He Shoulda Said ...

I caught an interview with Gen. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Fox "News" yesterday. The Fox talking head (far as I'm concerned, they're almost all identical) asked a question to the effect of "Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who wants to be President, for cry'n out loud, said that we need 'regime change at home'. Should this kind of irresponsible statement be allowed In Time Of War? Isn't this irresponsible when Our Troops Are At Risk?"

Myers responded with about three minutes of Beltway doubletalk that translated as "    ".

Unfortunately, the tendency toward public doubletalk is ingrained in the folks at the policy level. Basically, you know that anything you say will be used against you later, so you say as little as humanly possible, while making it as difficult as possible for the questioner to break in with a question, like "Hunh??"

What he should have said:

So you're saying we should cancel the 2004 Presidential election? Or that Democrats shouldn't be allowed to campaign? What he said was, essentially, that a Democrat should win the 2004 election. Do you really expect a Democrat to say anything else? Politics in the US is conducted at a high volume; get used to it.

Remember, we're fighting for freedom of speech and free elections. There's no reason to give up our most fundamental feedoms because we're actively fighting for them for the Iraqi people.

Also, I find your implication that our fighting men and women would allow their performance to be affected by legitimate, peaceful protests to be the single most disrespectful statement I've heard in a long time. Saying that our troops will not perform at their peak levels because of a few protests impugns their character, intelligence, and professionalism. It's worse than the people who scream "baby killer!" at our troops. That's just an insult, and says more about their own anger and ignorance than anything else.

Too much to hope, I guess.

War Sites

I've added an extra link block over on the right for useful war sites. Problem is, there are a bazillion sites talking about the war (including this one!), and it's hard to figure out where to look for information. The sites here, I think, are a good starting place. Most of the usefiul stuff, of course, is in the links. The information comes from "conventional" media sites, but those sites are so poorly organized that it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on without spending a huge amount of time digging.

• Sean Paul Kelly (The Agonist) -- Grand Central Station. News as it happens, at least as long as Sean can stay awake. He makes a real effort to simply digest and report, without slant. IMHO, he does a darn sight better job than the conventional media. (Note -- this site is extremely popular. This link points to one of the mirror sites.)
• Kos -- Thoughtful, in depth analysis and discussion of various points, especially logistics. Center/left politics.
• Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing -- A military point of view. Again, people who know what they're talking about, without too much political baggage. Politics, what there is, is middle-of-the-road military.

These sites have comment sections that are very much worth the effort to check out. All have a policy of throwing out dribbling loons of all political stripes; sadly necessary.

Enough with the Omens, Already!

Okay. We've had the biggest snowstorm in many years. Iraq had its biggest sandstorm ever. We have a brand-new plague. Chicago got hit by a meteorite. And to top it all off, today the temperature in the Washington,DC area was in the mid 60s, with snow flurries.

Awright, already! Enough with the omens! We get the idea -- we know this war is a bad idea. Now how about some hints about what to do about it?

What to look for? Bird carrying a snake? Plague of frogs? Rooster crowing at midnight?

How about a burning bush ... ?

Iraqi Affairs

The big question in Iraq is "what will happen after we win"? The talk of "democratization" is simply silly; we don't have the resources, will power, or national attention span. Most probable, of course, is that we'll just install a toady at the top and leave, keeping the Ba'athist power structure. Iraq will then promptly collapse into chaos and the Islamists will take over. Nobody in the US will care, as long as the oil keeps flowing.

But what if we did stay around? What if, as some have claimed, Iraq is going to become the "51^st state?". Well, we have a couple hundred years of experience dealing with "indigeneous peoples"; we'd probably do the same with the Iraqis.

Here, then, is the proposal for the Bureau of Iraqi Affairs (BIA) , patterned on the other BIA.

The War, So Far

If you want to know what's going on as it happens, The Agonist is the place to be. The error rate is higher than you get from the more mainline sources, but that's the price you pay for being up-to-the-minute. For as long as Sean-Paul holds out. How does he do it?. For more in-depth analysis, Kos is hard to beat. Try Venik's Aviation for a different point of view, including purported translations of GRU briefings..

TV coverage is absolutely godawful. Reminds me of nothing so much as a bunch of college wargamers discussing what Eisenhower did wrong at Normandy. Loud, arrogant, ignorant bluster and pictures with no context. Fox, as expected, is especially bad. They've completely dropped any pretense of doing "journalism" as opposed to "propaganda".

Al Jazeera finally has an English-language site. Too bad it's marked "Temporary". The site design is horrible (Microsoft only), but it's still interesting. Hopefully, they'll make it permanent and fix the design. I've also heard that they've been the victim of a denial-of-service attack; it'd be interesting to see just who's doing it. The talking heads are appalled that we didn't make Iraqi IV a priority.

Our military is following the obvious plan -- capture the oilfields, airlift troops to the north to start a front there, capture airbases in Iraq's western desert, and move the main attack force as quickly as possible to the outskirts of Baghdad. We're doing a lot of bombing, but nowhere near as much as the original (leaked?) "Shock and Awe" plan called for.

Unfortunately, a couple of things have gone very badly wrong:

• Against all expectations, the Iraqis are fighting. This is seriously Not Good; longer this war goes on, the worse trouble we'll be in.
• We're not being welcomed as liberators. Perhaps the Iraqis remember what happened when they answered our call to revolt in 1991?
• When this is over, I expect the Second Amendment types to have a field day. The Iraqi populous seems to be rather heavily armed. Not encouraging for the occupation.

