Sunday, December 28, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:31 AM]MS found in the dead-blogs list
While combing my dead-blogs bookmarks to see whether any of them have come back to life, I found this prediction from Memento Mori, last February:
There's a nice objectivist "fuck 'em, I've got mine" argument about the war which says: Iraqi civilians will suffer heavily if we don't go to war, and I don't give a rat's ass, because I don't want to make the effort. The argument is economically and politically childish about the likely results of the US backing down now, but at least the guy who makes it is pretty much covered if the war goes well. The war is going to cost money and American lives; he is guaranteed to be vindicated.It makes sense. It's logical. It certainly seemed reasonable at the time.
Not so the folks who are trying to make an argument that everyone will somehow be better off without the war than with any of the currently likely outcomes of doing so.[...]
But the odds are very, very high that any sort of argument like this is going to be totally impossible to make after the war. I know, y'all have said "I admit that Saddaam is a really bad guy -- you'll get no argument from me on that one." But honey, you aren't listening to yourself. He's a really, really bad guy. He's running one of the three nastiest regimes on the planet -- and this is a planet that has Kim Jong Il, the PRC, and any number of really fucked up African dictators on it. You're trying to cover your ass by saying, in that peevish tone, "Well I know he's nasty," but that ain't going to fly with the masses when the pictures of the torture chambers and the mass graves and the secret labs and all the government paperwork that documents totalitarian horror start flowing out. When the civilian casualties turn out to be lower than the number of people killed by dysentary in an average Iraqi week, and the kids are going back to school and eating chocolate bars out of the soldiers MRE's and the power goes back on to ordinary people's houses for the first time in ten years, everyone who staked their political credibility on the idea that allowing Saddaam Hussein to continue his atrocities would be much better than this is going to look like a flaming fool. And the next time you want to open your yap on foriegn policy, the rest of us are going to remember that you were so stupid, or so blindly partisan, that you advocated letting whatever horrors we uncover go on. Just like the folks claiming that Afghanistan was going to be Vietnam Lite ensured that the American public is largely turning a deaf ear to the wild casualty estimates the left is making now, y'all won't be able to walk away from the claims you're making the way you did in Serbia and Kosovo. Everyone's paying attention. All the marching made sure of that. And they're going to remember what you say. So you might want to ratchet it down a little if you don't want to end up with the same political relevance as the American Bund.
But it seems we do not live in a logical time.
Saturday, December 27, 2003
[posted by jaed at 2:44 PM]Levels of warfare
Donald Sensing posts on what we might do in response to a nuclear strike (responding to a Dean Esmay post on the subject):
...let us accept Dean's first premise, that an American city might suffer a catastrophic strike by al Qaeda that would kill many, many thousands of citizens. Imagine an atomic truck bomb in an American metropolis. Imagine 30,0000 dead and 60,000 injured, or more.This prompted some ruminations on levels and ways of waging total war.
What should America do in response?
I reject a nuclear response that seeks simply to lash out at presumed enemies and make Arabs suffer for suffering's sake. Killing just to kill would not be warranted even under such grievous circumstances.
Such an attack must evoke a severe American response, but the first question is whether al Qaeda's attack would mean that we should change our basic strategic aims , the foundation upon which everything else depends:... to inculcate far-reaching reforms within Arab societies themselves that will depress the causes of radical, violent Islamism. This task shall take a generation, at least; President Bush has said on multiple occasions that the fight against terror will occupy more presidencies than his own.I say that a K-strike against America would make this objective more urgent, not negate it ("K-strike" being shorthand for "catastrophic strike," borrowing from old military abbreviations).
- The first and oldest is the simplest: destroy the enemy. Kill all of them. Level or take their cities. Don't leave even one alive, and solve the entire problem that way: no enemy, no war. (I take this to be what Donald believes Dean is advocating, although I think Dean is actually advocating something else.)
- The second is the one the Romans practiced famously with Carthage: you don't need to kill all the enemy if you kill their civilization. Tear down the cities, transport the entire population far away and scatter them (selling into slavery is optional, but it prevents them from regrouping), sow the ground with salt to make sure no one can even settle in that land again.
War is something fought by a civilization, not individuals: destroy the civilization, and make it impossible for the individuals to reconsitute that civilization, and the war is over for good.
- The third is the one we practiced against Germany and Japan in WWII: wreak havoc upon the enemy, fight them with dreadful weapons, bring home to them the fact that they are defeated utterly and at your mercy, accept nothing short of unconditional surrender; then reconstitute and rebuild their civilization, preserving everything you can, but making sure that it's incapable of continuing the war.
- The fourth is what we're attempting incompletely in Iraq (I say "incompletely" because I think that to have a chance of working, such an attempt ultimately needs to encompass all of Arabia, not just Iraq): make a distinction between the leaders and the people, defeat the former while doing your best not to damage or kill the latter; then bring goodies to build their civic infrastructure up to reasonable levels while creating new governmental structures.
The idea here is that without the enemy leadership, the enemy will not want to continue the war, and the problem will be solved that way.
These four methods of war-waging appear in historical order. They are also ordered by how damaging they are to the enemy population. What may not be as evident is that they are in reverse order by how complicated they are to execute and how risky they are.
In commenting on Donald's post, first I should say that I do not agree that his formulation is quite basic enough. My idea of a basic goal (and no doubt Donald's) is "win the war"; the strategy he describes is one way to do so, the way we are pursuing. But what if it becomes evident that this strategy is one that cannot succeed? Or, even, that it is too risky and will cost us too many lives?
I see the warnings about nuclear response to nuclear attack as statements that, in the case of nuclear attack, the costs and risks of pursuing method #4 will have grown too great, and we must revert to, at best, method #3 (a la WWII), fought with nuclear weapons in the cities because that is the fastest way to inflict a defeat of the kind the method calls for.
This method of warfare does have some advantages against an enemy driven by ideology, because the sensation of certain defeat discredits the ideology that has led people down that road. The Jihadist ideology does seem to incorporate a certainty of victory against the kufr - earthly, military victory, not merely spiritual victory - so a military defeat that is sufficiently tangible would indeed help discredit it in the eyes of Arabs. But a "tangible military defeat" necessarily involves many deaths, much destruction. It's not preferable, unless we find we cannot win the war with any less-destructive method.
I've written briefly before about the fear that, if we don't deal with this now, eventually the attacks will ramp up to the point where genocide becomes an option. It is a possibility. It could be accomplished in days if someone decides to do it. It may be necessary to understand that this is one in the sheaf of possibilities to be willing to make war in the first place, as a means to avoid the even worse catastrophe.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
[posted by jaed at 5:01 PM]Various things
...which I want to make a note of but am too lazy to give each its own post:
- Christopher Hitchens interview, in which he gives a clearer picture of his views on the various subdivisions within the Left and his place therein. Part II here and includes a somewhat depressing series of inanities about Israel, but at least he stops short of advocating genocide.
- Sayyed Qutb's Milestones Along the Way, which I've referred to before (and if I haven't, Ideofact certainly has), is available online.
- The Telegraph has an article about the Iraqi colonel who apparently was the source for the British claim that Saddam had 45-minute launch capability for chemical weapons.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
[posted by jaed at 8:23 PM]Stick a fork in them
Instapundit posts on the Washington Post story claiming "Scandal!" because - wait for it - the turkey that Bush was photographed holding was not the turkey served to the troops in Iraq. (They were served other turkeys. This one was a centerpiece.) In response to this whole thing, Instapundit correspondent Elizabeth King lets loose with this:
I now have an urge to rant that I can't bottle up anymore. You don't have to read this, but I really need to say it.Elizabeth, you rant for me. I'd venture to say that you rant for millions.
I am SICK AND TIRED of our media. I am SICK AND TIRED of the superficial nature of their reporting on Iraq and their incessant preaching of quagmirism. I am SICK AND TIRED of their efforts to turn every U.S. military action into Vietnam, all facts to the contrary be damned. And I am SICK AND TIRED of 16-words-gate and Plame-gate and mission-accomplished-gate and now, God help us, turkey-gate.
We live in momentous times, and our media -- the freest and most technologically advanced media in the history of the world -- is mired in 60's nostalgia, conspiracy theories and banality.
Update: Oh, Christ, the British papers have started gnawing on this now. The Guardian's crack reportorial team tells us that Bush didn't carve the show turkey he was holding when the picture was taken. Not to be outdone, the Sydney Morning Herald tells Australia solemnly that "Although the pictures may have given the impression that the president himself had helped serve the traditional holiday meal, the troops were served buffet-style..." ... by Bush among others. Apparently their reporter either missed that set of photographs, or decided that mentioning Bush serving dinner to the troops would only confuse the issue.
Truly, I can no longer tell whether I am living in the real world, or a movie comedy.
(via Tim Blair, whose commenters include Deep Giblet, who urges us to "just follow the gravy". Heh.)
[posted by jaed at 5:58 PM]
The CounterRevolutionary has been posting news articles from the aftermath of WWII. It's all there: quagmire, falling US prestige, battles between cabinet departments, lack of planning leading to trouble, guerilla warfare, discontented and angry people in the occupation zone....
Of course the analogy between 1946 Germany and 2003 Iraq is inexact - the war was faster, the dictatorship and consequent debilitation of social institutions had lasted longer, and most of all, in 1946 the war was over, and no fighters from undefeated hostile belligerents were pouring across the borders of Germany. But still - it's uncanny how similar the media's tone is.
