MOVABLE TYPE : TEMPLATE

Slow Posting

I got up early today and had an eye exam (still have two functional ones). They were dilated in the process, so it will be a while before I spend much time on the computer. Meanwhile, here's an interesting discussion on arming ships against pirates in modern times. We seem to have managed to deal with this a lot better in the past. I think that we should bring back letters of marque, for not just pirates, but lawless terrorists in general.

[Early afternoon update]

A related question: why don't we hang pirates any more?

...the number of attacks keeps rising.

Why? The view of senior U.S. military officials seems to be, in effect, that there is no controlling legal authority. Title 18, Chapter 81 of the United States Code establishes a sentence of life in prison for foreigners captured in the act of piracy. But, crucially, the law is only enforceable against pirates who attack U.S.-flagged vessels, of which today there are few.

What about international law? Article 110 of the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Convention -- ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. -- enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates. A recent U.N. Security Council resolution allows foreign navies to pursue pirates into Somali waters -- provided Somalia's tottering government agrees -- but the resolution expires next week. As for the idea of laying waste, Stephen Decatur-like, to the pirate's prospering capital port city of Eyl, this too would require U.N. authorization. Yesterday, a shippers' organization asked NATO to blockade the Somali coast. NATO promptly declined.

As I noted, there seems to be a problem with the modern approach.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:10 AM

November 22, 2008
Ominous

As Clark notes, this isn't directly related to space transportation regulation, but you can see it coming:

The proposed regulation, titled the Large Aircraft Security Program, would require owners of those aircraft to obtain permission from TSA to operate their own personal aircraft every time they carry passengers. Additionally, all flight crews would be required to undergo fingerprinting and a background check, all passengers would have to be vetted against the government's terrorist watch lists, and numerous security requirements would be imposed on airports serving these "large" aircraft. EAA adamantly opposes this regulation and urges all members to respond to TSA...

"...We thank the TSA for agreeing with the many industry group and EAA members' requests for an extension, providing an additional two months to study and react to the proposal," said Doug Macnair, EAA vice president of government relations. "This proposal would be an unprecedented restriction on the freedom of movement for private U.S. citizens. It would also, for the first time, require governmental review and authority before a person could operate his/her own personal transportation conveyance.

First they came after the private aircraft pilots, and I said nothing, because I wasn't a private aircraft pilot.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:13 AM

November 14, 2008
"The War Is Over, And We Won"

That's the word from Michael Yon, reporting from Baghdad.

No thanks to the Democrats, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who tried to keep it from happening. I see that they still can't bring themselves to utter the word "win" with respect to the war. They continue to talk about "ending" it. Well, it looks like George Bush did that for them, and he won it as well. But winning wars is bad, you see, because it just encourages the warmongers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AM

Be Very Afraid

Vice-President-Elect Hairplugs wants to be a hands-on VP:

Biden has said he'd like to use his 36 years of experience in the Senate, including leadership of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees, to help push Obama's agenda in Congress. It's longtime insider's experience that Obama lacks and a role that has not been Cheney's focus.

I'm having trouble thinking of a single foreign policy issue in his career on which Joe Biden has been right.

It's also kind of frightening to think of him as responsible for space policy, as veeps have traditionally been. Particularly milspace.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:32 AM

November 12, 2008
Britannia Rules The Waves

...at least off the Horn of Africa:

Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty's warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles.

In the ensuing gunfight, two Somali pirates in a Yemeni-registered fishing dhow were killed, and a third pirate, believed to be a Yemeni, suffered injuries and subsequently died. It was the first time the Royal Navy had been engaged in a fatal shoot-out on the high seas in living memory.

By the time the Royal Marines boarded the pirates' vessel, the enemy had lost the will to fight and surrendered quietly. The Royal Navy described the boarding as "compliant".

I'll bet it was. Don't bring an "assault rifle" to a machine-gun-and-SA80 fight with Her Majesty's Navy.

As the article notes, I suspect that they decided after the incident with Iran that they weren't going to lose another sea battle to a second-rate power, let alone to a bunch of disorganized buccaneers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:28 PM

November 11, 2008
When The Military Gets It Right

All veterans are to be honored, but these guys seem particularly noteworthy, particularly considering that they're still serving.

Hope the word gets out what happened to the perps. I don't think they got their virgins. Perhaps it will discourage further kidnappings in Afghanistan, at least of Americans.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AM

An Extinct Species?

Would that it had been so. In honor of Veterans' Day, here's an interesting story of a recording captured to preserve the memory of the war that was to end all wars. Unfortunately, that part didn't work out.

[Update mid morning]

On the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice, three British veterans are still alive. The oldest is 112, the oldest man in the country. Did he ever imagine, in the midst of the war, that he would survive another nine tenths of a century beyond its end?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:42 AM

November 04, 2008
That Will Teach Her

A thirteen-year-old girl in Somalia was stoned to death for being raped.

Just a reminder of the kind of people with whom we are at war, even if the Democrats don't want to believe that we're at war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:58 AM

October 31, 2008
Brain Parasites

...and mind control. A suitable scientific topic for All Hallows Eve. I wonder if this could explain the Obama cult?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:47 AM

September 28, 2008
Probably Just Scurvy

So, what is the cargo of this Iranian ship headed for Somalia?

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill "within days" of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died...

...This was also confirmed by Hassan Allore Osman, minister of minerals and oil in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia.

He headed a delegation sent to Eyl when news of the toxic cargo and illnesses surfaced.

He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died.

"That ship is unusual," he was quoted as saying. "It is not carrying a normal shipment."

The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship's cargo containers when some of them fell sick -- but the containers were locked.

Osman's delegation spoke to the ship's captain and its engineer by cellphone, demanding to know more about the cargo.

Initially it was claimed the cargo contained "crude oil"; later it was said to be "minerals".

And Mwangura has added: "Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals."

The symptoms described could be possibly caused by chemical weapons, but the pirates claimed that they didn't open the locked holds (though the holds could have leaked as well). But the symptoms also match radiation poisoning.

But why would the Iranians be shipping WMD of any kind to Somalia? For transhipment elsewhere overland? And if it is radioactive, is it the material for a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb?

It will be ironic if it turns out that pirates caught what the CIA didn't (assuming, of course, that they haven't been tracking it).

[Late afternoon update]

Marlon McAvoy emails:

'm a Radiation Protection tech at ORNL. Was formerly a member of the DOE's RAP (Radiological Assistance Program) team, originally tasked and trained mostly for transport incidences, but which was reprioritized after 9-11. Just wanted to offer an observation, which might be old news to you two science geeks.
Skin burns were also reported in this incident. These are normally more associated with beta than the far more penetrating gamma radiation, but there's no way these guys could have gotten beta burns without close exposure to actual, unshielded radioactive material. Gamma can certainly burn the skin, but in which case the victim has sustained an enormous dose and will absolutely die from it, unless the exposure was tightly collimated over a small area.

So, my guess, this seems much more likely to be of chemical rather than radiological origin. But if multiple guys did receive 500+ rem (Roentgen equivalent man) of gamma radiation, our spooks will have no difficulty determining it. We have civilian instrument packages that can map minute fluctuations in background radiation levels; a poorly shielded gamma WMD would look like a magnesium flare to whatever is used by the intelligence community.

Whether they can or should let us civvies know is, of course, another question.

It is indeed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:18 AM

August 26, 2008
Who Started The War?

The one in Georgia. Michael Totten reports an interesting press briefing.

And apparently, some people aren't very happy about his reporting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:21 AM

A Story About Joe Biden

...that I hadn't heard:

At the Tuesday-morning meeting with committee staffers, Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: "I'm groping here." Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we're not bent on its destruction. "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

The staffers sit in silence. Finally somebody ventures a response: "I think they'd send it back." Then another aide speaks up delicately: "The thing I would worry about is that it would almost look like a publicity stunt." Still another reminds Biden that an Iranian delegation is in Moscow that very day to discuss a $300 million arms deal with Vladimir Putin that the United States has strongly condemned. But Joe Biden is barely listening anymore. He's already moved on to something else.

Didn't anyone point out to him that Iran is not part of the "Arab world"?

And we want to put this guy a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:53 AM

August 21, 2008
The Russians Play Chess

...and the Americans play monopoly. A disturbing and depressing essay from Spengler.

Is there an enlightened solution for Russia's problems?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:27 AM

"...Only Enemies Or Vassals"

Michael Totten reports from Tbilisi.

On Monday, I visited one of the schools transformed into refugee housing in the center of Tbilisi and spoke to four women--Lia, Nana, Diana, and Maya--who had fled with their children from a cluster of small villages just outside the city of Gori. "We left the cattle," Lia said. "We left the house. We left everything and came on foot because to stay there was impossible." Diana's account: "They are burning the houses. From most of the houses they are taking everything. They are stealing everything, even such things as toothbrushes and toilets. They are taking the toilets. Imagine. They are taking broken refrigerators." And Nana: "We are so heartbroken. I don't know what to say or even think. Our whole lives we were working to save something, and one day we lost everything. Now I have to start everything from the very beginning."

Maybe they exist, but I haven't seen any eyewitness accounts of the supposed atrocities by the Georgians that Russia claims started this.

And be sure to hit his tip jar. It's how he affords to do this reporting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:36 AM

August 19, 2008
Tehran Failure

Jim Oberg has the story on Iran's failed attempt to launch a satellite.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:38 PM

August 18, 2008
Casualty Of War?

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media this morning on the potential effect of Russia's renewed belligerence on the US space program.

I should note that I may have been a little too sanguine about the situation for the current ISS crew. While the RSA astronauts in Expedition 17 weren't born in Russia, it's possible that they are Russians, and sympathetic to Russia, given the way that Russia had colonized the Ukraine and Turkmen Republic and moved populations of Russians in there. It's all really speculation. Only the crew really know what the atmosphere is up there.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 AM

August 14, 2008
A New Home For The Sixth Fleet?

In Sevastopol? And I don't mean the similar-sounding one in California.

We do need to recognize that we're in a new Cold War with Russia, though many of the former "Republics" in the Soviet Union will now be (in fact have been) on our side, which will make it more manageable, but also more dangerous, with more trip wires.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:25 PM

July 29, 2008
The Arabization Of Macedonia

A report from Michael Totten.

It's a shame that we can't wave a wand and make oil worthless. Perhaps the only other solution is to take it away from them. There's something wrong with a system that gives people so much wealth who have done absolutely nothing to earn it or create it, and use it to subvert the rest of the world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:08 AM

July 25, 2008
Israeli Thoughts On The Messiah Visit

From Carolyn Glick:

I generally try to stay as far away as I possibly can from people who say they can make oceans recede. Our paths didn't cross. In fact, I managed to be out of the country on Wednesday.

...Obama acts like a European leader in his treatment of Israel. On the one hand, he professes this profound respect for Israel and the Jews, and goes on and on about how our security is important to him. On the other hand, he espouses policies that undermine Israeli security and threaten its survival, and demands that the Jewish state become the only state that turns its other cheek towards our enemies as they try to kill us. This is the same sort of message that we hear from all Europeans leaders. And it is tiresome and insulting.

Beyond that, Obama is in a unique situation because of the adulation he enjoys from the U.S. and Western media. The media is willing to ignore all of the substantive contradictions inherent in his policy pronouncements and to base their support for him on a quasi-religious faith. I don't remember this ever happening before in an American election -- at least not to the same extent. It is an interesting sociological phenomenon that is worthy of academic research. On a political level, it makes debate very difficult since Obama is treated more as a symbol than a politician. And it is hard to debate a symbol.

How long before this bubble pops? Robert Bidinotto thinks it may have already started.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:53 PM

July 22, 2008
An Alternate History

...for Senator Obama.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 AM

July 21, 2008
I Feel Much Safer Now

If true, this has to be a Secret Service nightmare:

According to security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Obama's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Obama, particularly in securing the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas...

Hey, maybe Obama could also get Khaddafi's female ninja bodyguards to help out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:31 AM

July 20, 2008
"'The Godfather' Of Superhero Movies"

That's the briefest review of the new Batman flick that I've seen.

I'll probably wait untll the DVD. I'm not that big a fan of dark movies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:13 PM

July 11, 2008
Al Qality

Iowahawk has gotten a hold of the latest hirabi recruitment brochure:

As you have possibly heard by now, Team Satan and their subsidiary Iraqi Security Forces have made several key market acquisitions in the last few months. In order to meet Q3 Return-on-Mayhem targets and maximize stakeholder value, we need to refocus our client-facing resource model. As we are currently seeking a 17th round of venture funding, budgets are extremely tight, and this will require reducing our internal work team payroll load through adaptive right-sizing on a go-forward basis. Accounting estimates indicate that much of this will be achieved via natural attrition and Apache Hellfire missiles. Still, in order to achieve costing targets, we will need to engage in involuntary outboarding.

The Communications department will be most directly effected by this initiative, as we continue transitioning of our day-to-day public relations efforts to low-cost offshore service providers like Huffington Post, DailyKos, and Democratic Underground.

Hey, you get what you pay for.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:01 PM

June 27, 2008
Has North Korea Been Defanged?

Wretchard says perhaps:

Time will tell whether the Six Party talks will succeed in denuclearizing the Korean peninsula or whether it will founder, as did the Agreed Framework before it, on some new difficulty. But two factors make the new agreement more robust than the 1994 agreement. First, the multilateral format means that any North Korean double-cross would alienate not only the United States, but South Korea, Japan, Russia and most importantly, Pyongyang's patron China. North Korea has a lot more to lose by welshing on the Six Party Talks than it did on the Agreed Framework.

Secondly, because their fissile production line will effectively be dismantled -- the Yongbon cooling will be demolished -- North Korea's remaining blackmail leverage consists of a mere handful of low-yield nuclear material. And with the United States positioned to watch Pakistan and Iran, the future of any clandestine program is in serious doubt.

Expect complaints from the Bush deranged in the peanut gallery, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:11 AM

June 23, 2008
An Ally In The War?

This would be an interesting development:

As Father Dall'Oglio warns darkly, Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem - from the East.

As Spengler notes, the Muslims should be worried. That truly would be the first real challenge to them, if not since the founding of the religion, at least since the Crusades.

Whose side do you think that the left will take? How many guesses do you want?

[Evening update]

In comments, Carl Pham asks:

What's to be appalled about in the Crusades, eh? Is this just regurgitating some politically-correct pap y'all were fed in public school?

I'm only appalled by the Crusades in the same sense that I'm appalled by the Middle Ages in general (I don't actually recall learning about them in public school, which in itself, regardless of the learning content, is an interesting commentary about public school in the sixties and early seventies. It's no doubt worse now, since it's better to know nothing of the Crusades than to be mistaught them).

And in being appalled, I'm judging it by modern sensibilities. As I said, Islam was more (much more) appalling in its behavior.

Then. And more importantly (and even more), now.

But I'm sure I'll get more Anonymous Morons in comments, whom I'll take great pleasure in appropriately naming, unwittingly making my point about which side the leftists will take.

Also:

If you want to look for unpleasant proselytizing by Christian nations, take a look at South and Central American under the Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s. The Crusades do not quality. Islam is only pissed about them because they coincided with the high-water mark of Islam's own effort to conquer the world.

Agreed. Latin American's dismal state is a consequence of having been colonized by Spain (and it was a Christian Spain). It continues to be mired in a feudal culture, which has only transmogrified into a socialist/fascist one, as exemplified by "liberation theology." Which is (unfortunately) not that far off from the "black liberation theology" of Senator Obama's former church.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:21 PM

Hate Crime

I'm sure that Ian McEwan will be arrested presently:

'As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist.

'And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well.

It will be interesting to see if the authorities come after him for this bit of politically incorrect truth telling. He's lucky he doesn't live in the police state of Canada.

Speaking of which, Professor Reynolds has a pithy comment:

When the stormtroopers wear clown shoes instead of jackboots, it's easy to forget that they're still stormtroopers.

And so far, the circus up there continues.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:49 AM

June 21, 2008
Another Good Reason To Do It

If Israel attacks Iran, El Baradei will resign. Could we count on him to follow through, though?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:15 AM

June 20, 2008
Waking Up?

Have Hezbollah sleeper cells in Canada been activated?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:50 AM

June 19, 2008
McCain's Infant Strike Force

Malicious and mendacious propaganda from Moveon.org? Say it ain't so!

This reminds me of that idiotic interview that O'Reilly did with Michael Moore a few years ago, when Moore kept asking O'Reilly if he would send his child to Iraq. If O'Reilly had been on his toes, he would have pointed out that a) no "children" are sent to Iraq and b) that the adults who do so have signed up for the service voluntarily, and don't need their parents permission, and are not "sent" by their parents, unless their parents happen to be their commanding officers. But this mindless trope of the left will never die.

[Afternoon update]

This is a pretty funny comment, over at Maguire's place:

Don't be misled by the name, lady: the 3rd Infantry Division is not made up of infants.

Hey, you can't expect them to know about this stuff.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:17 AM

June 18, 2008
A Year Later

What happened to the benchmarks?

In the wake of the September testimony, anti-war lawmakers and media outlets refused to let up on the benchmark mantra. For them, victory or defeat in Iraq hung on those 18 points. Party big shots like Harry Reid and Joe Biden publicly cited the failure to meet the benchmarks as evidence that Iraq was hopeless. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn issued a statement saying: "Despite the clear evidence that the Iraqi government has failed to make the necessary political progress and deliver on 15 of 18 benchmarks outlined by the Bush administration, the president wants to establish a permanent presence or 'enduring relationship' in Iraq, continuing to sacrifice an unacceptable level of American blood and treasure."

Well, if the benchmarks were all-important to Democrats in the fall of 2007, they have become meaningless to them in 2008. When is the last time you've heard a benchmark reckoning from Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? The reason for the deafening silence on this matter is simple. The military and political progress in Iraq has proved so monumental that the majority of the benchmarks have now been met.

I agree with the author that Congress should come up with some benchmarks for itself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:14 AM

June 17, 2008
Iraq Is Not Gaza

So writeth Michael Totten. I agree.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:38 PM

Learned Nothing, Forgotten Nothing

Andy McCarthy says that Barack Obama is the September 10th candidate:

The fact is that we used the criminal justice system as our principal enforcement approach, the approach Obama intends to reinstate, for eight years -- from the bombing of the World Trade Center until the shocking destruction of that complex on 9/11. During that timeframe, while the enemy was growing stronger and attacking more audaciously, we managed to prosecute successfully less than three dozen terrorists (29 to be precise). And with a handful of exceptions, they were the lowest ranking of players.

When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system works against terrorists, he means it satisfies his top concern: due process. And on that score, he's quite right: We've shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials, appeals, and habeas corpus.

As a national-security strategy, however, and as a means of carrying our government's first responsibility to protect the American people, heavy reliance on criminal justice is an abysmal failure.

Obama is going to be pounded on his appalling historical ignorance throughout the campaign. "Auschwitz" was just the beginning.

[Update at noon]

Apparently the McCain campaign thinks that this is a major vulnerability for Obama:

As the war of words between the two presidential campaigns is escalating, McCain advisers and surrogates unleashed some of their harshest language yet in describing Obama.

On a conference call with reporters, former CIA chief James Woolsey and others said Obama's policy regarding the handling of terrorism suspects would create an opening for more attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser, said Obama represents "the perfect manifestation of a Sept. 10 mindset."

"If a law enforcement approach were accurate, then you wouldn't have had Sept. 11," Kori Schake, a McCain policy adviser, said.

I think it's going to be 1972 all over again. The reason that the "superdelegate" concept was come up with was exactly to prevent this. It would seem that they're not doing their job.

Of course, it's still several weeks until the convention. If I were the McCain campaign, I wouldn't actually be pounding Obama this hard until he is safely the nominee. It probably helps Hillary! more at this stage than it does them, particularly since the public has a short attention span, and isn't necessarily going to remember this by November.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Another history lesson for Obama:

Yasin fled the United States after the bombing to Iraq, and lived as Saddam Hussein's guest in Baghdad until the invasion. He is still free, and wanted by the FBI.

Picky, picky, picky.

Anyway, it can't possibly be true. As everyone knows, Saddam had absolutely no connection to terrorism, or World Trade Center bombings.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:51 AM

June 16, 2008
The George Romney Democrats

James Kirchick writes that the Democrats are trying to lie their party to victory, and the country to defeat in Iraq:

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."

Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

Yes. Bill Clinton's CIA, since George Bush foolishly left George Tenant in charge of it, even after 911, and never even seriously attempted to clean house, other than the failed attempt by Porter Goss. The president got bad intelligence. But the Democrats are being mendacious in their selective memory and rewriting of history.

I loved this:

A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not because of American propaganda but because he had "brought so light a load to the laundromat." Given the similarity between Romney's explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one wonders why the news media aren't saying the same thing today.

I assume that the last phrase is simply a rhetorical flourish. There's no reason to wonder at all.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:56 AM

June 13, 2008
Facts Matter

Jennifer Rubin reports on a very interesting briefing on Iraq:

I asked O'Hanlon whether his previous criticism that Barack Obama was in denial about facts on the ground still stood. In a lengthy answer he and then Pollack avoided a partisan hit on Obama and I think revealed their true purpose: to inform the public and policy matters about the real situation in Iraq and allow Democrats to in essence climb back off the surge opposition policy limb they have crawled out on. (This is my description; they were quite tactful and even optimistic that this is a time when political leaders can reorient themselves to new facts.) Both indicated that it would be a mistake with critical provincial and national elections upcoming in 2008 and 2009 to begin an abrupt withdrawal in 2009. O'Hanlon offered that Democrats could take credit for having pressured Iraqis on a political front with the clear message that our presence would not be indefinite and that they should accept that "the good news is you may be able to leave earlier than proposed based on progress and not on defeat."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:27 PM

June 07, 2008
Messianic Mass Movements

Michael Ledeen has a good opinion piece in today's Journal, that I think is a must-read. And no, he's not talking about the Obamanians.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:33 PM

June 05, 2008
Unimpressed

John Bolton doesn't think much of Obama's foreign policy plans, or historical knowledge. Neither do I.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:22 AM

June 02, 2008
Canadian Kangaroos

Andrew Coyne is live blogging the "Human Rights" Commission star chamber for Mark Steyn and MacLeans. He's hoping that his magazine will lose:

Don't tell my employers, but I'm sort of hoping we lose this case. If we win--that is, if the tribunal finds we did not, by publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book, expose Muslims to hatred and contempt, or whatever the legalese is--then the whole clanking business rolls on, the stronger for having shown how "reasonable" it can be. Whereas if we lose, and fight on appeal, and challenge the whole legal basis for these inquisitions, then something important will be achieved.

I liked this:

Oh God: they're talking about who they'll be calling on Friday. Five days in a windowless room. If that's not a human rights violation...

And this comment on the Orwellian nature of the law:

Under Section 7.1, he continues, innocent intent is not a defence, nor is truth, nor is fair comment or the public interest, nor is good faith or responsible journalism.
Or in other words, there is no defence.

It's a good read, so far.

[Update about half an hour later]

Some thoughts from Mark Steyn:

The Canadian Islamic Congress lawyer says that freedom of speech is a "red herring". If it were, it would be on the endangered species list.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:57 AM

Splitter?

With Al Qaeda on the ropes, in Iraq (a central front by their own definition) and elsewhere, is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif becoming the hirabist movement's equivalent of Trotsky?

A key point from the Journal editorial:

Zawahiri himself last month repeated his claim that the country "is now the most important arena in which our Muslim nation is waging the battle against the forces of the Crusader-Zionist campaign." So it's all the more significant that on this crucial battleground, al Qaeda has been decimated by the surge of U.S. forces into Baghdad. The surge, in turn, gave confidence to the Sunni tribes that this was a fight they could win. For Zawahiri, losing the battles you say you need to win is not a way to collect new recruits. ...

[I]t is the surge, and the destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq , that has helped to demoralize al Qaeda around the world. Nothing would more embolden Zawahiri now than a U.S. retreat from Iraq, which al Qaeda would see as the U.S. version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.

That should be required reading for the Obama campaign. If we had followed his advice, we'd already have such an emboldened Al Qaeda. But they seem to be in denial:

...if Obama fails to "capitalize"-to take advantage of circumstances his opponent helped create and he opposed-is he guilty of only excessive pessimism? Or has he proven himself to be inflexible, unmoved by new facts, unwilling to admit error and divorced from reality? Hmmm, seems like someone said similar things about George W. Bush.

It does seem ironic.

[h/t to Cliff May for the Journal piece]

[Update a few minutes later]

It's not just Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq. The Mahdi Army and its Iranian allies aren't have a good time, either:

VSSA-logo.jpg Permalink | Printer-friendly version Iraqi Army interdicting Iranian operations in the South By Bill RoggioJune 1, 2008 10:48 PM

Click to view larger interactive map of southern Iraq.

Iraqi and Coalition forces press operations against the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and Basrah despite the cease-fire signed with the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. The Iraqi Army has expanded its operations in Basrah province to the east just along the Iranian border, while 11 Mahdi Army fighters have been captured during operations in Baghdad over the past 24 hours.

Iraqi soldiers and police, backed by US and British advisers, have expanded Operation Knights' Assault to the eastern town of Abu Al Khasib, in a region east of Basrah on the Iranian border. A brigade from the 1st Iraqi Army Division, backed by a battalion from 14th Iraqi Army Division and two Iraqi National Police battalions conducted operations along the border over the past two days. One suspect was detained and 52 AK-47 assault rifles and one submachine gun were found during the sweep.

Abu Al Khasib is on Highway 6 at the border crossing with Iran at Shalamcheh. The Iranian city of Shalamcheh is the main forward operating base for the Ramazan Corps's southernmost command. The Ramazan Corps is the Qods Force command assigned to direct operations inside Iraq. Weapons, fighters, and cash smuggled across the border into Basrah would pass through Abu Al Khasib.

The Iraqi Army has been expanding its operations along the Iranian supply routes in the South during the month of May. After clearing the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed militias from Basrah, operations have expanded into Az Zubayr and Al Qurnah.

It's still five months to go until the election, with a lot more potential progress to come. I can imagine the anti-Obama ads, contrasting the (undeniable, at that point) progress in Iraq with video of the evacuations from the embassy roof in Saigon. It could be a repeat of either McGovern, or Carter in 1980.

[Update a little while later]

Victor Davis Hanson has some related observations:

How odd (or to be expected) that suddenly intelligence agencies, analysts, journalists, and terrorists themselves are attesting that al-Qaeda is in near ruins, that ideologically radical Islam is losing its appeal, and that terrorist incidents against Americans at home and abroad outside the war zones are at an all-time low--and yet few associate the radical change in fortune in Iraq as a contributory cause to our success.

Actually, given the pervasive bias in the media on this subject, it's to be expected, not odd at all.

[Early afternoon update]

The Taliban is on the ropes in Afghanistan, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:56 AM

Breakfast Cereals and Garrison Keillor

Don't miss today's Bleat, over at Lileks place. He has a proper fisking of his fellow Minnesotan scribe.

[Late morning update]

As Jay Manifold points out, the permalink is wrong--it's pointing to Friday's Bleat. For now, until it's fixed, just go to today's Bleat.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:42 AM

May 30, 2008
Maybe They Could Use Crayons

There's been quite a bit of commentary about the technological backwardness of the enemy. That is certainly a key distinction between this war and World War II and the Cold war, in which we were at war with technologically advanced industrial states (Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union), whereas the hirabis have virtually no industrial or weapons-making capability, short of nail bombs. I think that it was Rich Lowry who compared the two cultures by writing something like "...we build skyscrapers and jet airliners--that's our idea. They hijack our airliners and fly them into the skyscrapers--that's their idea."

Anyway, there was some buzz recently that they had developed a computer graphic of a nuked Washington DC for one of their propaganda videos.

Nope. They had to lift it from a western video game. They're not only incapable of carrying out our destruction, they're not even capable of simulating it. But it does speak strongly to their intent if they ever get their hands on advanced weaponry, something that, with advancing technology, will become more and more of a problem in the future.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:45 AM

May 29, 2008
What Doesn't?

Apparently, the phrase "War on Terror" offends Muslims. Words fail.

Well, OK, not completely. Somehow, this reminds me of the (feigned?) outrage that the Democrats exhibited when President Bush talked about appeasers in his speech to the Knesset, but didn't name names. You know what? If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. It doesn't really serve your cause when, in response to criticism of someone unnamed, you jump up and shout, "Hey, he's talkin' 'bout me!"

Similarly, how can Muslims be offended by a "war on terror"? Do they think that terror and Islam are inevitably and appropriately identified with each other, and inseparable? Well, if so, stupidity like this just fuels that perception.

[Update in the evening]

Robert Spencer has further thoughts on fantasy-based policy making.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:41 PM

May 25, 2008
I'd Buy One

I think that a bumper sticker that said "I'D RATHER HAVE BUSH'S THIRD TERM THAN JIMMY CARTER'S SECOND" would be a hot seller, assuming that Obama is the nominee. Note, contrary to convention wisdom, I still don't assume that. There's this little thing called a "convention" coming up that will determine that.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:49 PM

"The Sun Sets"

...finally, on the British Empire.

Strange to witness one of the oldest and most successful of nations commit suicide without even being aware of what it's doing.

Strange indeed. And very sad.

[Update, a few minutes later]

You know, if the Saudis wanted to spend their money building Muslim hospitals in the UK (just as the Catholics have their own hospitals in the US), complete with restrictions as to how much hygiene is required on the part of the nursing staff, per sharia law, who could object to them orienting the beds in whatever direction they wished? The only people who would suffer would be the Muslims stupid enough to use their services.

But instead, because Britain, with its NHS (and other programs) has become a welfare state, it's a lot cheaper for them to spend the money bribing MPs to institute such nonsense in the public hospitals, so they can save their money for funding madrassas that encourage people to bomb the Tube.

This would seem to have parallels to the public school system, and the battles over what kind of "science" to teach in science classes. It is an intrinsic pitfall of state-supplied health and education. Not to mention other vital needs.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:18 PM

May 21, 2008
Lebanon Has Been Lost

Why is there no news about this? Sorry, but I think that it's more important than both the primaries and Ted Kennedy's brain tumor. I really don't understand it, particularly since it seems like a great opportunity to blame George Bush, and actually (much more rarely) be right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AM

May 19, 2008
One Of The (Many) Reasons

...that Obama is unlikely to win. Michael Weiss writes extensively about his Iraq minefield:

...there is every expectation that Obama will have his bluff called sooner or later. Adolph Reed, a prominent black leftist intellectual who teaches political science at the University of Pennsylvania, published a fascinating and undervalued essay in current issue of The Progressive magazine. It is titled "Obama No." Professor Reed has followed the resistible rise of this young Chicago politico for quite some time, and he never liked what he saw:

Obama's style of being all things to all people threatens to melt under the inescapable spotlight of a national campaign against a Republican. It's like what brings on the downfall of really successful con artists: They get themselves onto a stage that's so big that they can't hide their contradictions anymore, and everyone finds out about the different stories they've told different people.
Again, for various reasons, this is not the kind of thing that Hillary! was able to use against Obama, but it will be devastating to him in the fall.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:46 PM

May 16, 2008
"The Real Iraq"

Michael Totten reviews Michael Yon's book:

Iraq is a tragic, unhappy, and often disturbing place, but it's less sinister and frightening up close than it is from a distance. That's because it's a country striving for normality, whose normal aspects rarely make their way into media reports that highlight violence, mayhem, and failure. On TV, Iraq looks like a nation of masked, gun-toting fanatics, but in person, one finds friendliness, solidarity, and reasonableness amid the chaos. "Just because Iraqis have 'Allahu Akbar' on their flag," Yon writes, "doesn't mean they're going to blow up the World Trade Center any more than 'In God We Trust' means we're going to attack Communist China." "Iraq does not hate America," he insists. "If they hated us, I'd be urging an immediate troop withdrawal, because there would be no hope of winning this war. If the Iraqis hated us, we would be fighting the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army. Instead, we're fighting alongside them."

Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the moment. "The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer an army and are not going to found a caliphate." The outcome, though, is still in doubt. If Petraeus's surge strategy fails or is prematurely short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost certainly lose. "Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war," Yon concludes. "Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done." Which makes the present moment the moment of truth in Iraq.