Some things we expected:

• A few oil wells have been set on fire. Messy, but not disastrous.
• Hit and run attacks on the supply lines. I'm surprised there haven't been more.
• Some Islamist types have poked their heads up, including at least one suicide bombing.

Rumsfeld & company soiled their trousers on the POW issue. It's OK for US TV news to show Iraqi POWs, but not for Iraqi TV news to show American POWs. Everybody outside the US and UK has called them on this.

No "Weapons of Mass Destruction", despite what Fox says. Their talking heads can't distinguish between a factory for making poison gas and poison gas. LATER --Turns out it was an ordinary chemical factory.

Lessons we've hopefully learned:

• Helicopters are vulnerable to heavy machine gun fire. (The Soviets learned that one in Afghanistan)
• Our transport and logistics requirements are, in a word, unacceptable. Our military was designed to sit in fixed positions in West Germany and get overrun by the Soviets. It takes us six months to get into position to do anythng; against real opposition, we'd get wiped out.
• Blowing up empty government buildings impresses nobody.
• Outclassed military units tend to fight dirty. Rumsfeld & company may expect Iraqi military units to line up to be slaughtered like good little movie extras; most people don't.
• House-to-house mopup operations are nasty and dangerous. Duh!
• We're already getting blamed for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since Gulf War I. We're finding out why the sanctions were a really bad idea. Supposedly, we'd make the Iraqi people miserable enough to revolt against Saddam. "That trick never works, Bullwinkle!" "This time for sure!"

Well, we'll see. It's continuing.

The F Word, Again

David Neiwert of Orcinus has just put up a postscript to his series on Fascism and the American ultra-right wing, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism. If you haven't read it, arrange some time and do so. It's long and detailed and very, very, scary.

For reference, the parts of the series are:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
• Part 10
• Part 11
• Part 12
• Postscript

A good primer on Fascism is Umberto Eco's Eternal Fascism. Note that Eco is Italian -- while he isn't old enough to remember the rise of Mussolini, his parents' generation certainly is. Eternal Fascism has the kind of immediacy that says "it can happen here because it did happen here".

This Makes 'Way Too Much Sense

I'm always suspicious of theories that try to explain too much. They're almost as bad as conspiracy theories. But sometimes, you get one that is so good, it just might be true.

In the past few years, Georgie Bush and the Republicans have enjoyed an unbroken run of success, despite an absolutely jaw-dropping level of ineptitude. Their priorities have been, quite nakedly, looting the treasury on the domestic side and settling old scores internationally. The press can't seem to ask a single tough question and the Democrats can't seem to tie their own shoes. What's going on here?

Finally, we have an answer. We're re-enacting the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Georgie Bush as Mayor Wilkins. 'Way too much sense.

Plan Ahead. Big problem in Season 4 was with high-tech top-secret military types ...

War Crime

Two Iraqis surrender to a British soldier in southern Iraq.

Just saw Defense Sec. Rumsfeld on the Tube commenting on the American prisoners that the Iraqis have taken. He was majorly upset that al Jazeera had shown them on TV. "War crime! Violation of the Geneva Convention!" So, by the same standard, the above picture represents a British "war crime". (Or maybe a CNN war crime?)

Did we sign this convention? There seem to be a lot of "Geneva conventions"; some we signed, some we didn't. I remember some kerfluffles during the Vietnam war relating to "illegal" weapons (shotguns, to be precise); excuse was "we didn't sign it, we're not bound by it."

In any case:

• As "war crimes" go, this one is pretty lightweight. A bunch less serious than, say, the way the Soviets and the Germans treated each other's POWs in WWII.
• Since when does this administration feel bound by international treaties, conventions, or anything else that might prove inconvenient?
• Any "war crimes" trials will be held by the US. We will decide what's a "war crime" and what isn't. Nuremberg showed that "war crimes" trials can create entirely new classes of crimes, applied ex post facto to the defeated.

Gives us license to kick around some more Iraqis after the war. Like we need it?

Signs of Civilization

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins, 1st Battalion, Royal Irish, 19 March, 2003, Fort Blair Mayne desert camp:

We go to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country

We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.

...

Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there.

You will see things that no man could pay to see and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.

You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing.

Don't treat them as refugees for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.

If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day.

Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves.

...

I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts, I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.

...

As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now is north.

Compare this with the bloodthirsty gang of nincompoops at Fox or Dan Rather babbling like Howard Stern on a bad day.

(via Electrolite)

White Knuckles

Salam Pax is still on the air for now. He's the only one I've seen posting anything from Baghdad who isn't part of a big "news organization", isn't "embedded", speaks Arabic, and doesn't have a "minder" following him around. He lives there, works there, his family lives and works there. Read his stuff if you want a feel for what is really going on.

His comments seem to be down now; it was fascinating to watch various (I assume) American wingnuts try to convince him that he should be grateful for being bombed back to the stone age, as Saddam Hussein was All His Fault. Near as I can tell, these idiots are kept locked in underground bunkers and get their information only from Rush Limbaugh or other similar random disinformation generators. Then they swap stories to see who can come up with the most outrageous.

There are a few other sources of information on Iraq, but they're all outside the country. Best is probably Christopher Allbritton of Back to Iraq 2.0 . Unofrtunately, I lost a lot of respect for him when I found out that he doesn't speak Arabic, Farsi, or any of the other languages in the region. He's extremely knowledgeable about the area, but it just isn't the same if it all has to be squeezed through a translator.