[posted by jaed at 5:12 PM]
John Burns's reports from Iraq are becoming indispensable. I am starting to wonder what we'd be seeing if every Western reporter in Iraq 1) got out of the hotel once in a while 2) got out of Baghdad once in a while 3) got edgy and risk-taking enough to use translators who didn't used to work for the Mukhbarat.
Today's article in the NYT recounts a conversation with four Iraqi men in Amariya (the quote below is heavily elided to give a flavor of the direction of the conversation, but you should read it al):
"...Saddam is still there, and we count on him, every last man among us."(via the permalinkless Dignified Rant, via He Who Must Be Linked)
[...]
"Well, O.K., we didn't love Saddam, we have to be honest about it."
[...]
"O.K., let us be honest here. Whatever we may say to foreigners like you, the truth is that we were never really with Saddam; in our hearts, we were always against him. But he is gone; what we are against now is America."
[...]
"The Americans should go home, but not right now, not until they have ended all this trouble."
[...]
"Look, we really don't have anything against the Americans."
[...]
"But it would make things worse now if they were just to go away."
[posted by jaed at 4:54 PM]
It has been widely reported that the EU, after commissioning a report on anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, suppressed the findings because they were politically embarrassing: anti-Semitism is a rising problem, anti-Semitic attacks are largely perpetrated by young Muslim immigrants, and anti-Semitic rhetoric is emitted by the political left as well as by the far right of European politics.
The report has still not been released, but it was leaked to the Jerusalem Post and mirrored here. Judge for yourself.
[posted by jaed at 4:24 PM]
Stuart Cohen was actiing chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the time the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMDs was issued. The NIC website publishes a followup analysis and description. The document at times has an understandably testy tone:
We do not know whether the ISG ultimately will be able to find physical evidence of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons or confirm the status of its WMD programs and its nuclear ambitions. The purposeful, apparently regime-directed, destruction of evidence pertaining to WMD from one end of Iraq to the other, which began even before the Coalition occupied Baghdad, and has continued since then, already has affected the ISG's work. Moreover, Iraqis who have been willing to talk to US intelligence officers are in great danger. Many have been threatened; some have been killed. The denial and deception efforts directed by the extraordinarily brutal, but very competent Iraqi Intelligence Services, which matured through ten years of inspections by various UN agencies, remain a formidable challenge. And finally, finding physically small but extraordinarily lethal weapons in a country that is larger than the state of California would be a daunting task even under far more hospitable circumstances.(emphasis in original)
He also makes a couple of points that he shouldn't have to - because those points and their implications should be obvious, and chanting "Bush lied!!!" (or the polite journalistic equivalent) doesn't address them:
Allegations about the quality of the US intelligence performance and the need to confront these charges have forced senior intelligence officials throughout US Intelligence to spend much of their time looking backwards. I worry about the opportunity costs of this sort of preoccupation, but I also worry that analysts laboring under a barrage of allegations will become more and more disinclined to make judgments that go beyond ironclad evidence [...] the Intelligence Community increasingly will be in danger of not connecting the dots until the dots have become a straight line.
We must keep in mind that the search for WMD cannot and should not be about the reputation of US Intelligence or even just about finding weapons. At its core, men and women from across the Intelligence Community continue to focus on this issue because understanding the extent of Iraq's WMD efforts and finding and securing weapons and all of the key elements that make up Baghdad's WMD programs— before they fall into the wrong hands—is vital to our national security.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
[posted by jaed at 4:02 PM]That phrase again
Jimmy Carter spoke yesterday at the event that introduced the "Geneva Proposal" for the Middle East (basically Oslo II, so far as I can tell, except without the participation, approval, or interest of either polity involved):
"had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution."This is disquieting. (Three years ago I would have said "horrifying", but three years ago I didn't know about MEMRI, and my horror meter has been reset since then.) Is he ignorant of what he's implying with that choice of words? It seems unlikely; and Carter is not unintelligent and has never had a problem with articulateness or choice of words. Is it deliberate? If he wants to get the Israelis to accept this concept, implying that its end result will be a second Holocaust seems unwise. Or - most disturbing of all - is this sort of rhetoric so common in the circles in which he moves these days that it just kind of slipped out?
Monday, December 01, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:15 PM]If the NYT diid not exist it would be necessary for anti-Americans to invent it
Normally, I don't go in for Times-bashing, except when utterly obligatory. It's a prominent newspaper, it has a decided point of view, I don't always agree with that point of view... whatever.
Today, however, the NYT has a story concerning a battle between American soldiers and Saddam Fedayeen. And what headline does the NYT choose for its story?
46 Iraqis Die in Fierce Fight Between Rebels and G.I.'s
Rebels? Rebels???
There are subtler semantic pressures in this headline as well, of course. Who's called American soldiers "G.I.s" - which is no longer a technically correct term, the army no longer uses the "General Infantry" designation - since Viet Nam? (Subtle, very subtle.) Other scholars will need to analyze what that out-of-place apostrophe is doing there. Perhaps it's a drool mark that accidentally got transcribed onto the computer system.
And, of course, reading the headline you wouldn't know that the 46 people killed were all attackers, all among the Saddam Fedayeen. It's easy to get the vague impression that innocent Iraqi bystanders were killed by those Viet-era "G.I.s".
But these things are fairly trivial and not startling to anyone who reads the NYT daily; for this newspaper, Iraq is Viet Nam and Americans are almost always doers of evil. I doubt the headline writer even thought about these things; they're part of the background cloud of assumptions, and solidly embedded in the rhetoric used.
However: Rebels? Rebels??? Not even the French go that far toward romanticizing Saddam Hussein. What's next, heartrending reminiscences of Odai's childhood?
Saturday, November 29, 2003
[posted by jaed at 10:01 AM]Sigh
Eamonn Fitzgerald of Rainy Day posted this lovely little "thank-you" to America the other day, which damn near made me cry. Unexpected kindness does that to me. Then his commenters promptly announced that they didn't agree, and overall the Irish are, too, anti-American.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:46 AM]Dept of "What's wrong with this picture?"
From the Washington Post, we read:
The FBI, in an unprecedented move that has strained relations with a close ally in the war on terrorism, has subpoenaed records for dozens of bank accounts belonging to the Saudi Embassy...In other news, the Washington Post (dateline 1943) has a story that the US has strained relations with "a close ally in WWII" by bombing Japanese positions in the Pacific. I know Saudi Arabia paid for a number of ads touting themselves as "our partners in peace", but do you believe everything you hear on the radio?
Saudi Arabia: home of fifteen of nineteen.
Saudi Arabia: source of most of the funding for the jihadist movement.
Saudi Arabia: whose ambassador's wife channeled funds to the 9/11 attackers.
Saudi Arabia: origin of more state-sponsored anti-American khutbas than I can shake a stick at.
If Saudi Arabia is a "close ally in the war on terrorism", what in hell would an enemy look like?
Saturday, November 22, 2003
[posted by jaed at 1:30 PM]Quote of the day
The Economist, in an article on American protectionism against clothing imports from China:
Now, the Commerce Department has shown that it is willing to use every device at its disposal to ward off the menace of cheap dressing gowns.(via Drezner, whose remarks are readworthy as usual)
Thursday, November 20, 2003
[posted by jaed at 7:14 PM]...to coin a phrase
A number of people have commented on the apparent disconnect between some traditional ideals that the left associates itself with (humanitarian causes, human rights, opposition to dictatorship) and the behavior of much of the left and many soi-disant "liberals" at the moment ("People have been murdered in Istanbul? Who cares? It's Bush and Blair who are the killers!").
Cllifford May has, en passant, come up with a phrase that resonates: "the post-humanitarian left". It is descriptive. It is non-snarky. And it perfectly expresses the gulf I've been inarticulately contemplating lately, between the ideal and the real.
[posted by jaed at 1:11 PM]
Ralph Peters puts his finger on the media dynamics - go to the dramatic event, frame the story around it, ignore facts and events that don't fit in the frame - in a way that explains, briefly and colorfully, why the conventional media have behaved the way they have concerning Iraq:
The terrorists push a potent drug, and journalists are the addicts.(via the Karmic Inquisition)
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
[posted by jaed at 6:01 PM]The things we do for fashion
Imshin at Not a Fish provides all the excuse I need for not getting off my butt and installing Movable Type:
If I hang on long enough, Blogger will become retro and I will be cool, at last.Retro. That's the ticket.
[posted by jaed at 9:38 AM]
Here's a series of articles by Sivan Ahmedi. A few tidbits:
...I asked my friend if it was truly advisable that I speak Kurdish in public. He told me, �It is not like the last time you were here. Now, because of the EU, the Turks cannot give us as much trouble.� I hesitantly trusted him and spoke Kurdish everywhere we went, and I indeed encountered no real trouble.Gives a picture of a region that's not discussed much in the conventional media.
[...]
They then asked me what the American people think of KADEK. I told them that perhaps some think that KADEK is a terrorist group, while others, primarily Kurds and leftists, do not share this view. What I said next shocked them; I said that most people in the US probably don�t know about KADEK or simply don�t care about Turkey and the Kurdish question within Turkey�s borders. They asked me about US media perceptions of KADEK and I informed them that, while the media sometimes views KADEK in a negative light, there is very, very little reporting done whatsoever on these issues. Again, they were shocked, and with good reason. The issues that affected these people�s everyday lives were ignored by the media in the world�s most powerful nation.
