policy in a manner not to prevent the Army from ever losing another Vietnam, but to keep us from even fighting in the first place. That is, like Nicias demanding the world in order to prevent the Sicilian campaign from ever happening, SECDEF Weinberger and General Powell designed their doctrinal templates to prevent the US Army from ever being committed to another Vietnam in the first place.

The problem, as Top Gun's Commander Mike Metcalf (aka Viper) might say, is that "we (military) don't make policy, gentlemen; elected officials-- civilians-- do." And by telling the Army, "don't worry about Vietnam, because we won't do that again," we made two mistakes. First, we gave ourselves a blank check to forget the lessons learned in that conflict (because, contrary to what we decided in our official literature, there were many things the Army did wrong not just at the strategic and operational levels, but at the tactical level as well); much like the Israelis did after emerging-- victoriously-- from the Yom Kippur War of 1973, we took away the lessons we wanted to learn. So instead of learning from our past, we consigned counter-insurgency, unconventional warfare, and low-intensity doctrine to the back of the library to be checked out, only occasionally, by a John Nagl or a Wayne Downing. Secondly, and worse still, the blank check we wrote didn't have any funds in the account: as we would later see in Somalia and now Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Army doesn't get to pick and choose where we will be employed. Our policy-makers make those decisions and we execute, and by ignoring the theoretical and practical lessons of "small wars" in favor of "maneuver wars" and the enemy we want to face, we have hampered our ability to fight the enemy we do face.

Even before its uncertain conclusion, the military lessons from Operation Iraqi Freedom are already being written in the minds of Soldiers and officers who are going through the crucible (interestingly, their experience and conclusions are far different from those who have had more success in Operation Enduring Freedom). My sense is that if things don't work out, the official history will state that we lost because of strategic and political mistakes-- that we lost despite doing everything right at the tactical level (thereby exonerating our own performance). This, in turn, will lead to a newer Weinberger/Powell Doctrine explaining why we should never have committed forces to the Paktias and Fallujahs, and saved them only for the Fulda Gaps and Central Corridors. Like the US occupation of the Philippines or the British experience in the Mayalan Emergency, Afghanistan will be underreported and forgotten in order to "prove" the point-- that the Army can't (and therefore, shouldn't) do "small wars."

That isn't just intellectual dishonesty (although it is that)-- it's emasculating the Army's capability to do what maybe-- just maybe-- it will need to be able to do in the next few generations in order to defeat the threat coming over the horizon: fight and win "small wars."

And all that just because it doesn't fit into the dogma of an American military culture that is addicted to overwhelming force (mass), superior firepower, advanced technology, and kinetic "solutions"... That doesn't sound like much of a "solution" to me."

I apologize for such a long quotation, but I think it is that good. I agree fullheartedly with his assessment. Furthermore, in their determination to avoid repeating the Vietnam fiasco, the force structure was changed to limit the options of politicians. Politicians of course ignored this, and ran policy according to what they thought correct, rather than conform to the limitations the Army attempted to impose on their decision making. I talked about this in a prior Yankee Station post:

"... After the disastrous moral problems of the Vietnam War, Adams and Colin Powell nobly tried to structure the force so that any serious effort would require a total commitment from the nation. In theory, American presidents would be more careful about acquiring national backing and approval for war efforts if ever modest commitment required calling up the reserves.

This suggests a strangely optimistic view of politicians, but I digress…

It was also thought that this would ensure complete efforts with limited, attainable goals. The military couldn’t be sent in without the full support of the American people, since using it meant calling up reservists. I originally accepted the wisdom of this without serious thought. After all, it makes sense, right?

I gradually came to realize that in doing so however, Adams and Powell took options out of the hands of the civilian policy makers. As the article states, the army does not choose what wars the country must fight, its politicians decide, and even more often, fate decides. It is understandable that the army had been burned by the civilian leadership (and indeed its own) in Vietnam. It was almost criminal. But the reformers still erred by preparing an army for the wars that the army would like to fight, not the wars that it might have to fight. Throughout the 1990s, it was tasked to fight low scale protracted efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, etc. One would think that the reserves would have been on vacation through the 1990s, but in reality they were rotating in and out of odd places throughout the world, taking part in what were really, minor efforts.

