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.
I’d like to be able to attend this competition, for obvious reasons, but I don’t have the time or the money. I asked Davidian to sponsor my trip, but the cheapskate pretended not to hear me. Well, we’ll just see if I come up with any more glove competition ideas for him.
Kind of short notice I know, but there is a bloggist bash planned for this afternoon in Fort Lauderdale for any south Florida conservative/libertarian bloggists, in the bar at the Cheesecake Factory on Las Olas, starting around 4 PM.
This post set off a discussion in which I pointed out that tidal forces are asymmetric. Carl Pham expressed skepticism at this, asking if I was saying that the tide rose higher on the side of the earth closer to the moon. I hadn’t previously thought about this before, but since I do believe that tidal forces are asymmetric, this probably followed. Or at least it followed that they were different.
One attempt was made by Ilya to prove it, but I thought it flawed and oversimplified for reasons I pointed out in comments there, because one has to consider both centripetal effects and gravitational effects when analyzing tides.