[...]
We left Mardin and drove through the deserted landscape that leads to Cizre on a road that is just a few steps from the barbed wire fence separating Turkish-administered territory from the portion of Kurdistan occupied by the Syrian dictatorship. I looked into Syria and yelled, �Watch out, President Bush may want you next!�
[...]
I had just entered an area with a visa to Iraqi Kurdistan. I saw only Kurds and heard only Kurdish. I heard and saw the word Kurdistan� and never once heard anyone mention Iraq. Kurdish colors were ubiquitous, as was the beautiful flag of Kurdistan. It was as if I were in an independent state of Kurdistan. I asked myself, �How could this ever be reintegrated into Iraq?�
(via Ideofact)
Monday, November 17, 2003
[posted by jaed at 8:38 PM]Don't give them ideas
Gene at Harry's Place saw an ad for a restaurant named "Michael Moore". It turned out that the Moore for whom the restaurant is named is not the famous MM, but it inspired this brief fantasy:
The walls would be decorated with deer rifles and anti-gun-control bumper stickers. The wait staff would wear cowboy boots and George W. Bush masks. The only items on the menu would be chicken-fried steak and Budweiser, and anyone who tried to order vegetables would be laughed at and called a goddam sissy before getting dragged out and beaten up in the back alley.There are, as Gene says, many possibilities. The shuddersome thing about this is that if I read about such a restaurant - for real - it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. The dislike-shading-into-hate, the stereotyping, seems just that bad to me.
Damn. Maybe I should seek venture capital and open it myself. A chain of such restaurants would make a killing in Britain.
I'm just hoping we get through the next few days without someone taking a shot at Bush, and without anyone getting killed or seriously hurt. It will be ugly, hurtful, and damaging to this long-time alliance, and the most optimistic outlook I can manage is that perhaps it won't be any worse than that.
ON THE OTHER HAND: via Instapundit, I find the Guardian (of all papers) telling us that British opinion is a bit more pro-visit than otherwise, with 43% welcoming it and 37% opposing. 62% said the US is generally a force for good. Hmmm. Definitely not the impression I've gotten, but then it's not as though I were in Britain. I don't know.
[posted by jaed at 6:44 PM]
Volokh has a number of posts this week on the issues surrounding touchscreen voting machines, counting, etc. Eugene Volokh seems to think giving a receipt to the voter is being proposed; I've never heard this suggested, but if it has been, the suggestor should be slapped with a large fish into which has been carved the phrase "Secret Ballot". Diebold's management should be slapped with a similar fish that says "Open Source", or perhaps "Security by Obscurity Doesn't Work". (Depends on the size of the fish.)
Design criteria for a reasonable touchscreen voting system:
1. System is coded to prevent overvotes and inadvertant undervotes. The user interface should not let you overvote for an office. If you undervote (don't vote in a contest, or vote for fewer candidates than you're allowed to [for such things as at-large city councils]), it should ask "Are you sure?" in some fashion, to confirm that your undervote is deliberate.
2. System should, when the voter is finished, print out a ballot that's both human-readable and OCR-able, and ask the voter to confirm that these are in fact the right choices. Voter deposits this ballot in a box at the polling place before leaving, and it's used as a double-check on the computer tally.
(I say OCR-able, rather than having two sets of data - machine-readable and human-readable - because if the voter can't read the machine-readable part, it's not really a check; if the two sets are different, due to either a bug or software sabotage, it would be difficult to tell.)
3. The initial numbers are taken from the computer tally. If a candidate challenges the results, the printed ballots are used to generate either a machine count (faster, cheaper) or a hand count. You can toss the printed ballots after the time for a challenge has passed.
4. For the first N elections (where N is some small integer, 1 or 2 or 3, say) after the machines are installed in a county, a machine count is done as a matter of course. If the machine count is more than some delta different from the computer tally, consequences are triggered (these might include comprehensive software review, manual recount, and penalties due from the machine's manufacturer). This is repeated for the N elections after a software change.
As far as I can tell, not one of these provisions is being used. I wonder why not? They all seem fairly obvious and fairly reasonable. They solve the problems I've heard about with touchscreens, up to and including the theory that "Diebold is being paid by Bush to rig the machines!", as well as the problems that touchscreens are supposed to address (overvotes, ambiguous undervotes, slow counts). So what's up?
Sunday, November 16, 2003
[posted by jaed at 7:05 PM]The measure of success
Instapundit sets a low bar for success in Iraq:
But, you know, Russia was a mess (and remains one) after the fall of the Soviet Union, for many of the same reasons. But it's still better the way it is, for them and for us. So it doesn't have to be perfect. Just good enough. The problems that Bannion describes remind me of Nigeria, which isn't a great place, but it's better than a lot of countries in Africa. Likewise, Iraq isn't a great place, but it's better already than a lot of countries in the mideast, and it's on the path to improvement. Given the enormous damage to the physical -- and especially the social -- capital of the country done by decades of dictatorship, that's good enough.I have to disagree.
If we were judging "success" in isolation, I might agree. "Better than under Saddam" isn't a very high standard and it's one that the end result can easily meet. Even another dictatorship - under someone somewhat less bloodthirsty, with less-evil spawn, and with fewer territorial ambitions - would be a "success" in this limited sense. We could simply shrug and say "Well, as long as we're not going to be digging up mass graves with hundreds of thousands of corpses in thirty years, this is a signal improvement." And we'd be right, as far as that goes
Except for one thing: Iraq and our strategy there don't exist in isolation. The Iraq campaign was, and is, only part of the war. One of the several strategic reasons for dealing with Iraq first is that Iraq in many ways has a high potential to become a democratic and open society compared with other Arab countries, for a variety of reasons, and that transformation is part of our war strategy. Success in Iraq has to be judged in this broader sense, of whether it accomplishes our war aims.
An Iraq that is run by a dictator, or in constant danger of sliding into lawless authoritarianism, won't do that. It will instead strengthen the stability-uber-alles theoreticians, offering evidence that Arabs are incapable of democracy. It will cement our reputation for cutting and running. It will effectively take hope away from any Arabs entertaining the idea that democracy might be possible in their countries. It will ensure that the next time we need to take any kind of military action, the people will expect nothing but the worst of us; we can only dine out on our success with WWII Germany and Japan for so long in the face of a very public failure in Iraq.
It will do us enormous strategic damage. It will very likely lose us the war - the entire war, not just the engagement in Iraq. And this is not a war we can afford to lose.
Iraq can do better than "not as bad as under Saddam", and so can we. We have to.
[posted by jaed at 6:03 PM]
I don't think the press is unbiased. I think that the culture of the world press is such that its members can generally be expected to oppose us in this war and to romanticize our enemies, and that media outlets express this bias in choice of stories, in level of coverage, in the wording of stories and headlines, and in all the things we refer to as "positioning".
However, I have never thought that they've been hiding information from us - at worst, I've thought that they've presented an overall picture that's out of touch with reality, burying certain stories and hypiing others. I've never thought that there were actual facts they were refusing to report at all.
I may have been wrong. (And I can't tell you how much I dread the implications.) Zeyad reports that there were anti-terrorism demonstrations in two major Iraqi cities last week:
Huge anti-terrorism demonstrations were held in Nassiriyah yesterday by students association condemning the attacks on the Italian force carrying signs such as 'No to terrorism. Yes to freedom and peace', and 'This cowardly act will unify us'. I have to add that there were similar demonstrations in Baghdad more than a week ago also by students against the bombings of police stations early this Ramadan.I heard nothing of these demonstrations. And I follow the news on this matter more closely than most people do.
Had I simply missed the reports? Perhaps they weren't given prominence. I did a Google News search on Out of curiosity, I did a Google News search on "demonstration Nasiryah" (with a couple of variations on the spelling of "Nasiriyah") - but the only mention I found of anti-terrorist demonstrations was in the Telegraph, in a story datelined Baghdad:
A demonstration was planned at the blast site by local Iraqis to show support for the Italian presence but in the end only a handful of people turned up.I tried a similar search for demonstrations in Baghdad, and got plenty of hits, but they all concerned anti-American demonstrations (in Baghdad and London).
Now remember, Zeyad lives in Baghdad. It's unlikely he'd think there were demonstrations if there weren't. I've got no reason to think he might be making this up. But there are no stories. As far as I and Google News can tell, there are none - not one mainstream English-speaking news organization picked up what is, if true, a significant event that can give us insight into the complexities of Iraqi opinion. Which, you'll admit, is an important story.
I don't know what to think of this. But the implications are making my blood run cold. As a polity, we are far, far too dependent on a few reporters living in Baghdad luxury hotels and on their willingness to report the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is for them. If they're not willing to do that, this small group can effectively drop Iraq down the memory hole.
[posted by jaed at 4:12 PM]
...although you may wish you had. Two synagogies in Istanbul are bombed in the middle of prayer services, and this is the response of the Secretary-General of the Arab League:
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mussa condemned Saturday the bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul, and held Israel responsible for inciting terrorism.This is usual. It's what I've come to expect from Arabs in positions of power. But occasionally, I notice that it is mean-spirited to the point of inhumanity, as well as willfully stupid.