As a result, they were not fully rested even going into Iraq, and the effort there has damaged morale even more so. A military that requires the use of reserves for even the smallest option is not a military for today’s world, with low-scale international commitments and conflicts, even setting aside Iraq. These low-scale commitments and conflicts are sometimes necessary and continuously calling up reserves only blunts their edge, making them less useful when unexpected conflicts arise (which may also be controversial, but just as vital)."

The Powell and Weinberg doctrine strikes me more as a wishlist than a serious diplomatic and military doctrine that can be applied to the world. They assumed that the United States was no longer built for serious counter-insurgency, rather than accept that the Army took too long in Vietnam to figure it out, and then tried to prevent the army from ever fighting in again. Of course, this did nothing but push the decision making theoretically out of the hands of the politicians and into the army, thereby avoiding the serious work of studying counter-insurgency in favor of declaring that we'd never fight it again. Obviously, the real world is not like that, you must prepare for how you will fight, not how you want to fight, and with the obvious preponderance of American conventional power, we'll be fighting more non-conventional wars than conventional.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Kissinger Speaks

2005-08-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

Worth reading.

One of my biggest fears is that withdrawal will become an end itself, rather than one dependent on our chance of victory.

Homework

2005-08-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

Essential reading at Bill Roggio's place on Al Qaeda's intermediate and long term goals.

"Al Qaeda's purported strategy can be broken down into seven "phases" which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will acheive "definitive victory." Here are the phases, which are followed by commentary when appropriate.

The First Phase Known as "the awakening" -- this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby "awakening" Muslims. "The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful," writes Hussein. "The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target." The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard "everywhere."...

Read the rest and make no mistake, we are fighting an enemy with a real political agenda, they are not killing for the sake of killing. Understand your enemy, not to crawl into a fetal position - but to kill and marginalize them more effectively.

I'm going to try to have a post up on this later in the week.

Who is the Enemy?

2005-08-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Mr. Esmay talks about those who would prefer to label Islam itself the impediment to peace and democracy.

Part of this desire is rooted in a need to finally fight back and let loose, instead of being hobbled by our enemy's shadowy nature, a spreading and violent ideology permeating throughout 1.2 billion people. American can be more easily motivated against visible existential enemies and they historically know how to destroy them. Our misguided, but understandable declaration of war against the tactic rather than the idea itself, Wahabbism and violent fundamentalist Islam, has worsened our situation. The extreme difficulties in fighting ideas and furtive groups rather than a traditional nation state are very real - the War on Terror is essentially counter-insurgency on a global level.

With this in mind, you've got two traditional options available. You can either attack the carrier to get at the disease, or separate and isolate the enemy from its hosts via both military and political warfare. Regarding the former option, nuclear terrorism could change this, but we are not there and do not want to be there. The "victory" would likely be Pyhrric, poisoning the American psyche and alienating much of the American populace from its government - not to mention killing many innocent people.

This means the route that President Bush has taken, doing our best to separate Al Qaeda from the wider Muslim world. We've since found out that Al Qaeda is not the fringe of the fringe, the Muslim world [Arab in particular] is much more reactionary than we imagined, its homelands mired in corruption, victimology, and foreign scapegoating. We've run into a host of other problems from incendiary Arab satellite TV to hometown newspapers running enemy propaganda for months at a time. Still, we persist on strategy number 2, at least so long as we can physically afford it.