Barack Obama might productively read it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:11 PM

May 12, 2008
No Revolution This Year

Glenn Reynolds has a review of Ron Paul's book. I haven't read the book, but I agree with the points made in the review about Paul's views, and the difference between Rothbardians and Heinleinians.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:41 AM

May 10, 2008
Hezbollah's Apologists

It's been a rough week (and year) for them. I expect Obama to want no-conditions negotiations with them any minute.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:06 PM

May 08, 2008
Dhimmification

Sam Harris has a long piece at (of all places) the Huffington Post on the unwillingness of western civilization to stand up for its own values against radical Islam. And as others have noted (and he notes himself), this is particularly ironic:

In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders' film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a "kill fee." I declined.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:34 AM

April 28, 2008
Creeping Sharia

Bruce Bawer, on the cultural surrender of the west, aided and abetted by our own media, and the multi-culturalists in both academia and government.

Not exactly a new theme, but it doesn't hurt to repeat or remind, for those who haven't seen things like this, or have gone back to sleep.

It's a long piece, but this is really the nut of it:

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, KhoÃ‚Âmeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies' basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success.

Sadly, he makes a good case.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:39 AM

April 27, 2008
Rest In Peace

Pamela Bone, who broke with the Left over the common cause that so much of it found with radical Islam, has died of cancer.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:07 PM

A New Member?

Since Saddam was removed from power, there's been a vacancy in George Bush's three-nation "axis of evil." It looks like Syria has decided to apply for the position (and did so long ago, and even at the time was no doubt an unindicted co-conspirator--one wonders why Bush didn't include it in the beginning). Now, Austin Bay discusses the disturbing relationship between the two dictatorships of Syria and North Korea, and their increasingly evident first-strike posture.

Given Nancy Pelosi's idiotic visit with Assad earlier, and the dictator-soothing noises coming from the Obama campaign, Israel has to be very nervous about the Democrats running both the executive and legislative branch. Don't be surprised to see more strikes on Syria, and on Iran itself, this fall, if it looks like Obama is going to win, or does win--they won't want to wait until it's too late, after he's taken office in January.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:46 AM

April 25, 2008
Naming The Enemy

Are we at war with Jihadism?

Of course it is true that Islamic reformers are trying to redefine the very troubling concept of jihad as a positive: viz., an internal struggle for personal betterment. Much as I'd love them to succeed, it is a well-intentioned folly -- largely because of modern culture, which puts such a premium on authenticity. If you want to encourage the reformers, then encourage them to drop the concept of jihad altogether. As a matter of history, jihad is a military obligation. As long as it is accorded a central place in Islam, the militants are always going to be deemed more authentic, more true to the faith of Mohammed, than the reformers.

If correct, this makes the latest State Department policy all the more idiotic.

I still prefer the term Hirabis myself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AM

March 14, 2008
Actually Reading The Report

One of the prevailing myths (though that's a generous term--perhaps Big Lie would be more accurate) of the left was that Saddam had no ties to terrorism prior to his removal (Obama has used it as a central theme, in fact, of his campaign). Many in the media reported a few days ago that a recent Pentagon report had substantiated this template. However, as Ed Morrissey notes, they could have done this only by not reading the report, relying instead on spin and leaks from the Pentagon. Those who did actually read it would come to an opposite conclusion:

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no "smoking gun" linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

And why would anyone be surprised that this was the case? He hated the US, and Israel, and was rewarding Palestinian suicide bombers' families with cash. Other than the other myth (that he was secular, and they were extreme Islamic fanatics, and would have nothing to do with each other), why wouldn't he collaborate and cooperate with them against a common enemy?

If the McCain campaign is smart, they'll use this to school Obama again. Particularly since his proposed solution--to not have invaded Iraq--involves the need for a time machine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:32 AM

March 10, 2008
Beware The Experts

Michael Totten has a report from an interesting area of Iraq, with some cautionary words:

Be wary of any "expert" who says they know what's going on everywhere in Iraq. It's impossible to have both a general and a granular understanding of that country in real time. You can know one area well, or you can know several areas superficially, but you cannot have an intimate understanding of the entire country while it's in upheaval and flux. It doesn't matter how many times you've been there or how how many articles and languages you read.

One of the reasons I don't pay much attention to the trolls in the comments section.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:11 AM

Guitar Heros

Michael Yon has a long but interesting post about helicopter combat in Iraq:

Sometimes I sit up on a hill and watch them in the air. The other day two Kiowas were screaming low right over the rooftops and doing hard turns. I couldn't see the combat because they were too far away, but I knew they were toe to toe and there was plenty of shooting going on or they wouldn't have been flying so violently. It's scary watching them because I've met them and know they are mortals doing the work of immortals. At any second there could be a fireball. A "fallen angel." I remember the call over the radio last year of a "fallen angel" down by Baghdad. All aboard had been lost.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:00 AM

March 09, 2008
Blackbird Memories

From a former pilot.

...the plane was dripping, much like the misshapen model had assembled in my youth. Fuel was seeping through the joints, raining down on the hangar floor. At Mach 3, the plane would expand several inches because of the severe temperature, which could heat the leading edge of the wing to 1,100 degrees. To prevent cracking, expansion joints had been built into the plane. Sealant resembling rubber glue covered the seams, but when the plane was subsonic, fuel would leak through the joints.

One of the sayings of the program was that if the plane wasn't dripping, don't bother to get in--someone forgot to fuel it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:05 AM

March 08, 2008
Why Do They Hate Us?

Apparently, that's what Ahmadinejad should be asking about the Iraqis:

Weeks of hard work by Iranian emissaries and pro-Iran elements in Iraq were supposed to ensure massive crowds thronging the streets of Baghdad and throwing flowers on the path of the visiting Iranian leader. Instead, no more than a handful of Iraqis turned up for the occasion. The numbers were so low that the state-owned TV channels in Iran decided not to use the footage at all.

Instead, much larger crowds gathered to protest Ahmadinejad's visit. In the Adhamiya district of Baghdad, several thousand poured into the streets with cries of "Iranian aggressor, go home!"

But, but... I thought that our foolish adventure in Iraq only created an Iranian puppet there?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:20 AM

March 05, 2008
Anti-Cleric Revolt?

This seems like good news, if true:

"In the beginning, they gave their eyes and minds to the clerics; they trusted them," said Abu Mahmoud, a moderate Sunni cleric in Baghdad, who now works deprogramming religious extremists in American detention. "It's painful to admit, but it's changed. People have lost too much. They say to the clerics and the parties: You cost us this."
"When they behead someone, they say 'Allahu akbar,' they read Koranic verse," said a moderate Shiite sheik from Baghdad, using the phrase for "God is great."

"The young people, they think that is Islam," he said. "So Islam is a failure, not only in the students' minds, but also in the community."

A professor at Baghdad University's School of Law, who identified herself only as Bushra, said of her students: "They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them."

If militant Islam is the enemy, this seems like a victory to me. Let's try to spread the infection throughout the Muslim world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AM

March 04, 2008
Where Have The Heros Gone?

It's not a new subject, but Lileks muses on what's happened to Hollywood (and popular culture in general):

...imagine a story conference for the Beowulf movie: you know, I see modern parallels here - not surprising, given the timelessness of the epic. But the Mead Hall is civilization itself, an outpost constructed against the elements, and Grendel is the raging force that hates the song they sing-

"They hate us for our singing!" Knowing chuckles around the table.

No seriously, he does hate them for their singing. That's the point.

He hates what they've built, what they've done, how they live their lives.

"Maybe he has reason. That's the interesting angle. What drives Grendel?"

Yes, you're right. You're absolutely right. No one's ever taken the side of the demon in the entire history of literature, especially the last 40 years. By all means, let us craft an elaborate backstory for the guy who breaks down the door and chews the heads of the townsfolk, that we may better understand how we came to this point.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:00 AM

March 02, 2008
Confused

Selena Zito writes that all of the remaining presidential candidates are Scots-Irish.

Really? This is the first I'd heard that Hillary! was of Scots-Irish descent. I'd always assumed that she was from Puritan stock. That's the way she's always acted. And Obama is obviously, at best, only half Scots-Irish.

Zito doesn't seem to quite get the concept, either:

How can there be such scant understanding of a 30 million-strong ethnic group that has produced so many leaders and swung most elections?

Perhaps because political academics and pollsters parse the Scottish half off with the WASP vote and define the Irish-Catholic half as blue-collar Democrats. They are neither.

There is no "Irish-Catholic half" of the Scots-Irish. Scots-Irish aren't Irish at all. Neither are they Scottish. They were mostly Anglo-Saxon, not Celtic. They were also a violent people with an honor culture, mercenaries from the border area between England and Scotland. As the article notes, they were sent by the English to colonize Ulster, to get them out of Britain after the war between England and Scotland was settled and they had no more need for them. The ones too violent for Ulster were shipped off to America, so they're a double distillation of the most violent culture that the British Isles produced. After they fought (mostly for the South) in the Civil War, many of them headed out west.

People who think that America is too violent blame it on the proliferation of guns. But they confuse cause and effect. We have a lot of guns because we have a lot of Scots-Irish (aka rednecks). But it comes in pretty handy during war time.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:29 AM

March 01, 2008
The Moderate Muslim Supermajority

Michael Totten writes that there are a lot more moderate Muslims than we think.

I blame the media, which rewards the radicals with lots of (biased) news coverage, and ignores those who speak out and fight against them. I think, like Michael, that it's appalling that they pay any attention at all to CAIR. They need to actively seek out true moderate representatives of Islam.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:26 PM

Crickets Chirping At The ICRC?

With all the hue and cry about Korans in toilets in Guantanamo, where are all the staunch defenders of the Geneva Conventions now?

The terrorists are operating within civilian areas, many times with the actual assistance of these civilians, and more often than not with their tacit approval. Brace yourselves for the palestinian propaganda offensive going into overdrive, including stories about civilian deaths, many of which may not be true.

Here's another point:

We are lectured a great deal about the importance of democratizing the Middle East as, somehow, a strategy to defeat terrorism. I do not want to reargue this issue or make too much (again) of the fact that popular elections have thus far succeeded in empowering terrorists.

My question for the moment is this: Does this democratization ever entail any responsibility? The Palestinian "civilians" were given a choice in 2006, and they chose to elect Hamas -- a choice that was overwhelming in Gaza, where the terror organization -- having ousted the more "moderate" terror-mongers from Fatah -- now rules. If the civilians, eyes wide open, opt to be led by a terrorist organization whose chief calling card is its pledge to destroy Israel (a sentiment shared by a large majority of the "civilian" population), how upset are we supposed to get when the said civilians get caught in the cross-fire that is provoked by the savages they elected?

I have always thought that one of the aims of the Israeli pullout of Gaza was to demonstrate that the Palestinians are incapable of forming a functioning state, and of having someone accountable when Israel is attacked. If that was the goal, it seems to have succeeded. Hamas has declared war (or actually, Hamas has never not been in a state of war with Israel, since the destruction of Israel is one of its primary purposes), and now it will have to accept the consequences.

Hamas is blatantly violating just about every one of the Geneva Conventions, I suspect, but I fearlessly predict that only Israel will be charged with "war crimes." We know that the world will claim that the death of every innocent civilian in Gaza, among whom these war criminals hide, will be Israel's fault. No one, after all, can ever violate the Geneva Conventions except for the US and Israel, even when they don't.

Hmmmm...I wonder what the ICRC has to say about this?

[wandering over and reading]

The most recent release related to the subject is from Thursday, in which it simply tells both sides to "use restraint" against killing civilians. It says nothing about military operations among civilians in Gaza, or indeed anything specific at all, about anyone's behavior. I thought that they were supposed to be the defenders and upholders of the Conventions? Why can they not denounce this?

[Update a little while later]

I just reread the release at the ICRC site, and I just can't get over it. Let's just unpack this one graf:

Numerous rockets have been fired at the Israeli towns of Ashkelon and Sderot, hitting civilian areas and landing inside a hospital compound. At the same time, the Israel Defense Forces have carried out several air strikes inside the Gaza Strip. On both sides, there have been civilian fatalities and injuries.

Really?

"...rockets have been fired, and 'at the same time' the IDF have carried out several air strikes." Surely they don't mean literally "at the same time"? As though both Israel and Hamas decided to bomb babies, just for the hell of it?

All right, no doubt by "the same time," they are simply expressing an equivalence between them, not literally saying that the events were simultaneous. Of course, the reality is that first the rockets were fired, with the deliberate intent of killing Israeli civilians to the maximum degree possible, given the crude aiming capability of the rockets, which was followed, afterward by air strikes from Israel whose purpose was to take out the facilities that were launching the rockets in order to prevent further rocket attacks.

This moral equivalence, with no mention whatsoever of the daily, ongoing war crimes by Hamas, is simply nauseating. The ICRC may have moral standing in the world, but it has none with me.

[Update on Sunday afternoon]

A good point in comments. The release isn't even neutral. "Rockets were fired" (passive voice--who knows who fired them? Maybe they fired themselves?) versus the active and specific "IDF carried out air strikes."

[Update a little later]

Here it comes. The Saudis (who else?) are accusing Israel of war crimes. And not just any war crimes, no. Nazi war crimes.

And a bad word for the state that is actually committing war crimes.

[Via LGF]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:02 PM

February 29, 2008
I Sure Hope So

It would be a waste of money otherwise.

Hezbollah says that the US warship off the Lebanese coast is a theat. I wonder if the fact that it's the USS Cole is sending a subtle message as well?

[Update on Saturday]

The Saudis must think that something is up, too:

Future Television, privately owned by Saad Hariri who heads the majority anti-Syrian bloc in parliament, said Saudi Arabia had advised its nationals to leave Lebanon 'as soon as possible.'

Do they know something we don't?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:40 PM

February 28, 2008
Things Heating Up In The Levant?

Maybe:

The US Navy is sending three warships to the eastern Mediterranean Sea in a show of strength during a period of tensions with Syria and political uncertainty in Lebanon.

It's hard to believe that Syria really wants another war, given how easily Israel penetrated their supposedly impenetrable Russian defenses last fall. I think that the message is that if Hezbollah wants to take on Israel again, they'd better do it alone.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:15 PM

The Obama Solution: A Time Machine

Frank J. has the man himself to explain.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:09 PM

"Slow The Development Of Future Combat Systems"

In what fantasyland does Obama think that this is a winning campaign plank during a war?

I see another 1972 coming up for the Dems.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:19 AM

February 26, 2008
Reforming Islam?

Let's hope so:

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

Well, if anyone can do it, it seems like the Turks should be able to.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:59 PM

Report From Anbar

Another photo essay from Michael Totten:

"Don't get any closer," Corporal Waddle said. "We need to stay out of the blast radius in case it blows."
One Marine, whose name I didn't catch, accompanied the Iraqi man to the location of the explosive. "It's an 82mm mortar round," he said when he returned. "It's not an IED. Most likely a round that didn't go off when it was fired."

Every time I thought something vaguely exciting might happen, it didn't happen. There is no war in Western Iraq any more. This is a mop-up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 AM

February 12, 2008
No Thynge Coold Plese Me Moore

...than a blogge by Sir Iowahawke on that ArchBisheoppe Of Canterbeerry:

25 Sayeth the pilgryms to Bishop Rowan,
26 "Father, we do not like howe thynges are goin'.

27 You know we are as Lefte as thee,

28 But of layte have beyn chaunced to see

29 From Edinburgh to London-towne

30 The Musslemans in burnoose gowne

31 Who beat theyr ownselfs with theyr knyves

32 Than goon home and beat theyr wyves

33 And slaye theyr daughtyrs in honour killlynge

34 Howe do we stoppe the bloode fromme spillynge?"

35 The Bishop sipped upon hys tea

36 And sayed, "an open mind must we

37 Keep, for know thee well the Mussel-man

38 Has hys own laws for hys own clan

39 So question not hys Muslim reason

40 And presaerve ye well social cohesion."

Reade, thee, the reste.

It cood be only the product of an undhimmified English major.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:16 PM

The War Has Already Started In Europe

They just don't realize it. And they don't realize they're losing, though many, particularly in the UK, are starting to.

Spengler, on Europe in the Dar Al-Harb.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:50 AM

The Final Mission

Michael Totten writes about the last stages of the war in Fallujah, and Anbar:

According to planet-wide conventional wisdom, United States soldiers and Marines are on an abusive rampage in Iraq. Relentless media coverage of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib - which really did occur, but which the United States didn't sanction or tolerate - seriously distorted what actually goes on in Iraq most of the time. The United States military is far from perfect and is hardly guilt-free, but it's the most law-abiding and humane institution in Iraq at this time.
"Human rights are legal tools in the hands of citizens against abuse of power by an oppressive state," Lieutenant Montgomery said. "If human rights are not respected, sooner or later it will lead to violence and instability...Human rights are rights that derive from the inherent dignity and worth of the person, and they are universal, inalienable, and equal. They are the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace. They belong to people simply because they are human." Again, he read from it the white board. All Iraqi Police officers in Al Anbar are exposed to this material.

...I've said before that American soldiers and Marines aren't the bloodthirsty killers of the popular (in certain quarters) imagination, and that they are far less racist against Arabs than average Americans. They are also, famously, less racist against each other, and they have been since they were forcibly integrated after World War II. This is due to sustained everyday contact with each other and with Iraqis. The stereotype of the racist and unhinged American soldier and Marine is itself a bigoted caricature based almost entirely on sensationalist journalism and recklessly irresponsible war movies.

Liberal journalist George Packer has spent a lot of time in Iraq and is a reliable critic of the Bush Administration and the war. He, like me, has his opinions and doesn't conceal them. But he reports what he sees honestly and comprehensively. You can trust him whether you agree with his views or not.

In a current World Affairs article he pans some of Hollywood's recent anti-war box office flops. "[T]he films...present the war as incomprehensible mayhem," he wrote, "and they depict American soldiers as psychopaths who may as well be wearing SS uniforms. The G.I.s rape, burn, and mutilate corpses, torture detainees, accelerate a vehicle to run over a boy playing soccer, wantonly kill civilians and journalists in firefights, humiliate one another, and coolly record their own atrocities for entertainment. Have these things happened in Iraq? Many have. But in the cinematic version of the war, these are the only things that happen in Iraq. At a screening of The Situation, I was asked to discuss the film with its director, Philip Haas. Why had he portrayed the soldiers in cartoon fashion, I wondered. Why had he missed their humor, their fear, their tenderness for one another and even, every now and then, for Iraqis? Because, Haas said, he wanted to concentrate on humanizing his Iraqi characters instead."

It's not hard to humanize Iraqis and Americans. A competent writer or director can do both at the same time. In fact, it requires deliberate effort or willful ignorance for a writer or director to humanize Iraqis while at the same time dehumanizing Americans. Packer humanizes both because he's a good writer, he's honest, and he actually works in Iraq. He leaves his fortified hotel compound and makes an effort to get it right, unlike so many writers, directors, and journalists in the stereotype-manufacturing industries.

As is often the case, conventional wisdom isn't necessarily wise, or correct. The press, both foreign and American, has not acquitted itself well in Iraq. That is the real failure over there, contrary to what Nancy and Harry continue to ignorantly (and cynically) bleat about.

Read the whole thing, and support real reporters like Michael Totten with his tip jar.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:28 AM

February 11, 2008
Down A Big Cup Of Duuuhhhh

Some intelligence agencies are starting to think that maybe bin Laden hasn't been alive for a long time:

Questions about Bin Laden are being raised by intelligence officials who say that without a specific time mark with a photo of Bin Laden, his presence cannot be confirmed and the most recent statements could have been put together from older audio.

Yes, and that has been true since Tora Bora. Haven't these people ever wondered, or speculated why bin Laden, who was second only to Senator Schumer when it came to being a camera hog, all of a sudden switched from video to audio about six years ago? Even if he said things that seemed to indicate knowledge of recent events, that could have been done by splicing and manipulating an audio tape, or finding someone to imitate his voice. Maybe they've been using voice prints, but I don't know how reliable they really are. I do know that it's a lot harder to fake a video, and when I consider the fact that we've heard only audios, and not seen a new video (at least one that can be shown to be from a post-2002 period) I have long thought that he's been pushing up poppies since then.

Of course, the other reason that I've long thought that he's dead is that our so-called intelligence agencies--the same ones that subverted our pressure on Iran last fall with their "intelligence" estimate that they're not building a bomb--have continued to tell me that he's alive. To me, the question is not whether or not he's alive, but why so many in the so-called intelligence community have been so determined to continue to attempt to convince us that he is for the past six years.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:23 PM

The Cairing Party

The misspelling is deliberate:

Perhaps some members of Congress had been fooled by CAIR's deception. But now they have no excuse. Now Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who saluted CAIR's "important work," and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who applauded "CAIR's mission," know better.
The criminal briefing should also disabuse Rep. John Conyers, who's trumpeted CAIR's "long and distinguished history." Rep. John Dingell, who said "my office door is always open" to CAIR, now has an obligation to slam it shut.

No red-blooded American lawmaker wants to do anything that would facilitate the support of terrorists, not even Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who's gushed "CAIR has much to be proud of."

And shame on the (much fewer) Republicans on the list as well.

Moderate American Muslims need to form and promote an organization that truly speaks for them, and not for radicals and terrorism. But if they do, will the Democrats pay any attention, or will they remain enthralled with CAIR?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:07 AM

February 10, 2008
Boo Hoo

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is very demoralized:

In the Anbar document, the author describes an al-Qaida in crisis, with citizens growing weary of militants' presence and foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.
"We lost cities and afterward, villages ... We find ourselves in a wasteland desert," Smith quoted the document as saying.

The memo cites militants' increasing difficulty in moving around and transporting weapons and suicide belts because of better equipped Iraqi police and more watchful citizens, Smith said.

The author of the diary seized near Balad wrote that he was once in charge of 600 fighters, but only 20 were left "after the tribes changed course"_ a reference to how many Sunni tribesmen have switched sides to fight alongside the Americans, Smith said.

No thanks to Harry or Nancy. This is a real problem for the press. There may not be enough foreign fighters left to create the new Tet that they're dying to report.

[Update early afternoon]

The WaPo has more detailed account. Apparently the diary was from the October time period.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:29 AM

February 07, 2008
"A Feature, Not A Bug"

T. M. Lutas has some observations on the concern among the military for the modern political class in the west"

...we've always had the best military toys. But that technological line ended with the invention of the nuclear weapon. Once you can destroy the planet, where else is there to go in terms of outright destructiveness? We're trying to continue to improve by enhancing the precision of our violence but in the face of a force that wants terror, imprecision is a feature, not a bug.

Read the whole thing.

The danger we are confronting now is that mass destruction is coming into the hands of individuals, and it's going to continue to get worse. A policy of "non-interventionism" is not just futile, but suicidal, in such a world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:12 PM

February 06, 2008
One Toke Over The Line

Willie Nelson comes out as a Truther.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 PM

Forty Years Later

Remembering the lies of Tet.

As the Washington Post's Saigon bureau chief Peter Braestrup documented in his 1977 book, "The Big Story," the desperate fury of the communist attacks including on Saigon, where most reporters lived and worked, caught the press by surprise. (Not the military: It had been expecting an attack and had been on full alert since Jan. 24.) It also put many reporters in physical danger for the first time. Braestrup, a former Marine, calculated that only 40 of 354 print and TV journalists covering the war at the time had seen any real fighting. Their own panic deeply colored their reportage, suggesting that the communist assault had flung Vietnam into chaos.

Their editors at home, like CBS's Walter Cronkite, seized on the distorted reporting to discredit the military's version of events. The Viet Cong insurgency was in its death throes, just as U.S. military officials assured the American people at the time. Yet the press version painted a different picture.

To quote Braestrup, "the media tended to leave the shock and confusion of early February, as then perceived, fixed as the final impression of Tet" and of Vietnam generally. "Drama was perpetuated at the expense of information," and "the negative trend" of media reporting "added to the distortion of the real situation on the ground in Vietnam."

The North Vietnamese were delighted. On the heels of their devastating defeat, Hanoi increasingly shifted its propaganda efforts toward the media and the antiwar movement. Causing American (not South Vietnamese) casualties, even at heavy cost, became a battlefield objective in order to reinforce the American media's narrative of a failing policy in Vietnam.

Sound familiar?

I fear that Al Qaeda may attempt one more spasm of violence, and the media, ever dutiful to the enemy, wittingly or not, will report it as the war futile and lost in Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:57 AM

February 01, 2008
Myopia

Armed Liberal writes about the anti-American left (if that's not redundant), and its inability to see anything through other an anti-western fun-house prism.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:18 AM

January 30, 2008
Waking Up

Europeans are coming to the conclusion that Islam is dangerous:

"An overwhelming majority of the surveyed populations in Europe believe greater interaction between Islam and the West is a threat." Backbench Tory MP David Davies told the Sunday Express: "I am not surprised by these findings. People are fed up with multiculturalism and being told they have to give up their way of life."

"Most people in Britain expect anyone who comes here to be willing to learn our language and fit in with us."

Mr Davies, who serves on the Commons Home Affairs Committee, added: "People do get annoyed when they see millions spent on translating documents and legal aid being given to people fighting for the right to wear a head-to-toe covering at school."

...But leading Muslim academic Haleh Afshar, of York University, blamed media "hysteria" for the findings. She said: "There is an absence of trust towards Muslims, but to my mind that is very much driven by an uninformed media."

An "uninformed media."

Yes. That must be it.

It couldn't have anything to do with riots over cartoons, or bombings in the tube.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:23 AM

January 29, 2008
Radar Breakthrough

This looks like a pretty slick technology:

Lockheed for the first time has been testing a digital beam array to locate and track live targets--in this case, commercial and military aircraft coming in and out of the Philadelphia area. "The hard part was how we combined all the data ... to form the individual beams," Scott Smith, program manager for the radar system at Lockheed, tells PM. Commercially available high-speed digital electronics and advanced signal processors have become advanced enough to allow this data processing to occur, and that in turn has enabled digital beamforming to become practical for use outside a lab.

It will be helpful for ATC, but it has obvious military applications:

Digital beamforming radars will likely find their first homes on ships that track missile threats to U.S. fleets. Those threats will come from ballistic launches hundreds of miles away or from high-speed missiles launched from submarines or warplanes. The Russian government has been busy selling sea-skimming, antiship missiles to China that are designed to overwhelm the U.S. fleet's radars, so the ability to track multiple, fast-moving threats could become vital in the Taiwan Straits. But a digitized phased array radar can handle many incoming signals at once, and should be able to discern real threats from bits of metal or shaped decoy balloons.So somewhere a Chinese admiral is frowning at Lockheed's news, and a Taiwanese general is smirking.

Expect the usual suspects, any minute, to claim that it is "destabilizing" (a phrase they use any time the US comes up with a better way to defend itself).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:02 PM

January 28, 2008
Another Five-Year Anniversary

Such is the state of my disgust with the Bush administration that, it being my birthday, I probably won't bother to listen to his State of the Union speech tonight. But I recall another SOTU speech, exactly five years ago (on a previous birthday), that contained the sixteen words that the media continues to tell the Big Lie about, in their continuing attempt to maintain the conventional wisdom that it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:47 PM

The Latest Bit Of Dhimmitude In The UK

Mark Steyn:

Here's another news item out of Britain this week: A new version of The Three Little Pigs was turned down for some "excellence in education" award on the grounds that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues" and, as a result, the judges "had concerns for the Asian community" â€” ie, Muslims. Non-Muslim Asians â€” Hindus and Buddhists â€” have no "concerns" about anthropomorphized pigs.
This is now a recurring theme in British life. A while back, it was a local government council telling workers not to have knick-knacks on their desks representing Winnie-the-Pooh's porcine sidekick, Piglet. As Martin NiemÃ¶ller famously said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore. So then they came for the Three Little Pigs, and Babe, and by the time I realized my country had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!" and bring the nightmare to an end.

Just for the record, it's true that Muslims, like Jews, are not partial to bacon and sausages. But the Koran has nothing to say about cartoon pigs. Likewise, it is silent on the matter of whether one can name a teddy bear after Mohammed. What all these stories have in common is the excessive deference to Islam. If the Three Little Pigs are verboten when Muslims do not yet comprise ten per cent of the British population, what else will be on the blacklist by the time they're, say, 20 per cent?

And some related thoughts from Roger Kimball.

I am at the point where I think that we should say that no more mosques will be built in this country with Saudi money until there are churches and synagagues in Riyadh.

Charles Martel rolls in his grave.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:29 PM

January 24, 2008
Saddam Lied, People Died

So says Robert Bidinotto. Not to mention Sixty Minutes.

But as he notes, too many people are politically and emotionally invested in the myth that the administration lied for reality to have any impact on them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:30 PM

January 23, 2008
No Virgins For You

A suicide bomber blew himself up by falling down the stairs.

Well, at least we can be pretty sure that alcohol wasn't involved.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 PM

January 18, 2008
Prescient

A few months ago, T. M. Lutas made a bold prediction in the comments section of one of my blog posts:

Out of the 18 Iraqi provinces, 3 kurdish ones have their greatest security threats being foreign incursion from Turkey and Iran. Terrorism is successfully kept out. 4 arab provinces are under local management and we rarely, if ever, do anything there. That's 7 down, 11 to go with the rest of the provinces in various stages along the road towards handover. I fully expect that when the balance is 10:8 instead of 7:11 that we're going to see a sea change in coverage because "a majority of Iraq is under local control and relatively quiet" and all the MSM is going to realize that if they don't get on the right side of this quickly, the deluge of broken credibility will very likely worsen and shorten their personal careers significantly.
I expect at least 3 more provinces to get handed over between now and the height of campaign season 2008. I'd like to think that at least 6 more would make the transition by then (obviating the need to explain Kurdistan's special situation in the stats). The defeatists have to change the natural progression of Iraqi government and security institution building and do it soon or they're going to be in deep trouble in 2008.

Well, he called it right.

Iraq's army and police could be ready to take over security in all 18 provinces by the end of this year as the U.S. military moves toward a less prominent role in the country, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
"We look at it every month. We make recommendations. I think that if we continue along the path we're on now, we'll be able to do that by the end of 2008," Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said when asked when Iraqi forces could take the lead in all provinces.

Harry and Nancy are no doubt very disappointed, since we refused to surrender to the enemy as they were demanding all last year.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:17 PM

January 09, 2008
"The Ring On Zarqawi's Finger"

Michael Totten has an interesting discussion with some Iraqis:

According to the conventional narrative, Al Qaeda was rejected by Iraqis because they murdered Iraqis. They were far more vicious and hateful than the Americans they vowed to expel. The narrative is correct, as far as it goes, but Al Qaeda is detested for more than mere thuggery. Other armed groups have been able to maintain at least some popularity even though they also murder Iraqis. None of the others, though, violent though they may be, are so thoroughly totalitarian, so alien to the traditions of Iraqi culture, and so hostile to its centuries-old social fabric. Al Qaeda in Iraq tears at Iraq’s traditional culture as viciously as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia.
If you want to understand Al Qaeda in Iraq – its methods, its rise, and its fall – you’ll find their story has more in common with the Shining Path’s guerrilla and terrorist war in Peru than with the Islamic religion as practiced in the mosques of Fallujah.

“Nowadays we can analyze what is going on,” Ahmed said. “In the Sunni area, in the Western area, we have people being killed by Al Qaeda. The tribes and locals civilians here are standing up to fight the Al Qaeda organization because of that. We have been moving one step forward and two steps backward. We are now only semi-literate people. We need some more education.”

“Were all the insurgents here Al Qaeda, or were there other organizations also?” I said.

“The Al Qaeda organization is the major one,” said Omar. “They made some smaller sub-organizations for themselves to assist them by another name. But, in fact, they are all Al Qaeda.”

According to the conventional wisdom, Al Qaeda makes up only a very small part of Iraq’s insurgency. Maybe that’s true, overall. But I have not been able to find a single person on the ground in Western Iraq – not American, and not Iraqi – who says anyone other than Al Qaeda has played a significant role in the insurgency.

The conventional "wisdom" is often unwise. Particularly when it's tainted by hatred of George Bush.

[Afternoon update]

This strikes me as particularly timely, given that Harry Reid continues to demand that the US surrender to Al Qaeda (even if he's too stupid to realize that's what he's doing), just as we finally have them on the ropes.