And I ask myself, why does everyone just nod and sigh when people say this sort of thing? Our expectations are low, granted, but should they be allowed to sink so low that this sort of thing - not from a crazy person on the street, or an adolescent with more bravado than sense, but from a sane adult in a position of power - is passed over, the way I almost passed it over just now?
(via Watch)
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
[posted by jaed at 3:22 PM]Iron Curtain, redux
A while ago, I noted the use of "Iron Curtain" in the recently-released transcript of a 1945 talk by John Foster Dulles, and asked whether this was the original use. Marten Barck (of the indispensable Watch) tells me:
The first time the phrase is mentioned in Martin Gilbert (Churchill - A Life [845])is in a telegram from Churchill to Truman on May 12 1945: "An iron curtain is drawn upon their front." Of course, the historical version was on March 4 1946.
[posted by jaed at 11:25 AM]
Brian Tiemann at Peeve Farm reflects on a Tech Central column and a new email friendship with someone who says, well:
"I tend to view anyone or anything bearing a Bush/Cheney logo in much the same way that I view biohazard labels -- they are warnings that the contents therein are likely to be volatile, unstable, antithetical to human life, and quite possibly lethal," he says. "This public safety notice brought to you by Citizens Who Still Know How To Think Clearly."Yeah. I have friends who get their news from leaving NPR on all day (just to hint at their political persuasion) and I just avoid talking about politics with them. Another friend wanted me to go to a Clark campaign event recently and I'm avoiding talking politics with him too. There is... I don't know. An assumption that all Decent People agree, and I'm cowardly enough to find challenging that assumption very, very unpleasant.
(I haven't told him my horrible secret yet. I dread the inevitable day when I will.)
I think there's something new going on. [...] possibly it's the second- and third-order fallout in the nation's collective mind from 9/11-- first was the shock and horror and patriotism, but then there was the freight-train backlash against it that has so violently uprooted the foundations of so many people's minds that all cognitive consistency is lost.
If this is what 9/11 has done to us in the long term, then bin Laden really did have a plan and a half, didn't he?
Friday, October 31, 2003
[posted by jaed at 5:44 PM]Hanson sums things up
This week's NRO column from Victor Davis Hanson reviews the latest manifestations of anti-Semitism, and summarizes the situation with admirable pithiness:
These are weird, weird times, and before we win this messy war against Islamic fascism and its sponsors, count on things to get even uglier.Yeah.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
[posted by jaed at 6:48 PM]UN [in]security planning
Via Random Jottings, this report on UN security problems in Iraq - which may have made the bombing of the building more likely and more damaging:
The panel said the organization had failed to assess thoroughly security in Iraq or respond to warnings, including intelligence reports that said the headquarters could be a target of an attack.This is the sort of thing that tempts me to wax sarcastic about people who say we should turn Iraq over to the UN. This, plus the fact that after the bombing the UN turned tail and ran (and what consequences would that have had if they were running the country?), plus the larger and more important question of why anyone would suggest throwing Iraq to the wolves at this point... I am in danger of ranting.
United Nations officials, the panel said, also dismissed offers of protection from the United States coalition in Baghdad.
[...]
"The security awareness," the report said, "did not match the hostile environment."
(I must track down the original report and see whether it discusses the UN's incomprehensible practice of hiring Baathists as security guards. These people used to work for Saddam's Information Ministry, and therefore worked as minders with the UN, so they knew these people from the Baath days... but surely someone realized that hiring from this group might not be the brightest idea they'd ever had?)
Saturday, October 18, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:48 AM]Historical note:
Instapundit today points out this evaluation of the occupation, given in a confidential talk by John Foster Dulles in December 1945. As with the 1946 Life article by John Dos Passos, it provides some fascinating insights into parallels and differences from Iraq at a similar chronological stage.
But apart from its general merit as a historical document, I noticed this bit (emphasis mine):
It is difficult to say what is going on, but in general the Russians are acting little better than thugs. They have wiped out all the liquid assets. No food cards are issued to Germans, who are forced to travel on foot into the Russian zone, often more dead than alive. An iron curtain has descended over the fate of these people and very likely conditions are truly terrible. The promises at Yalta to the contrary, probably 8 to 10 million people are being enslaved.The "iron curtain" phrase has generally been attributed to Churchill, in a speech the following year. Did Dulles originate it? Or was it in general circulation this early?
It's trivial next to the overall import of what the document is talking about, of course, but it caught my eye.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:46 PM]Good question.
Peeve Farm wonders:
Most importantly, why has post-war success in Iraq been reduced to an underground secret, passed around from friend to friend like fish symbols in the dirt? Why do hundreds of thousands of Stalinists get to march in the streets, supported by relentless "quagmire" mumbo-jumbo from the major media, and wave banners about how Bush and Ashcroft crack down on all dissent and unpatriotic speech? (And why do so few people see the immensity of the irony inherent there?)
Saturday, September 27, 2003
[posted by jaed at 10:21 PM]Slippage
A lot of masks have slipped in the past two years. (I may return to this theme soon.) The indispensable Watch offers an English translation of an essay in the French periodical Liberåtion: "<La pente savonneuse de l'antisémitisme (The Slippery Slope of Anti-Semitism)":
But another group of people, far more dangerous to my eyes, also have an definitive view of things: they are all those highly respected intellectuals for whom anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism can never, no, never, contain an ounce of anti-Semitism. One could say anything about Israel and the support that Jewish communities have for it, unleash a torrent of insults on the Israeli people, define the Israeli-American axis as a new axis of Evil, name what happened at Jenin as an “Auschwitz” (dixit Saramago), compare Israeli soldiers to the SS, treat the Jewish state as a pariah among nations, without ever being accused of anti-Semitism. For them, anti-Semitism is confined to Le Pen and to Mégret. Besides, there has not been any rise in anti-Semitism in France ,the Jews are exaggerating. They’re hysterical. There is no anti-Semitism in the outer city housing estates, the fire-bombings of synagogues and the assaults on Jewish schools are “embellished” by the Jewish community...
What is serious in my view is that the perverse efforts of this little group are starting to bear fruit in French society: more and more people are saying and writing things about Israel and the Jews that they never would have allowed themselves to say or write a few years ago. They would never have allowed themselves to say such things because they would have been immediately put in their place by their neighbors, their friends and acquaintances, because their co-workers, at university or in the laboratory, would have turned their backs on them. Apparently, such opprobrium no longer exists, which is why they can say whatever they want.
[posted by jaed at 9:56 PM]
Eamon Fitzgerald's Rainy Day is one of those blogs with a bit of everything, refreshing to the mind because it's all filtered through a literate and generous sensibility. It should have massive readership. My three loyal readers (well, maybe it's two by now - I may well have lost one during the most recent unexplained hiatus) are very much urged to check it out.
One frequent feature of Rainy Day is its excerpts from diaries of the past. Today's caught my eye:
Diarist of the day: David Gascoyne, 27 September 1938I wonder whether some blogger will make a similar post a few years from now, a few weeks after a nuclear bomb goes off in Chicago, about a president of the United States.
"Listened this evening to Chamberlain's wireless address. He spoke slowly, in a sad and exhausted voice, and expressed a pathetically sincere horror of war. However much one may have disliked, even despised this man before, the crisis, and however true it may be that the futile policy of his government in the past is responsible for the present situation, one cannot deny that during the last few weeks he has done everything one could possibly expect him to do; and his attitude has been human and dignified, in stark contrast with the crude mock-heroic posturing of the Nazi villain."
Thursday, September 25, 2003
[posted by jaed at 3:21 PM]Rumsfelt talks sense, film at eleven
Today's WaPo has a Rumsfeld piece discussing Iraq. There is the expected reiteration of the positive statistics he rolled out a couple of weeks ago:
We have made solid progress: Within two months, all major Iraqi cities and most towns had municipal councils -- something that took eight months in postwar Germany. Within four months the Iraqi Governing Council had appointed a cabinet -- something that took 14 months in Germany. An independent Iraqi Central Bank was established and a new currency announced in just two months -- accomplishments that took three years in postwar Germany. Within two months a new Iraqi police force was conducting joint patrols with coalition forces. Within three months, we had begun training a new Iraqi army -- and today some 56,000 are participating in the defense of their country. By contrast, it took 14 months to establish a police force in Germany and 10 years to begin training a new German army.And there's also some philosophizing about the concept of "nation-building":
Why is enlisting Iraqis in security and governance so important?The concept of nation-building has always bothered me - not least because it conflates a number of different kinds of projects, some of which are more realistic (and more helpful) than others. The first time I remember seeing the term widely used was in reference to Somalia, where it seemed to represent a grandiose vision of creation of a nation out of nothing. I don't think that's ever going to work well.
Because it is their country. We are not in Iraq to engage in nation-building -- our mission is to help Iraqis so that they can build their own nation. That is an important distinction.
A foreign presence in any country is unnatural. It is much like a broken bone. If it's not set properly at the outset, the muscles and tendons will grow around the break, and eventually the body will adjust to the abnormal condition.