I am not a dhimmi. Better dead than red? Hell yes! I also love the New Hampshire state motto and I applauded the Navy bringing back the Gasden Flag. Likewise, I am also not squeamish. If it ultimately takes dropping a nuke on Riyadh to end this thing, then to quote Gene Hackman - drop that fucker, twice. Losing is simply not an option against this enemy. At the same time I’m pragmatic – and Americans are a pragmatic people. We’re the only people in the history of warfare that rebuilds the houses and armies of its enemies. Why? Because it is ultimately what will make us safe. We can go from the rage of battle to the patronization of occupation in the blink of an eye.

I’m also not willfully blind. I’m not deluded by PC double speak, and I haven’t been covering my eyes to news throughout the world. Islam is not in the best of shape. I don’t care about its Golden Age, as a civilization it is as close to failed as it can get.

Is Islam predominately a religion of peace? Is it compatible with Democracy? I can’t answer the first. I hardly consider myself enough of an expert to come down either way, nor could I describe Christianity or Judaism as such. It just isn’t my forte. What I can tell you, is that it is irrelevant – religions are the sum of their followers. Islam may be a religion of peace, but many Muslims, aren’t. Muslims are at war with Hindus in India, Buddhists in Thailand, Orthodox in Chechnya, Catholics in Philippines, and Protestants throughout the West. Islam has bloody borders - Samuel Huntington noticed this as far back as 1993. So much for Bush being the root of all evils.

But is it compatible with Democracy? Says Dean:

"In the Islamic world, Senegal has gone in barely ten years to one of the least-free nations on Earth to one of the most-free. It is 94% Muslim. Mali has come even farther in the last few decades, and is even freer than Senegal. You haven't heard of these countries? Too damned bad. They are a part of the Islamic world, and they show what is possible."

To which I’ll add these guys. They’re part of the Muslim world, and understandably most of us warbloggers love them – they’re the future of Iraq we’d like to build. In 10 years, while absorbing the refugees of Hussein's Arabization, under constant threat of attack, and complete absent from the Oil for Food debacle - they built a workable democracy, and they are now our allies. They’re even Sunni Muslim, the branch from which we face most of our problems worldwide.

Islam is part of the problem. There are even sects within it, notably Wahhabism, which I consider incompatible with democracy. The spread of a retrograde Saudi version of Islam and its derivatives is the biggest source of our problems. At the same time, to declare war on Islam itself, is counterproductive. Yes, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda receive the admiration and support, active or passive, of a larger portion of the Muslim world than we often acknowledge. But no, not the entire Muslim world is against us.

This man, recently buried at Arlington after dying beside US troops, is not our enemy.

This American soldier, fighting for his country even while his wife gives birth at home, is not our enemy.

These brave souls, frequently slaughtered at recruiting centers, only to be replaced by others, are not our enemy. They are the Minutemen, even if fools such as Michael Moore cannot see it.

You divide and conquer your opposition, whenever possible - you do not go out of your way to unify it. To avoid a clash of epic proportions, may we find more such men, and avoid needlessly alienating them.

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*Update* Edited at 8 PM to make more clear the consequences of total war.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

2005-08-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has a humorous and worthwhile post on Wahhabist swimwear.

Unfortunately, I was distracted by a memory, seared, seared into my mind.

Reason for Celebration

2005-08-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

Stop by and congratulate Abu Yusef. He's an American soldier in Iraq whose wife has just given birth to a baby boy back home.

An American Hero

2005-08-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

The USA Today remembers an American hero who's not American, but Iraqi:

"An Iraqi air force pilot will be buried Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery. It will be the first interment there of an Iraqi citizen. The late Capt. Ali Abass is the first Iraqi to be honored with burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of Capt. Ali Abass will be buried with some of the remains of four members of a U.S. Air Force team who died beside him when their plane crashed near the Iranian border. Abass will be one of about 60 foreign nationals buried at the national cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington. More than 260,000 Americans have been laid to rest there since the Civil War.

The event, with a 21-gun salute and a flyover by Air Force jets, will be witnessed by senior U.S. and Iraqi military officials, symbolizing the cooperation between the military services of the two nations.