...over the past year nearly 900 brave Americans have been killed while trying to provide Iraq’s leaders with the opportunity to unite their country. In that time American taxpayers have spent more than $120 billion to finance another nation’s civil war and back an Iraqi government that shows little interest in progress. And as President Bush continues to cling stubbornly to his flawed strategy, Al Qaeda only grows stronger.

As Michael Totten reports, this was never much of a civil war, and to the degree that it was, it was being instigated by Al Qaeda, and if Al Qaeda is growing stronger, it certainly isn't in Iraq. But the Senate Majority (non)Leader remains stuck in the 2006 narrative, and out of touch with reality.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:12 AM

January 04, 2008
Death Of A Long-Time Blogger

Andrew Olmsted has been killed in Iraq, in a cause that he believed in dearly (not necessarily Iraq per se, as he explains posthumously, but in simply serving his country). My most profound condolences to family and friends.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:05 PM

December 31, 2007
Happy New Year!

...in Baghdad.

Harry and Nancy are (no doubt) very disappointed.

Happy New Year to every one else, who isn't unhappy to see happiness in Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:20 PM

December 30, 2007
The Pathology Of Pakistan

In his last column of 2007, Mark Steyn has thoughts on what is perhaps currently the biggest security problem in the world.

...the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” have always been somewhat loosely governed Federal Administration-wise. In the new issue of The Claremont Review Of Books, Stanley Kurtz’s fascinating round-up of various tomes by Akbar Ahmed (recently Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London and before that Political Agent in Waziristan) mentions en passant a factoid I vaguely remember from my schooldays – that even at the height of imperial power, the laws of British India, by treaty and tradition, only governed 100 yards either side of Waziristan’s main roads. Once you were off the shoulder, you were subject to the rule of various “maliks” (tribal bigshots). The British prided themselves on an ability to run the joint at arm’s length through discreet subsidy of favored locals. As a young lieutenant with the Malakand Field Force, Winston Churchill found the wiles of Sir Harold Deane, chief commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province, a tad frustrating. “We had with us a very brilliant political officer, a Major Deane, who was most disliked because he always stopped military operations,” recalled Churchill. “Apparently all these savage chiefs were his old friends and almost his blood relations. Nothing disturbed their friendship. In between fights, they talked as man to man and as pal to pal.”
The benign interpretation of Musharraf’s recent moves is that he’s doing a Major Deane. The reality is somewhat bleaker: Today, even that 200-yard corridor of nominal sovereignty has gone and Islamabad’s Political Agent is a much shrunken figure compared to his predecessors from the Raj. That doesn’t mean “foreign” influence is impossible in Waziristan. Osama bin Laden is, after all, a foreigner, and so are many of the other al-Qaeda A-listers holed up in the tribal lands. Jihadists arrested recently in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia all spent time training in Waziristan, as do Chechen rebels. If another big hit on the US mainland is currently in the works, it’s safe to say it’s being plotted somewhere in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:01 AM

December 29, 2007
Lessons From "The Surge"

From Michael Barone.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:28 PM

December 27, 2007
It Was Only A Matter Of Time

This isn't good news. Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated by a suicide bomber. I'm a little surprised that Musharraf himself has lasted this long, but I imagine he's pretty fanatical about security. I also hope that he has the bombs under control.

Pakistan is probably the most intractable problem we have right now, and in many ways is at the heart of the war. And the notion that "non-interventionalism" will make it go away is hopeless naive.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some thoughts from Michael Ledeen:

The freedom of women in the world—with the frightening prospect of the domination of men by women in any form, from the classroom to the ballot box—drives them around the bend. As she knew.
She was one of many women in the front lines of the war against the terror masters, and I often think that, after the American armed forces, brave women are indeed the greatest threat to our fanatical enemies. And they know it, which is why they killed her.

We can only hope that some good will come out of this. We need a "Peshawar awakening."

[Update at 10 AM CST]

Mark Steyn:

Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.

I've been dismayed since September 11th that the federal leviathan saw it as an opportunity to aggrandize itself and perpetuate its foreign-policy fantasies. My biggest disappointment with the Bush administration is that it didn't see this as an opportunity to clean house in both Foggy Bottom and the intelligence community, instead leaving the incompetent Tenet in charge (who should have been removed before the attacks), and letting the milquetoast Powell and the usual pin-stripers at State continue to run the transnationalist show. And if a Dem, any Dem, is elected next year, it will just go on.

And unfortunately, civil service rules are such that even the most fervent attempts at reform generally lose the battle with the bureaucrats.

[Update at 11 AM CST]

John Podhoretz writes about the American voters delusions about "holidays from history." The campaign so far has been amazingly unsubstantive and pathetic. Particular in the moderating of the clown-show "debates" by the media. I hope that this assassination will create an "Ottumwa" or "Manchester" awakening.

[Early afternoon update]

The idiotic reaction of Bill Richardson:

Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on President Bush to force Musharraf to step down. Until then, Richardson said the U.S. must suspend military aid to the Pakistani government.
"A leader has died, but democracy must live. The United States government cannot stand by and allow Pakistan's return to democracy to be derailed or delayed by violence," Richardson said.

And this is the Democrat with the best foreign policy credentials? As Captain Ed warns:

Richardson fortunately doesn't have a prayer of victory in the primaries. It's worth considering, however, that he will likely be a candidate for Secretary of State in any Democratic administration that wins in November 2008, if not a running mate on the ticket. Keep that in mind when thinking about whether to get involved in the next election.

Indeed.

[Update in the afternoon]

Blame America first. Mike Huckabee is apologizing. Not in my name.

And of course, he doesn't explain just what it is for which we should be asking forgiveness. But isn't it obvious that anything that goes wrong in the world is always our fault?

He really is the Republican Jimmy Carter.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unsurprisingly, Fred Thompson isn't apologizing. Unlike Huckabee, he seems to recognize that we're at war, and not against smokers and overweight people.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:59 AM

December 26, 2007
The Insanity Of The Left

The IDF is being criticized because it doesn't rape enough women:

The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."
The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.

No, it couldn't possibly be that that the Israeli government (like Jews everywhere) abhors rape, and that Israeli soldiers are discouraged from raping women, and punished when they do.

Either way, in the minds of the anti-semites in academia, they can't win.

[Update before bed]

I continue to be boggled by this. Refusing to rape women? Just how evil can you get?

[Thursday morning update]

Jeez... What is it about the self-hating Israeli left and its rape fantasies?

Contacted by the Jewish Week, Laundau confirmed the statements, but said his views had been delivered “with much more sophistication.” He admitted: “I did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped — I did use that word — by the U.S., and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous U.S. intervention in the affairs of the Middle East.”

I think these people need to be on a couch. Not so they can be raped, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:06 PM

December 23, 2007
Coming Home To Baghdad

For Christmas:

...al-Qaeda has been rooted out of Doura and the hundreds of Christian families who left the area are returning.
On Christmas Day they will congregate in the battle-scarred St Mary's Church, where part of the crucifix on its tower is still missing after being shot at.

"We closed the church two years ago because of all the trouble," said the priest, Father Younadim Shamoon, 45, who has decorated its bullet-cratered walls with modest fairy lights.

"But many people are coming back after word got around that the local Muslim people were welcoming us again. We thank God and hope that we can live together again as brothers."

No thanks to Harry Reid.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:14 PM

December 20, 2007
Coming To Their Senses?

This seems like good news:

In his memoirs, Sharif recalls serving time with Zawahiri in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Sharif specifically accuses Zawahiri of informing on his associates to get out of prison. He also calls Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden cowards, accusing them of running out of Afghanistan and leaving wives and children behind to die in the American invasion. He wants them tried before a shari'a court, which would be at least poetic justice for the radical Islamists.
Zawahiri could give a press conference at CENTCOM and still not live down those kind of accusations. The entire mythos of AQ relies on the personal courage of its leaders, who claim to have bested a global superpower in personally liberating Afghanistan. Leaving behind women and children while fleeing a battle doesn't quite match that mythology. If it gains resonance in the ummah, Zawahiri and Osama will discover that interviews with Western journalists won't make up the lost ground.

Critics of Sharif claim that he has been tortured into his recantation. Undoubtedly, the Egyptian authorities have applied their usual techniques to Sharif, but Rohan Gunaranta says it matches a trend in Egypt over the last few years. The author of Inside al-Qaeda believes that Muslims have begun to see the disaster that 9/11 has brought to their standing in the world, and even the radicals want a new direction. The personal revelations of Zawahiri as a snitch may make it easier for them to make that transition, and for us to then destroy what remains of AQ.

I think that Ed is a little overoptimistic on that last, but it would sure be nice if he's right.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here's some more good news that would seem to be related:

We have failed to offer a robust response to the brutal wave of human sacrifice. This failure has allowed extremists to garner headlines and define the agenda without meeting an equally passionate response from the moderate center. It is long past time to mount a vigorous campaign against the cult of death and reaffirm a culture of life.
An essential first step is admitting we have a problem. The terrible attacks of recent days occurred during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's most solemn act of atonement. The introspection and self-criticism of this sacred time offer an ideal moment to acknowledge the sacrilege of terrorism and the sin of being a passive bystander.

We must also avoid the temptation to rationalize murder. "The attack is wrong," goes a common refrain, "but we must understand the root causes." There can be no "buts" - no qualifications or justifications that indulge the political grievances and religious sanction claimed by extremists.

More of this, please.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AM

Iraqis Taking Back Their Country

When even the Grauniad can't avoid reporting it, you know things have to be getting pretty good:

Not so long ago Sunni and Shia gunmen were fighting for control of the suburb, near the road to Baghdad's airport. As a result, the once religiously mixed housing projects that lie either side of al-Amil's main street soon separated into Shia or Sunni enclaves.
But Muhammad, a Sunni Arab, and his Shia colleagues in the neighbourhood watch group are determined to reverse the ethnic cleansing. Last month, the group agreed to protect a Sunni mosque in his street from local Shia militias. They have also been mediating between the divided communities either side of the highway.

The result was an understanding: Sunni families would return to their former homes in the heavily Shia areas, while Shia families crossed back into the mainly Sunni streets. The two communities agreed to guarantee the safety of the returnees. Such was the popular backing for the deal that even the local Mahdi army commander had to acquiesce.

"We've been neighbours for 25 years and we feel like brothers," said Muhammad. "We will help them to guard and respect their mosques, and they won't harm me or my family."

Nobody tell Harry Reid. Or if you do, make sure that he doesn't have any sharp objects around, in his despondency.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 AM

December 17, 2007
Not A "Rational Process"

Some thoughts on fear of religion.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:08 PM

A Contrast

I'm not a big Giuliani fan, and a lot of people have been talking up McCain as tough on the war, but I found this an interesting contrast. I'd have trouble pulling the lever for McCain. He's not Jimmy Carter, or Huckabee, but I don't think that he'd have any problem with the current State Department, which is one of the many federal agencies that needs to be azed and rebuilt.

[Update]

A good (and related) point about Giuliani:

Frum argues, in response to a post of mine, that Giuliani is the anti-terrorists' candidate because he has a proven track record of riding herd on the bureaucracies beneath him to accomplish his objectives. This line of argument would be a lot more persuasive if, in the years preceding Sept. 11, Giuliani had managed to get his fire and police departments to be able to communicate with each other in emergencies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:05 PM

December 16, 2007
Why The Terrorists Hate Us

Because we put birds inside other birds.

Just an extreme example of the lunacy and denial on the part of the left about the Islamists.

And here are some related thoughts on denial in Canada about the Religion of Peace™:

It's cultural, it's because of colonialism, it's because of Palestine, because of Iraq, because of misunderstanding. Because of anything other than Islam.
Only a bigot would argue that every Muslim was violent or opposed to Western freedom. But only a coward or a liar would argue that there was not a profound and deeply worrying link between conservative Islam and myriad acts of terror, intolerance and hysterical anger.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:32 PM

December 15, 2007
Not Just Afghanistan

Here's another example of the insanity of the War on (Some) Drugs, and its incompatibility with waging a real war:

It's a bad idea to keep so many people in prison, and it's a worse idea to do so and then have them exposed to radical "clerics."

Yes. A really bad idea.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AM

December 05, 2007
Some Thoughts On Iran And The NIE

Not from me, but from Victor Davis Hanson. Here are a couple:

Why would a country that produces 4 million barrels of oil per day at $90 per barrel not use its windfall profits to expand and refurbish an ailing oil industry to get in further on the obscene profit-making, rather than divert resources in the billions for the acquisition of a reactor that is not needed for power production (natural gas is still burned off at the wellhead)?
We suffer collective amnesia in suggesting that the chill in Iranian relations was a phenomenon of the last few years alone. Not restoring formal diplomatic relations was a bipartisan policy, presumably based on the notion that neither the Carter nor the Clinton administration ever got genuine positive feedback from their efforts to expand diplomatic channels with the Iranians. After all, what President wanted to be responsible for opening-and losing-another embassy in Teheran? In this regard, the recent hostage-taking of British soldiers abroad reaffirms that Iranian ways have not changed much since 1979.

They are food for thought.

[Thursday morning update]

Some more thoughts, from John Bolton:

...the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point. Moreover, the risks and returns of pursuing a diplomatic strategy are policy calculations, not intelligence judgments. The very public rollout in the NIE of a diplomatic strategy exposes the biases at work behind the Potemkin village of "intelligence."

It is amazing how many people who have been quick to criticize the NIE in the past have been so eager to embrace it now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:47 PM

December 03, 2007
The Return Of WW III?

Ron Rosenbaum is worried about Pakistan. With good reason, I think.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:46 AM

November 27, 2007
Report From Fallujah

From Michael Totten.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:05 AM

November 24, 2007
Blindly To The Slaughterhouse

Mark Steyn writes about the silence of the artistic lambs.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 PM

Not A Reactor?

Did Israel destroy a Syrian nuclear bomb factory a few weeks ago?

I wouldn't be surprised. And I still wonder how much of Saddam's WMD material was moved there before the war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 AM

November 21, 2007
Coming Home

Iraqis are returning to Iraq from their exile.

What do they know that Harry Reid doesn't? He must be very disappointed.

[Update a little later]

This isn't exactly hot off the press (it was posted at the end of August) but David Kilcullen, one of General Petraeus' advisors, provides a good (but long) description of what was going on in Iraq at that time, that explains much of what we're seeing today.

[Update later morning]

Ralph Peters: What went right in Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:04 AM

November 20, 2007
"I Told You So"

That's what John McCain is saying about his stance on Iraq, and the consistency with which he's been calling for more troops from the beginning. And he's right, he has.

The problem is, I remain unconvinced that more troops were the answer, then, or now. I always thought that the surge was misnamed. I think that there are two other factors that are as important, and perhaps much more important, than troop levels per se.

First was the change of tactics, in which rather than hunkering down in bases and training Iraqis to go out and fight the insurgency, Petraeus put the troops out in the field and worked with the locals.

But I think that the most important factor was simply that the Iraqis tired of the insurgency and Al Qaeda. I think that Petraeus was the right man at the right time, but I don't think that it takes anything away from him to question how well the strategy would have worked two, or three years ago. It probably would have been better than what we were doing at the time, but I think that the time had to be ripe for the awakenings in Anbar and Diyala, and now in Baghdad. It may be that the Iraqis simply had to go through this brutal period to understand the barbarity and viciousness of the fundamentalists that were attempting to colonize them, as they had Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the benefits of working with Americans and each other, rather than trying to fight each other for the spoils of the war.

The Sunnis are probably finally coming to the realization that they are never going to rule over the majority as they had under the Ba'athists, and seem to now be ready to accommodate themselves to the new Iraq, and are trying to cut deals. Again, I don't think that's something that could have happened overnight.

I don't think that it was ever realistic to think that we were going to get a well-functioning democracy quickly in Iraq, even if we managed to get votes much more quickly than most predicted. Anyone who has studied military history knows that wars, and insurrections, are generally long protracted periods of one disaster after another, until one side finally throws in the towel. World War II was a series of bloody blunders, in both theaters, but we had the will and the resources to continue on regardless until the enemy was finally defeated. That's why I was never as critical of Bush and Rumsfeld as many were. Not to say I think the decisions flawless, but sometimes things have to happen at their own pace, regardless of tactics. The only wars that America has lost are those in which it got tired, and gave up.

One fears that the attention-deficit, teevee-remote, video-game generation won't have the patience to win the long war against our new ideological enemy, which is likely to continue for decades, as our war against totalitarian communism did. But give the president credit for standing firm in the face of the surrender demands of the Democrats after the election. I think that history, however else it judges him, will be kind to him in that regard, and less so to the Reids and Pelosis.

We'll never know, of course, if more troops or better tactics would have gotten us to this point sooner, though if we have to do something similar in the future, we may take some lessons from Iraq, and try it. But history doesn't really allow controlled experiments. In any event, while Senator McCain can be praised for consistency, it remains unobvious to me that his prescriptions would have been as effective at the time as he wants to claim now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:43 AM

November 19, 2007
The Good News From Iraq

Christopher Hitchens has some thoughts:

As I began by saying, I am not at all certain that any of this apparently good news is really genuine or will be really lasting. However, I am quite sure both that it could be true and that it would be wonderful if it were to be true. What worries me about the reaction of liberals and Democrats is not the skepticism, which is pardonable, but the dank and sinister impression they give that the worse the tidings, the better they would be pleased. The latter mentality isn't pardonable and ought not to be pardoned, either.

Indeed. I have a feeling that the Dems aren't going to have as good an election next year as they hope. Particularly since they continue to delude themselves that they won last year because the American people want to surrender in Iraq:

All signs indicate that Democrats will continue proposing such measures as long as Mr. Bush remains in office and troops remain in Iraq. “We are going to keep plugging away,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Democratic lawmakers and strategists on Capitol Hill said their hope was that even if Republican support for Mr. Bush’s strategy held firm, voters would reward Democrats for their efforts at the polls next November, and that there was no risk to failing again and again.

They misjudge this risk at their peril. The risk is not of their failing, but of their appearing too eager for defeat, and in increasingly looking like they are living in an alternate reality.

[Update about 2:30 PM EST]

Jack Kelly writes about the quagmire in Iraq.

Al Qaeda's quagmire:

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation," Osama bin Laden said in an audiotape posted on Islamic Web sites in December 2004. "It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate."
Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq. All for naught. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7. This follows the expulsion of al-Qaida from two previous "capitals" of its Islamic Republic of Iraq, Ramadi and Baquba.

Al-Qaida is evacuating populated areas and is trying to establish hideouts in the Hamrin mountains in northern Iraq, with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and former insurgent allies who have turned on them, in hot pursuit. Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone.

Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians.

"Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage.

Canadian columnist David Warren speculated some years ago that enticing al-Qaida to fight there was one of the reasons why President Bush decided to invade Iraq. The administration has made so many egregious mistakes that I doubt the "flypaper" strategy was deliberate. But it has worked out that way. It may have been a mistake for the United States to go to war in Iraq. But it's pretty clear now it was a blunder for al-Qaida to have done so.

[Update about 4 PM EST]

Max Singer writes about the new Copperhead Democrats, and why 2008 may be a lot like 1864.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:35 AM

He Shoots, He Scores!

Norman Podhoretz, 1, Andrew Sullivan and The Economist, nothing, in the latters' attempts to minimize the danger of a nuclear mullahcracy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:08 AM

What Civil War?

Sunni and Shiite are uniting to fight Al Qaeda:

Commanders in the field think they have tapped into a genuine public expression of reconciliation that has outpaced the elected government's progress on mending the sectarian rift.
"What you find is these people have lived together for decades with no problem until the terrorists arrived and tried to instigate the problem," said Lt. Col. Valery Keaveny, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 509th Airborne unit in the Iskandariya area south of Baghdad. "So they are perfectly willing to work together to keep the terrorists out."

Note that this is grass roots, bottom-up cooperation. Over time, let's hope that it filters its way up to the government itself. If Iraq is really becoming a democracy, it should.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of civil wars, it's been a dozen dozen years, seven score and four, since Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address. Here's my post on the subject from three years ago.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:14 AM

November 18, 2007
Who Did Iran Surrender To?

in Iraq?

I'm guessing it's not Harry and Nancy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:26 PM

November 16, 2007
"Tell The Christians To Come Home"

Michael Yon, with more signs that the war is over, and Al Qaeda defeated.

Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s. Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home. The Christians who might see these photos likely will recognize their friends here. The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, “Come back to Iraq. Come home.” They wanted the cameras to catch it. They wanted to spread the word: Come home. Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. “Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.”

Here's a dispatch from Ramadi as well. And Austin Bay sends a message to bin Laden.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AM

November 14, 2007
Police Work Won the War

In Iraq, databases of DNA, fingerprints and iris scans have been collected from entire city populations. They brought in ballistics and other forensics experts. They train troops in staying alive and police in evidence handling. They conduct IED clearing operations. They analyze the IEDs. They analyze, profile, they catch in the act sometimes via UAV and roll up the cell.

Then they do it again when the cells evolve to foil the latest counters.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 01:27 PM

November 12, 2007
Musharraf's Problem, And Ours

Stanley Kurtz writes about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Tragically, this may be the only solution:

No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes…are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.

Nor does anyone else, so far, but it may be inevitable, for some future administration, of either party.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:43 AM

November 10, 2007
Famous Last Words

Are we too cheap to stop asteroid strikes? You decide:

Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, said the agency could not do more to detect NEOs "given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with."

If there is a one in 26 million chance that an asteroid strike will kill everyone in the world, that's an expectation of 230 deaths per year. That's within a stone's throw of the average number of deaths from terrorist attacks on US soil in the last ten years. It's interesting to watch the difference between overreacting to terrorism and underreacting to understood harms such as auto accidents.

Not that I think war in Iraq was a bad idea, just that 'War on Terror' is an inapt name. The operation name 'Iraqi Freedom' was more apt.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:38 PM

"How We Won"

Greyhawk boldly writes that, though the media hasn't noticed, we've won the war (or at least the battle of Iraq), despite the attempts earlier this year by the Congressional Democrats to seize defeat from the jaws of victory:

...few people are paying attention to what those of us who are here fighting this war might have to say. Everyone is focused on the death metrics, and everyone is wrong. Call it "hearts and minds" or people fighting for their lives and futures who do not fear turning to us for help and helping us in return without fear of retribution from an enemy falling fast - these are the numbers that tell the tale. These are the numbers that indicate something worthwhile. These are the numbers that will drive the death metrics further down and keep them there.

He has a lot of links to support his thesis.

And as I've noted before, it's all about the evolutionary pressures favoring cooperation over chaos.

To use combat (or even civilian) casualties as a metric for progress in a war is puerile, but it serves well the purpose of those opposed to this war, and war in general (and particularly wars waged by the BusHitler). Had we done so in the second World War, one would have thought that we were losing all through late 1944 and early 1945 in Europe, and in the summer of '45 in the Pacific--after all, casualties were soaring as we took territory, and the Japanese were unrelenting in their brutality against the population in the territories they still occupied. Fortunately, the press was smarter then, and knew how to measure progress--by territory increasingly controlled by the victors, island after island, sea after sea.

Similarly, we've been seizing territory from Al Qaeda in Iraq, town by town, district by district, to the point at which they've been completely routed, and the Iraqis now seem ready to forge a new nation. (And for those of limited patience, it's always useful to recall that it took our own nation eight years from Cornwallis' surrender until we had a constitution in place).

This doesn't, of course, indicate that we can immediately pull the troops out, any more than we could have done so in Europe or Japan after the surrenders there. Now, as then, the war is merely transitioning from the major battle that we just won in Iraq, to the larger upcoming ones on its borders, and until its neighbors (all of them, really, other than Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait) stop fomenting sectarianism and hatred, Iraq will remain at risk of slipping back into the abyss, despite the hard-fought victory of Americans and Iraqis. The question for the administration at this point must be, what next?

Tomorrow is the 89th anniversary of the end of the war that was to end all wars. One can hope that there will, in time, be the last war, but that one wasn't it, nor was the one against the Axis, or the one against the Soviets. Each of these wars, in fact, contained the seeds and provided fertile ground for the next, just as the end of the Cold War resulted in a resurgence of violent Islam. We are now deep in the middle of another world war--a fourth one, both cold and hot.

Will it be the last one? Let us hope.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:41 AM

November 08, 2007
"Welcome To The New Political Discourse"

James Kirchick explains what a "neocon" is.

Nice to know, since I've been (moronically) called one many times (as well as a "conservative" and a "right winger" and a "wingnut").

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:18 PM

November 07, 2007
An Iwo Jima Moment?

If things continue to go well, this photo should win a Pulitzer.

But probably not in today's media environment. After all, it goes against the narrative. And of course, we know how today's media would have treated that moment.

[Late evening update]

"Wretchard" (aka Richard Fernandez) has related, and more articulate (as usual) thoughts.

[Update on Thursday afternoon]

Here's some more good news:

A rare visit by a delegation representing Sunni tribes in the Province of Anbar to the predominantly Shiite Province of Qadissiya is yet another signal that Iraqis are keen to put an end to sectarian strife.
The Anbar delegation included major Sunni tribes who have formed a coalition and raised a tribal force to check Qaeda influence in their areas.

Sheikh Mohammed Shaalan said both Sunni and Shiite tribes in the two provinces have vowed to bring national reconciliation to success.

Shaalan, who spoke for the meeting, said a tribal delegation from Qadissiya would also travel to Anbar in the near future.

“We have agreed to support he government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki which is working hard to enable tribes assume a better role in solving conflicts away from sectarianism and factionalism,” he said.

Shaalan said the two sides signed an agreement under which they will coordinate their efforts and raise resources “to combat crime and punish those attacking and killing security and police personnel.”

I'm amused by those in comments who seem to be quite upset that the Iraqis refuse to hate George Bush as much as the commenters do, or as much as the commenters think they should.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:38 PM

November 06, 2007
My Book To Help America

Unlike many of the items that Iowahawk has unearthed, this one is real, and provides a fascinating (and somewhat depressing) contrast of three different decades, and our national attitudes toward war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:35 AM

November 01, 2007
Propaganda

Michael Totten writes about what the Army wanted him to see.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:04 AM

Just A Coincidence, I'm Sure

A good find by Donald Sensing:

"... as foreign aid to the Palestinians increases, so do Palestinian acts of murder. When foreign aid to Palestinians decreases, Palestinian acts of murder correspondingly decrease. In fact, the more money they receive, the more murders the Palestinians commit, the less money they receive, the less murders they commit – it is practically a 100% correlation.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:07 AM

"Al Qaeda Has Been Defeated In Iraq"

At least that's what the Iraqis are saying, according to Michael Yon:

Sheik Omar, who has gained the respect of American combat leaders for his intelligence and organizational skills, said the tough line against al Qaeda is also enforced at the tribal level. According to Sheik Omar, the Jabouri tribe, too, is actively committed to destroying al Qaeda. So much so, that Jabouri tribal leaders have decided they would “kill their own sons” if any aided al Qaeda. To underscore the point, he went on to say that about 70 Jabouri “sons” had been killed by the Jabouri tribe so far.

Of course, there are many in denial that Al Qaeda was ever in Iraq, so they'll continue to dream, wistfully, of an American defeat.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:28 AM

October 31, 2007
The Awakening Spreads

...to Taji:

"(The Taji Awakening) involves all the sheiks (in Taji), both Sunni and Shi'a. Over the period of four weeks now, it has gathered momentum," Burke said. "The movement here has become dynamic."
He said that the largest gathering of Sunni and Shi'a sheiks in Iraq occurred on Aug. 20 in the Taji area and that the terrorist forces in the area are now "on the run" because of the sectarian reconciliation. As a result, the overall quality of life in rural North Baghdad Province has improved, with marketplaces "flourishing" and critical infrastructure needs being met, according to Burke.

I've commented before about the evolution of cooperation, and its potential role in Iraq. It seems, finally, to be happening. Bad news for those who have been fully invested in an American defeat, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:05 AM

October 30, 2007
A Modest Proposal

Ron Silver has some suggestions of things we can do to make the world like us more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:56 AM

October 24, 2007
Che Guevara...

Man of God?

I am actually quite optimistic that at least some (more) lefties will wake up, as time goes by, to the absurdity of them being in alliance with radical Islamists. The only rationale for this otherwise ridiculous arrangement is (see above) that the enemy of your enemy (the USA) is your friend, no matter what. If you really do think that the USA is the biggest baddest thing in the world and that curbing its power is the only thing that matters (think Hitler Churchill Stalin), then this alliance makes a kind of primitive sense. Although even if you do think that, encouraging the development of rampant capitalism everywhere except in the USA would make a lot more sense. That really would reduce the USA to the margins of history. But, if you think that lefty-ism is anything at all to do with positive support for civilisation, decency, freedom, female (in particular) emancipation, life being nice even if you do not submit to Islam etc., then you should surely turn your back on all such alliances.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:35 PM

October 22, 2007
The Contrast

Michael Yon:

I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Key words here being "thinking person."

Read the whole thing, and hit his tip jar so he can keep reporting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:28 AM

October 18, 2007
Meet The New Nazis

...same as the old Nazis. We might have defeated them (at least temporarily) in Europe, but the same mentality is thriving in the Middle East, and has been for decades. And it makes the notion that Israelis are the new Nazis all the more stupid.

[Update late morning]

Speaking of stuck on stupid, here's Exhibit A: Ward Churchill gives a speech. Theme: Zionists are Nazis.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AM

October 17, 2007
Wishing Away Reality

Many may want to pretend that Al Qaeda and Iran aren't at war with us, but they know better.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:10 PM

Outraged

Dutch Muslim youths rioted and burned cars, apparently in protest over the killing of someone who attacked police officers with a knife, and perceptions that they're seen as violent. As the British foreign service used to say about many cultures, their primary problem was that they lacked a sense of irony.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:02 AM

October 15, 2007
Counterproductive

Michael Yon reports that not only has Al Qaeda lost its war in Iraq, but that its attempts to foment a civil war have backfired on them. It may be that the incipient civil war there (which Yon was the first to note) is over before it really got started, and once again, the war opponents (who remain in denial about the enemy, and fantasize that this never was, and never would be, more than a civil war) are behind the curve. This possibility is buttressed by events like the Shia awakening.

Yon also has a much longer recent dispatch from Iraq.

[Update on Tuesday morning]

More good news from Iraq (and bad news for Al Qaeda, and those who continue to hope that the US loses):

...in order for the advances to be permanent, something else must take the place of U.S. kinetic operations. Solution? Concerned citizens. One reason for al Qaeda’s misadventure in Iraq is armed and concerned citizens. Many Somalians and Syrians have been in Haditha (close to the border) and elsewhere in Iraq, but between Baghdad and Arab Jabour:
“The al Qaeda that’s here is not guys … from Syria or Somalia. They are local people who grew up here,” Adgie said. “They were bad, bad teenagers who stole cars, and (with) the lure of fast money from al Qaeda … they joined al Qaeda, and they carry out al Qaeda’s bidding.”
These home-grown terrorists employed “ultra-violence” against their fellow villagers to “strike fear in their hearts,” the colonel explained. Coalition forces from the final phase of the U.S. troop surge streamed into the region earlier this summer.

“In early August, we started seeing the first of the concerned local citizens come forward,” Adgie said. “And they started providing us with just a lot of information on who the bad guys were.”

The “concerned citizen” movement was greatly bolstered last month, the colonel explained, when a retired brigadier general from Saddam Hussein’s former army encouraged more local people to assist the coalition effort.

“(He) decided, ‘Enough is enough. I’ll be the leader,’” Adgie said. “He stepped up, stepped out into the light of day and helped us recruit this concerned citizen organization.”

That organization has grown from 87 to 538 people in just seven weeks, the colonel explained, and its members provide crucial information.

“Al Qaeda operates under a veil of secrecy. No one knows who al Qaeda is,” Adgie said. “Well that’s no longer possible when the guy you went to high school with is a concerned citizen, and he can look you in the eye and say: ‘You’re al Qaeda.’”

Also, watch out for armed and dangerous grannies.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

As noted in comments by Leland, Orwell would be smiling grimly. "Killed enemy troops" have now been redefined by the press as "victims of war." Those brutal Americans. How dare they murder people who are attempting to kill them?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:49 AM

October 09, 2007
Fallout Shelters?