People have lately been using the term "nation-building" to describe what was done in Germany and Japan after WWII, but both Germany and Japan were nations before that. What we did is more like "nation-reconstituting" - taking apart and rebuilding political structures, taking measures to change political attitudes, along with financial aid and investment to deal with immediate material needs and get the economy on the road to recovery.
This is drastic, but it's not the same as creating a nation out of the raw stuff of human beings; if these countries hadn't already had deep national identities, what came out the other end of the process wouldn't have been a nation. Anarchy, perhaps. Or perhaps a conglomerate of polities stuck together with tape and ready to come apart when stressed, like Yugoslavia.
These ruminations of course invite consideration of which category Iraq falls into. Iraq started life as an artificial state, one of many that European colonialism left behind. Various groups are stuck together with duct tape into one country, inside one set of borders, and most of those groups extend outside the borders. If people identify with their group - Kurds, Arabs, whoever - more closely than with the country, it's a recipe for disaster. I'm not sure myself whether I think Iraq is a viable country in the long term.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
[posted by jaed at 1:32 PM]Today's "oh for fuck's sake!" moment of the day
In the middle of a UPI story about the Iraqi Governing Council's temporary ban on al Jazeera and al Arabiya, I find this, dropped in insouciantly:
Subhy Haddad - the former head of the Iraqi News Agency as well as a long time contributor to Reuters and the BBC - said he had mixed feelings about the decision to stifle the two networks. [emphasis mine]Oh, I'll just bet he does. The head of Saddam's official news arm also reported for Reuters and the BBC? I google his name, and yes, so it seems. He is identified by the BBC as "a BBC reporter and resident of Baghdad". Christ on a pogo stick.
Cautious disclaimer: I was not able to find any Google mention of his alleged former position as head of the Iraqi News Agency. It could be a mistake in the story.
Monday, September 22, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:13 AM]The virtue (? maybe if you're a "paleoconservative") of unnecessary hard work
Regions of Mind has an interesting post on modernity, technology, and conservative views of same. It starts out as a review of a book review, but keeps right on going:
My mother is a (miraculously capable) lady in her 80s. When she grew up on a farm in North�Carolina�in the 1920s and '30s, her family made its own candles and sewed its own clothes. (The family did own a Model T, however.) When I took my kids down to the historic downtown of Brownville, in the far southeastern corner of Nebraska, about a month ago, we stopped by the quaint little broom shop there. The owner makes brooms of all sizes right in front of visitors. When I talked to my Mom by phone the next day, I told her about the store and asked her if her family had made its own brooms when she was a girl. Mom's reply: "We sure did." She told me the basic mechanics of how they did it."Let it be read by you," as Amritas is fond of saying.
Sunday, September 21, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:40 PM]Late out the gate again
(Everyone's already linked this too, but I want to put a link here for my own use.) An anti-war judge visits Iraq for five weeks, as part of a delegation to help evaluate the Iraqi justice system. here (more readable format) and here (more complete text).
Like virtually every first-person report that hasn't come through the conventional media, he tells us that the story we're getting from said media doesn't reflect reality. (It startles me how close to unanimous this view is. And it scares me, since most people don't have access to non-conventional views.)
Having decided to topple Saddam, we cannot abandon those who trust us. I fear we will quit as the horrors of war come into our living rooms. Look at the stories you are getting from the media today. The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE TRUTH FROM THE NEWS MEDIA. The news you watch, listen to and read is highly selective. Good news doesn't sell.(emphasis in original)
It's a very interesting read, with both plaudits and complaints about both Iraqis and US forces. If by some chance you haven't read it yet, you should.
[posted by jaed at 11:07 AM]
(Everyone and their siblings have already linked to this, so if you're reading this you've probably already seen it). John Burns on the press and its responsibilities:
Editors of great newspapers, and small newspapers, and editors of great television networks should exact from their correspondents the obligation of telling the truth about these places. It's not impossible to tell the truth. I have a conviction about closed societies, that they're actually much easier to report on than they seem, because the act of closure is itself revealing. Every lie tells you a truth. If you just leave your eyes and ears open, it's extremely revealing.As various people have already remarked, this makes an interesting bookend with Eason Jordan's piece about how CNN just couldn't help slanting its news for years to accommodate a dictator.
We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn't recognize it. They rationalized it away.
Saturday, September 20, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:07 PM]Le Frog, C'est Moi
Gene Weingarten goes in search of French rudeness (among other things) in the Washington Post. And he finds it, but only by employing subterfuge and unsubtle techniques:
I began by assuring M. Gaymard that confrontation and controversy were the last things on my mind; that my role was conciliatory; that my questions were designed to elicit an open and frank exchange of views, so vital to the healing process. The minister inclined his head graciously, and I began.Heh heh heh, as Instapundit might say in a voluble mood.
"I think we can both agree that the diplomatic situation between our two nations is both regrettable and unnecessary . . . Perhaps the worst part is that it has resurrected in the United States some ugly, unfair, inaccurate and totally unsupportable stereotypes about the French. You know: that you are elitist, that you are rude, that you are cowards, that you have an insufferable air of superiority, that your fashion shows are nothing more than elaborate parades of clown costumes . . ."
The minister waited for translation.
". . . that your movies are long and boring and unbearably pretentious, that you lack personal hygiene and let your dogs poop all over the streets, and indeed, that your national pet, the poodle, is a ridiculous life form better never to have survived the evolutionary process."
The minister shifted slightly in his chair.
"I will not insult you, or dignify these preposterous, obviously untrue stereotypes by asking you to respond to them. But I was just wondering if the French have any equally preposterous and obviously untrue stereotypes about Americans that you might enumerate here for the purpose of my not dignifying them with a response."
Friday, September 19, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:40 AM]Iraq and al Qaeda:
Another good summary article, this one on intelligence about collaboration between the Baathists and al Qaeda leadership.
As with other such articles, I didn't notice anything new, but it's a handy all-in-one-place kind of thing. As with most intelligence summaries, it's not definitive courtroom-quality proof, but it's well worth reading, especially if one's basis for thinking the two organizations could never ever cooperate is "But Saddam was Secular, and al Qaeda was Religious, and they Hated Each Other!!!"
Thursday, September 18, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:57 PM]"This isn't a game. This isn't about poking a stick at George Bush. This is our lives."
Johann Hari writes about a group of young Iraqi exiles who went back in June and July to see the situation for themselves, returning recently. Their experience pretty much corroborates what we've learned from polls: Iraqis are hopeful, sensible, and realize there's a lot of work yet to do.
One thing that's bothered me lately is that without exception, reports from Iraq from people who have spent some in-depth time there and aren't mainstream-media journalists have, shall we say, differed from the official media view of Iraq-as-quagmire, Vietnam in the making, everybody-hates-us-why-don't-we-eat-some-worms, etc. This from an on-site observer explains it as cogently as anything I've seen:
Rather, Yasser says, there are several reasons why the reporting from Iraq is stressing the negative over the positive. "First, buildings being bombed is a much better story than the formation of the Baghdad city council to clear up the rubbish and sort out the sewers. Angry Iraqis make a better story than hopeful Iraqis."You know what to do next.
"Second, a lot of the media was openly anti-war, so now that there are hundreds of thousands of mass graves being opened up and all the evidence shows that the Iraqis supported [the war], the media are latching on to the few things, like the looting and, of course, the weapons issue - that was always a red herring - that seem to vindicate their position. And third - I know this sounds like a petty point, but it's very important - a lot of journalists are using the same guides and translators that they used before the war, because they know them. They don't seem to realise that those people were carefully selected by the regime because of their loyalty to Saddam's line. So most journalists are getting a totally distorted picture."
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:43 PM]What's the Sanskrit for "magnificent rant"?
Amritas seems to be on a roll lately:
Ahhh, AmeriKKKa, whipping boy of the world! Got a problem? Blame it on us - yes, US with two capital letters! Nurture your Amerikahass (America-hate). It's a German term. Deutsch is sehr cool since it's not the forked tongue of the Busch-Blair Axis of Evil. Let your Amerikahass overflow. Impress your friends, including AmeriKKKans ashamed of themselves. Everybody knows that soPHISticated people HATE AmeriKKKa. Intelligence and patriotism never mix. Don't just question - denounce! Protest at every opportunity! Wait for that moment when the Gestapo takes you away, when you can die as a martyr to The Cause™! (Yeah, it'll never happen, but you can dream, can't you? You too could be Mumia. Wait and see!) You are a member of la résistance! Doesn't it feel exciting to be part of a Movement™? There may only be a few of you bright enough to see through der Busch's plot right now, but eventually entire mobs will storm the White House (what a racist term!) and liberate AmeriKKKa from its self-appointed Führer (NEVER FORGET FLORIDA!!). Then true Democrat (you were expecting democratic?) elections would be held, AmeriKKKa would withdraw from the world, and all would be right again, with Leftist yuppies sipping overpriced coffee in their SUVs - dying every now and then (hey, THEY DESERVE IT!!) - while millions outside the Satanic borders suffer under Great Leadership™. "Suffer"? Who's to say they don't like it?As with any satire, you can derive this sort of thing by taking the actual rhetoric and giving it a twist of the broiler knob. The frightening thing is that you don't need to twist the knob all that hard these days to come up with something like this.