"Things like this tend to draw us closer together," says Lt. Gen. Michael Wooley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. Even after the United States withdraws from Iraq, "there will be long-term personal relationships" between the pilots and air crews of the two nations, he says.

Abass was popular with the Americans. He bonded with them because of an earlier incident, according to an Air Force statement. After he and a U.S. officer were forced to make an emergency landing on an Iraqi road, some vehicles approached and Abass had the American hide behind a nearby sand berm. He then convinced the visitors that he worked for the Iraqi agriculture department."

RIP Mr. Abass. You are a hero to both your own nation and ours.

An Old Enemy

2005-08-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

At the Belmont Club, Wretchard mixes history with personal recollection:

"In February 1945, a woman now dying of lung cancer grabbed two of her children and jumped out the window to escape Imperial Japanese Marines crashing through the door intent on bayoneting everyone in the burning house. Finding no one, they went on to the next house to continue their massacre on a street not far from the Rizal Memorial ballpark, where Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth both played in sunnier days before the forgotten Battle of Manila. The 100,000 civilians who died in the largest urban battle of the Pacific War -- more than at Hiroshima -- are not remembered in beautiful candles floating down darkened rivers or in flights of doves soaring into the blue sky; there is no anti-American significance to their deaths. But they still live in the fading memory of that woman, who hid for two days in the smoldering ruins of the neighborhood until the first American patrols came into view.

I saw my aunt last as she stood in a window of a Sydney hotel and waved goodbye. I hope to see her again."

In many ways, the Imperial Japanese were the most similar enemy to Al Qaeda that we've fought before this latest war. Suicidally inclined, they fought to the death. In many cases they almost consciously chased their opportunity to die for the Emperor in fruitless and self defeating banzai charges that only served to get them killed off faster in the face of overwhelming American firepower. Prior to undertaking these charges, they'd often use alcohol to dull the senses, just as today's mujahadeen fry their brains with hashish and other mind altering substances before going into combat.

The Japanese also considered their enemies largely subhuman, and treated them accordingly - from fellow Asians to Westerners. Ironically they largely treated fellow Asians even worse than they did Westerners, proving the baselessness of their co-prosperity sphere rhetoric, meant as it was to seduce anti-colonialist asians. Truthfully, the Japanese loved Filipinos and Chinese about as much as Zarqawi loves Shi'ite Muslims. As a result, much as the Germans forfeited anti-Boshevik feelings in Russia, Japanese brutality forced even anti-colonial asians to fight back against their new masters.

Bill Roggio relates the story of an Iraqi village's expulsion of Zarqawi's forces. "Sunnis have taken up arms against al Qaeda to protect their Shiite neighbors." So too, we hope that what happened in Asia long ago will happen in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world. We hope that actual Saudi Wahhabist and Al Qaeda's direct rule and methods will prove as much an anathema and curse to Muslims as Japanese rule was to their victims. The Iranian youth have learned, will the rest of the Ummah follow, and if so, how long will it take?

Open posted at the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

A Dutch-born American?

2005-08-14T13:49:00.000-07:00

Dutch blog Zacht Ei tells the story of a Dutch newscaster whose pro-American sympathies were likely part of the reason behind the Dutch PBS's decision to reject him as a potential news anchor:

"Mr. Groenhuijsen has been at odds with the NOS Journaal for some time because he has said such fascist controversial things as:

'If all America had wanted were Iraq's oil reserves, Bush would have chosen the Chirac method, and invited Saddam over at his ranch to discuss business.'

'When I see whole American families signing up for the military to defend the freedom of others, some Dutch say: Americans are fanatics. I say: I salute you.'

and my personal favorite:

'Many Dutch are what they claim Americans to be: they are suffering from Torremolinos superficiality, BMW rudeness and Vinkeveen egotism.'

So of course I ordered his book ('Amerikanen zijn niet gek', or 'Americans aren't crazy') immediately."

Never forget. Even in countries and institutions with which we are at odds, we have friends.