I don't know if I agree with this post (and haven't given it much thought), but it's worth discussing. I remember shopping for them with my dad in the late fifties, though we never ended up getting one.

That was then, this is now. Do they make sense in the current environment?

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts on the subject from Dr. Kurtz.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:06 PM

Under Distant Stars

Michael Yon writes about the state of medical support in the war, which is surely the best in any war, any time in history. But he also writes about some things that never change:

The soldier who had been ambushed by the IED in Iraq was expected to die very soon. I was a few feet away when a call came in from a close family member. The family member did not inquire about his condition or what happened. This family member only wanted to know when the soldier would die, and who would receive his death benefit. In less civilized times, people like that roamed the battlefield with tools to pry gold teeth from the jaws of fallen soldiers, but it was distressing to imagine that a family member would do the same.

Yes, distressing, but sadly, not surprising, for anyone who watches the freak shows on daytime television.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:36 AM

Will History Repeat?

Let's hope so.

The Democrats, meanwhile, held a convention in late August, nominating without serious controversy George B. McClellan, the general whom Lincoln had dismissed as head of the Union forces in Virginia because he would not fight. The Democratic platform denounced "four years of failure" in the war effort and the destruction of "public liberty and private right." It called for the restoration of the rights of the states unimpaired, and a settlement of the issues central to the war—primarily slavery—at a post-war "convention." It was a platform for peace at any price, which Nevins called a document of "submission."
But then the dawn broke. On September 1, the news reached Washington that Atlanta had fallen. Other victories came on as Grant approached closer to Richmond and held on against ferocious counterattacks by Lee. Despite these hints of impending change in the direction of the war, McClellan refused to repudiate the Democratic platform, declaring in his acceptance of the nomination that if "any one State is willing to return to the Union, it should be received at once, with a full guarantee of all its constitutional rights." The results of four years of calamitous war and bloody sacrifice would thus be thrown away.

Nevins writes: "[T]he damage done to the Democratic Party by the platform could not be undone. Its silly and evil stigmatization of the heroic war effort as worthless gave the Northern millions an image of the Democratic Party they could never forget. That phrase upon the failure of the war was to echo down the coming decades...and would cost the party votes for a generation."

It's certainly what the new Copperheads deserve.

[Update a few minutes later]

They may already be starting to figure it out:

...there’s another driving factor under the radar: a latent concern that Iraq may not be as favorable a political issue for Democrats a year from now, as images of brigades of U.S. troops coming home could well be flickering on American television screens.
“They’ve run millions of dollars of ads and had untold rallies and protests, but they’re actually losing approval” on the war, said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “How’s it going to look when troops start coming home next year and, while most people are holding a ‘Welcome Home’ sign, they’re left holding a MoveOn.org ad or Code Pink banner?”

Also, Victor Davis Hanson writes about the untold "colonels' war."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:52 AM

October 08, 2007
Is It Dead, Jim?

What happened to Al Qaeda's Ramadan offensive?

Most people (and all Democrats) fail to appreciate the fact that al Qaeda was directly responsible for the enormous rise in civilian casualties that occurred in 2006 and that continued until recently. As such, they do not really have a way to conceptualize the enormous drop in casualties that occurred last month and that has been maintained through the first week of this month. Once you understand the role played by al Qaeda, then, if al Qaeda really has been quashed (big "if"), I do not see how civilian casualties will ever again climb to their previous levels. The two main sources of civilian casualties in Iraq -- deaths from al Qaeda's suicide bombers and retaliatory execution-style killings by Shiite militias in Baghdad -- are both under control. If al Qaeda can no longer deliberately enrage the Shiite militias by slaughtering hundreds of innocent Shiite civilians at a time, then where are the extra 1000 deaths going to come from this month?

An interesting question. But it does look like Al Qaeda's attempt at a Tet of their own failed, despite the Dems' fervent desire for a repeat.

[Update in the evening]

More thoughts from Omar Fadhil, in Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:38 PM

October 07, 2007
What Did Israel Do To Syria On September 6th?

An interesting analysis, and speculation. Whatever it was, the silence from all quarters does indeed indicate that it was very big:

Apart from averting the threat that was developing at Dayr as Zawr, Israel’s strategic position has been strengthened by the raid. Firstly, it has — as Major General Amos Yadlin, the head of Israel’s military intelligence, noted — ‘restored its deterrence’, which was damaged by its inept handling of the war in the Lebanon last year. Secondly, it has reminded Damascus that Israel knows what it is up to and is capable of striking anywhere within its territory.
Equally, Iran has been put on notice that Israel will not tolerate any nuclear threat. Washington, too, has been reminded that Israel’s intelligence is often a better guide than its own in the region, a crucial point given the divisions between the Israeli and American intelligence assessments about the development of the Iranian bomb. Hezbollah, the Iranian/Syrian proxy force, has also been put on notice that the air-defence system it boasted would alter the strategic balance in the region is impotent in the face of Israeli technology.

I suspect that this is good news for the good guys. Another benefit not mentioned, but that I've noted previously, is that it no doubt significantly depreciated the value of Russian armament on the terrorist market.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:53 PM

An American Hero

Christopher Hitchens writes about a remarkable young man:

I became a trifle choked up after that, but everybody else also managed to speak, often reading poems of their own composition, and as the day ebbed in a blaze of glory over the ocean, I thought, Well, here we are to perform the last honors for a warrior and hero, and there are no hysterical ululations, no shrieks for revenge, no insults hurled at the enemy, no firing into the air or bogus hysterics. Instead, an honest, brave, modest family is doing its private best. I hope no fanatical fool could ever mistake this for weakness. It is, instead, a very particular kind of strength. If America can spontaneously produce young men like Mark, and occasions like this one, it has a real homeland security instead of a bureaucratic one. To borrow some words of George Orwell's when he first saw revolutionary Barcelona, "I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 PM

October 05, 2007
The Good Old Days

Remember when Al Gore was castigating George Bush for ignoring Saddam's ties to terrorism? Gee, I wonder what changed?

Calculating and cynical? Democrats? How can you think such a thing?

[Update late morning]

When is Al Gore going to apologize to George Bush and the nation for lying about Saddam's ties to terrorism?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:26 AM

Sounds Like An Insurance Policy

Apparently, the Dutch government was willing to provide security to Ayaan Hirsi Ali only as long as there was no threat to her.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 AM

October 03, 2007
The Current State Of Play In Iraq

Here's a long, but interesting analysis. Doom mongers, and the Defeatocrats will hate it:

The great question in deciding whether to keep fighting in Iraq is not about the morality and self-interest of supporting a struggling democracy that is also one of the most important countries in the world. The question is whether the war is winnable and whether we can help the winning of it. The answer is made much easier by the fact that three and a half years after the start of the insurgency, most of the big questions in Iraq have been resolved. Moreover, they have been resolved in ways that are mostly towards the positive end of the range of outcomes imagined at the start of the project. The country is whole. It has embraced the ballot box. It has created a fair and popular constitution. It has avoided all-out civil war. It has not been taken over by Iran. It has put an end to Kurdish and marsh Arab genocide, and anti-Shia apartheid. It has rejected mass revenge against the Sunnis. As shown in the great national votes of 2005 and the noisy celebrations of the Iraq football team's success in July, Iraq survived the Saddam Hussein era with a sense of national unity; even the Kurds—whose reluctant commitment to autonomy rather than full independence is in no danger of changing—celebrated. Iraq's condition has not caused a sectarian apocalypse across the region. The country has ceased to be a threat to the world or its region. The only neighbours threatened by its status today are the leaders in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran.

Just the leaders we want to be threatened. And ultimately, removed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:45 AM

October 02, 2007
Coming Clean

Israel is now admitting that it hit a Syrian target a few weeks ago. Both the Syrians and the Iranians have to be pretty nervous, now that they know the expensive Russian air defenses that they spent so much on are worthless (at least when operated by Syrians).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:38 AM

October 01, 2007
"We Are So Desperate For Your Help"

No one tell Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, but Al Qaeda thinks they're losing in Iraq.

Ain't it a shame?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:15 AM

Turning The Other Cheek

We can't necessarily remove every dictatorial regime on the planet, but there were many reasons to remove the one in Iraq. Critics of that decision often claim that it was up to the Iraqi people to stand up to Saddam and remove him if that's what they wanted. Some of them (particularly the pacifists among them) even cite Mahatma Gandhi as an example, and advocate the use of non-violent resistance techniques.

What they ignore in doing so is that Gandhi faced an almost unique situation--imperialists who were not monsters, and were unwilling to put down the rebellion with the brutality necessary to do so. To think that Gandhi's tactics would have been effective against a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Saddam, is foolish.

And here we have a textbook example, that demonstrates the fatuity of such thinking. Who, after all, is more pacifist, and (according to their theory, should be more successful with such tactics) than Buddhist monks?

Liselotte Agerlid, who is now in Thailand, said that the Burmese people now face possibly decades of repression. "The Burma revolt is over," she added.
"The military regime won and a new generation has been violently repressed and violently denied democracy. The people in the street were young people, monks and civilians who were not participating during the 1988 revolt.

"Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear."

Mrs Agerlid said Rangoon is heavily guarded by soldiers.

"There are extremely high numbers of soldiers in Rangoon's streets," she added. "Anyone can see it is absolutely impossible for any demonstration to gather, or for anyone to do anything.

"People are scared and the general assessment is that the fight is over. We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned."

The diplomat also said that three monasteries were raided yesterday afternoon and are now totally abandoned.

At his border hideout last night, 42-year-old Mr Win said he hopes to cross into Thailand and seek asylum at the Norwegian Embassy.

The 42-year-old chief of military intelligence in Rangoon's northern region, added: "I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks.

"They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this."

But such regimes can always find people who will not refuse (and some who will even take pleasure). If there is a solution to tyranny and dictatorship, it does not lie in passivity and non-violence. Or "dialogue."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:07 AM

News That's Not News

At least at the New York Times. Or if it was "fit to print," they buried it pretty well.

"US Military Deaths In Iraq Lowest In Fourteen Months."

Guess it doesn't fit the template. Or help the Defeatocrats.

[Update in the afternoon]

It's not just the military deaths that are dropping.

I should note, for anti-war loons. I don't actually put that much stock in these kinds of statistics, for reasons I mentioned in comments--they don't actually necessarily presage the future. I simply point them out to those who are so eager to leap on them when they think that they tell the false narrative that they want told.

[Update in mid afternoon]

For those who are into this kind of numerology, here is a lot more analysis by John Wixted.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:01 AM

Not "Fear," But Anger

I agree with Ron Rosenbaum:

I just don’t get the desperate need for so many commentators left and right to twist themselves into knots of such clueless sophistry to trivialize a fascist regime, to prove somehow that by failing to speak out against Iran’s Stasi like regime that tortures and murders dissidents and heretics, they are somehow being braver and more sophisticated than the “fearful” who actually did speak out.
I have to admit I’m still shocked by the failure of so many of the commentariat in the MSM and the blogosphere to have the moral clarity to express outrage, shocked by their impulse instead to find ways to deny or trivialize Hitlerism and the need to confront it—especially by those in the moral witness line of work. The self-congratulatory (I’m so fearless!) way they strained to find eight different ways to excuse and diminish what Ahmadinejad said is something they will have to explain to the Iranian student in the Observer story.

[Update late morning]

On a slightly lighter (or lower?) note, Iowahawk has another dialog with evil.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:50 AM

September 29, 2007
A Split In The Jihad Movement?

Some interesting, and little reported activities in Waziristan and the Pakistan/Afghanistan border:

You may remember a couple of months ago a report that al Qaeda and its affiliates had abandoned their training camps in Pakistan along the Afghan border. The initial report caused quite a blog storm but soon the mystery was forgotten. According to AI, which links to references for all of this, the US got fed up with not being able to reach al Qaeda inside Pakistan. Then a few months back the US government told the Pakistani government that we had the coordinates for twenty-nine terror training bases and in a week we will be destroying them (perhaps on Cheney's visit this summer). The intent was to drive the terrorists from those camps so we could get to them.
It worked. That's why those camps emptied out.

So the US left the terrorists an escape route into Tora Bora. Once they had detected a large group of al Qaeda at the fortress and the likelihood of High Value Targets as determined by large scale security detachments, the US dropped the curtain on the escape routes back into Pakistan. We have been pounding the hell out of them for weeks in near complete secrecy.

But an observer may wonder why, if al Qaeda had to vacate the camps, didn't they just go to other hideouts in Pakistan? According to this article in the Telegraph:

The Uzbeks are a surviving remnant of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qa'eda affiliate that fought with the Taliban against the Americans in 2001.
Its surviving members fled into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt where earlier this year their hosts turned against them following a dispute. Afghan leaders say that the Uzbeks were recently given the choice to fight the Americans in Afghanistan or face annihilation by the local tribes.

At least one sizeable group of al-Qa'eda and Taliban fighters is continuing to resist despite heavy bombing raids and attacks from US Special Forces. American military spokesmen declined to corroborate the claim, saying the operation was ongoing.

As a reminder, "Uzbeks" is a synonym for al Qaeda in the Pakistani border region and what the locals call all foreign jihadists. So the reporting from Pakistan earlier this year was spot on. Some powerful Taliban leaders have turned on al Qaeda and when their terror camps were targeted by the US they had nowhere else to go.

I blame George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:57 AM

September 27, 2007
Iran In Panic?

Let's hope so. At least, that is, as long as they don't actually have nukes...

Why would the Syrian government be so tight-lipped about an act of war perpetrated on their soil? The first half of the answer lies in this story that appeared in the Israeli media last month (8/13): Syria's Antiaircraft System Most Advanced In World. Syria has gone on a profligate buying spree, spending vast sums on Russian systems, 'considered the cutting edge in aircraft interception technology.' Syria now 'possesses the most crowded antiaircraft system in the world,' with 'more than 200 antiaircraft batteries of different types,' some of which are so new that they have been installed in Syria 'before being introduced into Russian operation service.' While you're digesting that, take a look at the map of Syria: Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge antiaircraft missile batteries when that penetration took place on September 6th. Nothing.
El blanko. Silence. The systems didn't even light up, gave no indication whatever of any detection of enemy aircraft invading Syrian airspace, zip, zero, nada. The Israelis (with a little techie assistance from us) blinded the Russkie antiaircraft systems so completely the Syrians didn't even know they were blinded. Now you see why the Syrians have been scared speechless. They thought they were protected - at enormous expense - only to discover they are defenseless. As in naked. Thus the Great Iranian Freak-Out - for this means Iran is just as nakedly defenseless as Syria.

Couldn't happen to a nicer government, if true.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:11 PM

Last Bastion In Baghdad

Bill Roggio reports on the efforts to continue to cleanse Iraq's capital of Al Qaeda.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:53 AM

September 24, 2007
And They Were So Close, Too

Syrian officials say that the IAF strike has severely damaged hopes for peace.

[Update at 6 PM Eastern]

Iran seems to be doubling down:

Iran is smuggling advanced weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, into Iraq to be used by extremists against American troops, the US military charged on Sunday.
US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told reporters in Baghdad that Iran was shifting sophisticated arms such as "RPG-29s, explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), 240 mm rockets and Misagh-1 surface-to-air missiles" across its borders into Iraq.

An EFP is a feared roadside bomb which when it explodes emits a white-hot slug of molten copper that can cut through the armoured skins of US military vehicles.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:07 PM

"Al Qaeda Lost"

Michael Totten has the latest report from Anbar:

“What’s the most important thing Americans need to know about Iraq that they don’t currently know?” I said.
“That we’re fighting Al Qaeda,” he said without hesitation. “[Abu Musab al] Zarqawi invented Al Qaeda in Iraq. The top leadership outside Iraq squawked and thought it was a bad idea. Then he blew up the Samarra mosque, triggered a civil war, and got the whole world’s attention. Then the Al Qaeda leadership outside dumped huge amounts of money and people and arms into Anbar Province. They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost.”

No thanks to the Democrats, who at best were naive about the nature of the enemy, and at worst wanted them to win against the "real" enemy--George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:14 AM

September 23, 2007
What's Been Going On In Syria?

John Wixted has a round up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:25 AM

September 17, 2007
The Dog That Didn't Bark?

Where was the vaunted "Arab street"? Where were the protests from the other Arab nations to the UN about Israel's "aggression" against Syria?

Some interesting military and diplomatic analysis and discussion over at Tigerhawk's place.

[Monday evening update]

Here's a lot more. Can we officially replace Iraq with Syria as the newest member of the Axis of Evil now? Though hopefully one that may be treading a little more carefully, now that it knows (once again) that its air defenses are worthless.

And speaking of the old A of E, Iran's war against us doesn't seem to be going very well. Unfortunately, this doesn't get covered much, either in the media, or in Congressional hearings.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:35 PM

September 15, 2007
Baghdad Bob Redux

Well, not exactly. Maybe we should just call this guy Damascus Dave:

Nothing in Syria was bombed by the IAF, and nothing was damaged - this according to Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja'afari.
Reports of such an attack are "ridiculous and not true," Army Radio reported Ja'afari as saying on Saturday. Ja'afari added that "Syria does not have North Korean nuclear facilities."

No, of course not. And the Israelis will be swimming in oceans of their own blood, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:28 AM

September 13, 2007
Another Doctor Evil

What was this guy up to?

Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face when he was arrested Saturday in Hemlock Park.

Emphasis mine. What is it with medical students and doctors, and terrorism? This is just one more nail in the coffin of the absurd notion that terrorism is a result of poverty (assuming, of course, that he is a terrorist).

And instead of "Name That Party!" we get to play "Name His Religion!"

There are Christian Arabs (particularly Lebanese) in Dearborn, but somehow, I'm guessing that this guy is no Methodist.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:09 AM

September 12, 2007
Axis Of Evil Update

Has North Korea been providing Syria with nuclear material?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:57 AM

September 11, 2007
Have We Lost Our Way?

[Note: in honor of the anniversary, I've moved this post to the top, all day]

Lileks, on today's date:

It seemed right away like it would be a big war, three to four years – Afghanistan first, of course, then Iraq, then Iran. The idea that it would have stalled and ended up in diffuse oblique arguments about political timetables would have been immensely depressing. There was a model for this sort of thing, a template. Advance. But that requires cultural confidence, a loose agreement on the goals, the rationale, the nature of the enemy and the endgame. We don’t have those things. Imagine telling someone six years ago Iran would be allowed, by default, to make nuclear weapons. They would wonder what the hell we’d done with half a decade, plus change. What part of 25 years of Death to America didn’t we get, exactly?

Apropos of nothing in particular, this is the first anniversary that was the same day as the day it happened--on a Tuesday. One still wonders how they picked that date and day. But that's the only similarity, apparently. The current weather for Manhattan is cloudy and rainy--nothing at all like that Tuesday six years ago, when death and destruction suddenly appeared from a cloudless blue sky.

[Update a few minutes later]

The fog shrouds the hole in the skyline.

[Mid-morning update]

It's a propitious day to come out with Norman Podhoretz' new book on the war. He also has a piece at the Journal today.

[Late morning update]

Jonah Goldberg writes about the emotional half life of 911. Pretty much everyone comes in for criticism, including the president. But this is an important point, I think:

...it’s important to remember that from the outset, the media took it as their sworn duty to keep Americans from getting too riled up about 9/11. I wrote a column about it back in March of 2002. Back then the news networks especially saw it as imperative that we not let our outrage get out of hand. I can understand the sentiment, but it’s worth noting that such sentiments vanished entirely during hurricane Katrina. After 9/11, the press withheld objectively accurate and factual images from the public, lest the rubes get too riled up. After Katrina, the press endlessly recycled inaccurate and exaggerated information in order to keep everyone upset. The difference speaks volumes.

Indeed. Of course, in the first case, we would have gotten riled up against the Religion of Peace™. Couldn't have that. Much better to get us riled up against the real enemy, Bushco, even if they had to print fake news in order to do so.

[Update at 11 AM]

Some thoughts from Debra Burlingame. It was an act of war, not merely a tragedy to be mourned.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 PM

September 10, 2007
A Visit To Ramadi

By Michael Totten. Lots of interesting stories, if you want to find out what's really going on there:

"We found tons of weapons and IEDs. Just as we were finishing up some of the military dogs refused to sit on the flour bags. We opened up the bags and it felt like soap. We tested it. We didn’t think it was an explosive, but an accelerant. We took everything, put it into piles, and blew it up without warning anybody. It was a much bigger explosion than we expected. Urea-nitrate was in the bags. It’s an explosive made from fertilizer. That blast was so big that people at Camp Ramadi, all the way on the other side of the city and outside the city, thought it was a nearby car bomb. People are Camp Corregidor thought they were being mortared. Windows blew out for blocks and blocks in every direction. It destroyed the whole block. Civil affairs officers paid compensation to locals for injuries and property damage. Thank God no one was killed. The media reported it as a car bomb at the soccer stadium. Reporters in the Green Zone have no idea what goes on out here.”

[Update in the afternoon]

Bill Ardolino has a similar report from Fallujah.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:19 AM

September 09, 2007
Six Years Ago

Most people think that September 11th was the opening of the main Al Qaeda campaign, but it was really two days earlier, on September 9th, with the assassination in Afghanistan of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a key figure in the liberation of Afghanistan from the Soviets, who afterward had been fighting to liberate his country from the Taliban for years. No one paid much attention to the event at the time, but in hindsight, as the Wikipedia article notes, there is good reason to think that he was assassinated by bin Laden as a means of consolidating his power in Kabul, as part of the preparation for the attacks scheduled to happen two days later.

As a remembrance, here is an open letter from him to the American people, published in 1998.

[Update in the evening]

Welcome, Instapundit readers! If you've never been here before you might want to check out the general blog.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:57 AM

Where Did The War Go?

Some thoughts from Mark Steyn:

According to a poll in May, 35 percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq.
Apparently, 39 percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance — or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I’m confident half of them will have joined Rosie O’Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses. If Iraq is another Vietnam, 9/11 is another Kennedy assassination. Were Bali, Madrid, and London also inside jobs by the Bush Gang? If so, it’s no wonder federal spending’s out of control.

RTWT.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:49 AM

Critical Eye For The Terrorist Guy

Some fashion advice for Osama, from the Manolo.

FWIW, I remain unconvinced that it really is Osama.

[Update late morning]

Michael Ledeen is skeptical, too.

[Another update a few minutes later]

And then there's this outtake from the video.

[Update at 11:30 AM]

Here's another theory about the video:

All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen!

Actually, my strongest reason to think that bin Laden is at room temperature? Because the CIA says he's still alive.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:09 AM

September 08, 2007
Speaking Truth To An "Ugly Narrative"

Peter Wehner explains the realities of the war to Jonathan Rauch. And obliquely, the Democrats:

Let’s lay out the logic for Mr. Rauch in an easy-to-follow manner: If jihadists have declared Iraq to be the central front in the larger war we are engaged in—as they have—and if we retreat because we have been bloodied in Iraq—as leading Democrats want—then it’s reasonable to assume that a precipitous American withdrawal, led by Democrats, will embolden the jihadists.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

September 07, 2007
The Administration's Real Failure

I agree with Andy McCarthy, at least as far as this goes:

My calculation — which is not the standard calculation of surge supporters — has been that, eventually, we will have to confront the fact that Iran must be dealt with — not necessarily invaded, but military operations are going to be necessary. When that happens, it would be much better if we were heavily present in Iraq and capable of quickly using it as a platform than if we have withdrawn, allowed much of Iraq to become a de facto Iranian preserve, and must start marshalling forces from scratch — under far more difficult circumstances (e.g., with Turkey perhaps in Iran's camp and Pakistan maybe under anti-American leadership).
The administration has done a poor job explaining the overall war and setting appropriate expectations for what it will take to win. Indeed, the kit-gloves approach to the mullahs is testimony to the administration's own expectations in that regard. As a result, there is now exactly what your post suggests: a disconnect between where we'd like to be politically next year so far as the 2008 election is concerned and where we need to be to win the war — meaning, the overall war against radical Islam, not just the Battle of Iraq. This is a terrible problem, but it is one of our own making.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:04 AM

Londonistan

I wish that I was surprised about this:

Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.
The Times investigation casts serious doubts on government statements that foreign preachers are to blame for spreading the creed of radical Islam in Britain’s mosques and its policy of enouraging [sic] the recruitment of more “home-grown” preachers.

...The Times has gained access to numerous talks and sermons delivered in recent years by Mr ul Haq and other graduates of Britain’s most influential Deobandi seminary near Bury, Greater Manchester.

Intended for a Muslim-only audience, they reveal a deep-rooted hatred of Western society, admiration for the Taleban and a passionate zeal for martyrdom “in the way of Allah”.

You don't say. Are we losing Albion?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:54 AM

I Love It When A Plan Doesn't Come Together

The Surrendercrats' attempt to preempt the Petraeus Report backfired on them. We need to get that nanotech going on building the world's smallest violin, so I can play it for them.

I continue to be disgusted by them. Their latest propaganda ploy is to call it "the Bush Report," and imply that General Petraeus is just an administration sock puppet.

Well, how about if I call tactics like that the Democrats' "Al Qaeda talking points"?

To paraphrase Golda Meir, we'll start to win this war when the Democrats learn to love the country more than they hate George Bush and the Republicans.

[Update in the afternoon]

Now that Osama's latest tape has been released, it looks like he's still channelling Moveon.org and Kos:

People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there.

I've never bought into the wishful thinking of the left that the Democrats were elected to end the war, but I find it amusing that Osama shares that fantasy.

Of course, I remain skeptical that it's really Osama.

[Late afternoon update]

See what I mean? Kos wants Obama to be Osama. And he wants Hillary! to be Osama, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AM

September 06, 2007
War Is Too Important

...to be left to the lawyers.

We'd probably have lost World War II if it had been fought under these kinds of constraints. And even if not, it would have taken longer, and cost many more lives.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:45 AM

August 31, 2007
A Petraeus Preview

From Captain Ed:

It's an interesting advance look at the Petraeus testimony due on September 11th. Combined with the announcement of an agreement among Iraq's political factions on political reform, it will make a formidable case for continuing on the mission. Democrats will have a difficult time asking for retreat just when obvious progress can be seen.

Yes, they put all their chips on America's defeat. But they've been playing a losing hand.

[Update in the afternoon]

Anyone who claims that "the surge" was a mistake should read this piece from the Times of London. My only complaint about it this sentence:

Captain Patriquin played a little-known but crucial role in one of the few American success stories of the Iraq war.

No, it's not one of the "few" American success stories of the Iraq war. It's just one of the few that you've actually reported.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:48 AM

August 30, 2007
Rewriting The History Of The Vietnam War

To correspond with the what really happened, rather than the mythology believed on campus and by the media and the Democrats:

A...scathing critic of the VFW speech who held such views in 1975 is Stanley Karnow, author of an outdated but still widely read history of the Vietnam War. "The 'loss' of Cambodia," Karnow said, would be "the salvation of the Cambodians." Senator Christopher Dodd, then a member of the House, claimed in 1975, "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now."

Well, we know how well that turned out.

In response to the President's comments about abandoning Vietnam, some have argued that abandonment was not that important because Vietnam is now a nice capitalist country. This argument shows a callousness toward the loss of human life (in the late 1970s) and the harsh repression of political dissent (from 1975 to today) that is thoroughly out of keeping with how these people normally view international affairs. Hysterical hatred of the Iraq War and President Bush seems the only possible explanation for such an inconsistency. The present-day capitalist economy of Vietnam, moreover, is not reason to doubt the wisdom of U.S. involvement. Instead, it is reason to doubt the wisdom of North Vietnamese involvement. While America was fighting for capitalism in South Vietnam, North Vietnam was fighting to destroy it.

Can someone explain to me why we should be listening to these people now?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Of course there's no Media Conspiracy™. They're too incompetent to have a conspiracy.

They just guzzle their own bathwater.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:40 PM

WMD Found

And it's apparently Saddam's. At the UN headquarters. I guess it never occurred to the weapons inspectors to look there. Maybe it should have.

Yes, they're the people to leave in charge of controlling WMD.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:55 AM

The Revolt Of The Tribes

A very interesting, sophisticated (and guardedly optimistic) analysis of the current situation in Iraq.

To understand what follows, you need to realize that Iraqi tribes are not somehow separate, out in the desert, or remote: rather, they are powerful interest groups that permeate Iraqi society. More than 85% of Iraqis claim some form of tribal affiliation; tribal identity is a parallel, informal but powerful sphere of influence in the community. Iraqi tribal leaders represent a competing power center, and the tribes themselves are a parallel hierarchy that overlaps with formal government structures and political allegiances. Most Iraqis wear their tribal selves beside other strands of identity (religious, ethnic, regional, socio-economic) that interact in complex ways, rendering meaningless the facile division into Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish groups that distant observers sometimes perceive. The reality of Iraqi national character is much more complex than that, and tribal identity plays an extremely important part in it, even for urbanized Iraqis. Thus the tribal revolt is not some remote riot on a reservation: it’s a major social movement that could significantly influence most Iraqis where they live.

You won't get anything like this from most of the simpletons in the MSM.

[Update at 11:30 AM]

Michael Yon, who endorses the article linked above, has published his third dispatch from Anbar. I haven't had time to read it yet, but if it's anything like his first two, it's well worth the read.

[Update]

I glanced through it:

Over the next several days, I saw how much the Iraqis respected Rakene Lee and the other Marines who were all courageous, tactically competent, measured, and collectively and constantly telling even the Iraqis to go easy on the Iraqis. It’s people like Rakene Lee who are winning the moral high ground in Iraq. It is people like this who are devastating al Qaeda just by being themselves. Over those same several days, I would also see the Iraqi Lieutenant Hamid treat prisoners with respect and going out of his way to treat other Iraqis the way he saw Americans treating them. Lieutenant Hamid, in his young twenties, seemed to watch every move of the Marines and try to emulate them.

Hearts and minds.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AM

August 29, 2007
Casus Belli

Kimberly Kagan has a dossier on the acts of war (mostly by proxie) that Iran has been committing against the US for at least the past five years. We may not be at war with Iran, but they're certainly at war with us, regardless of how much many choose to ignore it.

[Update late morning]

Here's a book that seems timely: Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots Quest For Destruction.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:42 AM

In The Shark Cage

Michael Totten visits Al Qaeda's newest lair in Iraq, because they've been chased out of their preferred locales.

“I am optimistic,” he said. “But only for one single reason. Because I talk to the average Joe in Iraq. I meet the children and parents. Iraqi parents love their children as much as I love mine.”
I knew what he meant. Counterintuitive and contradictory as it may seem, I never felt more optimistic in Iraq than I did when I walked the streets and interacted with average Iraqis. Iraq looks more doomed from inside the base than it does outside on the street, and it looks more doomed from across the Atlantic than it does from inside the base.

Major Mike Garcia said this view of Iraq is typical. “Soldiers who don’t leave the FOB [Forward Operating Base] are more likely to be pessimistic than those who go out on patrol. They’re less aware of what’s actually happening and have fewer reality checks on their gloom.”

And this was an interesting commentary on...something.

“He’s like me,” he said. “He’s a Harvard Law grad who joined the Army after 9/11. I’m an attorney.”
“You’re an attorney?” I said. “What are you doing out here in Iraq?”

“I practiced law for three years,” he said, “then got into investment banking. When 9/11 happened I just had to sign up with the Army. Investment banking is a lot more stressful than this.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I said.

“No,” he said and laughed. “I am totally serious.”

If he was deployed in, say, Kurdistan I could see it. But Mushadah was stressful. Less stressful than investment banking? Investment banking in New York must really be something.

Be sure to hit his tip jar, if you can.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 AM

August 28, 2007
It Couldn't Happen To A Nicer Organization

Robert Spencer says that CAIR is having a bad week. Unfortunately, I doubt if the MSM will notice.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:26 PM

August 27, 2007
At War With Hypocritical Lunatics

Michael Yon has a second installment of his "Ghosts of Anbar" series:

Some of these men will admit they were insurgents who switched sides because they realized that they are more likely to get what they want with a stable government. Al Qaeda promised them everything under the baking sun, yet al Qaeda killed people who smoked—and Iraqis like to smoke. They killed people who had satellite dishes or televisions, but al Qaeda would be drinking and with prostitutes. Iraqis have told me some interesting anecdotes about the religious technicalities of prostitution. They are not supposed to have sex out of wedlock, so they marry the prostitute (and the house of ill-repute has the proper religious authority present to make the marriage), and then they divorce the prostitute after completing their business. Another rumor in the area is that al Qaeda tried to force shepherds to make their female sheep wear underwear. This is one I have heard all over Iraq.