Friday, September 12, 2003
[posted by jaed at 5:11 PM]Fun With IP Law
Apparently someone has a patent on plugins, or at least on automatic launching of plugins to play data external to the page. (Flash developers, that bell you hear may be tolling for you.) Why I haven't heard about this before now is one of those mysteries - I suppose I haven't been paying enough attention to tech news. The patent holder Eolas has already won at trial against Microsoft, but of course this potentially affects all browsers with plugin capability (not to mention all web pages that use external data). Sounds like a mess.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
[posted by jaed at 7:40 PM]September 11th
I was still asleep when it happened. The phone rang at about 7:30 Pacific time, and I ignored it and went back to sleep. By the time I got up, it was 9:45. The message was from a friend saying "Major terrorist action in New York! Check it out!"
I went through that moment of blurrily thinking she was kidding.
Then I turned on the television. Flip, flip, several channels of Portland's useless mayor talking about how "the city is secure" - no actual information to be had, but the same thing was on all the networks, so I knew something was going on. I don't have cable, so there weren't many choices. Flip, flip. PBS had Barney: no. Fox News, at the end of the dial, had a live shot of a city skyline, obviously New York, with lots of smoke, and someone talking about reports of a car bomb outside the State Department, something happening at the Pentagon. I'm not very familiar with New York, so it took me a minute to understand what I was seeing. I was thinking that with all that smoke, there must be a terrible fire somewhere in New York, this must be what was happening.
Then I thought wait a minute, isn't there supposed to be a building there where all that smoke is?
And then the announcer recapped, and I understood that what I was looking at was the World Trade Center, which wasn't there any more (nor any of the people who had been in it), because someone had flown a passenger jet into it.
No theme music, no clever logos, no titles - all that offensive garbage came later, after the news producers had had time to get their breath back - just a video feed along with about twenty words of simple recitation of the facts. And two thoughts in my head:
"Oh, my God."
"We're at war."
Sunday, September 07, 2003
[posted by jaed at 7:05 PM]Are democracy and Islam compatible?
Free Thoughts on Iran hosts a lengthy discussion ondemocracy and Islam. I won't excerpt it (primarily because I don't think a brief excerpt will do it justice), but various interesting thoughts from Muslims approaching the question from different angles, the distinction between "democracy" and "guaranteed rights", etc. Well worth reading the whole thing.
Saturday, September 06, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:15 PM]"When the phone rings, it's us."
Natalie Solent offers a creative way to deal with telemarketers:
Hi, my name is Shelley and I'm calling to ask if you'd be interested in a new service offered by British Orangecom."Indeed (TM Instapundit).
[Very enthusiastically] "Yes!"
"Wo-? Um. It's about 'Friends & Family 2003', a new call tariff that--"
"Yes. Oh yes."
"A NEW CALL TARIFF THAT OFFERS-"
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh, oh, oh yes!"
[Click.]
See, it is quite possible to dispose of these creatures while maintaining an entirely positive attitude.
Sunday, August 31, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:07 AM]Flies, or maggots?
Belmont Club proposes that David Warren's "flypaper" may not be the best analogy for the flood of Arab extremists heading for Iraq:
The logical modification to the 'flypaper' scenario is the 'maggot' model. It relies on the observation that terrorism requires the corpse of a decaying society in order to survive. [...] Hamas requires an ecosystem like Lebanon to raise funds, replenish recruits and build a dysfunctional empire that could exist nowhere else but in such a place. Islamic Jihad, Lashkar Jihad, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Palestinian Authority and Al-Qaeda must keep up the mayhem because they need a job. Frankly, they are unqualified for anything else. Terrorists are flooding into Iraq because it is the only place where professionals in their line of work can get a job. Killing Americans is an optional extra but no one is counting on it.Now as an analogy, this suggests various thoughts to me. One of them is that maggots don't feed on healthy flesh, only decaying flesh - if a society is not decaying, terrorists can find no foothold there.
Which of course invests the process of building and rebuilding civil society in Iraq with even more importance. I don't think Iraqi civil society is necessarily unhealthy or dying, but transitional times are delicate - people don't yet know what to expect, they haven't yet started to take control of their lives back (my impression is that this is most true in the so-called "Sunni triangle", which is where most of the terrorists seem to be). It calls into sharp relief the fact that attracting terrorists into Iraq is not the endpoint, not at all.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:57 PM]"Cruz Bustamante" sounds like a porn star name
All right, I am a child. (I can hardly deny it after that remark.)
But seriously... doesn't it?
[posted by jaed at 10:10 PM]
Over at Asymmetrical Information, a topic (inspired by an evisceration of Tom Friedman's writing style) explores the outer limits of bad metaphor. The entire comment thread should be bronzed.
You know what to do next.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:39 AM]Rorschach test
Vodkapundit points to this Washington Post column suggesting a strategic approach, rather than more-boots-on-the-ground, for Iraq. One model is the Vietnam-era "Phoenix" program:
If you aren't familiar with Phoenix, it was one of the few things we tried in Vietnam that actually worked. Soldiers -- mostly Marines, actually -- worked closely, and in small numbers, with village chiefs and militia. Their goal was to make the South Vietnamese safe from the Viet Cong, one hamlet at a time. They did so by training up the locals in a non-condescending manner, helping establish a non-corrupt local government, and turning each town into a mini fortress, then slowly expanding the security zone.I wonder about this, because the lion's share of the attacks is coming from a relatively small area of high Baathist support. They're not geographically dispersed, and most towns and cities don't seem to require "pacification" so much as general civil support.
Imagine a war won, not by advancing the front, but by scattered, spreading ink blots slowly merging together.
Still, if VP is right that it worked in Vietnam, it's worth looking at for lessons at the very least.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:29 PM]Wait, I thought "Chutzpah" was a Yiddish word...
I admit I'm really hoping that the Onion has hacked MEMRI, but if not, it seems a group of Arabs resident in Switzerland is suing all Jews because, they allege, during the Exodus they took not only themselves, but trillions of tons of gold, along with jewels, silver, and kitchen utensils (??).
Dr. Hilmi: [...] a group of Egyptians in Switzerland has opened the case of the so-called 'great exodus of the Jews from Pharaonic Egypt.' At that time, they stole from the Pharaonic Egyptians gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more, leaving Egypt in the middle of the night with all this wealth, which today is priceless."You see, since those nasty Jews stole everything that wasn't nailed down, it wasn't there thousands of years later, during the Arab conquest of Egypt, for the Arabs to...steal.
(What I'm wondering is why they haven't expanded the lawsuit in the obvious direction. The Jews, remember, were enslaved by the Egyptians, which is what prompted the whole unfortunate situation in the first place. So they were stealing, not only the forks and spoons, but themselves, weren't they? Surely a good husky Jewish slave is worth more - considering all the years of potential labor - than a few pots? Just those alive today number 12 or 13 million, and when you multiply that by the price of a slave - I'm sure they can get the correct figure from the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, or one of the other Muslim countries that practice slavery to this day - you're talking about a lot of money.)
Saturday, August 23, 2003
[posted by jaed at 10:08 AM]Useful Collection of Info Dept
The Weekly Standard provides an overview of information from public sources about the ties between the Baathists and al Quaeda. Nothing new, as far as I can tell, but it's helpful to have it all in one place.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:21 PM]Blink
You're the UN. You're performing operations in what's still a war zone, with a fair number of violent people of the death-to-the-infidel persuasion. What do you do about security?
Well, apparently, you turn down offers of security protection from the US army (can't be associated with those nasty Amriki, you know... most declasse...). And who do you get to provide security? Why, members of the Baathist secret services!
all of the guards at the compound were agents of the Iraqi secret services, to whom they reported on United Nations activities before the war. The United Nations continued to employ them after the war was over, the official said.Good God!
Caveat: the source for this is an unnamed "senior American official", and I've gotten twitchy about anonymously-sourced comments with no confirming source. And of course it's entirely possible that the guards had nothing to do wiith the attack as such; as far as I know that's just suspicion, and there's no direct evidence of it.
But still, even if just the contention that the guards stayed on is true - what the hell kind of stupidity, of obliviousness to reality, does it take to use Saddam Hussein's men as security? What were they thinking?
(Is it possible it stemmed from anti-Americanism - "The Americans overthrew Saddam Hussein, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, therefore Saddam Hussein's guards are our natural friends..."? Could such thoughts have contributed to such a policy? It's hard to believe, but the candid reactions of UN staff after the bombing - along the lines of "But we're not Americans, we're here to try to get the Americans out, why would anyone attack us?" - make me wonder.)
Friday, July 25, 2003
[posted by jaed at 8:00 AM]...there is not much more harm that the warden can inflict on me for speaking out...
In the NYT, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who was one of Fidel Castro's companions in the movement to overthrow Batista (and was jailed with him), compares and contrasts their treatment at the hands of Batista with Cuban dissidents' treatment at Castro's hands:
Prisoner Castro, a lawyer, had three months between his arrest and his October 1953 trial to prepare his own defense (later adapted into his famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech). Warden Castro allowed today's dissidents their first glimpses of their lawyers minutes before their trials, if at all.The traditional exhortation: read the whole thing.
Their quarters do not resemble Inmate Castro's bright and spacious hospital room of 1953: most are in cells full of rats and mosquitoes; in many, the tap for drinking water juts from the wall just above the hole in the floor the prisoners are to use as a toilet. When they have family visits, every three months, they come out in handcuffs, some in shackles.