Canada - America's Most Surprising Political Enemy

2005-08-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

While on vacation I stumbled across this post by Dean Esmay, concerning Canadian-American relations.

Said Esmay:

Reader Robert Bell recently sent me a column written by Ted Byfield of the Calgary Sun laying out how a growing number of the American intelligence, diplomatic, and defense communities view Canada as a hostile nation--not an avowed enemy, of course, but a nation which goes out of its way to thwart or harm American interests whenever possible. When I read Byfield's column I started wincing, because he quotes some of the more inflammatory-sounding sentences from a recent paper written by Professor Harvey M. Sapolsky of the Security Studies Program at MIT.

I had assumed that the paper by Sapolsky was a cringeworthy rant about Canada and Canadians, but then I went and searched for it--apparently, the Calgary Sun hasn't figured out how to use hyperlinks yet--and I believe I found the paper: Canada: A Nuisance Neighbor (And sometimes a malicious one, too).

I sat down to read the paper and, despite its inflammatory title, found it to be a rather calm, rational exploration of all the ways in which Canada has chosen to base its national identity on hostility toward America and to actively work to thwart U.S. foreign policy and at times even to put our troops at risk.

I then went and re-read Ted Byfield's column on Sapolsky's piece, and realized that it was more thoughtful and serious than I'd thought. Sapolsky's brutally honest, to the point of rude, but his analysis is hard to refute.

I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about this. Americans get a sometimes well-deserved reputation for being rude among Canadians, but I have to admit I'd never seriously considered some of the points that Sapolsky raises.

I've been beating the same drum as Sapolsky for a while, to the point where acquaintances have labeled me a Canada-phobe. In a prior post on Canadian-American relations, I said the following:

In the past we have been among the two closest countries in the world, with Roosevelt guarenteeing the protection of Canadian sovereignty in the dark days of 1940. This has changed, and contrary to the reporter's statement, it is getting worse. The missle defense debacle was irresponsible and simply dangerous, and the US cannot allow Canada to jeopordize America's security by placating the Canadian leadership's moral self-righteousness and anti-Americanism. Canadian's have always been afflicted with an excessive inferiority complex concerning the US; they define themselves as "not being American." In the past, this was simply a discomfort, but it has become a serious problem. In the post 9-11 world we cannot count on Canadian loyalty. They think we are the problem: we provoke the Russians with ABM defense, Middle Eastern terrorism through our foreign policy, and European antagonism through general unilateral Cowboyism. And until they acquire leaders with more political courage than a boy scout troop - no offense to boy scouts, that is not going to change.

Canada is one of the few nations in the world where indigenous nationalism originates in a self-identified and exaggerated distinction from another country, specifically us. In actuality, Canadians are of course closer to Americans than any other people in the world. If you were to say that to a typical postmodern Canadian nationalist, however, they'd likely set aside their professed pacifism and beat you up.

They get away with this because Americans barely pay attention to them, and when they do, Canadian narcissism is seen as the relatively harmless result of a state overshadowed by its domineering neighbor and in serious need of a self-identity. As Sapolsky correctly said, however, this self-professed status as North America's moral superpower is now working against American interests:

The more reprehensible Canadian behavior has been that which has potential for harmfully constraining our military actions and putting our soldiers permanently at risk. One example is the Ottawa Treaty Banning Landmines, which the Canadian Foreign Minister at the time, Lloyd Axworthy, orchestrated in 1997. The Treaty, whose formulation involved unusually extensive participation by non-governmental organizations including various humanitarian relief and anti-war groups, bans the manufacture, possession, transfer, and use of anti-personnel devices that explode on contact or in proximity with a person so as to incapacitate, injure or kill.

Banned also are so-called anti-handling devices often used with anti-vehicle mines. The argument was that the dangers of mines persist long after wars, with these weapons lying in wait most often in unmarked or forgotten locations to kill and maim the innocent who pass by or try to work the land.