We are winning, and what's more, we're developing a lot of skills for defeating an insurgency, that will stand us in good stead in the future.

But Al Qaeda is also self defeating, in much the way that the Nazis were when they invaded Russia, and particularly the Ukraine. All that Hitler had to do was not be quite as brutal and genocidal as Joe Stalin, and he couldn't manage it.

And support Yon's reporting. You're not going to get many stories and reporting like this from the so-called professionals.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:51 AM

August 26, 2007
A New Metric For Iraq

New glass.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:06 AM

August 25, 2007
On The Verge Of Victory?

Ralph Peters:

Of the two simultaneous missions under way - maturing a responsible government and advancing our own strategic interests - the latter is far more important. In fact, it's vital. And on that track, we're making stunning progress.
Out here in Anbar Province, al Qaeda did what religion-driven extremists always do eventually - they over-reached, setting the bar so high that nonfanatics couldn't measure up (nor did they want to). The terrorists responded with a campaign of slaughter against their fellow Muslims.

Now the Sunni Arabs who were fighting so bitterly against us are fighting beside us to destroy al Qaeda in Iraq. And the terrorists are going down.

Out here in Anbar Province - long the most troubled in Iraq - the change has come so swiftly and thoroughly that it's dazzling. Marines who were under fire routinely just months ago are now directing their former enemies in battle.

Although this trend has been reported, our battlefield leaders here agree that the magnitude of the shift hasn't registered back home: Al Qaeda is on the verge of a humiliating, devastating strategic defeat - rejected by their fellow Sunni Muslims.

If we don't quit, this will not only be a huge practical win - it'll be the information victory we've been aching for.

No matter what the Middle Eastern media might say, everyone in the Arab and greater Sunni Muslim world will know that al Qaeda was driven out of Iraq by a combination of Muslims and Americans.

Think that would help al Qaeda's recruitment efforts? Even now, the terrorists have to resort to lies about their prospective missions to gain recruits.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:22 AM

August 22, 2007
Iraq Is Not Ulster

As the British are learning, on the verge of losing Basra.

Col Anderson said British troops "did the best they could", but added: "I'm not sure they did as good a job as they did traditionally. This isn't Northern Ireland. They thought they had a pretty good model but Iraq is a different culture."
Michael O'Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, added: "Basra is a mess, and the exit strategy attempted there has failed. It is, for the purposes of future Iraq policymaking, an example of what not to do.

"Basra has gone far towards revising the common American image of British soldiers as perhaps the world's best at counter-insurgency."

I think that Petraeus has rewritten the book.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:56 PM

Choosing Between Wars

In further comments on the insanity of our dual and incompatible wars in Afghanistan, Ilya Somin has a suggestion as to how Congress could actually do something constructive:

Congressional Democrats say that they are serious about fighting the War on Terror, and have repeatedly emphasized (with some justification) that the Bush Administration has dropped the ball in Afghanistan. If you truly are serious about improving the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, why not start by denying the use of US government funds for poppy eradication campaigns in that country? Why not instead devote those funds (at least $600 million for last year alone) to military operations and infrastructure development? You can simultaneously improve the conduct of the war and repudiate a failed Bush Administration policy. What's not to like?

Unfortunately, I don't think they have the political guts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AM

August 21, 2007
The Ultimate Mugging

How a so-called liberal reevaluated his beliefs as a result of 911:

Milne's savaging of American self-absorption was the most conspicuous example of an attitude that could be heard in plenty of sophisticated conversations, or should I say conversations between sophisticated people, and read in a number of left or liberal publications.
What all these reactions had in common, I realised, was not complexity but simplicity. For all of them this was an issue of the powerless striking back at the powerful, the oppressed against the oppressor, the rebels against the imperialists. It was Han Solo and Luke Skywalker taking on the Death Star. There was no serious attempt to examine what kind of power the powerless wanted to assume, or over whom they wanted to exercise it, and no one thought to ask by what authority these suicidal killers had been designated the voice of the oppressed. It was enough that Palestinians had danced in the West Bank. The scale of the suffering, the innocence of the victims and the aims of the perpetrators barely seemed to register in many of the comments. Was this a sign of shock or complacency? Or was it something else, a kind of atrophying of moral faculties, brought on by prolonged use of fixed ideas, that prevented the sufferer from recognising a new paradigm when it arrived, no matter how spectacular its announcement?

In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.

But it's not just about foreign policy:

The scene outside the off-licence shocked and depressed me. Violence happens in all big cities and it is always shocking and depressing to witness. Or at least it should be. What made me feel particularly low, however, was the effortlessness and extremity of the attack, the apparent absence of compunction, the offenders' lack of fear of censure, their obliviousness to social constraint and the compliance, almost conspiracy, of the silent onlookers. Not only was it a savage assault on a young girl but on civic decency as well. Yet the more I thought about it - and I thought about it a lot - the more I realised that there wasn't an 'appropriate' response to what had happened. There wasn't a liberal vocabulary with which to describe the situation. Indeed, even a phrase like 'civic decency' sounded fuddy-duddy, uptight, somehow right-wing. There was a liberal way of talking about the culprits. It involved referring to their poor education and difficult home lives and the poverty they suffered. To have done so would have meant ignoring the expensive clothes and mobile phones that all of them had, or it would have been necessary to explain that these were signs of superficial wealth, the desperate avarice of the marginalised and underprivileged in a nakedly materialist world. But I had no appetite for that brand of reasoning. It blamed nebulous society and excused not just the individuals but also the community of which they were a part. Thus the problem was not local, communal, immediate, it was national, multifaceted, the result of innumerable political mistakes made by the powers that be. In other words, it was inevitable and effectively incurable. We were all powerless: the girl, the onlookers and the culprits who had been led by great social forces beyond their control to stick a broken bottle in a young girl's face.

I had trouble figuring out what to excerpt. Read the whole thing. It looks to be a good book.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:24 PM

Shhhhh...It's A Secret

We're winning the war. Harry Reid is very disappointed.

And as is noted, Hillary! wants to surrender anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:38 AM

"Spies Are Everywhere"

Michael Totten has a new report from Baghdad.

“When you came and liberated this country,” he continued, “Iraq had 25 million Saddams. America is turning us back into human beings. That soccer field is not for a specific person. It is for everybody. We appreciate that. We believe that if Americans have something that is ours, they will return it to us. If the Iraqi government has something that is ours, we forget it.”
Our host for the evening nodded in agreement.

“We support you,” the man continued. “You support our back, we support your back. But you must understand: If you pull back, we will pull back. I will have no choice but to pull back if I can’t depend on you. It will be much harder for us to stand together. But as long as you stand firmly behind us we will support you against Moqtada al Sadr and the other bastards in the area.”

“Are they Sunnis?” I said to Lieutenant Pitts. Moqtada al Sadr leads the radical Shia Mahdi Army militia.

“No,” he said. “They are Shias. But they don’t like any of the idiot groups, regardless of sect. They want peace.”

And as someone with an Iraqi sister-in-law, I can certainly identify with this:

It was late at night, but the Iraqis said we needed to eat. I had no idea, but in hindsight I should have known. It seems no Arab is happy if I’m in his house and he isn’t feeding me.

Be sure to hit his tip jar--it's the only way he can fund this reporting, which is among the best you'll get from the war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AM

August 20, 2007
Misplaced Priorities

We're going to have to make a choice as to which war in Afghanistan is the more important one, the war against the Taliban, or the war against (some) drugs.

In the past two years, the drug war has become the Taliban's most effective recruiter in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Muslim extremists have reinvigorated themselves by supporting and taxing the countless peasants who are dependent one way or another on the opium trade, their only reliable source of income. The Taliban is becoming richer and stronger by the day, especially in the east and south of the country. The "War on Drugs" is defeating the "war on terror."

We can't do both, and (as the piece points out) the latter is a hopeless enterprise everywhere, not just in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the drug warriors continue to allow their misbegotten war to take precedence over the real one.

[Late Monday afternoon update]

Let Afghan poppies bloom:

In a bold move some years ago, Britain tried to buy up the poppy crop, spending more than £20 million to acquire the opium and persuade the farmers to grow other crops. It was a failure: warlords snatched and resold the opium and no other crop came near to yielding the same income to the farmers. Legalising the trade for medical needs is the obvious alternative. It has been tried, with remarkable results, in India and Turkey. The need for more and cheaper diamorphine-based drugs is clearly there. The scheme is compatible with Afghan law and international narcotics regulations. It is fiercely opposed by gangsters, smugglers and the Tabeban. But it is the best way of putting them out of business.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:04 AM

August 16, 2007
The Genocide of Muslims

...by Muslims. And as usual, we get the blame.

(Yes, I know that technically speaking, it's not a genocide, but it's still a bloody toll.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:31 AM

August 15, 2007
"The Story The World Doesn't Want To Hear"

This isn't news to the people who've been reading Michaels Yon and Totten, but the source of this story is what's most surprising--Der Spiegel:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq -- it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq -- not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers -- are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Many of Herr Fitner's journalistic brethren may not be very happy with him. It's the wrong template. Doesn't he know that we're supposed to be losing?

It should also be noted that he's no apologist for the administration. In fact, he repeats the same tired old myths and straw men:

But there is little talk of these developments outside of Iraq. The world continues to debate the Bush administration's lies, which hang over the entire operation like a curse, concealing its successes. The lies are legend, and they continue to color the picture the world paints of Iraq.
No one can forget how the hawks twisted the truth to engineer reasons to go to war -- the made-up stories of Saddam Hussein as a mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and the trumped-up reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush himself repeatedly told his people and the rest of world horrible fairy tales, painting the most glaring of disaster scenarios, talking ad nauseam about unmanned Iraqi drones that, in his imagination, posed a threat to the US.

Of course, the administration never claimed that Saddam was behind 911, and there is no evidence that anyone in the administration has ever "lied" about the war. If Bush lied, so did many Democrats who believed the same things. But perhaps a German doesn't understand the meaning of the English word "lie." Unfortunately, many on the left don't seem to, either. In fact, it is often their first resort when confronted with facts that they find unpleasant. At least this reporter is willing to report accurately what he finds on the ground in Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AM

The Strange Country Of Iraq

Michael Totten has a story from Baghdad:

“What if the US assaults Sadr City?” I said.
“We would all love that,” he said. “Everyone except the Mahdi Army would love that. Every single person I know hates Moqtada al Sadr.”

But some people do like Moqtada al Sadr. Someone in Graya’at put up a billboard with his face on it.

Lieutenant William H. Lord told me earlier that when American soldiers have gone into Sadr City in the past, children flipped them off and threw rocks. Children in our area of Baghdad, by contrast, treat the American soldiers like heroes. General Petraeus has his work cut out for him if and when he decides to surge into Sadr’s domain.

“Even Saddam was better than Jaysh al Mahdi,” he said. “They treat everyone bad. Americans treat us good. Sadr does not. They say Americans rape our women. They lie. It is just propaganda. Americans have plenty of women. Jaysh al Mahdi rapes our women for real. They are animals. But soon enough their day is coming.”

Let's hope so.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 AM

August 13, 2007
No Union Cards

Christopher Hitchens, on the nuttiness of people who cannot bring themselves to believe that we are fighting Al Qaeda. In Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:58 PM

August 07, 2007
Born An American

Natural Americans are born all over the world, but they don't all get to live here. Michael Totten has a fascinating (and gruesome) interview with an Iraqi interpreter:

MJT: Is there a solution to the problem in this country?
Hammer: Nuke Iraq.

MJT: Be serious.

Hammer: I am serious. If you screen all Iraqis, 5 million of them would be good people. Clear them out, then kill everyone else. Syria and Iran would surrender. [Laughs.]

Right now they see 100 corpses every day in the streets. It’s not okay to kill the bad people who do that?

Ok, if you want a serious solution try this:

Charge money to the families of insurgents. Fine them huge amounts of money if anyone in their family is captured or killed and identified as an insurgent. Make them pay. You can put it into law. Within one week they won’t do anything wrong because they want money. Their familes will make them stop.

The militias pay them 100 dollars to set up IEDs. Fine them thousands of dollars if they are caught and their families will make them stop. Give them that law. Go ahead. Try it.

MJT: What will happen if the Americans leave next year?

Hammer: Rivers of blood everywhere. Syria and Iran will take pieces of Iraq. Anti-American governments will laugh. You will be a joke of a country that no one will take seriously.

I will kill myself if it happens. I am completely serious. The militias will hunt down and kill me and my family. I will beat them to it by killing myself.

I worked for the U.S. government for four years. Everyone who works as an interpreter for four years and gets a signature from a General or a Senator gets a Green Card. My hope is to get this somehow. I will do anything for this.

I am doing this for my son. Everything for my son. I don’t want my son living here getting into religion and militias and Al Qaeda. I want my son to be free, to have a girlfriend, to get married, and to be a good citizen.

These are the kinds of people who should get priority for green cards, if they feel they're unable to help fix their native country. And how the British are treating their translators is disgraceful:

Last month Denmark granted asylum to 60 former Iraqi staff and their families before its forces withdrew from the south. The US has said it will take in 7,000 Iraqis this year, including former employees.
But Britain has so far refused to make an exception. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said yesterday that Iraqi employees would receive no special help in applying for asylum.

“Anyone who is seeking to apply for refugee status must do so from within the United Kingdom. There is no exception to that,” said a Home Office spokesman. “Their cases will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis against the criteria of the 1951 Refugee Convention.”

One of the great and ongoing mistakes in our foreign policy is to reward our enemies, and punish or betray our friends.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:42 AM

August 05, 2007
"I Have Seen The Horror"

Michael Yon has a new venue to explain Iraq, both directly to the American people, and to the media and politicians who (either ignorantly or mendaciously, or perhaps both) continue to mislead them about it being simply a civil war:

When it comes to Iraq, being there matters because of the massive disconnect between what most Americans think they know about Iraq, and what is actually going on there.
The current controversy about the extent to which Al Qaeda is a threat to peace in Iraq is a case in point. Questions about which group calling itself an offshoot of Al Qaeda is really an offshoot of Al Qaeda is a distraction masquerading as a debate.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq, intentionally inflaming sectarian hostilities, deliberately pushing for full scale civil war. They do this by launching attacks against Shia, Sunni, Kurds and coalition forces. To ensure the attacks provoke counterattacks, they make them particularly gruesome...

...Clearly, not every terrorist in Iraq is Al Qaeda, but it is Al Qaeda that has been intentionally, openly, brazenly trying to stoke a civil war. As Al Qaeda is now being chased out of regions it once held without serious challenge, their tactics are tinged with desperation.

This may be the greatest miscalculation they've made in their otherwise sophisticated battle for the hearts and minds of locals, and it is one we must exploit.

Whether it was in 2002 is irrelevant. Iraq is the current front line in the war. Yon knows it. The administration knows it. Even Al Qaeda repeatedly admits it.

To abandon it now will be to give the enemy a great victory, and show bin Laden to be right, that when the going gets tough, America (and the West) abandons the field. It would demonstrate that their viciousness works in accomplishing their vile goals.

And it would be all the more tragic if it happened at a time in which we are actually winning on the ground, if not in the media.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:34 PM

Missing Alms

Mark Steyn on censorship by litigation:

...why would the Cambridge University Press, one of the most respected publishers on the planet, absolve Khalid bin Mahfouz, his family, his businesses and his charities to a degree that neither (to pluck at random) the U.S., French, Albanian, Swiss and Pakistani governments would be prepared to do?
Because English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff. And like many other big-shot Saudis, Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors – in effect, using distant jurisdictions to nullify the First Amendment. He may be a wronged man, but his use of what the British call "libel chill" is designed not to vindicate his good name but to shut down the discussion, which is why Cambridge University Press made no serious attempt to mount a defense. He's one of the richest men on the planet, and they're an academic publisher with very small profit margins. But, even if you've got a bestseller, your pockets are unlikely to be deep enough: "House Of Saud, House Of Bush" did boffo biz with the anti-Bush crowd in America, but there's no British edition – because Sheikh Mahfouz had indicated he was prepared to spend what it takes to challenge it in court, and Random House decided it wasn't worth it.

We've gotten used to one-way multiculturalism: The world accepts that you can't open an Episcopal or Congregational church in Jeddah or Riyadh, but every week the Saudis can open radical mosques and madrassahs and pro-Saudi think-tanks in London and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., and Falls Church, Va. And their global reach extends a little further day by day, inch by inch, in the lengthening shadows, as the lights go out one by one around the world.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:03 AM

August 04, 2007
Robot Soldiers

...and the laws of war. Some interesting thoughts.

I've often discussed my frustration with those on the left who deludedly (or more likely, disingenuously) claim that we must treat enemy captured according to the Geneva Conventions (i.e., in their minds, as POWs, or even worse, as civil criminals) when in fact to do what they demand would be a clear violation in itself of the conventions, because the conventions require that we not privilege illegal combatants. And in this war, the enemy has no legal combatants, in terms of Geneva.

In an age of asymmetrical warfare, and entering a post-Westphalian era, the conventions seem no longer to work (except as a means for those who hate America, and particularly George Bush's America, more than they fear radical Islam, to tie our hands). They need to be replaced with something else. This kind of technology may be one solution.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:01 PM

August 02, 2007
Quashing Of Dissent

The Saudis are suppressing speech, and getting books burned.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:54 AM

July 30, 2007
No Time To Quit

Optimism about Iraq, from unlikely sources:

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference...

...In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

I think that this is very important:

The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus’s determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.
In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

While I do think that the new tactics are being successful, and to take nothing away from General Petraeus and the troops, it remains unobvious to me that this would have been possible, or at least worked as well, earlier. It may well have been that the Iraqis had to go through a crucible of violence and Islamist oppression before they could realize where their true interests lay. And Americans are not known for their patience. Few of them are familiar enough with history to even recall that it took us eight years from the end of the revolution until we had our current constitution.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Michael Totten has a first-hand report on a night raid in Baghdad:

When we arrived outside the mosque, some of the soldiers squatted in driveways across the street and scanned the roof. I joined them as Eddy and the others took the suspect to the gate.
I crouched near the ground.

“There are four men on the roof,” a soldier said. “You can’t see them anymore. They just ducked away as we got here.”

“They have a little bunker up there,” he continued. “You can’t see it from here, but it has sand bags and sniper netting around it.”

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s a mosque.”

“They’re violating curfew,” I said, “and stalking us in the dark from a militarized mosque. And you aren’t going to do anything?”

“Our rules of engagement say we can’t interfere in any way with a mosque unless they are shooting at us,” he said.

We left our stalker with his “co-workers” and walked away.

We continue to fight with one hand tied behind our back, against an enemy that has no respect for the rules of war, or for human life.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:05 AM

July 28, 2007
Too Cavalier

That's what Cathy Young writes that civil libertarians are about terrorism.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:34 AM

July 26, 2007
Another Loss For The Anti-Bush Propagandists

Not that the moonbats will pay much attention, but the Lancet report from 2004 claiming a hundred thousand civilian casualties in Iraq as a result of removing Saddam has been further discredited.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:07 AM

"Couldn't Possibly Be Going Better"

The other Michael, Michael Totten, reports from Baghdad:

“Do they ever get pissed off when you search them?” I said.
“Not very often,” he said. “They understand we’re trying to protect them.”

“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

“Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

[Update a couple hours later]

Another dispatch from Baqubah by Michael Yon.

The idea is to get the Iraqis to run their own cities but most of the old leaders are gone, and the new ones are like throwing babies to cow udders. Many just don’t know what to do, and in any case, most of them have no natural instinct for it. So our soldiers are mentoring Iraqi civil leaders, which is a huge education for me because I get to sit in on the meetings. The American leaders tell me what they are up to, which amounts for free Ph.D. level instruction in situ: just have to be willing to be shot at. (The education a writer can get here is unbelievable.) Meeting after meeting—after embeds in Nineveh, Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala—I have seen how American officers tend to have a hidden skill-set. Collectively, American military leaders seem to somehow intuitively know how to run the mechanics of a city. Watch video of LTC Johnson in action at a meeting with Iraqi Army officials to plan for the delivery and distribution of diesel fuel, another commodity formerly under al Qaeda control.
I have wondered now for two years why is it that American military leaders somehow seem to naturally know what it takes to run a city, while many of the local leaders seem clueless. Over time, a possible answer occurred, and that nudge might be due to how the person who runs each American base is referred to as the “Mayor.” A commander’s first job is to take care of his or her forces. Our military is, in a sense its own little country, with city-states spread out all around the world. Each base is like a little city-state. The military commander must understand how the water, electricity, sewerage, food distribution, police, courts, prisons, hospitals, fire, schools, airports, ports, trash control, vector control, communications, fuel, fiscal budgeting, fire, for his “city” all work. They have “embassies” all over the world and must deal diplomatically with local officials in Korea, Germany, Japan and many dozens of other nations. The U.S. military even has its own space program, which few countries have.
In short, our military is a reasonable microcosm of the United States – sans the very important business aspect which actually produces the wealth the military depends on. The requisite skill-set to run a serious war campaign involves a subset of skills that include diplomacy and civil administration.

We live far better on base here in Baqubah than many people who are living downtown (though there are some very nice homes), and it’s not all about money. Not at all and not in the least. When Americans move into Iraqi buildings, the buildings start improving from the first day. And then, the buildings near the buildings start to improve. It’s not about the money, but the mindset. The Greatest Generation called it “the can-do mentality.” It’s a wealth measured not only in dollars, but also in knowledge. The burning curiosity that launched the Hubble, flows from that mentality, and so does the revenue stream of taxpayer dollars that funded it. Iraq is very rich in resources, but philosophically it is impoverished. The truest separation between cultures is in the collective dreams of their people.

If teaching people to become self sufficient is "socialism" (per the first comment below), then bring it on, for now.

And I'm sure that Harry Reid is very disappointed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:45 AM

July 24, 2007
"2006 Was 1943"

The success of the surge. And the continuing efforts of the Dems and the media to make Iraq into another Vietnam.

[Afternoon update]

Max Boot has to educate Henry Kissinger on the fact that Iraq is not Vietnam:

Skilled diplomacy can consolidate the results of military success but can seldom make up for its lack. In Iraq, there is scant chance that any American legerdemain can convince internal factions like the Jaish al Mahdi or Al Qaeda in Iraq, or outside actors such as Iran and Syria, that their interests are congruent with ours. While the U.S. pursues stability and democracy, our enemies are merrily capitalizing on mayhem to carve out spheres of influence and bleed us dry.
The only thing that could conceivably alter their calculations is a change in the balance of power on the ground. That is what Army Gen. David Petraeus is trying to achieve. But he is being undermined by incessant withdrawal demands from home, which are convincing our enemies that they can wait us out. Only if the other side faces the probability of defeat -- or at least stalemate -- can negotiations produce a durable accord.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:35 AM

July 20, 2007
More On Anti-War Libertarians

Randy Barnett has further thoughts. I found this interesting:

I realize that some fraction of radical libertarians, whose opinion I respect, believe that there is no such thing as a just war, but most radical libertarians (including most critics of my WSJ op-ed) allow the legitimacy of a defensive war and oppose only wars of aggression. Some antiwar libertarians who oppose the Iraq war as aggression, for example, supported the war in Afghanistan on "self-defense" grounds. And those who didn't say they would support a war that was truly in self-defense. They simply deny that the war in Iraq fits that description. Yet if they also accept stance (1), as they appear to, then ON THEIR ACCOUNT because a defensive war is waged by an illegitimate government and the rights of innocents were inevitably violated, it too must be opposed.

I've never quite understood the arguments of those who claim that they're not anti-war because they supported the war in Afghanistan, but that they were opposed to removing Saddam Hussein.

Why did they support the war in Afghanistan? Was it, as described above, because it was a "defensive" war? If so, what does that mean? Was it to prevent further attacks? Or was it to avenge 911?

If the latter (and much of the rhetoric seems to indicate that), then it wasn't a defensive war, except possibly in the limited sense that by making an example of the Taliban we could discourage other regimes from similarly harboring our enemies.

If the former, then it was a preemptive war (that is, we were going to remove a regime, to prevent it from supporting any further attacks). But we've been told by this crowd that preemptive wars aren't acceptable. For instances despite many threats made against Israel (and the Great Satan--us) by Iran, and its continuing development of the means with which to carry them out, we are not allowed to go to war with Iran, because that would be "preemptive" and we're supposed to wait for them to strike the first blow, as happened with Afghanistan.

Now it turns out in hindsight that the threat from Iraq was exaggerated (though not as much as many war opponents assume), but at the time, we considered it sufficient to need to be preemptive (not to mention all of the ongoing violations of the UN resolutions and truce agreements that Saddam continued to ignore). In that sense, it was a defensive war. So when war opponents claim that we have a right to defensive wars, but practically only allow it to happen after it's too late to defend ourselves (as occurred with 911), just what do they mean?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:48 AM

July 17, 2007
The Real War In Iraq

The one against corruption.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:55 PM

July 16, 2007
An Interesting New Book

Here's an excerpt from a new book that just came out today, describing the war between the CIA, and the Pentagon and White House. I wonder if it will talk about their ally, the State Department?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:35 PM

You'll Be As Shocked As I Was To Learn

...that Nobel-winning terrorist and murderer Yasser Afafat died of AIDS.

It didn't happen soon enough.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mark Steyn has further thoughts.

[Tuesday update]

I guess I wasn't clear enough (or at all) as to the point of this post. It's not news that Arafat died of AIDS. What's news is that "Palestinians" are admitting it. I suspect that this is all of a piece with the civil war between Hamas and Fatah, it being an attempt by the former to discredit the latter.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:32 AM

He's Dead, Jim

I've long thought that, despite CIA claims to the contrary (I mean, it's not like the CIA is a reliable source), Osama has been dead for years. Here's a Koranic interpretation of the latest "new" (really old) video, that speculates that it's preparatory to an announcement that he's gotten his virgins.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:29 AM

July 12, 2007
Down In The Dumps

Zawahiri doesn't sound very optimistic. But expect continued blather from the media and Congressional "leadership" about how we're the ones losing the war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:17 AM

July 11, 2007
Al Qaeda Is Losing On The Ground

...and winning in the media and in Washington. It's Tet all over again, and we're just letting them do it.

A congressionally-imposed defeat in Iraq may be averted by a swing in the polls, or more precisely, a swing in the GRPs that move the polls. Given the military's long standing Public Affairs policy of media neutrality, the administration and the Generals will have to earn the GRPs in a hostile media environment. This is difficult, but not impossible, given the substantial American center - Citizens who would prefer victory if given reason to hope.
Alternately, Congress could defy the polls. Al Qaeda is running its war on smoke and mirrors - or, more accurately, on bytes of sound and sight. Congress could act on General Petraeus' reports from the ground, rather than broadcasts generated by insurgents. This requires a simple commitment - one foreign to many in the elective branch: Leadership.

Something that seems to be in frighteningly short supply inside the Beltway these days. As Glenn notes:

Targeting our politicians and journalists is clearly going after our weak points...

Yes, they're pretty soft targets.

[Update late morning]

Despite the cheerleading for them from the media and Congressional leadership, Michael Yon says that Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq:

The focus on al Qaeda makes sense here, where local officials have gone on record acknowledging that most of the perhaps one thousand al Qaeda fighters in Baqubah were young men and boys who called the city home. This may clash with the perception in US and other media that only a small percentage of the enemy in Iraq is al Qaeda, which in turn leads to false conclusions that the massive offensive campaign underway across Iraq is a lot of shock and awe aimed at a straw enemy. But as more Sunni tribal leaders renounce former ties with al Qaeda, it’s becoming clearer just how heavily AQ relied on local talent, and how disruptive they have been here in fomenting the civil war.

But that doesn't fit the media's narrative.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:50 AM

July 10, 2007
The Anti-Sheehan

Mark Danziger:

My adult son's independent decision about what he wants to do with his life has no bearing on me or on what I write. My views and words about the issues that have concerned me for five years or more are not one gram more significant nor my arguments one iota stronger or weaker because of the decision which he independently made. Judge me as a parent if you will, but please do not judge my positions as a writer based on this act by someone else.

Also, on the chutzpah of the surrenderistas at New York Times:

One of the main arguments supporting the claim that we should leave now is the obvious and real collapse of public support for the war - a collapse that is shocking, just shocking, given the years of media spin on the war - media spin that bloggers have been pointing out continually. There's something to say about the media and antiwar left beating on public opinion for four years, and then using that collapse of public opinion as an argument for their position.

Jules Crittendon has further thoughts on that subject.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:34 AM

July 09, 2007
The Invasion That No One Noticed

Perhaps because they find it too inconvenient:

If Israel sent the IDF three kilometers into Lebanon and started digging trenches and building bunkers it would make news all over the world. But Syria does it and everyone shrugs. Hardly anyone even knows it happened at all.
Syria can, apparently, get away with just about anything. I could hardly blame Assad at this point if he believes, after such an astonishing non-response, that he can reconquer Beirut. So far he can kill and terrorize and invade and destroy with impunity, at least up to a point. What is that point? Has anyone in the U.S., Israel, the Arab League, the European Union, or the United Nations even considered the question?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:26 AM

July 07, 2007
Two Years Ago

The London subway bombings.

Things seem to have gotten worse, lately, not better, in terms of their ability to preempt these things.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:28 AM

First It Was Doctors

And now it's the police:

Up to eight police officers and civilian staff are suspected of links to extremist groups including Al Qaeda.
Some are even believed to have attended terror training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Their names feature on a secret list of alleged radicals said to be working in the Metropolitan and other forces...

...Astonishingly, many of the alleged jihadists have not been sacked because - it is claimed - police do not have the "legal power" to dismiss them.

We can also reveal that one suspected jihadist officer working in the South East has been allowed to keep his job despite being caught circulating Internet images of beheadings and roadside bombings in Iraq.

He is said to have argued that he was trying to "enhance" debate about the war.

Classified intelligence reports raising concerns about police staff's background cannot be used to justify their dismissal, sources said.

This is almost like something out of Monty Python. It reminds me of the skit with Graham Chapman as the British Navy officer who lectures the audience on how the cannibalism problem in the Royal Navy is completely under control, as a sailor walks behind him munching on a leg. Well, almost like it, except it's not funny. One could do a World War II parody on how MI5 has very few Nazis in it, and most of them are fine chaps, except for their support of gassing Jews, and providing bombing targets to Germany.

One fears that the entire British government bureaucracy is rotted with these termites. When will the British people recognize that they are at war, muster up the will to fight, and reclaim their nation? This is what a people unconfident in their own values looks like.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:00 AM

Trouble Brewing In Lebanon?

Looks like the axis of evil may be about to stir up the pot:

A series of op-eds in the Lebanese daily Al-Mustabal, by Nusair Al-As'ad, warned of a planned Syrian-Iranian coup in Lebanon. [9] According to these articles, Hizbullah was planning to launch, in the near future, a new stage in the coup being led by Syria and Iran in Lebanon, during which it would use its weapons on the domestic Lebanese front. The threats by the Lebanese opposition to establish a second government in Lebanon were part of this planned coup, and the coup was to be carried out under the banner of establishing a second government.
The articles stated that the threat voiced by Syrian President Bashar Assad during his April 2007 meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, namely, that the situation in Lebanon would "reach the point of civil war," was actually "an official declaration of the coup he is now staging in Lebanon."

That would be the end (at least temporarily) of the Cedar Revolution. The State Department is supposedly gung-ho on democracy in the Middle East. Do they have a plan? I'd like to think so, but only because, like a second marriage, it would be a triumph of hope over experience.

Many have been expecting, and Israel has been prudently preparing for, another war this summer. This may be the precipitating event. Let's hope that they learned from their mistakes from last summer.