Friday, July 18, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:57 PM]Behold the power of <cheesy echo effect> the blog!!!
Ron Rosenbaum, in the middle of a disquisition on Sullivan, Hitchens, and the Orwell influence, commits to print this insight on why blogging can be so influential:
What gives him [Sullivan] an edge in impact and reach over Mr. Hitchens (and just about everyone else) is the way he�s turned his political Web site (Web zine, Web log, online diary�whatever you want to call andrewsullivan.com) into a powerful weapon of nonstop, 24/7, omnipresent total-surveillance panopticon punditry. Using his political Web zine (a form pioneered by Mickey Kaus in his witty Kausfiles.com), he�s done more than just frame the debate; he�s dominated it, smothered it with an overwhelming energy and forcefulness that allows him to riddle his opponents with ceaseless real-time hectoring and invective and polemic.Nicely put. When discussing blogs, most commentators focus on their populist appeal - the fact that anyone with opinions can be heard (even if they aren't, perish the thought, "professional journalists"), and anyone who expresses those opinions well will be listened to - and on the possibilities for fact-checking and thorough coverage that are inherent in rich linkage between blogs.
But this comment brings out another facet: the sheer unrelenting depth possible when using a publication medium that you can update as often as you think of something to say, with no publication cycle or limited newshole to worry about.
(Yes, I am aware of the irony of pointing to a comment like this when I've been so remiss lately in updating this blog....)
Thursday, July 17, 2003
[posted by jaed at 11:51 PM]Baghdad Museum Roundup
This article from the WSJ (written for ARTnews, it says here) is the most thorough discussion I've seen of the events surrounding the looting at the National Museum of Antiquities.
(I think the author is a little too easy on Donny George - there's no mention of the allegations against him by museum staff, nor of the fact that for weeks he insisted that the museum's entire collection was gone when he must have known that that wasn't true - but nonetheless, the coverage is complete and careful, relying on interviews with museum staff, American forces, and residents of the area who witnessed the looting.)
Sunday, June 01, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:12 PM]Looting in Iraq:
Mark Steyn visits Iraq to see firsthand the chaos and anarchy, and he does in fact find that Iraq is plague-ridden - though not the way you might think:
I managed to determine that the Oxfam crowd was holding a meeting with the Red Cross to discuss the deteriorating situation. But just what exactly was "deteriorating"? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town. Was it the water? I made a point of drinking the stuff everywhere I went in a spirited effort to pick up the dysentery and cholera supposedly running rampant. But I remain a disease-free zone. So what precisely is happening in Rutba that requires an Oxfam/ICRC summit?One of these days I'm going to need to talk about the parasitic nature of the oh-so-well-meaning NGO. There's a rant inside, and it wants out.
[...]
It will be very destructive for Iraq if the tentativeness of the American administration in Baghdad allows the ambulance-chasers of the NGOs to sink their fangs into the country.
Saturday, May 24, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:28 AM]No reason except I liked it:
Daniel Henninger, in today's WSJ:
In the world of media, at least, it's a rare fact that is allowed to stand on its own short legs anymore; instead, the little factling has to be poked, pinched and shaken until it gives up its "meaning." Much cable news consists almost wholly of earnest anchormenschen asking a never-ending stream of experts what something that we just saw with our own eyes really means, or better yet, what it's going to mean. "Whaddaya think's gonna happen here, Jim?" People who watch fortunetellers every night are likely to believe, or not believe, anything.That is just a beautiful piece of writing.
Monday, April 28, 2003
[posted by jaed at 8:16 AM]The most terrible things:
It's easy to talk about torture or, more glibly, "human rights violations", in the abstract, to debate it, to put it into a calculus of pragmatic political action, risk, "blowback", tradeoffs in regional stability. It's much harder to be cold and practical about it when you hear the testimony of a victim.
In 1985, Iraqi lawyer Lahib Nouman offered to defend a man Udai Hussein had falsely accused of a crime. For crossing him in this fashion, over the next eighteen years, he did this to her:
In prison, she endured rape, beatings and unspeakable torture. In the hospital, she was subjected to countless sessions of shock therapy and powerful sedatives. Along the way, her mind became unhinged, her memories scrambled and her face frozen in a mask of permanent terror. "They have turned me into a witch," she says, ruefully pulling at her stringy hair, which she has dyed the color of tea. "They have made me horrible."Lahib Nouman is brave, indomitable. A hero, in fact. Her name ought to be celebrated for that, for her example of defiance to a tyrant. But the price she has paid for her courage.... It makes me sick to think of it.
[...]
"I said what every Iraqi was thinking," she says. "I just had nothing to lose. What could they do to me that they were not already doing?"
In Baghdad's working-class districts, Nouman gained a certain amount of fame as the crazy woman lawyer who dared to stand up to Uday. Even some of the staff at the mental hospital came to admire her tenacity. "She never stopped speaking against Uday, not even when she was getting shock treatment," says Jabar Rubbaiyeh Lefteh, an ambulance driver at the mental hospital. "She was braver than any man I know."
I'm a pragmatist in these matters. I've written before that I supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein for reasons of American security, not because of Iraqis; I was moved by their stories but I've never considered cruel tyranny, in itself, enough reason for war from another country. My reasons for believing that are still good. But a story like this shakes them. I read this and I ask myself where we were all this time, while this was going on. Where I was.
Go read the whole thing. Bear witness to the martyrdom of a hero of our time.
It's the very least we can do, isn't it?
(via Tim Blair)
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:23 PM]Calling a Code:
Sina Motallebi of Iran, who blogs (in Persian) at Webgard, has been arrested by Iranian authorities for his blogging and other writing. His blog is also offline at the moment.
Please go sign this petition in his support.
(via BuzzMachine, which has more)
Monday, April 21, 2003
[posted by jaed at 9:17 PM]More stories:
Newsweek has an article telling a few Iraqis' stories:
Ulga and the reporter silently walked through the darkened cells at Haakimiya, which was surprisingly clean, except for the graffiti on the walls. GOD I ASK YOUR MERCY, scratched one prisoner who�d marked 42 days on the walls. SAVE ME, MARY, implored another, presumably a Christian. IN MEMORY OF LUAY AND ABBAS WHO WERE TORTURED, read another.About halfway through this story, I realized my hand was hurting, because it was gripping the edge of my desk so hard I'd scored lines in the palm.
Saturday, April 19, 2003
[posted by jaed at 8:28 PM]The world sees the UN as system damage and routes around it:
If the UN is determined to keep Iraq under punitive economic sanctions, we're obviously going to have to do something about that.
Reader Scott Draeker proposes that we might simply buy Iraqi oil ourselves, outside the control of the oil-for-food apparatus. It's a thought. If I'm reading the stats right, we can buy all they want to sell us without increasing our oil imports. But there are some problems with the idea.
First of all, of course, the sanctions don't just forbid Iraq to sell oil except through the UN. They forbid it to buy anything except through the UN too. Countries that want to stay on the UN's good side might refuse to sell anything to any Iraqi individual or business.
If a country is going to be limited to just one trading partner, having the US as that trading partner is probably the best choice... but it's not healthy for any economy to be so sharply limited. And it's poisonous for Iraq as a nation to start out being in such a position with other countries.
Second, what happens to the rest of the world market for oil if we buy exclusively from Iraq? Not that I'd mourn if Saudi oil sales went down, for example - there are those who suggest that one result of this war is that Iraq's newly restored oil sales can be used to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, possibly curtailing its support for terrorism without requiring military action. But being required to buy all Iraq's oil production robs us of some flexibility here.
Also, the "No blood for oil" conspirators will have a positive field day with such an arrangement, but then they will anyway, so that's kind of a wash.
[posted by jaed at 8:20 PM]
A while ago, I suggested the fear that the UN, as part of its anti-US political game-playing, might actually try to continue the sanctions and embargo against Iraq. I thought at the time that I was terribly cynical for even entertaining the possibility that the UN might want to punish Iraqis for the supposed sin of America in getting their dictator off their back - but there were signs and remarks that made me worry it was so.
I don't especially like having been right about this. It's ugly, and it's shockingly cruel, and it's being done for the most venal of reasons:
- The Russians are screaming that they expect Lukoil contracts with Saddam to be honored by Iraq, and they'll go to court to enforce them.
- The French, naturally enough, want the extremely favorable TotalFinaElf deal continued. Six months ago, the French were eager to end sanctions so that they could take advantage of the oil contracts to their fullest. But if that's not going to happen - and I doubt it will - then France can at least take its slice of cash off the top of the oil-for-food program and profit that way.
- Saddam's debtor nations, who sold weapons to him on credit with which he could keep his people down, now demand that the Iraqi people be left holding the bag for such debts.
- The UN administrative apparatus, which has skimmed $1.2 billion dollars from the oil-for-food program thus far, and employed over 4000 people as of February in the program.
- Everyone wants America slapped down, required to "remorsefully return to the [Security] Council", to quote Germany's UN ambassador.
One wonders when this is supposed to end. In a few years, when Iraq achieves full independence and the Americans leave, will the UNSC still have the desire to punish Iraq? Will it demand acceptance of Saddam's debts as binding, the TFE and Lukoil contracts, and so on as the price for recognizing Iraq as a fellow member nation? Or will sanctions-because-of-WMD turn into sanctions-because-of-debts?
