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?