[Early afternoon update]

And then there's this:

The London based Al-Hayat reported Saturday that Israel was "concerned" that Syria's decision to remove military checkpoints on the road to Kuneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights could be a preparation for war.
According to the report, the checkpoints in question had been in place for 40 years, ever since the Six Day War.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:12 AM

July 06, 2007
"Overrated" Follow Up

In response to yesterday's post, Greg Scoblete emails:

I read your post "Overrated" following an Instapundit link. I think you're right, re: doctors, but I noticed you derided the notion that the jihad has any basis in U.S. policy. I think you simplify the argument. There is absolutely some causality between the two, just as there is causality between Islamic fundamentalism and violence. There is ample evidence of this in the writings of bin Laden and among analysts who study Islamic terrorism. (I wrote as much at TCS Daily here).
Nor is it a "progressive" myth. George Bush, Wolfowitz, and other administration officials have explicitly linked U.S. policy to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. This isn't in the spirit of blaming the victim but of knowing your enemy. Believing we're being attacked solely out of religious animus is a comforting myth, but not one that will help us win a needed victory over jihadist terrorism.

Of course, I oversimplified. The post was running long as it was.

Of course we have made foreign policy mistakes that have resulted in the current mess, going back for decades.

My point was that they're not the mistakes that the "progressives" and transnationalists think they are, and that it's not because we do things that make the Caliphists and hirabis upset, or explain "why they hate us," which is the prevailing mind set.

Our foreign policy mistakes have been to give in to them, and thereby encourage them. Terrorism is not an ideology of hopelessness, but of hope. Hope that by making us fear them sufficiently, we will give in to their unreasonable, savage, medieval demands.

[sigh]

It will take a long essay to explain this properly.

There are (at least) two categories of error in foreign policy. One is to commit egregious acts against a people such that they rise up against you.

The other is to show weakness, such that they think that if they can hurt you badly enough, you'll give up, and give in to their demands, no matter how outrageous and unreasonable they may be.

While we've done more than we should have of both over the last...well...half century, if not longer, the latter is the major reason that we are currently under siege (at least metaphorically, if not literally).

Yes, bin Laden whined about the "occupation of Arabia" during and after the first Gulf War. And the Arabs continually whine about the oppression of the "Palestinians" by the "Zionists" (see, I can use scare quotes just as well as Reuters, except...well, mine are actually accurate).

But the real reason for the war we're in can be found in the part of bin Laden's speech about the "weak horse" and the "strong horse."

In Tehran in 1979, in Beirut in 1982, in New York in 1993 (when we treated the first Trade Center bombing as a criminal operation), in Mogadishu, in the Khobar towers, in the Cole attack, etc., etc., etc,.) we have shown ourselves to be the "weak horse." And, of course, it all started when we abandoned the south Vietnamese in 1975.

Only when we decided to take out the Taliban did we surprise the Hirabis. And then, when we decided to topple terrorist sympathizer Saddam Hussein, they trembled. Not because he had been providing them with a great deal of support (though it was not zero, as popular myth has it), but because they recognized that a) a major US military presence in the heart of Arabia was a great threat from a military standpoint and b) the notion of democracy there was an even greater threat to their medieval designs, that depended on an Arabia in thrall to fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam.

So, yes, our foreign policy, at least since 1979, has been based on a delusion--that we could ignore Islamic militancy, or treat it as a criminal problem. This is a delusion in which the Democrats have indulged in particular (though many Republicans supped the koolaid as well, down to the present time, as Pete Domenici has).

But the solution is not to change our policy to placate religious fanatics.

Douglas Hofstadter, in one of his books (forget which one) talks about the irrationality of those who seek compromise uber alles.

He describes a mother presiding over two disputing little boys. She has just baked a cake. One of the boys thinks that the two boys should share the cake. The other thinks that he should get the whole cake.

What is a compromise?

Well, if one listens to people at the UN, or even our own State Department, a compromise between the two positions would be that the boy who wants the whole cake would get three quarters, and the one who thinks it should be shared would get one quarter.

That is, as long as he was willing to fight for it, of course (though only diplomatically, and not, heaven forfend, really fight, with actually breaking things, and killing people), and continue to apologize for wanting even a quarter of it. No, war is evil. We must compromise.

That's where we're at with Islamicists.

We want tolerance of all religions. They want tolerance of theirs, and Dhimmitude for the others.

We want freedom of speech and thought. They want freedom of speech to praise Allah, and freedom to behead any who are less than appreciative of the obvious fact that Mohammed is the Prophet Who Must Be Praised.

The foreign policy mistakes that we have made are to be willing to "compromise" with such insanity. To attempt to meet it half way. To ignore it when it takes ambassadors hostage. To ignore it when it plants truck bombs beneath the World Trade Center. To ignore it when it blows up a barrack of Marines in Beirut. To ignore it when the Khobar Towers are blown up, and to rely on an ostensibly friendly regime to investigate it, despite the fact that it also funds the hatred and ideology that drives madmen to do such things. To ignore it when it attacks a US warship in the Middle East and kills US sailors and damages it to the point that it must put into port for repairs.

These are the things that our foreign policy has done to promote terrorism.

There is no half way. There is tolerance, which the West, and the Enlightenment, for centuries, has promoted, and there is tyranny. There is no compromise with tyranny.

How does one "compromise" with that?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:21 PM

Update From Baqubah

Another very interesting dispatch from Michael Yon, with stories (and photos) that we continue to not get from the MSM:

The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the “al Ameriki tribe,” or “tribe America.”
I’ve seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can—more or less and with giant caveats—rely on.

Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient but to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.

Now that all those realizations and more have settled in, the dynamics here are changing in palpable ways.

Hearts and minds.

And emphasis mine. Leave it up to the current Democrat leadership, and "abandon them again" is exactly what we would do.

And there's this, on "Al Qaeda."

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11-years-old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

Note: this is not the way to win hearts and minds...

Is it Al Qaeda?

Forrest Gump famously said, "Stupid is as stupid does." It would seem to apply here, as Yon points out. If they act like Al Qaeda, whether in massacring villages, baking and serving young boys, or driving jeeps through airport windows, it's a duck. As Lileks noted, it's nutty to assume that just because someone doesn't have an Al Qaeda medical benefits card in their wallet that they're not aligned with global Jihad.

And if we are, finally, making the progress that Yon reports, I still have to wonder if in fact it even could have been achieved earlier, even with a better strategy. While I would certainly never claim that the war has been waged perfectly (but then, what war ever is?), it's not at all obvious to me that the current strategy would have worked three years ago. And history being what it is, it's not possible to do a controlled experiment.

When we pacified Germany and Japan, the peoples of those two nations had been utterly defeated, and were tired of war. The problem with Iraq was that we didn't defeat the nation--we only defeated the brutal dictator and his minions who had been holding that nation hostage. Once his boot was off the neck of the people, many of them, particularly those who saw it as an opportunity to finally gain power themselves, turned on us as the new "occupiers." They didn't understand who the real enemy was.

Only now, having had to suffer the new brutality of the hirabis, in Anbar, in Diyala, can they appreciate a "tribe" whose goal is liberation, rather than subjugation. It has been said that the only way to convince Muslims of the evil of Islamists is for them to have to live under their rule for a while. It happened in Afghanistan, and more recently it happened in Iraq (and it is probably happening in Gaza now). We'll never know, of course, if bringing Petraeus in earlier would have had the same effect then, but what is clear to me is that the field had certainly been tilled for his tactics over the last couple years, and that the Iraqis are now fully receptive to someone who will save them from those who wish to reenslave them.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Instapundit has a follow-up email from Yon:

Baqubah has so quieted down that it's nothing like I have ever seen it. Practically no fighting. . . . It's Friday so there will likely not be much happening downtown today, so I stayed on base to write about the goings-on. I wrote about the lethargy of the local Iraqi leadership a couple weeks ago, but the energetic leadership of U.S. Army seems to be catching. The Iraqis are much more into the fight than they were back on 19 June with Arrowhead Ripper kicked off. We are now D+17 (17 days since Arrowhead Ripper kicked off), and the changes in Baqubah are remarkable. I am cautiously optimistic. Very cautious, and very optimistic.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:09 AM

July 05, 2007
Overrated

Many people have expressed surprise that doctors were involved in Jihad. Beyond that, there seems to be some shock that they did so in such an incompetent manner. They're doctors! They're supposed to be smart, right?

Well, with all due respect to my physician readers and commenters, I've never bought into that myth. Neither does John Derbyshire:

I attended a British university with a large and famous teaching hospital attached. The medical students were pretty widely regarded as the dumbest on campus, and as the heaviest drinkers and stupidest pranksters. Of the five or six student rock groups, the medics' was the loudest and worst. (Its name was "Perry Stalsis and his Abdo Men.") My subsequent experience of doctors has done nothing to erase those early impressions. Sure, medical students have to memorize the names of a lot of little parts. So do auto mechanics.

That's how I've always viewed doctors--as mechanics, except for the human body, rather than inanimate objects.

Not saying, of course, that there aren't smart doctors, or doctors capable of rigging and detonating explosives via cell phone (but as I've noted in the past, fortunately, people competent at doing such things are generally less likely to want to). But there's certainly no reason to automatically infer high intelligence, or even competence, just because someone is a doctor. Or a lawyer, for that matter.

By the way, it would also be nice if this latest development finally puts to bed the ongoing "progressive" myth that terrorism is caused by poverty and alienation, or by our foreign policy (the latest manifestation of this nonsense is the nutty notion that we are "creating terrorists in Iraq").

It's the Jihad, stupid. As a former Islamist notes, we are at war with an ideology:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy...
...And as with previous terror attacks, people are again articulating the line that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy. For example, yesterday on Radio 4's Today programme, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: 'What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.'

He then refused to acknowledge the role of Islamist ideology in terrorism and said that the Muslim Brotherhood and those who give a religious mandate to suicide bombings in Palestine were genuinely representative of Islam.

I left the BJN in February 2006, but if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombings, and I were both part of the BJN - I met him on two occasions - and though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.

We continue to deny moral agency to Muslims, and act as though we really are responsible for all bad things in the world, and they have no responsibility for their own behavior. If we don't understand what we are at war with, and chase after solutions to problems that don't really exist, and continue to foolishly ask questions like "why do they hate us?", we can never win.

[Friday morning update]

Diane West has more:

In the media, the effort [to ignore the Islamist elephant in the corner] is misleading to the point of farce. Joel Mowbray, writing at the Powerline blog, noted that the New York Times has identified Britain's Muslim terrorists as "South Asian people" — which, considering Britain's largest South Asian population is Hindu, is beyond absurd. "Diverse group allegedly in British plot," the Associated Press reported, missing that unifying Islamic thread. "All 8 detainees have ties to health service," wrote the Toronto Star, "but genesis of terror scheme still eludes investigators."
If they read Robert Spencer's jihadwatch.org, the essential daily compendium of jihad and dhimmi news, they might get a clue. But, very ominously, Mr. Spencer's Web site is being blocked by assorted organizations which, according to his readers, continue to provide access to assorted pro-jihad sites. Mr. Spencer reports he's "never received word of so many organizations banning this site all at once." These include the City of Chicago, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, GE IT, JPMorgan Chase, Defense Finance and Accounting Services and now, a federal employee in Dallas informs him, the federal government.

Reason given? Some Internet providers deem the factually based, meticulous analysis on display at jihadwatch.org to be "hate speech." This should send Orwellian shivers up society's spine, but, alarmingly, such reactions to jihad analysis are increasingly the norm.

We are winning the war on the ground, and losing it where it really matters, in the media, and political establishment. The enemy understands the nature and value of their information war, but our side remains clueless.

[Update, late Friday afternoon]

A potential explanation for the Jihadwatch censorship, to the degree that it exists.

We need to get smarter firewall companies. I mean, we are at war.

[Update on Saturday morning]

There's a follow up to this post up above.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

July 03, 2007
National Jihad Service

Everyone in involved in the British bombing plots seemed to have the same employer:

Eight people arrested in connection with failed car bombings in Glasgow and London all have links with the National Health Service, the BBC has learned.

Mark Steyn and Stanley Kurtz have thoughts on the implications.

[Early afternoon update]

Iain Murray makes another relevant point about the NHS:

The high proportion of foreign physicians is indeed down to a lack of British Doctors - not just from lack of students, but also because many trained Doctors choose to pursue other careers. Life in the NHS is not a rewarding experience. A family member of mine who is so highly regarded as a Doctor that she has won a prize carrying a substantial annual stipend for the rest of her life has withdrawn from clinical treatment because she was constantly asked to make life-or-death decisions based on the rationing of resources (you won't hear that story in Sicko). The socialization of medicine in the UK is responsible for a lot of problems. The importation of terrorists is just one of them.

[Update at 2 PM EDT]

Dr. Sanity has some thoughts on doctors as terrorists.

[Evening update]

More thoughts on Doctors Evil, from Michael Ledeen:

I think it has something to do with what Mel Brooks once referred to as "that total indifference to pain and suffering" that is necessary to be a good doctor. You have to be "clinical" about all that, because you can't afford to have your judgment swayed by real sympathy with the sufferer.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:04 AM

July 02, 2007
Couldn't Have Been Us

Remember after 911, when some of the apologists for the terrorists were saying that they couldn't have pulled it off, because Arabs are too incompetent and dumb to do anything like that?

Well, here's some evidence for that proposition:

The calls made on the phones allowed police to trace those behind the failed attacks last Friday, the London daily evening newspaper said, without giving sources.
The phones were meant to set off blasts when they were called, but the devices failed to detonate the mixture of gas canisters and nails in the two Mercedes cars parked in London's entertainment district.

In a very real sense, this is no doubt part of the reason that we haven't had more attacks, at least successful ones (remember moron Richard Reid?). The intersection of the sets between people who want to pull something like this off, and people who are capable of it, is fortunately not very large. Unfortunately, though, with advancing technology, it's going to get easier and easier to do more and more damage.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Were they amateurish by design?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:53 AM

July 01, 2007
"No Sign Of The Sacred"

Michael Yon has a gruesome report from Iraq, with graphic photos:

Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.

This isn't civil war. It's a war on the Iraqi people, and on decency itself, by a mindless, butchering hateful ideology. And in their savagery, they use our own decency against us, booby trapping bodies because they know that we, unlike they, honor the dead.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:01 AM

June 30, 2007
Counterfactual

What if we'd left Saddam in power?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:12 PM

June 28, 2007
Petraeus Explained

By Fred Kagan:

The U.S. has not undertaken a multi-phased operation on such a large scale since 2003, and it is not surprising therefore that many commentators have become confused about how to evaluate what is going on and how to report it. Sectarian deaths in Baghdad dropped significantly as soon as the new strategy was announced in January, and remain at less than half their former levels. Spectacular attacks rose as al Qaeda conducted a counter-surge of its own, but have recently begun falling again. Violence is down tremendously in Anbar province, where the Sunni tribes have turned against al Qaeda and are actively cooperating with U.S. forces for the first time. This process has spread from Anbar into Babil, Salah-ad-Din, and even Diyala provinces, and echoes of it have even spread into one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad--Ameriyah, formerly an al Qaeda stronghold. Violence has risen naturally in areas that the enemy had long controlled but in which U.S. forces are now actively fighting for the first time in many years, and the downward spiral in Diyala that began in mid-2006 continued (which is not surprising, since the Baghdad Security Plan does not aim to establish security in Diyala).
All of these trends are positive. The growing skill and determination of the Iraqi Army units fighting alongside Americans is also positive. Some Iraqi Police units have also fought well. Others have displayed sectarian tendencies and participated in sectarian actions. Political progress has been very slow--something that has clearly disappointed many who hoped for an immediate turnaround, but that is not surprising for those who always believed that it would follow, not precede or accompany, the establishment of security at least in Baghdad. And negative sectarian actors within the Iraqi Government continue to resist making necessary compromises with former foes. Overall, the basic trends are rather better than could have been expected of the operation so far, primarily because of the unanticipated stunning success in Anbar and its spread. But it remains far too early to offer any meaningful evaluation of the progress of an operation whose decisive phases are only just beginning.

To say that the current plan has failed is simply incorrect. It might fail, of course, as any military/political plan might fail. Indications on the military side strongly suggest that success--in the form of dramatically reduced violence by the end of this year--is quite likely. Indications on the political side are more mixed, but are also less meaningful at this early stage before security has been established.

I wonder how many of the House members were listening, or care?

[Update mid morning]

J. D. Johannes, just back from Iraq, isn't very impressed with Richard Lugar:

The virtual extinction of the insurgency in the province — a victory that I was privileged to witness first-hand — represented not some momentary quirk of tribal alliances, but a diligent application of the revised tactics that coalition forces have implemented under skilled, battle-proven officers and Gen. Petraeus. These tactics include meticulous census-taking of persons and vehicles; skilled, persistent diplomacy with tribal leaders; incorporation of local intelligence; constant foot patrols in the residential areas from platoon and squad sized outposts; and persistent perimeter control of areas cleared and held.
Even Lugar acknowledges the effectiveness of these tactics. He stated, “I do not doubt the assessments of military commanders that there has been some progress in security…We should attempt to preserve initiatives that have shown promise, such as engaging Sunni groups that are disaffected with the extreme tactics and agenda of al Qaeda in Iraq.”

But it is hard to see how redeployment to Kuwait, or the Kurdish provinces, or hunkering down in large bases in the outlying desert will preserve this progress, let alone extend it...

...The Petraeus surge, authorized by the executive branch, was not “improvised.” Its fundamental planning dates from early in Donald Rumsfeld’s stint as secretary of Defense, where it was developed as a contingency plan should a “light footprint” approach fail. It deserves its day in the sun.

And its recent success should not be held against it.

Of course, I've always marveled that anyone was ever very impressed with Richard Lugar.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:46 AM

June 27, 2007
Take Heart

Things are not as bad as they seem in the Middle East.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:51 PM

June 26, 2007
Losing The War

That's what Newt Gingrich says that western leaders are doing.

I also notice that he's now calling it by its proper name--World War IV, rather than World War III, which was the Cold War.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 PM

June 25, 2007
"Rage Boy"

...and the cowed. Christopher Hitchens writes about the supine west:

This mental and moral capitulation has a bearing on the argument about Iraq, as well. We are incessantly told that the removal of the Saddam Hussein despotism has inflamed the world's Muslims against us and made Iraq hospitable to terrorism, for all the world as if Baathism had not been pumping out jihadist rhetoric for the past decade (as it still does from Damascus, allied to Tehran). But how are we to know what will incite such rage? A caricature published in Copenhagen appears to do it. A crass remark from Josef Ratzinger (leader of an anti-war church) seems to have the same effect. A rumor from Guantanamo will convulse Peshawar, the Muslim press preaches that the Jews brought down the Twin Towers, and a single citation in a British honors list will cause the Iranian state-run press to repeat its claim that the British government—along with the Israelis, of course—paid Salman Rushdie to write The Satanic Verses to begin with. Exactly how is such a mentality to be placated?

How was the Nazi mentality to be placated?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:01 PM

False Narrative

John Wixted is tired of listening to misleading and false statements from Dems about the "civil war" in Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:36 AM

June 24, 2007
Supine

Mark Steyn writes that we've replaced Salman Rushdie in hiding:

I told my London friends that I had to hand it to Tony Blair's advisers: What easier way for the toothless old British lion, after the humiliations inflicted upon the Royal Navy sailors by their Iranian kidnappers, to show you're still a player than by knighting Salman Rushdie for his "services to literature"? Given that his principal service to literature has been to introduce the word "fatwa" to the English language, one assumed that some characteristically cynical British civil servant had waved the knighthood through as a relatively cheap way of flipping the finger to the mullahs.
But no. It seems Her Majesty's Government was taken entirely by surprise by the scenes of burning Union Jacks on the evening news.

Can that really be true? In a typically incompetent response, Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, issued one of those "obviously we're sorry if there's been a misunderstanding" statements in which she managed to imply that Rushdie had been honored as a representative of the Muslim community. He's not. He's an ex-Muslim. He's a representative of the Muslim community's willingness to kill you for trying to leave the Muslim community. But, locked into obsolescent multicultural identity-groupthink, Mrs. Beckett instinctively saw Rushdie as a member of a quaintly exotic minority rather than as a free-born individual.

This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was "not particularly well-received": he was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Muhammad cooked up the Quran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounès Matoub described himself as "ni Arabe ni musulman" (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don't stand around on Oscar night, congratulating themselves on their "courage" for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can't do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop Saudi-Iranian standards embedding themselves in the West.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:26 PM

June 23, 2007
What's Really Going On In Diyala Province

Strategy Page:

Both the terrorists and U.S. troops know that victory has been defined as several weeks with no bombs going off in Baghdad. The media is keeping score, and they use their ears and video cameras. No loud bangs and no bodies equals no news. That's victory.
Not really. The real war is within the Iraqi government. The terrorists lost two years ago, when the relentless slaughter of Moslem civilians turned the Arab world against al Qaeda. Journalists missed that one, but not the historians. The war in Iraq has always been about Arabs demonstrating that they can run a clean government, for the benefit of all the people, not just the tyrants on top. So far, there have lots of victories and defeats in this, and no clear decision overall. Elections have been held several times, but the people elected have proved to be as corrupt and venal as their tyrannical predecessors. Everyone admits that this bad behavior is not a good thing, but attempts to stop it have been only partially successful. Changing thousands of years of custom and tradition is not easy. The clay tablets dug up in the vicinity of Baghdad, reveal similar scandal and despair over four thousand years ago. Most Iraqis realize, however, that if the chain of corruption is not broken, the dreary past will again become a painful present.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:56 PM

June 21, 2007
More From Baqubah

The first day of fighting, from Michael Yon:

...our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.
A positive indicator on the 19th and the 20th is that most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda. Clearly, I cannot do a census, but that says something about the locals.

I guess they don't think so much of Michael Moore's "Minute Men."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:26 PM

June 19, 2007
The Battle Of Baquba

It has begun, and Michael Yon writes about it, and the general state of the war, and the abysmal state of reporting about it:

Northeast of Baghdad, innocent civilians are being asked to leave Baquba. More than 1,000 AQI fighters are there, with perhaps another thousand adjuncts. Baquba alone might be as intense as Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in late 2004. They are ready for us. Giant bombs are buried in the roads. Snipers—real snipers—have chiseled holes in walls so that they can shoot not from roofs or windows, but from deep inside buildings, where we cannot see the flash or hear the shots. They will shoot for our faces and necks. Car bombs are already assembled. Suicide vests are prepared.
The enemy will try to herd us into their traps, and likely many of us will be killed before it ends. Already, they have been blowing up bridges, apparently to restrict our movements. Entire buildings are rigged with explosives. They have rockets, mortars, and bombs hidden in places they know we are likely to cross, or places we might seek cover. They will use human shields and force people to drive bombs at us. They will use cameras and make it look like we are ravaging the city and that they are defeating us. By the time you read this, we will be inside Baquba, and we will be killing them. No secrets are spilling here.

Our jets will drop bombs and we will use rockets. Helicopters will cover us, and medevac our wounded and killed. By the time you read this, our artillery will be firing, and our tanks moving in. And Humvees. And Strykers. And other vehicles. Our people will capture key terrain and cutoff escape routes. The idea this time is not to chase al Qaeda out, but to trap and kill them head-on, or in ambushes, or while they sleep. When they are wounded, they will be unable to go to hospitals without being captured, and so their wounds will fester and they will die painfully sometimes. It will be horrible for al Qaeda. Horror and terrorism is what they sow, and tonight they will reap their harvest. They will get no rest. They can only fight and die, or run and try to get away. Nobody is asking for surrender, but if they surrender, they will be taken.

It's long, but if you want to understand what is really going on in Iraq, read the whole thing.

[Update late morning]

Bill Roggio has more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:34 AM

June 17, 2007
A Religious War?

Sounds like the Iranian regime is spoiling for one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:49 PM

Is The War Starting?

Probably not, despite the fact that two Katyushas launched from Lebanon fell near Kiryat Shmona. So far, the Israeli government is downplaying it as not being the work of Hezbollah. I think that Hezbollah and Iran are preparing for war, but they're not ready yet. They probably want to consolidate things in Gaza and arm Hamas first, so they can attack on two simultaneous fronts.

[Update after noon]

This report from the Jerusalem Post says that there were four rockets.a

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 AM

June 15, 2007
A Tale Of Two Senators

Senator Lieberman just came back from Iraq. He's more encouraged than Harry Reid. He's also more informed (both on the war, and probably on energy, and almost anything else). Not to mention logical:

The officials I met in Baghdad said that 90% of suicide bombings in Iraq today are the work of non-Iraqi, al Qaeda terrorists. In fact, al Qaeda's leaders have repeatedly said that Iraq is the central front of their global war against us. That is why it is nonsensical for anyone to claim that the war in Iraq can be separated from the war against al Qaeda--and why a U.S. pullout, under fire, would represent an epic victory for al Qaeda, as significant as their attacks on 9/11.
Some of my colleagues in Washington claim we can fight al Qaeda in Iraq while disengaging from the sectarian violence there. Not so, say our commanders in Baghdad, who point out that the crux of al Qaeda's strategy is to spark Iraqi civil war.

Al Qaeda is launching spectacular terrorist bombings in Iraq, such as the despicable attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra this week, to try to provoke sectarian violence. Its obvious aim is to use Sunni-Shia bloodshed to collapse the Iraqi government and create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, radicalizing the region and providing a base from which to launch terrorist attacks against the West.

I guess that explains why he was drummed out of the Democrat Party. No moral or intellectual clarity allowed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:59 PM

The Sopranos

...in Gaza? As Glenn notes, the comparison is an insult to mafiosi, but the parallels exist.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AM

June 14, 2007
Let's Give Them A Country!

Mark Steyn, on the mythical "Palestinians":

Seasoned observers have been making droll cracks about a "two-state solution" - Hamas gets Gaza, Fatah gets the West Bank. But even that cynical jest is wishful thinking. The better bet is that the West Bank will eventually fall Hamas' way, too.
This is the logical consequence of the fraudulence of "Palestinian nationalism". There has never been any such thing. There is no evidence anywhere in the "Palestinian Authority" that anyone there is interested in building a state and running it. In conventional post-colonial scenarios of the Sixties and Seventies, liberation movements used terrorism as a means to advance nationalism. By contrast, Arafat's gang used nationalism as a means to advance terrorism. With him out of the way, it was deluded to assume that the "Palestinian people" would stick with a bunch of corrupt secular socialists with little appeal to anyone other than French intellectuals and Swiss bankers.

Want to see what Iraq will look like if we abandon it to the Islamists? Just look at Gaza.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:53 AM

June 13, 2007
You Want A Rant About Islam In The UK?

Here's a rant about Islam in the UK. He'll no doubt be arrested for "hate speech" (in this case, otherwise known as speaking Truth to Insanity).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:40 AM

June 10, 2007
Only Nixon Could Go To China

...and only Joe Lieberman can talk about bombing Iran:

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. "And to me, that would include a strike into... over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."
The Indepedent former Democrat from Connecticut said that he was not calling for an invasion of Iran, but he did say the U.S. should target specific training camps.

The biggest risk, at least in the short term, is the extortion of the Iranian government against the region

Shamkhani told the US journal Defense News that missiles would be launched not only at US military bases but also at strategic targets such as oil refineries and power stations.
Qatar, Bahrain and Oman all host important US bases and British forces are based in all three countries. Any Iranian attack would be bound to draw in the other Gulf Cooperation Council states: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The attacks on Arab states would be in addition to airstrikes on Israel, which have been threatened repeatedly. An Iranian foreign ministry official said: “The objective would be to overwhelm US missile defence systems with dozens and maybe hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously at specific targets.”

"Nice little oil refinery you got there, Saudi Arabia. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it..."

We really need to get, or beef up, medium-range missile defenses as quickly as possible in Iraq, which is in a good location to preempt Iranian strikes against Israel, Jordan, the Iraqi facilities themselves, and the Arabian peninsula. It's strategic location was (or at least should have been) one of the many reasons that it made sense to establish a military presence there. As long as we're paying the price in blood and treasure (and political opposition) to be there, we should be taking advantage of it. That we don't seem to be is one of the reasons that I (and I suspect many others, including the troops who are doing the bleeding and dying) are so frustrated with the administration.

[Update a few minutes later]

Michael Ledeen has related thoughts:

Ambassador Crocker tries to cover up our nakedness, saying we'd only consider another round of talks when the Iraqi Government issues a formal invitation. But they will. How could they not? They watch our tv, they know about the September deadline, they've seen this administration has no stomach for fighting, above all against journalists and Democrats. They expect us to leave. They expect the Iranians to stay. And who can say they are wrong?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:43 PM

June 08, 2007
Iranian Terrorist Cells

...in Iraq. Well, at least we're going after them there.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:30 AM

June 07, 2007
Creating New Killing Fields

An interesting op-ed in the New York Times today:

...despite the defeat in 1975, America’s 10 years in Indochina had positive effects. Lee Kuan Yew, then prime minister of Singapore, has well articulated how the consequences would have been worse if the United States had not made the effort in Indochina. “Had there been no U.S. intervention,” he argues, the will of non-communist countries to resist communist revolution in the 1960s “would have melted and Southeast Asia would most likely have gone communist.” The domino theory would have proved correct.
Today, in Iraq, there should be no illusion that defeat would come at an acceptable price. George Orwell wrote that the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. But anyone who thinks an American defeat in Iraq will bring a merciful end to this conflict is deluded. Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.

What's particularly interesting about it is that one of the authors is William Shawcross, who in decades past has been one of the great critics of US foreign policy, blaming us for the catastrophe in Cambodia. He has come around, finally, and recognizes the reality--that the US is one of the few forces for good in a very hostile world.

As they note, the opponents of the war live in a dreamland, in which US defeat in Iraq won't lead to a slaughter, and a great resurgence in the appeal of Jihad and a moral victory for the hirabis.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:35 PM

Living In A Fantasy World

We continue to pretend that Iran is not waging war against us, in Iraq, Afghanistan (and against Israel in Syria and Lebanon). How much more of this should we take before punishing the regime?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 AM

June 06, 2007
If We Lose The War, Whose Fault Will It Be?

OK, well, the press should take some responsibility, but it will also be the bureaucracy:

Iraq has shown that the DoD bureaucracy is too big, too slow and out of touch with the realities of the modern battlefield.
Up until just recently the military was built for a set-piece battle against like forces. But our enemy does not want to cooperate with the geniuses in the Pentagon who came up with the plans and procured the equipment to execute those plans and developed training platforms to prepare soldiers for those plans.

The bureaucracy--even in combat--is staggering. To get some things done the request has to go through 15! steps of approval.

One Company Commander summed it up like this:

"They trust me with the lives of 100 men, humvees, weapons, ammo, civil affairs negotiations, classified intelligence, radios, everything. But I cannot be trusted with $20k worth of Dinar to hire a crew to build up an IP station?"

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:48 PM

Sauce For The Goose

So, if Turkey is doing hot pursuit into Iraq, why is it we're not going after the safe houses in Syria?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:45 AM

June 03, 2007
A Victory

Michael Yon has a first-hand account of a quick-thinking American officer, and a blow against corruption in Iraq. It's hard to imagine a story like this coming from CNN. Hit his tip jar.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:22 AM

June 02, 2007
More On Torture (And Geneva)

The comments in the other post were getting out of hand, particularly after it was Instalinked. But there was an earlier comment there that I really shouldn't let stand unchallenged, now that I have a break for the weekend.

The other point, separate from the moral issue raised by Bill, is that torture does not provide useful information. That according to experts.
So when you torture you are doing it not for the information content you wish to derive, but rather the sheer pleasure it gives the torturer. We don't need that pleasure given that we claim we are better than Al-Qaeda.

I don't accept the conclusion, because I don't accept the premise.

First, "the experts" disagree on the value of information gained by torture. Certainly, it's obvious that there is no guarantee that information gained under duress is valid. On the other hand, that doesn't imply that no information gained under duress is valid. And we aren't talking about inquisition, or confessions, here. We are talking about actionable (and often verifiable) information. For instance, if someone in custody knows the location of a kidnap victim, or a planted nuclear weapon, and they are unwilling to reveal it, what are we to do? If we get the information by duress, and we go to the location and find the victim or bomb, then apparently the information was both valid, and useful. Is the commenter really attempting to argue that because it was obtained by unsavory means that it is not?