The United States has refused to sign the treaty in part because it maintains marked and fenced mine fields along the inter-Korean border to hinder possible North Korean attacks, but also because it has developed and equipped its forces with replacement mines that are scattered rather than emplaced, and that are set with timers to self-destruct after a battle, thus posing no risk to returning civilians. These devices were not exempt in formulating the ban because, as one organizer put it, "we didn't want to give the United States any advantage." At Canada's urging, most of our allies, including nearly all of our NATO partners, have signed the Treaty, which means essentially that we can not ever deploy mines if we seek coalition partners because it is unlawful for signatory nations to join in warfare with landmine users.

Because American forces do nearly all of the fighting these days done by Western militaries, it will be American soldiers who will be most often unprotected by defensive minefields. American soldiers, of course, will still face the dangers of landmines. The treaty has little effect on fighting in the poorer regions of the world, because few local participants pay attention to the ban and because unsophisticated mines are cheap to make and easy to plant.

Another example of Canada working against American security interests and potentially placing American soldiers in jeopardy is Canada's promotion of the International Criminal Court. A Canadian diplomat presided over the negotiations that produced the treaty creating the court, which Canada championed as the rightful legacy of the Nuremberg trials and the forum where the perpetrators of evils like that which occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia will be brought to justice. President Bush renounced the accepting signature that President Clinton gave the International Criminal Court treaty in his last days in office but never forwarded to the Senate, saying that the treaty would give license to politically driven prosecutors to indict Americans serving in overseas stability and peacekeeping operations.

With America taking the initiative to bring order to so many different parts of the world, it needed to protect its soldiers from the easy retaliation that an International Criminal Court trial would offer those who sympathize with our enemies. Canada has strongly opposed U.S. attempts to gain an extended exemption for U.S. forces from the court's jurisdiction. It seems likely that one day soon an American soldier will be heading to the Hague for judgment, with all the political consequences that will involve.

Canada's role in drafting these treaties is not the result of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien's obvious and, at times, crudely expressed dislike for President George W. Bush and his administration. The treaties were initiated well before President Bush took office, when Chretien's good friend Bill Clinton was the president. Because they intentionally undermine America's military equities, the treaties seem to represent a deeper and more dangerous decision by Canada's foreign policy establishment to lead the international effort to hobble the American military. Canada appears not to be just searching for a virtuous image or opportunistically expressing a mild brand of anti-Americanism. It seems to be on a Lilliputian quest to bind our power.

Sapolsky did not even touch the short-sighted moves by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to go against his previous support and publically backstab the construction of American Ballistic Missile Defense. Why? Placating domestic anti-Americanism within his base:

But federal officials, who wished to remain anonymous, told the CBC's Radio-Canada that domestic considerations may have outweighed pressure from Washington.

Martin's government lost its majority last spring and the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats oppose the plan, while the Conservatives support it but want a full debate on Canada's role.

As well, Martin faces stiff resistance in his own caucus. The Liberals also want to improve their fortunes in Quebec, where there seems to be little support for missile defence.

Martin then said he expected any American President to consult him prior to our interception of any incoming missiles over Canada. Yes, he actually suggested that with a nuclear missile heading towards the United States, an American President should consult him prior to intercepting it. It demonstrates the fundamental unseriousness of national security politics north of the border. Call me a Canada-phobe, but I'd snicker seeing a missile knocked off course to land somewhere in Quebec, one that could have been knocked down much father North had Paul Martin grown a backbone. The good news is that as Sapolsky says, American politicians are beginning to recognize that Canadian anti-Americanism is no longer a harmless dementia, but one damaging American interests. We will act accordingly against North America's self-proclaimed moral superpower.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway for their open posts.

Back

2005-08-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

After a much longer than anticipated trip, I am now rebased in Southern Florida, for a little bit of pre-school R&R. Posting should pick up again, especially if cloud cover remains as is.

Trip

2005-08-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

Summer job is done, so I'm heading up to New York City tomorrow morning. Due to the traveling posting will be light to nonexistant for a few days.