[posted by jaed at 7:52 PM]
One problem with the mainstream media is that a story disappears if there's no new information coming out. It's very rare for the media to keep a scandal going if there are no new tidbits to hang new stories on.
This is, or was, Adnan Abdul Karim Enad:
On January 25th, he approached UN weapons inspectors, carrying a notebook. He was subsequently dragged away by Iraqi soldiers, assisted by UN security, still clutching the notebook for dear life. His last words as he was dragged away are reported to have been "Save me! Save me!"
The UNMOVIC inspection team was empowered, by the same resolution that sent them to Iraq, to interview anyone who might have information about weapons programs, any time, anywhere, without interference, and to offer transportation out of the country to such people and their families. The inspectors did not choose to interview the man, to look at his notebook, to ascertain who he was, or to exchange a word with him. They simply ordered him removed, and sat frozen until that was done.
The man disappeared into the hands of Saddam's soldiers, and so did the notebook he was carrying. If they killed him, we'll probably never find answers. If a reporter finds the man, or if there are records concerning what happened to him, or if a regime member involved with his arrest and subsequent disposition comes forward, we may hear more about him. Otherwise, there will, most likely, be nothing but silence.
We ought not to forget, however.
(Hans Blix remarked, when asked about the incident, that the man could have found "more elegant ways" to approach the inspectors. You might want to keep that ugly little joke in mind - along with this man's face, and the face of the inspector in blue beside him trying desperately to pretend he doesn't exist - when you hear Blix saying that he must head new inspections because only the United Nations carries the necessary moral authority.)
Friday, April 18, 2003
[posted by jaed at 7:45 PM]A star is born:
Check out Puce Blog. Puce, first spotted at in the comments sections at BuzzMachine, is either a budding comic genius or a completely crazed America-hater...or maybe both...and determining which one may be the next fad to hit the blogosphere (TM Bill Quick). A recent offering:
Wear aminal costume of carton for make bone to panis damp ladypart, type trueword in disent and museum USA blame. WHAT AS YOU LISTEN?!? CLICK CLICKI mean, this is great stuff.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:02 PM]A meme is born:
The next conspiracy theory will be that the US looted the museum. It's already starting.
Consider this quote from the Times:
The British view is that the sight of local youths dismantling the offices and barracks of a regime they used to fear shows they have confidence that Saddam Hussain's henchmen will not be returning to these towns in southern Iraq.I can see already how this is going to be spun:
One senior British officer said: "We believe this sends a powerful message that the old guard is truly finished."
- British officer, nowhere near Baghdad, notes that when people see government offices being looted, they feel like Saddam really is gone. (Simple common sense, it seems to me.)
- This will turn into "British encouraged looting in Basra." This despite the fact that the quote says no such thing - it's an observation about the response of people to looting already going on.
- Almost instantaneously, this will become "Americans encouraged looting in Baghdad." This despite the fact that Baghdad and Basra are hundreds of miles apart and the quoted officer isn't American. Only stage 3 and we're already completely out of sight of the starting point, but we're just getting started.
- This change will be followed by "It was Bush's cynical and evil policy to encourage looting."
- At some point, this will shift further, to "The US decided beforehand that the museum in Baghdad should be looted." This will be mentioned casually, as undisputed fact, on innumerable blog comment sections.
- Finally, people will start talking about "The US looting of cultural treasures in the Baghdad Museum." At first, this will only be a loose way of referring to the previous - already tinfoil-tinged - accusation, but inevitably, some people will inadvertantly or deliberately use it literally.
- And finally will come the accusation that the US's deliberately looting the museum is a war crime. (This will be only one of several dubious entries in an itemized list, but it will again be stated as fact.)
You read it here first.
And why am I so confident, you ask? John Quiggin, a blogger not known for his tinfoil hat collection, has already gone to Stage 4, and I'm already seeing his accusation linked widely in comment sections:
When we come to allocate the responsibility for the destruction of archeological treasures and so on, it will be important to recall that this was the product of deliberate policy, not mere neglect.This is only the beginning.
Update: Reader Rich Schultz writes to point out this Pacifica radio story (scroll down to "Did US Antiquities Dealers..."):
Amy Goodman from "Democracy Now" has already reached stage five [...] insinuating that a group of American antiquarians and graverobbers have been influencing the Bush administration to make it easier for them to buy stolen goods.Erik of Bite the Wax Tadpole spots a summary of Stage 7 thinking at The Aardvark Speaks:
The suspicion that US forces initiated the looting has in the meantime popped up in several places. The Independent has an article on artefacts stolen 'on order'. The Glasgow Herald reports on how the pressure group of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers lobbied the Bush administration, and Bryan Pfaffenberger (of the University of Virginia) has more about this rather influential group. Even CNN reports that the museum lootings were probably carried out by by art and cultural professionals of non-Iraqi origin.(See the article for several links.)
John Quiggin also writes to suggest:
If you'll read the full text of the report I linked, you'll find that it supports all of the steps from 1 to 4.However, I disagree. A careful reading of the article does not show that the British encouraged looting, only that unnamed "UN officials" (who presumably are not on site, and have no personal knowledge of it) have made the accusation. This is why I assigned the UN to Stage 2; it's not evidence that the British encouraged looting, unless you take the word of an unnamed UN official on background, as filtered through a reporter, as gospel. As for Stages 3 and 4, the article does not support them: it doesn't mention Baghdad (as John notes, this was published before US troops were in Baghdad) nor make any claims about policy.
Sunday, April 13, 2003
[posted by jaed at 12:44 PM]Shame:
In the WSJ, Michael Gonzales takes a look at how Europe reached a fever pitch of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism - and he doesn't blame the Arab population, the media elite, or homesick-for-Che socialists. No, he blames the political leadership:
"How did we get here?" asked a former French minister in a newspaper column recently. "Here" is a situation in which French Jews are being beaten up in the streets of Paris and in which President Jacques Chirac has to write to Queen Elizabeth to apologize for the desecration of British tombs in France, and in which one-third of the French have been pulling for Saddam Hussein to win.The political leaders of France, Germany, and Belgium have stirred up hate. And now they find they have to deal with the results.
An even better question is who brought us here. The former environment minister, Corinne Lepage, lays the blame on the government and an obeisant media for "having wanted to stigmatize American policy in excessive fashion." But it's time to name names.
Mr. Chirac brought us here, as did his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. In Belgium the foreign, defense and prime ministers--Louis Michel, Andr� Flahaut and Guy Verhofstadt--have brought their country to shame too.
Saturday, April 12, 2003
[posted by jaed at 2:08 PM]Not in your name:
There's a spate of anti-war protests scheduled today. And so at this point, I have a number of things to say to some of my fellow Americans, to those who have so often insisted that this war would not be fought in their names - No, no, not in my name!
His hair is cropped short. Half his teeth have been knocked out, his face is battered and the eyes sunken and haunted-looking. His chest is covered with 50 separate cuts from a knife, his back has even more marks, which he says are cigarette burns. Two of his fingers were broken and deliberately bent into a permanent, contorted position and there's a hole in the middle of his palm where his torturers stabbed him and twisted the blade.
Today, though, Adnan was a happy man, so happy that he could barely restrain his excitement. He was finally freed from a prison in downtown Basra, after British troops entered the city and drove the remaining defenders away.
This man was not freed in your name.
English-speaking Iraqis came up to reporters to express their own delight. Among them was Saad Ahmed, a 54-year-old retired English teacher. "We have been waiting for you for a long time," he said. "We are now happier than you.
"You are victorious as far as the war is concerned, but we are victorious in life. We have been living, not as human beings, for more than 30 years."
His son Emad, a 23-year-old student, added: "It's a great day for us and for all Iraqi people. Every family in Iraq have one, two, three deaths because of Saddam, either from wars or in his prisons. I am very happy." One of those joining in the celebrations, Qusay Rawah, said the downfall of Saddam's regime in Basra was a day "we had prayed for".
Their prayers were not answered in your name.
More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot weapons from an army compound, a US officer said.
These children were not rescued in your name.
"I am very happy today, like I have been reborn," Karim Kadem, a 27-year-old man who returned on Thursday to see the place where he was imprisoned for two years. "I thought I would die here."
Kadem said he was accused of opposing Saddam and the party. Five other friends arrested with him were either killed or blinded. He has permanent injuries to his arms; he can no longer lift them fully. Kadem said he returned to the prison to exorcise his fears.
"I wanted to see the place. I wanted to relieve my heart of the bad memories," he said.
His heart has not been relieved of fear in your name.
When news got out that Al-Emeri was back, crowds of men flooded into the streets and pressed around him, cheering and clapping and pushing up against Marines in defensive positions. One man rushed up to an American with a wreath of plastic flowers to hug him, rifle and all, despite the Marine's best efforts to maintain his distance.
His family were among those who rushed out to greet him - including his 15-year-old son, Ali, whom he hadn't seen since he left Iraq. When they first saw each other, they embraced tightly and wept.
Ali Al-Emeri said he was afraid to ever let his father go away again, but Al-Emeri assured him: "Stay home. You are safe. I am here, the U.S. forces are here."
This father did not at last come home to his son in your name.
Enjoy your protest today. Try to forget that you used your own freedom to try to keep freedom from others.
And may posterity forget you were our countrymen.