Now whether or not it's immoral to attain such information by such means is a separate and debatable issue (unfortunately, we live in a complex world in which "it depends"). But to say that one cannot obtain "useful information" by such means is nuts. Even if "the experts" say it (and I don't think they all do, with due respect to Senator McCain, who is admittedly made of tough stuff). As commenter Cecil Trotter points out, George Tenet (is he an "expert"?) claims that Khalid Sheik Mohammed revealed a great deal of useful information under duress.

The notion that, even if we concede that we torture captured illegal combatants (I don't, at least not as a matter of policy), it is only because we are sadists, and that Dick Cheney enjoys a good cigar, and quaffs an infant smoothie, while watching people being tortured, is nuts. We are in a war. If we attempt to get information out of people using duress, it is because we seek the information, not because we like people to suffer. This is Bush (and Cheney) derangement, pure and simple.

However, human nature is human nature. And in recognition of the latter we have the Third Geneva Convention.

There seems to be a single-minded focus on the Geneva Conventions as protectors of prisoners' rights, even for prisoners who behave in utter violation of those Conventions. To do so is to display a profound ignorance of the primary intent of the Conventions, which were an attempt to reduce the impact of war on innocent civilians, a concept that our enemy holds in utter contempt.

This subject has been discussed multiple times in the blogosphere over the last few years, but apparently many of the commenters either haven't read, or have read and forgotten, or lacked the reading comprehension to understand it.

The Conventions require that combatants fight in recognizable uniforms. Why? So that it makes it easier to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and to reduce the incidents of collateral casualties.

The Conventions require that combatants not wage war from designated sanctuaries such as churches, mosques, hospitals, or ambulances. Why? I'd like to think that the answer is obvious.

The Conventions require that those waging war accept the Conventions. Why? Because if not, then there is no point in having them, since people who violate them would still be granted the benefit of them.

Since 911, in the face of the most ruthless enemy imaginable, who would wipe us off the face of the earth with the flick of a finger had they our power, we have fought the most humane war in the history of humankind. We have spent untold billions of dollars to develop precision weaponry that can destroy a building while leaving another one right next to it intact, that can destroy a tank while leaving a car sitting next to it unscratched. We (and the Israelis) will send in troops and risk their lives to take out specific terrorists, when we could instead simply wipe out a neighborhood, safely from the air. Why? Simply to avoid civilian casualties. We have rules of engagement that put our troops at further risk, so that we don't accidentally hit a civilian.

But we have an enemy that not only hides in mosques and ambulances, and behind women's skirts, but one that rejoices in deliberately murdering civilians, even of their own religion.

When people unthinkingly demand that we grant the rights of standard POWs stipulated by the Conventions to illegal combatants, they are in effect demanding that we violate the Conventions, and they are in fact undermining the purpose of the Conventions. This isn't about having "moral authority" in the eyes of the world (a dubious premise, anyway, given how little moral authority most of the world has). That's like worrying about what gangsters think about our occasional speeding tickets. No, it's about trying to enforce the rules of war that were an (admittedly paradoxical) attempt to civilize it.

But when the focus in the news is on how awful we are, and how it's all our fault that Muslims murder Muslims in Iraq, and the more they murder each other, the more news it makes in the western press, and the more we are blamed for it, it is giving the enemy exactly the kind of propaganda they want, and feed on. Only when the news media start to tell the whole story of what's going on over there will we start to win the real war that we're losing in the media, even as we win it on the ground.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:42 AM

May 29, 2007
Evolving Peace

J. D Johannes says that the pacification is spreading from Anbar. If so, it would confirm my theory about the evolution of cooperation.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:40 AM

May 24, 2007
Yearning For A Tet?

Hey, it worked for them the first time:

Despite their utter, unconditional capitulation, the Democrats insist this fight is not over. They live to surrender another day.
...Tet, the all-out communist offensive of February 1968, is remembered as a military failure for the North Vietnamese that was ironically their greatest political victory. An Iranian-backed campaign this summer could be the same for both Iran and America’s surrender camp. A bloody excuse to pack it in and abandon Iraq to its fate.

Look for Tet’s bloody reprise this summer. American and Iraqi soldiers, as well as the Iraqi people, could pay a terrible price as it plays out. The American people and their leaders will be, indirectly, from the safety of home, tested in their resolve.

You know, if I were in charge of communications at the White House, I'd be planning some speeches this summer (and even sooner, to show prescience) to give the American people a little history lesson about the last time.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:22 PM

A Civil War?

Yes, a civil war in the Arab world:

Seventy percent of insurgents fighting in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria where they are provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report Wednesday.

I don't understand why we aren't doing anything about this.

I should also repeat, as has been noted before, that 911 and the "War on Terror" is indeed an Arab/Muslim civil war that they've been exporting along with their oil.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:56 PM

Iow Jima On The Euphrates

Except with a lot lower casualty rate. Strategy Page says that the Iraqis are finally getting fed up with the violence:

American military commanders and diplomats continue to remind Iraqi politicians that the biggest problem in the country is corruption. That's hard for many Iraqis to accept, since stealing whatever-you-can-get-your-hands-on has been a tradition for so long. Many Iraqis assume it's the natural order of things, and consider the Americans insane, or disrespectful, with all their talk of honest government. The message, however, is getting through, as it becomes obvious that Iraqs new democracy won't work with the traditional Iraqi attitudes towards dishonesty in politics. This new attitude is being reflected in many ways. There are more corruption investigations, arrests and prosecutions. The corruption is still there, but it's becoming politically incorrect. Meanwhile, everyone is getting more patriotic. It's no longer cool to take orders from Iran. So Muqtada Al Sadr, and his Mahdi army, are becoming less a tool of Iran, and more a mainstream Iraqi political movement. Sadr is even sitting down and cutting deals with Sunni Arab politicians. At the same time, the Mahdi Army is being purged of factions that don't go along with the new peace and reconciliation approach. Those radical factions are still killing Sunni Arabs, while Sunni Arabs and al Qaeda continue to slaughter Shia Arabs. This is not popular with Iraqis in general, and the terrorists are increasingly seen as a public menace that all Iraqis must unite to destroy.

We won Iwo Jima. Some will argue, of course, that the analogy is more apt than it seems, because it was an unnecessary battle. But that was only clear (to the degree that it is true) in retrospect, and there's little point in carrying the analogy too far.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:00 AM

May 23, 2007
Wrong Target

Melanie Phillips writes about liberalism versus Islamism. Sadly though, many who (mistakenly) call themselves liberals seem to think that George Bush is the enemy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:56 AM

May 22, 2007
The Evolution Of Cooperation

Bill Whittle's latest essay reminds me of this post that I wrote a couple years ago on the pacification of Iraq:

One of the interesting things about [Tit for Tat] is that the more similar algorithms it has to deal with, the better it does. Put in an environment of non-cooperators, it has a much harder time, but it can still be more successful than them, and if it has a few others to cooperate with, it can survive even in a sea of non-cooperators.
Non-cooperators, on the other hand, don't do well in a cooperative society. A non-nice strategy (one that always, or occasionally, or randomly defects unprovoked) won't do well in a world of TFTs, because after the first time they get screwed by it, they will not cooperate with it again, at least until it changes its ways. So while it gets a big payoff the first time, it gets a much smaller one in subsequent exchanges, whereas the TFTs interacting with each other always get the medium benefit.

Thus, it's possible for a small group of cooperators to "colonize" a larger group of non-cooperators, and eventually take it over, whereas a group of non-cooperators invading a larger group of cooperators will not thrive, and will eventually die out. This is the basis for Axelrod's (and others') claim that there is evolutionary pressure for cooperation to evolve.

This may hold the key to fixing Iraq, and ultimately the Middle East. While there's a lot of bad news coming from that country right now, the fact remains that much of it is calm and at peace--that part doesn't make the news. It may be that nationwide elections won't be possible in January, but certainly it should be for some regions (particularly the Kurdish region).

In fact, there were national elections in January. But this provides a possible key to a metric of success. Instead of counting suicide bombings and violence levels (which the terrorists can maintain at an almost arbitrary level as long as there are a few of them around, due to entropy), as the media does (because if it bleeds it leads), it would be more useful to measure how small an area they appear in, and how large a one is relatively peaceful, as Anbar now seems to be, based on Michael Yon's reports of boredom there.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hmmmm...just one more thought. Is the Anglosphere a "tit for tat" culture and legal system? I wonder if it's ever been discussed over here?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:47 AM

A Sensible Democrat

It's not just Joe Lieberman any more. Bob Kerrey:

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

My only dispute with that it that I remain unconvinced that bin Laden is still alive. But his movement certainly lives on, and it would remain a victory for it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:36 AM

May 21, 2007
Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?

A depressing story about the fecklessness of the State Department and North Korea's (shocking!) perfidy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:05 AM

May 18, 2007
A Photoessay

...from Baghdad:

Still living in Baghdad, this family has not fled the community it lives in. Shia and Sunni live on both sides of the home.
Some people forget that the sectarian violence kicked off in 2005 as part a deliberate strategy by AQIZ. Too many people assume that Sunni and Shia in Iraq have been killing each other for centuries.

The war in Iraq is plagued by a Congress who lacks the information to cast a vote and a public who lacks the basic knowledge to take part in an opinion poll.

...Is there hope for Baghdad? Yes. The additional U.S. forces from the surge are already showing limited signs of success. They are not the signs quantified by London or D.C. think tanks.

Every Battalion Commander I talked with gave me the same metrics to measure success--Commerce, people returning to their homes, essential services, kids playing soccer in fields they haven't played on in 2 years, professionalization of the police and security services.

Those are things that do not fit well in an index and things a person can only see on the ground by going back to the same areas of operation every few months.

Which is why I will be back in Dora and West Rasheed in a few months.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:17 PM

Winning On The Battlefield

...but losing the war in Information Space. And the media is, wittingly or otherwise, not on our side.

As long as al-Qaeda detonated IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan, they could increase the perception of a quagmire. By getting the media to focus on the IEDs-of-the-day, al Qaeda was able to bury the good news (like the training of the Iraqi Army and reconstruction efforts), and was able to weather the loss of senior leaders like Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
In the case of keeping Cornet Wales from deploying with his unit, it did not take any IEDs. He was kept home via the use of threats by a terrorist whose claims were repeated by the media. Eventually, senior British Army officers flinched. This is a major victory for the terrorists in Iraq – one that did not require a single IED or even a shot.

And here's some perspective.

[Update a few minutes later]

All is quiet on the Anbar front:

I cannot believe my eyes and ears in Anbar. Very quiet where I am. Did a foot patrol today with Iraqi Army and a couple of Marines. Local population was friendly. Have not heard a shot fired in anger in days. (Whereas before the sounds of war were nearly always in the air.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:59 AM

May 16, 2007
The Case For Bombing Iran

Norman Podhoretz makes it.

And no, before you ask, I don't know whether he does it well or not. I haven't had time to read it yet. I link as a favor to my readers who may wish to. But it's generally worth reading Podhoretz, one of the original and self-admitted "neocons," if just to provoke thought and discussion. And I will say that I agree at least with the first two paragraphs.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Bernard Lewis, who is cited by Podhoretz in his piece, has further thoughts in the WSJ today (Ron Paul should read it):

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?"
...From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that...dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary.

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 AM

May 15, 2007
Different Timetables

A comment from Instapundit, with regard to Max Boot's WSJ column (following up on his previous article):

The commanders' timetables are driven by a desire to win. The Washington politicians' timetables are driven by a cowardly desire to have the war off the table before the 2008 elections.

Yes.

The key message from the Boot column:

It's still possible to stave off catastrophic defeat in Iraq. But the only way to do it is to give Gen. Petraeus and his troops more time--at least another year--to try to change the dynamics on the ground. The surge strategy may be a long shot but every alternative is even worse.

Kind of like democracy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:26 PM

A To-Do List For Iraq

Max Boot has one (while also cautioning patience). One of the things that I don't understand why the administration isn't doing:

Another necessity is to go more aggressively after foreign fighters. They comprise a relatively small percentage of the overall insurgency, but they account for a very high percentage of the most grotesque attacks--80 to 90 percent of all suicide bombings, according to General Petraeus's briefing with Pentagon reporters on April 26. These jihadists are of many nationalities, but most infiltrate from Syria. The Bush administration has repeatedly vowed that Syria would suffer unspecified consequences if it did not cut off this terrorist pipeline, but so far this has been an empty threat. The administration has refused to authorize Special Operations forces to hit terrorist safe houses and "rat lines" on the Syrian side of the border, even though international law recognizes the right of "hot pursuit" and holds states liable for letting their territory be used to stage attacks on neighbors. It's high time to unleash our covert operators--Delta Force, the SEALs, and other units in the Joint Special Operations Command--to take the fight to the enemy. They can stage low-profile raids with great precision, and Syrian president Bashar Assad would have scant ability to retaliate. We also need to apply greater pressure to Iran, which continues to support both Shiite and Sunni terrorist groups in Iraq, but that will be harder to do because Tehran is a more formidable adversary than Damascus.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Goldstein is less than impressed with John Edwards' notion of "supporting the troops":

What kind of cynical political beast would profess to all that—noting a direct threat, recognizing a Security Council that was acting out of its own financial interests, claiming that his own reading of the intelligence led him to believe Iraq that was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, and saying categorically that no, he wasn’t misled in his vote to go to war—and then call for us to pull out, leaving the Iraqi people hanging out to dry, and virtually insuring that the middle east becomes further destabilized?
Or, to put it more bluntly, how craven and ego-driven does one have to be to sell out two entire countries for the remote opportunity he might pick off a few primary victories by pandering to the anti-war base and maybe secure himself a vice presidential nod?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 AM

May 14, 2007
A Race With Time

Victor Davis Hanson has a provocative post at The Corner, on the patience of a government in a democracy at war:

...as is true in most long wars (cf. 1864 or 1918), armies seem not to be fully effective until they digest and learn from their horrific mistakes, and so enter a race to apply their wisdom before an exasperated public gives up.
In late summer 1864 the work of Sheridan and Sherman and the 1918 summer offensive uplifted public opinion enough to stick it out; in 1970-3 post-Tet, radical improvement in American tactics, weaponry, and know-how came too little too late to deflate the public sense of defeatism and doom.

And Michael Yon has thoughts on General Petraeus, and a letter from him to the troops, which may be viewed as crucial by historians.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:24 AM

Stuck In The Past

Tarek Heggy bemoans the lack of scholarship among Islamic scholars:

I have been engaged in meetings with a number of scholars from the Vatican. I always bemoan and wonder why the Vatican abounds with men of religion with such splendid educational, intellectual and encyclopedic cognitive backgrounds in their various areas of knowledge, while our scholars know nothing about the great fruits of human creativity in many of the different branches of social and human sciences.
At a conference held seven years ago, I saw a scholar who is considered by some as the greatest Muslim jurist and preacher of his time. He was an Egyptian with Qatari nationality who fled from Egypt during the clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamāl Abd al-Nāsir in 1954. At the conference, he used more than one interpreter, and never got involved in discussions about modern streams of thought. On the other hand, the Vatican scholars were using four or five languages in their discussions that covered vast fields of knowledge. I will not hide the fact that I felt ashamed of him that day. He seemed so primitive in his thoughts and approaches. It appeared as if he was a primeval human from the forests of ' Borneo Island.'

We need a generation of Muslim religious scholars who have studied other religions, human history, world literature, philosophy, sociology and psychology and can speak a number of languages; the languages of civilization. Until this happens, our Muslim scholars will remain primitive and stay at their level of naivety, shallowness and isolation from the path of civilization and humanity.

But I guess that I shouldn't point out things like this. It makes me (like Tarek) an Islamaphobe (see comments).

[Update at 9:30 AM EDT]

Christina Hoff Sommers has some thoughts on Muslim women, and the failure of western feminism to take up their cause. Makes perfect sense to me, though. They can't blame the treatment of Muslim women on dead white European males. Or at least they haven't come up with a way yet.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:28 AM

May 11, 2007
Dismantle It

I've long been a critic of the Department of Homeland Security as in, I don't believe that it should exist, or should ever have been formed. Well, it seems that Senator Schumer agrees with me. And he's even honest enough to take some of the blame.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:32 AM

A Depressing Report From Londonistan

...from Christopher Hitchens:

Returning to the old place after a long absence, I found that it was the scent of Algeria that now predominated along the main thoroughfare of Blackstock Road. This had had a good effect on the quality of the coffee and the spiciness of the grocery stores. But it felt odd, under the gray skies of London, to see women wearing the veil, and even swathed in the chador or the all-enveloping burka. Many of these Algerians, Bangladeshis, and others are also refugees from conflict in their own country. Indeed, they have often been the losers in battles against Middle Eastern and Asian regimes which they regard as insufficiently Islamic. Quite unlike the Irish and the Cypriots, they bring these far-off quarrels along with them. And they also bring a religion which is not ashamed to speak of conquest and violence.
Until he was jailed last year on charges of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, a man known to the police of several countries as Abu Hamza al-Masri was the imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque. He was a conspicuous figure because, having lost the use of an eye and both hands in an exchange of views in Afghanistan, he sported an opaque eye plus a hook to theatrical effect. Not as nice as he looked, Abu Hamza was nonetheless unfailingly generous with his hospitality. Overnight guests at his mosque's sleeping quarters have included Richard Reid, the man in whose honor we now all have to take off our shoes at the airport, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the missing team member of September 11, 2001. Other visitors included Ahmed Ressam, arrested for trying to blow up LAX for the millennium, and Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who planned to don an explosive vest and penetrate the American Embassy in Paris. On July 7, 2005 ("7/7," as the British call it), a clutch of bombs exploded in London's transport system. It emerged that one of the suicide murderers had been influenced by the preachings of Abu Hamza, as had two of those attempting to replicate the mission two weeks later.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:56 AM

May 10, 2007
Cognitive Dissonance

Jonah Goldberg, on the insanity of people who think that Bush knew about 911 ahead of time (depressingly, about a third of Democrats):

Ah yes, because Bush's post-9/11 plan has worked out so perfectly on so many levels. All along he'd hoped that by 2007 he'd be a political eunuch on the Hill and below-freezing approval levels. And the mad genius's plan to seize Iraqi oil and topple regimes across the Middle East has gone off without a hitch. Meanwhile, Karl Rove's Mark Hanna-like scheme to permanently lock in a Republican majority couldn't be going smoother.

Don't any of these morons consider why, if he's so evil and conniving, and willing to destroy buildings and murder thousands, he didn't plant WMDs in Iraq?

And disgustingly, rather than using the opportunity as a "Sister Souljah moment," a major Democrat candidate panders to them, instead of properly denouncing them as loons. He can't, though, because they're his base.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:45 AM

It's Not An Organization, It's An Ideology

The people who whine that we haven't caught bin Laden (I'm still not convinced that he didn't die years ago), or that "Al Qaeda in Iraq is not Al Qaeda," don't understand what we're at war with, or who the enemy is. Andrew McCarthy explains.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:30 AM

The Infection Is Spreading

Anbar isn't the only place where Al Qaeda will be on the run.

In fact, what's finally happening reminds me of a post I wrote a couple years ago on how one establishes a beachhead of cooperation, and then expands it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AM

May 09, 2007
The Situation In Baghdad

A very long, but interesting (and encouraging) video interview by Bob Wright with Eli Lake, embedded reporter for the New York Sun, and a major in Iraq.

"The people who think that the insurgents are fighting for a nationalist cause should go to Haifa Street right now."

"In terms of the Vietnam analogy, these are people trying to seek My Lais every day, and our guys are trying to prevent it."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:28 AM

May 08, 2007
The Enemy Who Cannot Be Named

We are at war with Iran (and really, have been for almost thirty years now), but we apparently have to continue to pretend otherwise.

Twice before the military has tried to present to the press overwhelming evidence of Iran’s involvement in the Iraq war, only to be met by hostile skepticism. The skepticism basically takes the form of three questions:

Couldn’t these weapons have been made anywhere?
Isn’t it fishy that these weapons were marked in English with American-style dates?
Isn’t all of this a ploy to justify a neocon war with Iraq [sic]?

As you will see from the video, Maj. Weber can definitively answer the first two questions. As for the Daily Kos-inspired third question, well, who can address questions from planet Paranoid? And who should bother?

As noted in comments, point (3) is almost certainly meant to be "...war with Iran."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:44 PM

May 07, 2007
A Story I Haven't Covered Enough

The military's attempt to clamp down on milbloggers.

This is dumb, not just because of the free speech implications, but because they are shutting down the voices that could be the most important ones in support of the war. But even if not, it's a violation of the values for which these soldiers (and other military personnel) are fighting. Of course no operational information should be blogged, but there's no evidence that this has occurred. It sounds more like stupid bureaucracy to me (which is the story of the Bush administration, and of every administration). Of course, that's the story of big government itself. Unfortunately, it's not something that we can get around when it comes to making war.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:40 PM

He Was A Great Guy

...for a terrorist with a totalitarian ideology. Why looks can be deceiving:

One clue to this phenomenon may come from jazz musician Tarek Shah, who recently pled guilty to providing martial arts and hand-to-hand combat with weapons training to Al-Qaeda operatives. In 2004 Shah told a man he thought was a fellow jihadist but who turned out to be an undercover agent, “I could be joking and smiling and then cutting their throats in the next second.”
Or they may be genuinely decent fellows. It was the Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler who told a group of SS leaders: “Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet -- apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written…”

Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? To their friends and family, they probably were. After all, they weren’t interested in undifferentiated mayhem. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational and good, and the murders were a means to that goal. It was not just a noteworthy achievement, but a necessity, for them to remain “decent fellows,” for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society. That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for – in their view – a goal that remained good.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 AM

May 05, 2007
Britain's Coming Terrorist War

The manager of Al Arabiya: "...Pursuing extremist Muslims today is better than pursuing all Muslims tomorrow."

Indeed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:48 PM

May 04, 2007
More Good News From Anbar

And bad news for the Democrats who want to surrender. The Sunnis are finally figuring out which side they should want to be on. I guess they're realizing that Al Qaeda is not, in the words of bin Laden, the "strong horse."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:57 AM

May 03, 2007
End It, Don't Win It

Donald Sensing, on the absurd mental gymnastics that Democrats must perform to want to end a war that doesn't exist. As he says, one side can start a war, but it takes both to end it. And Al Qaeda, either in Afghanistan or Iraq, isn't ready to quit. Particularly when, based on the actions of the Dems, they think they're winning.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 AM

May 02, 2007
The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend

Lee Smith says that the Democrats are waging a proxie war against the Bush administration--in the Middle East, many of whom refuse to believe that we're at war (simultaneously while thinking that we should end the war that we're not in--talk about cognitive dissonance). I think that's exactly what's happening, even if they don't realize it themselves.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:04 PM

It Worked For Reagan

I wrote earlier this morning that whatever I (and a lot of other people) voted for last fall, it wasn't surrender. Here's an interesting approach to the war, that seems beyond the Democrats. We win, they lose. Go sign the petition.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:42 PM

Don't Give Up Too Soon

Why Congress should support the "surge":

It’s hard for a soldier like me to reconcile a political jab like Senator Harry Reid’s “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything” when it’s made in front of a banner that reads “Support Our Troops.” But the politician’s job is different from the soldier’s. Mr. Reid’s belief — that the best way to support the troops is by acknowledging defeat and pulling them out of Iraq — is likely shared by a large slice of the population, which gives it legitimacy.
It seems oddly detached, however, from what’s happening on the battlefield. The Iraqi battalion I lived with is stationed outside of Habbaniya, a small city in violent Anbar Province. Together with a fledgling police force and a Marine battalion, these Iraqi troops made Habbaniya a relatively secure place: it has a souk where Iraqi soldiers can shop outside their armored Humvees, public generators that don’t mysteriously explode, children who walk to school on their own. The area became so stable, in fact, that it attracted the attention of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In late February, the Sunni insurgents blew up the mosque, killing 36.

If American politicians pull the marines out of Anbar, the Iraqi soldiers told me, they too will have to pull back, ceding some zones to protect others. The same is true in the Baghdad neighborhoods where the early stages of the surge have made life livable again.

And here's another soldier who is justifiably angry:

What the Democrats are doing is akin to what we did in Vietnam by signing a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese, tantamount to bailing out on our allies’ without their concurrence, then departing with absolutely no intention of ever coming back, no matter what the North Vietnamese did. Congress also cut off financial support for South Vietnam after our departure. And sure as hell, as soon as we left, the North Vietnamese attacked south in full force, and for two more years, the two sides pounded each other until the more determined North, supported by Russia and China, won the war. And we veterans here at home who had fought and seen so many of our buddies die over there, had to keep our mouths shut and just take it.
And we felt the shame of defeat. Not a defeat we’d suffered, but a defeat of our national will. And that enraged me and made me feel ashamed. It took me more than forty years to get over it, and I still simmer when I think about it.

And we’re going to do it again, thanks to the Democrats in Congress.

On the other hand – and I have to say this to keep my sanity — in a democracy, the will of the people must prevail, and if the majority of our population really want us to leave Iraq, then we should. But has there been a national debate about staying or leaving, fighting or folding, winning or losing? No. Has there been a definitive referendum on the war? No. And have the American people been given a chance, other than anecdotally, to make a statement on whether we want to withdraw from Iraq and face the consequences, or whether we want to tough it out, and win the bloody thing? No.

So I ask you, where do the Democrats come up with this national mandate bullshit?

Whole cloth, baby. Whole cloth.

[Update at 9:30 AM EDT]

In response to the first comment, last fall's vote was not a referendum on the war at all, let alone a "definitive" one. There were many issues that weren't the war, and many Democrats ran on them. I was pissed off at the Republicans, and happy to see them lose (but sadder to see the Dems win, because they didn't deserve to). But it wasn't (just) over the war, and to the limited degree that it was about the war, it sure as hell wasn't because I wanted us to surrender.

Have you ever heard of a "controlled experiment" (hint: that wasn't one)?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:22 AM

May 01, 2007
Bad News For The Democrats

Which is to say, good news from Iraq.

In addition to showing real progress (Sunnis killing Al Qaeda), it also undermines the mantra that Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, since he had been there pre-removal of Saddam.

[Update a few minutes later]

K-Lo questions the timing:

...how long can it take for Rove-planned-it for a veto-backdrop story theories?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:52 AM

April 30, 2007
George Tenet (Part Deux)

Rich Lowry has read his book. So, with an even more devastating review, has Christopher Hitchens. In a rational and well-read world, he wouldn't be being lionized by the media. But in the real, Bush-deranged world, he probably will continue to be.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:19 PM

April 29, 2007
A Depressing Assessment

...of Israel's war last summer against Hezbollah:

When war erupted in summer 2006, Israel enjoyed overwhelming military superiority and favorable political conditions. However, its strategic follies and operational deficiencies resulted in a faltering, indecisive war. The Israeli military could have administered a serious blow to Hezbollah from the air during the first few days of the war or, alternatively, destroyed most of Hezbollah's military presence in southern Lebanon with a large land invasion. Unfortunately, Israel's political and military leadership had no clear concept of what victory over Hezbollah entailed.
Israel squandered an important opportunity to settle regional scores. It left unchecked Iran's apparent efforts to expand Shi‘i influence in Lebanon and left untouched Syria's potential for mischief in Lebanon. Hezbollah's resilience against the Israeli bombardment emboldened it to withstand future Israeli assaults, and Israel's failure to succeed emboldened regional radicals.

Israel is a strong state, but it can ill-afford such failure. It lives in a dangerous neighborhood in which military might is the guarantee for survival. Halutz has initiated an intensive and comprehensive inquiry process and resigned. In the past, the IDF has proved its capacity to learn from its mistakes and improve. Some deficiencies can be easily corrected. Increases in the defense budget could provide the means to implement some lessons learned, for example, longer training for reserve units and procurement of better weapon systems. Less easy to correct are deficiencies in strategic thinking.

Post-modern notions have blurred the strategic clarity of Israel's political leadership and its defense and foreign affairs establishment. The economic cost of building a strong military force may be high, but it is not an optional expense. Too often, wishful thinking supplants reality.

Let's hope they've taken some lessons, because with the connivance of Syria and Iran (as last time) a repeat performance is unfortunately not far off.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:15 PM

April 28, 2007
If The Democrats Get Their Way

A view of Iraq's future. From Basra:

It seems that ever since Britain and Denmark announced their intention to withdraw, the security situation has deteriorated. Troops from both countries now come under fire from the Shi'ite militias vying for power.
This is what happens when abandoning an area with a weak security apparatus in place. Now that the Brits and Danes have given the people of Basra a drop-dead date for their withdrawal, they have set in motion a fight for power that will only amplify as the withdrawal date approaches. Instead of throwing in with the central government, the flight of the Coalition has convinced Iraqis in that area that they have to find the strongest warlord for protection.

We can expect this across the country if the US withdraws precipitately from Iraq. A pullout will embolden the violent and frighten the law-abiding, and the end result will be a completely failed state.

[Late afternoon update]

A plea from Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:35 AM

April 26, 2007
So Who Won, Harry?

Amir Tehari asks the obvious question of Harry Reid--if we've lost the war, who won?

Because all wars have winners and losers, Reid, having identified America as the loser, is required to name the winner. This Reid cannot do.
The reason is that, whichever way one looks at the situation, America and its Iraqi allies remain the only objective victors in this war...

...Reid may believe that Iran, either alone or with its Syrian Sancho Panza, is the victor. If that's the case, Reid shares the illusion peddled by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Convinced that the Americans will run away, mostly thanks to political maneuvers by Reid and his friends, Ahmadinejad has gone on the offensive in Iraq and throughout the region. By heightening his profile, he wants to make sure that Iran reaps the fruits of what Reid is sowing in Washington.

But even then, it's unlikely that most Iraqis would acknowledge Ahmadinejad as winner and bow to his diktat. The Islamic Republic cannot act as victor solely because Reid says so.

It's possible that Reid imagined that his analytical problems are over simply because he has identified the war's loser. The truth is that his troubles are only beginning. He must tell Americans to whom they wish their army to surrender in Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:34 PM

"The War Isn't Lost"

Fred Kagan is back from Iraq. He's not very impressed with Harry Reid.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:48 AM

April 25, 2007
"Strategy Of Defeat"

That's how the WSJ accurately characterizes Senator Reid's (and his party's) position.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:03 PM

"If America Pulls Out Of Iraq..."

“...they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”

The second installment of Michael Totten's trip to Kirkuk.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:52 AM

Incompatible Viewpoints

Tony Blankley writes about the two radically different points of view on the war:

For those of us who support the great struggle against radical Islam, the world reality could not be plainer. The threat of radical Islam is not merely a few thousand terrorists using small explosives to kill a few dozen people at a time -- usually in the faraway Middle East. Rather, it is an historic recrudescence of a violent, conquering old tradition of Islam that almost overwhelmed the world from the Seventh Century until as recently as the 17th century. It is radicalizing the minds of increasing numbers of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims to be very aggressive culturally, as well as violent -- from Africa to Indonesia, to Cairo to Ankara, to Paris, to Rotterdam to London to Falls Church, Va.

Unfortunately, in addition, the debate is poisoned, almost rendered futile, by the irrational blind hatred that so many harbor for George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:52 AM

Running Out Of Time

As noted in comments here, T. M. Lutas says that the Democrats' bet is looking pretty shaky:

I expect at least 3 more provinces to get handed over between now and the height of campaign season 2008. I'd like to think that at least 6 more would make the transition by then (obviating the need to explain Kurdistan's special situation in the stats). The defeatists have to change the natural progression of Iraqi government and security institution building and do it soon or they're going to be in deep trouble in 2008.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:06 AM

Reducing The Pull Of The Gravity Well

An interesting essay on insurgency, and counterinsurgency.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:22 AM

April 24, 2007
More Inconvenient Truth

For Harry Reid. From Iraq:

We are winning over here in Al Anbar province. I don't know about Baghdad, but Ramadi was considered THE hotspot in Al Anbar, the worse province, and it has been very quiet. The city is calm, the kids are playing in the streets, the local shops are open, the power is on at night, and daily commerce is the norm rather than the exception. There have been no complex attacks since March. That is HUGE progress. This quiet time is allowing the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to establish themselves in the eyes of the people. The Iraqi people also want IA's and IP's in their areas. The Sunni Sheiks are behind us and giving us full support. This means that almost all Sunnis in Al Anbar are now committed to supporting the US and Iraqi forces. It also means that almost all insurgents left out here are AQ. FYI, the surge is just beginning. Gen Petraeus' strategy is just getting started and we're seeing huge gains here.
However, you don't see Harry Reid talking about this. When I saw what he said, it really pissed me off. That guy does not know what is going on over here because he hasn't bothered to come and find out. The truth on the ground in Al Anbar is not politically convenient for him, so he completely ignored it.