-Chao

British Developments

2005-08-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Reflecting the sudden but significant shift in British attitudes, Blair announces new anti-terrorism measures.

The proposals, which also target extremist Web sites and bookshops, are aimed primarily at excluding radical Islamic clerics accused of whipping up hatred and violence among vulnerable, disenfranchised Muslim men.

"We are angry. We are angry about extremism and about what they are doing to our country, angry about their abuse of our good nature," Blair said. "We welcome people here who share our values and our way of life. But don't meddle in extremism because if you meddle in it ... you are going back out again."

Still, however, European sensibilities get in the way:

Some British officials feel human rights legislation has hampered Britain's ability to deport foreigners. As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (search), Britain is not allowed to deport people to a country where they may face torture or death.

Blair is hoping that by winning pledges from countries that deportees would not be subjected to inhumane treatment, Britain can take a tougher line. An agreement has already been reached with Jordan, and London is talking to Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt.

I'm personally in favor of jailing these people whenever possible, because it makes little sense to effectively evacuate your enemy. Nevertheless, one of the main reasons that deporting extremist clerics might be a good idea is precisely because they face much tougher treatment at home from governments that may or may not like them - there is a reason they are in Britain. You must make them face the consequences for their words - it is a deterrence.

The story continues:

"The proposals, however, could affect their ideological leaders, as well as people such as jailed Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who allegedly encouraged the killings of Jews and other non-Muslims and is wanted in the United States, and Omar Mahmoud abu Omar, a Palestinian Islamic extremist better known as Abu Qatada.

Sheikh Omar Bakri, who has frequently shrugged off allegations that he preaches extremism, criticized Blair's proposals, particularly suggestions that he could be targeted for remarks made years ago.

"If they believed what I said was illegal, why didn't they arrest me at the time, they know my work well," he told The Associated Press. "However, I feel I've done a great service for Muslims. I've addressed the anger and frustration so many youth feel." He said if asked to go, he would return to Lebanon rather than challenge the decision.

According to a 2001 MEMRI report, Sheik Omar bin Bakri Muhammad is the founder of the London branch of Hizb Al-Tahir. Hizb Al-Tahir recently became known in the blogosphere due to the discovered affiliation of a Guardian trainee with the organization, which promotes the reestablishment of an Islamic Caliphate.

The report also says that Sheik Bakri "presents himself as the spokesman of Osama Bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. This organization, by Bakri's own admission, participates in fundraising for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and is "in touch" with Hizbullah. Bakri has further claimed to have recruited volunteers for training in paramilitary camps located in the US and Lebanon." He also claimed to have recruited fighters destined for Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Kashmir.

His views haven't changed since the report, he supported the attacks in Beslan, saying, "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq."

Bottom line: This man should be either jailed or disappeared, not deported - and certainly not protected from the effects of his deportation. We must go after the financial backers and recruiters just as harshly as we go after the jihadis themselves.

Also quoted in the article is a Iqbal Sacranie, who heads the Muslim Council of Britain and "said the group would be seeking more details from Blair, but his early response was concern. "Our democratic values need to be upheld, not undermined," he said."

In December of 2004, Mr. Sacranie did not have any problems supporting the recently passed British law against religious hatred. At the time he thought, "stirring up hatred against people simply because of their religious beliefs or lack of them ought to be regarded as a social evil. The BNP's ongoing Islamophobia can and has led to criminal acts, abuse, discrimination, fear and disorder."

Apparently the urgency to combat religious hatred was shortlived, after people started dying, of course.

*Sissy Williams also is on this topic, here.
*Pierre Legrand is less optimistic that Blair's finally serious.

-Oops, sorry to both of you about the initially incorrect trackback.

Iranian Conundrum - Why Iran Will Get Nukes

2005-08-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Strategy Page tells the disturbing truth, Iranian nukes are inevitable.