Yes, that's the same reason that he doesn't want to hear from Petraeus, or have open testimony in front of the cameras.

The truth? Harry Reid can't handle the truth.

[Update a couple minutes later]

That noted neocon reporter from the NYT, John Burns, says that the Democrats are executing Al Qaeda's strategy perfectly:

Well, the number of troops, that's finite. The amount of time they can stay, we think that's probably finite, too. And the calculations of the insurgents, who, as one military officer said to me, will always trade territory for time. That's to say, they will move out, they will wait. Because they know the political dynamic in the United States is moving in a direction that is probably going to be favorable to them.

Look, I don't think that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi objectively want Al Qaeda to win. I'm sure that they have succeeded in deluding themselves that we are the problem in Iraq. I'm also sure that they believe that this is in the near term a political winner for them, and sadly, they may be right. But they're playing a dangerous game. What if they're wrong, and the people actually reporting success in Iraq are right? They're so heavily invested in defeat now that it could actually be an electoral disaster for them next year. I certainly hope that will be the case. For me, it would be win-win--we'd have won in Iraq, and the Dems would have lost precisely because they did everything they could to prevent it from happening.

Anyway politics aside, like it or not, and deny it or not, they are objectively providing aid and comfort to the enemy. The problem is that they won't start acting in the national interest until, to paraphrase Golda Meir, they start loving their country more than they hunger for power and hate George Bush.

[Update a few minutes later]

More contempt for Harry Reid from the troops.

[Afternoon update]

OK, that's progress. I guess.

Now Harry will listen to Petraeus. He just won't believe anything he says. Unless, of course, it fits with the leftist narrative.

Well, hey, we already know that the truth is inconvenient.

[Late afternoon update]

OK, one more, since it's still near the top. Dick Cheney is too kind to Harry Reid:

...only last November, Senator Reid said there would be no cutoff of funds for the military in Iraq. So in less than six months' time, Senator Reid has gone from pledging full funding for the military, then full funding but with conditions, and then a cutoff of funding — three positions in five months on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops.
Yesterday, Senator Reid said the troop surge was against the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. That is plainly false. The Iraq Study Group report was explicitly favorable toward a troop surge to secure Baghdad. Senator Reid said there should be a regional conference on Iraq. Apparently, he doesn't know that there is going to be one next week. Senator Reid said he doesn't have real substantive meetings with the President. Yet immediately following last week's meeting at the White House, he said, "It was a good exchange; everyone voiced their considered opinion about the war in Iraq."

What's most troubling about Senator Reid's comments yesterday is his defeatism. Indeed, last week, he said the war is already lost. And the timetable legislation that he is now pursuing would guarantee defeat.

Well, if that's what's necessary to elect Democrats, "bring it on."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:19 AM

April 23, 2007
More Progress In Anbar

A long but informative report, from Max Boot.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:41 PM

Who Cares What's Actually Happening?

The Dems have a problem--how to lose a war without being blamed for it. They pulled it off in Vietnam, but I hope that they can't do it again.

What's curious is that congressional Democrats don't seem much interested in what's actually happening in Iraq. The commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Washington this week, but last week Pelosi's office said "scheduling conflicts" prevented him from briefing House members. Two days later, the members-only meeting was scheduled, but the episode brings to mind the fact that Pelosi and other top House Democrats skipped a Pentagon videoconference with Petraeus March 8.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:54 AM

Are We Winning The War?

And not realizing it? An interesting dispatch from Anbar province.

No one tell Harry Reid. Given his heavy investment in defeat, his disappointment would be palpable.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:28 AM

April 21, 2007
Where The WMD Went?

This is pretty dismaying, if true:

The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralise the danger of Iraqi WMD. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.

It also would mean that Madame Speaker's cosying up with Assad was an even bigger disaster than it seemed at the time.

Unfortunately, it seems entirely plausible. I wish we had someone else to vote for.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:01 PM

April 20, 2007
"There Is No Military Solution Here"

I'm getting very tired of hearing this trite phrase, as though it's obvious, or indisputable, or useful. Or even true. Of course there is a military solution, or at least, the military is a key component of whatever solution we come up with. There's certainly no non-military solution to nihilistic madmen bent on murder and mayhem. It's not policy analysis--it's simply a mindless mantra.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some letters to Harry Reid, from the people who "don't have a solution."

And some thoughts on defeatism from Victor Davis Hanson.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 AM

Dispatch From Kirkuk

Michael Totten has a long photoessay. Remember to support him with the tip jar.

Iraq is a big place. It is more or less the size of California. If a car bomb were to go off in San Diego, it wouldn’t disturb people who live in San Francisco. They would watch the aftermath from safety on TV just as I watched scenes of carnage from safety at Mam Rostam’s in Kirkuk. The war was far away…or at least around a couple of corners. Iraq looks scarier from far away than it does up close and in person…even when you’re in the Red Zone. How much danger you’re in depends on where you are in Iraq. The Red Zone is not one shade of crimson. The war, for the most part, is concentrated mostly in very specific areas. On any given day you might see something violent, but you probably won’t. This fact is completely lost in the breathless media coverage of the carnage, the mayhem, and the bang-bang.
But I was lounging around with the chief of police. Any illusion that Kirkuk might have been safe couldn’t last long with him in the room. My feelings of detached security were but a passing moment. The chief’s walkie-talkie urgently squawked and he had to answer. The room was silent as he listened grimly.

“There has been a shooting,” he said. “Two men on a motorcycle rode down the street and fired a gun at people walking on the sidewalk. One of the men was apprehended. They are bringing him here.”

For some reason I assumed when the chief said “here” he meant the police station. He did not. He meant Mam Rostam’s.

“They will be here in two minutes,” he said.

“Here?” I said. “They’re bringing him here? To the house?”

“They will bring him here before taking him down to the station,” the chief said. “I’ll interrogate him here. I’m not going to feel good until I slap him.”

There's a lot more, including the extreme racism of the Arabs, which goes too little commented upon in places like Turtle Bay, and complications from the Turks.

[Update a few minutes later]

Patrick Lasswell, Michael's partner-in-danger, has more of the story, with some background.

It's very easy to forget (since the subject rarely comes up in political discussion) that if we abandon Iraq, we essentially abandon the Kurds as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:25 AM

April 19, 2007
No Danegeld

Christopher Hitchens has a long but fascinating history of the beginning of the war of the US versus Islam. I've always thought that this would make a great movie, particularly since September 11th.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:38 PM

April 15, 2007
Straw Men In Baghdad

In the context of the almost-unheard-of declaration of the Duke lacrosse players' innocence by the state attorney general, I would note that (former federal prosecutor) Andrew McCarthy has some thoughts on the distinctions between "not (yet) guilty" and "innocent," and between 911 and Al Qaeda:

To be clear, I don't understand Jonah to be saying anything other than that no connection has been proved, and assuming that's what he's saying, I agree. But there is a big difference between saying no connection has been proved and saying no connection is likely, or at least conceivable. The debate on this has become so perverted by those hell-bent on discrediting the American invasion of Iraq (aided and abetted by the administration's infuriating failure to defend itself), that it seems people feel compelled to make an opening concession that there is no connection between Iraq and 9/11 in order to be taken seriously in arguing that there is a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. But it would be more accurate to say that the evidence of connection between Iraq and al Qaeda is extensive, and there is enough troubling circumstantial evidence of Iraqi ties to central 9/11 players that Iraq's participation in 9/11 cannot be discounted.

The left and their enablers in the media are now fully invested in the notion that Saddam provided no support for Al Qaeda, and doubling down. As always (the Duke case being a prime example) the appropriate narrative continues trump reality. It is two different things to say that Saddam coordinated with bin Laden, and that Saddam was involved with 911, and they continue to muddy the waters by conflating the two.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:13 AM

What A Surprise

It seems that all members of the Iraqi Parliament, regardless of political party, are opposed to being blown up. Who knew?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:49 AM

April 12, 2007
With The British Squaddies

Michael Yon has a graphic report from Iraq, embedded with the British troops:

As we rumbled through the dry, desert heat, the smells of Iraq—nearly all of them bad—wafted down from the top hatch. Suddenly, the Bulldog was filled with a stench so awful that soldiers nearly gagged, as if everything that could rot in Iraq had gone rotten all at once. Where just moments before there was only dusty air in the compartment, in a flash it was filled with that horrendous, fetid stench and a swarm of flies. When, a few minutes later, the stench was suddenly replaced by smoke from outside, dozens of flies remained in the compartment.
...In an operation that lasted over four hours, British forces killed 26-27 enemy and sustained no casualties. 5 Platoon fired more than 4,000 bullets before their guns began to cool, and about 15 of the enemy kills were accredited to 5 Platoon. Another platoon captured two enemy fighters, including one Iraqi policeman who might have been heeding al Sadr’s call for Iraqi Police and Army forces to turn on their Coalition partners.

Shorter Michael Yon--he's impressed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:13 PM

Detente?

Mark Danzigerisn't very impressed with "foreign policy experts."

I think that we should take the same attitude toward the current regime in Iran that Reagan did to the Soviet Union--"They lose, we win."

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oh, and here's the latest insanity from the UN--Iran and Syria are leading the disarmament commission. And we're supposed to take this institution seriously?

And here's an interesting (albeit glum) report on what Iran is up to in Iraq:

it's not just the Sunni Arab neighborhoods that need attention. Radical Shia outfits, like the Iran backed Mahdi Army, have also become more aggressive. The pro-Iranian groups have been losing strength, mainly because Arabs don't trust the Iranians. Despite sharing religious beliefs (most Iranians, like most Iraqi Arabs, are Shia), Iraqi Arabs know that the Iranians despise them, and are still unhappy with the results of the 1980s war. In that conflict, Iraqi Shia Arabs fought for Saddam against Iranians, and fought the Iranians to a standstill, and a ceasefire. This was a humiliation for the Iranians, who had walked over the local opposition for thousands of years. But the Iranians have money, weapons and technical assistance for Iraqi Shia Arabs willing to cooperate. All the Iranians want is more chaos inside Iraq. This makes Iraq weak, and less of a threat to Iranian ambitions in the region. While some of the pro-Iranian Iraqi Arabs believe they have a chance of turning Iraq into a religious dictatorship (like Iran is), most know they are being played, and paid. You take the money. Jobs are scarce. But Iran is still the enemy. Always has been, always will be.
More evidence is piling up that Iran has, as many intel specialists have long suspected, been supporting some Sunni Arab terrorist groups, as well as Shia Arab ones. There are dozens of Sunni Arab terrorist groups, scattered all over the physical and political map. Apparently Iran helps out Sunni Arab terrorists who are less likely to slaughter Shia. There are parts of the country where the only targets are Kurds and Turkomen (both Sunni) or Christians (a rapidly disappearing, via migration minority). Iran has long had problems with Kurds, Turks and Christians, and does not mind killing them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:51 AM

April 11, 2007
Let's Hope

In the wake of the hangover over their latest national embarrassment on the world stage, John O'Sullivan asks if Britain is finally becoming un-Dianified.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:44 AM

At WOC Today

An interesting discussion on women in combat, and a discourse on the last microcosm of the Cold War, on the Korean peninsula.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:55 AM

April 06, 2007
Illegal Negotiations

Robert Turner says that Nancy Pelosi could be prosecuted under the Logan Act (subscription required). It seems like an open-shut case to me, but this Justice Department would never do it, of course.

It's an ongoing mystery to me, actually, why the Bush Justice department treats Democrats with kid gloves. Berger gets a slap on the wrist, Jefferson still hasn't even been indicted. Doesn't exactly sound to me like the legal arm of a fascist regime.

[Update]

It seems to me that if the Bush administration was clever, the president would magnanimously issue a preemptive pardon to Madam Speaker (for this one incident, not blanket), but not to any of the Republicans who went. It would make the point without the Justice Department having to do anything at all, and it would be hilarious to watch the donkeys scream about it.

But, of course, the Bush administration isn't noted for cleverness.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:01 AM

Get Them The Memo

Maybe the Democrats believe that Iraq has nothing to do with Al Qaeda (they do, after all, believe lots of nutty things), but they don't seem to have persuaded Al Qaeda.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:41 AM

April 05, 2007
"Chumps On Pilgrimage"

Claudia Rossett isn't very impressed with Nancy's Excellent Adventure, either.

[Update at 4:30 PM EDT]

Austin Bay says that this isn't "shuttle diplomacy"--it's muddle diplomacy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:18 PM

Clueless In Damascus

Regardless of her headgear during her excellent adventure to Syria, the Washington Post agrees with me that Nancy Pelosi is an idiot. The kind that Uncle Joe Stalin used to call a useful one, for the Assad regime.

"What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

As Glenn writes:

If Bush and Cheney were really evil, they'd both resign and stick the Democrats with a Pelosi Presidency for the next two years. The Democratic Party would never recover. Alas, neither would the country.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:55 AM

April 04, 2007
What Would A Martian Think?

Krauthammer, on the nutty notion that the "real" war is in Afghanistan, and not in Iraq:

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian -- and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources, no industrial and no technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure which, though suffering decay in the later Saddam years, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e. wrong) hands.
Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are asking the question.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:34 PM

April 03, 2007
A Feminist Of Convenience

Nancy seems to have no problem with misogynists, as long as they're not western misogynists.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 PM

Wimps?

Ralph Peters (and John Derbyshire) wonders what has happened to the Royal Marines.

[Update in the evening]

Mark Steyn has further thoughts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:52 AM

Optimism

Michael Yon sees hope in Iraq:

One key aspect of General Petraeus’ new operations in Iraq is to put out a large number of “Combat Outposts,” or COPs. The idea of the COPs is not new, but it is proven, and is similar to local law enforcement in the United States opening precinct stations in high crime districts. Though the idea of precinct stations is steady-state (the cops plan to keep precincts open), here in Iraq, part of the idea is to first bring stability – by dampening the vibrant civil war for instance – but ultimately turning Iraq back over to the Iraqis.
If I might insert a personal opinion, I think Petraeus’ plan has a serious chance of working despite heavy odds. In fact, within my first three days with 1-4, talking with Iraqi families and police, there were strong indicators that for this little neighborhood, local people and Iraqi police are definitely encouraged. This doesn’t extend to the terrorists, however, and 1-4 Cav has been under fire. Our soldiers showed amazing fire discipline, not even knowing I was just feet behind them with a video camera. (I’ve seen it many times, but finally have got video proof that our guys will go far not to shoot the wrong people.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:45 AM

April 01, 2007
Soi-Disant Reactionaries

On the left.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:56 AM

March 31, 2007
Where The Rubber Hits The Road

Even if the left in the West remains clueless, letting deranged Bush hatred substitute for thought, the left in the Middle East can't afford that luxury:

“We looked to the left in the West and imitated it,” says Awad Nasir, one of Iraq’s best-known poets and a lifelong Communist. “We heard from the US and Western Europe that being left meant being anti-American. So we were anti-American. And then we saw Americans coming from the other side of the world to save us from Saddam Hussein, something that our leftist friends and the Soviet Union would never contemplate.”
Mustafa Kazemi, spokesman for the new Afghan front expresses similar sentiments. “Our nation is still facing the menace of obscurantism and terror from Taleban and Al-Qaeda,” he says. “Thus, we are surprised when elements of the left in the US and Europe campaign for withdrawal so that our new democracy is left defenseless against its enemies.”

For his part, Jumblatt, the Lebanese leader, says he realized that his lifelong anti-Americanism had been misplaced when he saw “long lines of people, waiting to vote in Iraq, in the first free election in an Arab country.”

...“Anti-Americanism is a luxury we cannot afford in the Middle East,” says Adnan Hussein, a leftist Iraq writer recently picked by the Financial Times as one of the 50 most influential columnists in the world. “Blinded by anti-Americanism, the left in the West ends up on the same side as religious fascists and despots.”

Yeah, but at least they're not George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:04 AM

March 30, 2007
Islam Means Submission

An Iranian blogger, on why it's a mistake to attempt to appease the mullahs.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:51 PM

Dog Bites Man

The Berlin bureau Chief of Der Spiegel, on the ability of Germans to hold all sorts of strange beliefs, including anti-Americanism:

For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.
Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945. (Well, with German help, of course -- from Einstein and his ilk.) There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil. Just look at President Bush, the man who, as some of SPIEGEL ONLINE's readers steadfastly believe, "is worse than Hitler." Now that gives us a chance to kill two birds with one stone. If Bush is the new Hitler, then we Germans have finally unloaded the Führer on to someone else. In fact, we won't even have to posthumously revoke his German citizenship, as politicians in Lower Saxony recently proposed. No one can hold a candle to our talent for symbolism!

Unfortunately, Germany is not unique in that regard. It's a seemingly (but only seemingly) harmless game that a citizen of any country can (and often does) play. When Europe either is living under Sharia law, or (reverting to form) has deported and/or killed many of its recent immigrants and their offspring, I'm fully confident that they'll blame America. And generations into the future, George W. Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:25 PM

March 29, 2007
Americaphobes

Dean Esmay has some thoughts:

Time after time the naysayers have proven themselves both morally and intellectually incoherent, and yet they never have the introspection to acknowledge this.
Furthermore, anyone calling himself a "liberal" or a "humanist"--Muslim or not--is in my view faced with a stark choice:

You either sit around pretending that a vicious, murderous, fascist "insurgency" that routinely cuts people's heads off and shoots children in the face is the "legitimate voice of the Iraqi people," or you recognize that there is in Iraq a government elected by the Iraqi people working under a Constitution written entirely by Iraqis that recognizes human rights better than any in the Arab world.

No matter how many reservations you have about how it was done or how imperfectly that elected government implements the ideals expressed in that ratified Constitution.

If you take the former position you have no business calling yourself a liberal or a progressive or a humanist. If you take the latter position, then maybe you have to swallow the bitter pill that someone named George Bush, whom you don't like and maybe think is incompetent, was the instigator of something that damn well needs to be supported.

But you can't have it both ways. Indeed, by declaring the whole thing illegitimate, all you're doing is siding with the Islamophobes of the world who claim the Muslims and the Arabs are far too savage, backward, and primitive to respect things like democracy and human rights. Indeed, you're implicitly siding with the Jihadwatch crowd.

They're not anti-war. They're just on the other side.

Oh, and I'm sure that the usual suspects in the "human rights community" will be speaking up about this violation of the Geneva Conventions any minute now.

Any minute now.

<sound="chirping crickets">

</sound>

Any minute.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:49 AM

March 28, 2007
Iran Is Not A Legitimate State

So argues Mark Steyn:

How many times does the Islamic Republic have to (a) seize sovereign territory (the US embassy in Teheran); (b) order mob hits on foreign nationals (Salman Rushdie and his publishers); (c) perpetrate acts of state terrorism against citizens of countries with which it has no grievance whatsoever (the Buenos Aires community center bombing)? Its behavior has been consistent for three decades, yet, this time round as last time round, the British government calls in the Iranian ambassador and gives him a stern talking to, as if he were the emissary of Poland or India or any other civilized state.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:56 AM

March 25, 2007
Fight Back

That the people who may be sued by CAIR for sincerely attempting to protect their airplane and their lives should be provided with legal defense goes without saying. But I think it should go further.

We need to start a legal fund to have a class-action countersuit against the "flying Imams," for maliciously terrorizing the passengers and delaying the flight. And for this clear attempt to intimidate us all into remaining passive in the face of equally clear threats. We should make this as painful for CAIR as possible, to discourage both such future behavior on what appear to be their operatives, and from filing frivolous lawsuits.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:20 AM

March 23, 2007
Tit For Tat?

This is interesting. I wonder if, as the headline asks, it was just a local decision, or if Ahmadinejad knows something about it. Maybe, while he's in New York, he should be detained for questioning.

Not for long, of course. Just until the British sailors are released unharmed.

[Evening update]

Maybe Ahmadinehad had a similar thought. As noted in comments, he's decided to postpone his trip to the Big Apple. Which perhaps makes one think that he got caught by surprise himself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:29 PM

March 21, 2007
Red On Red

This seems like good news. The "foreign guests" seem to have worn out their welcome among the Taliban in Waziristan. Here's hoping that they kill each other in copious quantities, since the prospect of them becoming peaceful democrats seems dim.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 PM

March 20, 2007
The Continuing Insanity Of The War

The War on (some) Drugs, that is. In the real war. In Afghanistan:

We are winning in Afghanistan - that is the clear view on the ground. In contrast to Iraq, the Taliban are heavily on the back foot. Continued success, however, will be hampered by attempts to eradicate opium poppies...We are winning precisely because we are fighting the Taliban with "hearts and minds", not just militarily might. Success hinges on not driving the locals into supporting the enemy. Yet this is precisely what poppy eradication is starting to do. Farmers grow poppies in Helmand for the same reason farmers decide what to grow the world over - because it is the rational thing to do. It is not part of a cunning scheme to flood the infidel West with cheap heroin. To a Pashtun farmer, poppies mean an instant cash-crop. Advocates of poppy eradication like to argue that narcotics fuel the insurgency. The truth is the precise opposite. Farmers carry a financial risk when they grow poppies having already been paid for their unharvested crop. Destroying their crop will make it impossible to pay their debts. As a direct consequence, they then become much more likely to accept work as hired-guns for the Taliban. Fear of poppy eradication is mobilising local farmers to side with the Taliban. In the poppy growing Sanjin valley, the locals have teamed up with the Taliban and so that is now where our troops face the fiercest fighting. As Americans say, "Go figure".

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:48 PM

Ending The Cycle Of Excuses

Mario Loyola writes about the infantilization and dehumanization of the "Palestinians"--by the left.

A few months ago, I was reading Rashid Khalidi's latest book (The Iron Cage, on the struggle for Palestinian statehood) and I was struck by his evident mission, which was not to relate the history of what happened in Palestine, but rather to explain how everything that happened in Palestine was the fault of the Zionists and their allies. The major premise of this argument is really very odd: namely, that everyone in the story has moral agency except the Palestinians, who (by virtue of their status as victims) cannot commit any crimes for which the Zionists are not ultimately responsible. This struck me as a particularly dehumanizing way to defend the Palestinians.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:52 AM

March 15, 2007
Another Defection In Iran?

Maybe.

The question is, if they're finally getting actionable intelligence, will there be any action?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:47 PM

A Quick Recap

Austin Bay says that we're winning in Iraq (and really have been all along, despite the media's body-count-driven narrative).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:02 AM

March 12, 2007
Mislearning Lessons From History

Jonathan Chait has some words of caution for his fellow Bush haters.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:56 PM

Is Global Jihad Falling Apart?

Let's hope so:

The end of Saddam was the end of a major financer of the Global Islamic Jihad Movement. His money no longer flows through Rahman into the madrassas and terror training camps. The stress of losing Saddam and his wealth, plus being soundly defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, has caused the terrorist leaders alliance to crack. Add to that the loss of support from the UAE and Libya, and the financial cost to al Qaeda has been enormous. Not only has al Qaeda been defeated on the battlefield, funding has become a challenge for the Global Islamic Jihad Movement.
But the separation of Hekmatyar from the Taliban is not the only indication that the movement has fractured. Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad has written this week that the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban has faltered. If it is true (his reporting before has been insightful) this is one of the most significant developments in the war on terror. Divide and conquer still applies as a useful maxim.

I never fail to be amazed at people who seriously believe that it would have been a good idea to leave Saddam in power.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:28 AM

March 11, 2007
He Gets It

I've never been a big Ted Koppel or Nightline fan, but unlike many of his fellow Democrats (that's an assumption, but I think a reasonable one), he understands that we are at war (it may help that he's Jewish), and have been for a quarter century, even if many of us didn't figure it out until five years ago. Unfortunately, many remain in denial.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:22 PM

Learning From History

Looks like we're getting some new neighbors here in south Florida. From France:

There are no official U.S. government figures on the number of French Jews here, but officials in U.S. Jewish organizations said it could be anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 in South Florida -- mostly Miami-Dade.
''I would say they're in the thousands now,'' said Mendy Levy, a rabbi at The Shul synagogue in Surfside.

''There is no question of an increase in the number of French Jews in South Florida, and there's an expectation that that rate of increase will accelerate,'' said Jacob Solomon, executive vice president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. 'French Jews see the handwriting on the wall and say, `We're not going to wait until it's too late.' ''

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:32 AM

Getting Serious About Taliban Hunting

They're sending in the Sioux. I wonder if they'll count coup? I assume that taking scalps is against the Geneva Convention, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:20 AM

Do The Dems and the MSM Have A Backup Plan?

In light of growing evidence that "the surge" is working, that even Brian Williams couldn't ignore, Robert Kagan asks an interesting question.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:07 AM

March 09, 2007
Who's Your Baghdadi Now?

Looks like a major capture in Iraq:

Al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, has been identified in statements posted on Islamic extremist Web sites as the head of the Islamic State, which was proclaimed last year after the death of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraqi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al-Baghdadi was said to have headed the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an alliance of Al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, which was set up last year to downplay the role of foreigners in the Iraqi insurgency.

Hard to see how this is bad news. For either us or Iraq.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:11 PM

The New Euphemism

I see that this is the new Democrat mantra:

"bring our involvement in that civil war to a conclusion."

Is there a civil war in Iraq? Sure.

Is that all that is going on there? Really?

There will be no negative consequences to either the region, or our own security, to allow the "civil" war to get worse, or for the Sunni countries in the region (most of whom are at best indifferent to Al Qaeda and their goals, and often supportive) to continue to reinforce their agents of chaos there, and allow Anbar and other areas to become uninhibited breeding and training grounds for terrorism, as Afghanistan was under the Taliban?

It would be nice if we could have a real debate over this war, instead of disingenuousness from appeasers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:18 PM

I Guess It Is Like Vietnam

The Navy is deploying Swift Boats to Iraq. They'd better stay out of Cambodia, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:51 AM

Then And Now

What Democrats were saying in Iraq before everything became George Bush's fault and he "lied us into war."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:39 AM

Are We Approaching A Tipping Point?

For the desktop OS?

"We are involved in a number of massive deals for Linux desktops, and those are the kinds of things that are indicators of critical mass. So we are really looking at it very hard," said Doug Small, worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. "We are in a massive deal right now for ... multi-thousands of units of a desktop opportunity for Linux. That's an indicator." He declined to give details about the Linux deals.

This, combined with the fact that Dell is now shipping Linux laptops, is an ominous omen for Redmond.

I think that Vista may have been a bridge too far for Microsoft. Windows has been an entrenched technology for well over a decade now (and MS operating systems in general for well over two). As long as the cost of switching over remains high in terms of user retraining, it's hard for a newcomer to make much headway. But if the cost of continued use grows as well, and the benefits of the new technology start to become overwhelming, even the most entrenched technology can still lose out, when the curves cross over.

I've been fortunate enough not to have had to try Vista yet, but here's an amusing parable.

Of course, it's still an uphill battle until a standard GUI can be established, but I think that the Gnome/KDE wars continue.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:07 AM

The News Just Keeps Getting Better

...on that defecting Iranian general:

According to the report, the missing Iranian general was carrying documents and maps of Iran's military and intelligence infrastructure as well as information regarding the relations between the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad.
In addition, the general was reported to possess information regarding the Iranian nuclear program as well as information about Iran's strategic military plans.

Emphasis mine. If true, it will make it a lot easier to take out the key facilities at minimal cost and collateral damage.

This appears to be a major break in our struggle with Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. It would be nice if it also presaged a more general rebellion within the ranks, and the populace itself.

[Mid-morning update]

It's a quagmire! More insurgent attacks. In Iran.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:44 AM

Food For Thought

From Lileks:

I drove home listening to Bob Davis on KSTP; he was revisiting one of his favorite topics, one that mirrors exactly something I’ve felt for some time: the lack of any prominent cultural direction, and the strange incoherent sense of anticipation that lack produces. It’s as if the culture is treading water, with nothing truly new to give it focus and purpose. That’s not exactly a good thing when you’re competing with cultures that have both, in large quantities, and a sense of historical momentum the West has lost. I grapple with this from time to time, usually in the morning; it’s the odd suspicion that the West is exhausted. Not done or over or dead or resigned, but simply exhausted. We live in the end stages of the application of the Enlightenment, at least as applied to our own culture; what now? If you’ve ended debate on the great issues, you’re left with smaller ones, like 720 vs. 1080i; you concern yourself with indistinct dreads and assign to them a moral component; you luxuriate in the hot springs of partisan politics and redefine the issues so the gap between left and right looks like Gog v. Magog territory.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:28 AM

March 08, 2007
"Like Living In A History Piece"

When you sit in front of monitors and maps showing countless trajectories from Lebanon into Israel -- into the very places your friends and family live -- it can be quite agitating. Some of us were becoming very impatient, and in the many dead moments there were debates whether our response should be harsher. Of course, none of us were in any position of real influence. It was somewhat of a relief when the ground offensive was escalated, even though virtually everyone had people who were very close to them in combat units. I had some very tense conversations with people who were about to enter Lebanon, trying to prepare them without letting out really sensitive information. Talking to friends and family back home sometimes proved difficult because they would ask questions I could not answer -- either because I did not know the answer or because it was sensitive. Even today there are some very basic facts about the conflict that I would like the entire world to know, but divulging them would mean that we'll have poorer intelligence in the next round.

An excerpt from a long but fascinating (at least to me) interview with an IDF officer, by Michael Totten.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, Europe has a serious Israel problem. I think this is right:

Perhaps the best explanation, then, is one given by Stephan Vopel of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for why many more Americans and Israelis favor a military strike against Iran than Germans: "While Israelis subscribe to the maxim 'never again,' the German dictum is 'never again war.'" Pacifism, in other words, is the driving force behind European animus toward both the US and Israel.

Yes, it's easy to be a pacifist, when you've had someone else subsidizing your defense for decades.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:45 PM

March 07, 2007
Panic In Tehran?

This seems like good news, especially if it's a defection.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

March 06, 2007
"A Few Signs Of Progress"

From Iraqpundit:

Are my aunt and her neighbors kidding themselves out of desperation? That's possible; it's hard to live without hope, and people can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be optimistic. (Though the truth is that Iraqis are not, as a rule, an optimistic group, and are inclined by cultural habit to see things darkly. But that's another story.) It's true that the murderers in Iraq are still at work. On the other hand, I'm far more inclined to take seriously a picture of Baghdad that comes from a life-long Baghdadi than one coming from a Westerner who has parachuted into town for a while, and who doesn't speak the language.
Yet Iraqis who desperately want to lead normal lives are not the only ones with an incentive to interpret events in their own interests. If one listens to the usual suspects among certain journalists, academics, and politicians, the ongoing crackdown is futile and doomed to fail. But that's a conclusion that many of these figures reached even before the security sweep began. In other words, some of the crackdown's critics have created incentives, professional and personal, to perceive Iraqi and American failure. People can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be pessimistic, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AM

March 05, 2007
Another Greatest Generation

Jim Bennett has a review of John O'Sullivan's new book on Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope.

Looking at alternative outcomes of the Reagan-Thatcher-John Paul II world, it is hard to see how any other leaders in any of the three seats of power could have done better, and very easy to see how they could have done worse -- all the way to outbreak of nuclear war. Therefore, while leaving any actual theodicy to more venturesome commentators, it is easy to see why some considered the advent of these three leaders (and their not-statistically-likely serial survival of assassination attempts) to be providential. Since I find theodicy to be too problematic to consider (if God does move human events directly, there's far too much moral dark matter assumed in the problem for we poor three-dimensional observers to be able to draw any conclusions from it), I think O'Sullivan spent either too much time or too little discussing that possibility. If we assume we cannot intuit divine knowledge or intention in specific human events, then that is all one can really say about the matter; if we assume one can understand such things, then the events O'Sullivan discusses would be one of the principal theological events of our century, and could easily merit not just the bulk of O'Sullivan's book, but a library full of books.

We need to come up with more leaders like them. Sadly, I don't see any in office currently, or in the current race.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:19 PM