I completely agree. Considering our difficulties in Iraq, there is zero possibility we will be making war on a country 3 times its size. In particular, one that has a history of fanatical resistance to outside invasion. In 1980, Iran was much more divided than it is now, yet rallied behind Khomeini to send its children over minefields after the Iraq Army.

Our current long term strategy is internal revolution, and its attractiveness is buoyed by the fact that an estimated 2/3rds of current Iranian citizens were born after the Khomeini revolution. Most do not identify with fundamentalism or abhor America. This has led to many commentators to call it the most pro-American country in the region, save Israel. Indeed, I agree with Ralph Peters that post-Mullah Iran has the potential to become a critical American ally in the region.

Unfortunately, the seemingly inevitable turnover is unlikely to end their Iranian support of the Iraqi resistance acccording to our time table. The Iranian domestic opposition is still unarmed and outgunned by regime supporters in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other regime pillars. Unarmed prophets fail when the leadership has the will to respond with violence, will the Mullahs show no signs of lacking. Internal revolution is a long term hope, not something we can depend in the near future. And because we no longer have the military option to seriously threaten them, their interference in Iraqi affairs is not going to end. This is their chance to throw us off the beaches, conveniently increasing their own influence in Iraqi concurrently.

So, can we delay their development of nuclear weapons until the regime falls? In the long run, it doesn't matter. For a regime as unpopular as the Mullahs, their pursuit of nuclear weapons enjoys popular domestic support. It is the natural desire of a people surrounded by enemies who are sick of a long history of foreign influence and domination. Thus, even a democratic Iran would likely be a nuclear power, albeit a probable American ally.

Open posted at both the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Not Gonna Take It

2005-08-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

London based Iraqi Expat has had enough with Ba'athist apologists:

I am getting tired of this. Especially, from sick people who don't seem to have any self-respect or any sense of righteousness, people who praise and or defend animals like Saddam, and people who praise and or defend animals like the Baathists and Islamists who are fighting in Iraq and terrorising Iraqis to bring their fascist murderous regime back. Needless to say, that I am sick of the shameless lowlife Baathists and Islamists.

I am getting tired of all this; hence, I don't care anymore whether or not justice is served, I don't care anymore whether or not Saddam gets a fair trial and hanged; all I care about is that he dies, and with him dies all the shameless lowlife animals ("freedom fighters").

In my dictionary, there are no human rights for animals, there are only animal rights and these are for real animals; therefore, Saddam, his loyalist Baathists and terrorists, in Iraq and elsewhere, are entitled to one right only, the right to apologise and cry for forgiveness before being hanged. Apology will not be accepted and forgiveness will not be granted, of course."

It was the latest screed from George Galloway, Oswald Mosely reborn, that set him off.

Brookings Report

2005-08-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Looking over the latest Brookings report poll data and hope to have a post up tomorrow.

Ho Chi Mihn Trail Redux

2005-08-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

Bill Roggio summarizes our major operations in the Western Anbar province of Iraq. It seems pretty clear we're trying to uproot the supply lines and reinforcement routes from Syria. The question is of course whether we have the capability to fill the vacuum left by each operation, or whether the insurgents will quickly refill the voids.

But...You Promised!

2005-08-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

According to Canadian immigration officials, official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election.

"I guess I'm happy Republicans and Democrats have found a way to live together in peace and in harmony," said Immigration Minister Joe Volpehe.

Toby Condliffe, who heads the Canadian chapter of Democrats Abroad, also had an explanation:

"I can only assume the Americans who checked out the Web site subsequently checked out our winter temperatures and further took note that the National Hockey League was being locked out and had second thoughts," he told Reuters.

How are the Democrats ever going to win back American voters if they renege on their commitments?

Iranian Interference

2005-08-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

"Shipment of high explosives intercepted in Iraq - most sophisticated of roadside bombs reportedly coming from Iran".

"U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.

The officials say the shipment contained dozens of "shaped charges" manufactured recently."

Related discussion in the comments section here.