Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Ever notice how the people who keep clamoring for tolerance when they are not the ones in charge suddenly forget about it when they feel that they are the ones who have the power?

This is a very good article by Debra Saunders pointing out the hypocrisy of those who claim "tolerance," while showin nothing but comtempt for anyone with a different moral viewpoint than theirs.

Of course, I am not particularly enamored of her attempt to portray dissent on the Iraq War as hurting the troops, but then you cannot have everything you want in a column.

David Limbaugh similarly comments.

Of course, Tom Toles and Sully, in supporting Toles cannot bear tha thought that someone is so gauche and inappropriate to actually admit to believing in Biblical morality on such an issue. Note that Toles does not just disagree with Pace's statement, he thinks that it was terrible that Pace would make the statement.

That is all.

What Does He Mean?

Daniel Larison mentions this post by Andrew Sullivan:

[Sununu]'s the first Republican in the Congress to call for Gonzales to be dismissed. Sununu is also one of the few truly principled conservatives on the Hill. A coincidence? I think not.

My first thought:

I find it interesting that Sullivan nowhere explains or links to anything that explains why he feels that Sununu is one of the few principled conservatives aside from this particular action (as Sully says that he "is also one" instead of "is one," it can be assumed that he formed this opinion of Mr. Sununu prior to his call for Gonzalez's dismissal.

My bet: Sununu is for gay marriage or soemthing like that.

That is all.

Public Schooling and Leftist Dogma

This and this serve as just more evidence that despite the claims by leftists that they are "for freedom" and that the right-wingers are "authoritarian," when leftists get control they are as eager to control other people and to ram their beliefs down people's throats as they accuse the right of being.

That is all.

No One Noticed but Me (Exhibit 3 in a Series)

See also: Exhibit 2

and Exhibit 1.

In February 2002, more than a year before the invasion of Iraq, Norman Podhoretz wrote:

In a long article in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria has contended that the way
“to save the Arab world” is for the United States to get over this “fear
of the worse alternative” that has prevented us from pressuring for
political and economic reforms:

We do not seek democracy in the Middle East—at least not yet. We seek
first what might be called the preconditions for democracy . . . the
rule of law, individual rights, private property, independent courts,
the separation of church and state. . . . We should not assume that what
took hundreds of years in the West can happen overnight in the Middle
East.

Well, yes—and fulfilling Zakaria’s agenda would be a tremendous leap
forward. But I have to take issue with the idea that democracy and
capitalism can grow only in a soil that has been cultivated for
centuries. After all, in the aftermath of World War II, the United
States managed in a few short years to transform both Nazi Germany and
imperial Japan into capitalist democracies. And thanks to our victory in
World War III, something similar seems to be happening on its own steam
in Central and Eastern Europe, and even in the old heartland of the evil
empire itself. Why should the Islamic world eternally remain an
exception?

That is all.

No One Noticed but Me (Exhibit 2 in a Series)

See also Exhibit 1.

Steve Sailer recently referred me to this speech given by Bush to the American Enterprise Institute.

He spoke on February 26, 2003.

While he does emphasize "weapons of mass destruction" as the immediate casus belli, he also makes it very clear that he views the democratization of Iraq, and in fact of the entire world, a high priority and one of the main objectives should he go to war with Iraq. It is definitely more than a passing thought along the lines of "we have to replace Saddam with something, might as well be democracy."

Moreover, Bush, unlike Podhoretz in the previous piece, doesn't seem to view democratization as a long-term goal, to be achieved perhaps after inculcating democratic institutions over a generation or two.

He makes it clear that he wants us to start building Iraqi democracy immediately after defeating Saddam, and that he views the Iraqis as being as ready for democracy and freedom as Germany and Japan were.

Money quotes:

A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq.

The first to benefit from a free Iraq would be the Iraqi people... Iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us.

If we must use force, the United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated Iraq.

All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected.

After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.

There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The nation of Iraq -- with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people -- is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.

Arab intellectuals have called on Arab governments to address the "freedom gap" so their peoples can fully share in the progress of our times... A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.

It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that... the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror.

So for those of you who thought that the democracy push only occurred after the war ended and we didn't find WMDs - you haven't been listening.

That is all.

What She Really Means

Noemie Emery in a nutshell:

"I'm okay with him supporting killing babies, as long as he kills some of those durn ragheads at the same time."

Oh, yeah, "Hack" Kelly says much the same thing.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Daniel Larison.

That is all.

Illegal is Illegal

I agree with VDARE: deport illegal aliens - even if they are Irish rather than Mexican.

A more humorous take on this at Rankine 911.

That is all.

Miracles and Faith

A very good article by Rabbi Berel Wein.

That is all.

Adding to the BlogRoll

Chris Roach's Man-Sized Target.

That is all.

But if Bush Lied About WMDs, Doesn't that Mean Clinton Lied About them, too? Huh?

Yup. He did lie, says Scott Ritter.

I find it hilarious that one of the arguments for Bush telling the truth is based on trusting Mr. Clinton, don't you?

That is all.

Pronouncing my Nom de Plume

For those who are new to the blog, it is pronounced

GLAVE - stir

That is all.

No One Noticed but Me (Exhibit 1 in a Series)

One of the things that surprised me after the invasion of Iraq was how many people were surprised at the announcement that out goal was democratization. It had always struck me that the idea of focibly changing the political culture of the Middle East was the underlying motivation behind the war.

But a lot of people argue that no, the entire argument was over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Neither the president nor the pro-war pundits promoted democratization as a major goal until after the invasion.

Very well. I will go on the lookout for things that were written prior to the war in Iraq to prove that the idea of democratization was a major goal.

Exhibit 1: In Praise of the Bush Doctrine by Norman Podhoretz, dated September 2002.

In this aticle, while he does mention the WMD issue, two things are clear:

(i) He views Iraq not as a war in and of itself, but as a stepping stone to the conquest and re-shaping of the Middle East.

(ii) He very much views changing the political culture as the primary goal of our Middle East venture rather than an afterthought (as in, after we remove Saddam, we need something to replace him, so it might as well be democracy). Granted, he is not in favor of the immediate institution of democratic trappings as Bush turned out to be, but it is obvious that he wants to imposition of a secular democracy in the Middle Eastern countries, and furthermore, regards it as eminently doable.

In other words, as in Afghanistan and Iran, changes of regime are the sine qua non throughout the region.

Obviously it would be foolish to anticipate an overnight conversion to democracy and free markets. But I would argue that what might realistically be expected is the creation of conditions that would point in that direction... why should Islam alone forever be exempt from the processes that affected Judaism and Christianity before it?

The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced... should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as... the Saudi royal family and Egypts Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority...

There was a song that became popular in America during World War II: We did it before, and we can do it again. What I am trying to say to the skeptics and the defeatists of today is that yes indeed we did it before; and yes indeed we can do it again. yria and Lebanon and Libya... the Saudi royal family and Egypts Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority...

There is no denying that the alternative to these regimes could easily turn out to be worse, even (or especially) if it comes into power through democratic elections...

Nevertheless, there is a policy that can head it off, provided that the United States has the will to fight World War IV, the war against militant Islam to a successful conclusion, and provided, too, that we then have the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties. This is what we did directly and unapologetically in Germany and Japan after winning World War II... and it is George W. Bush's ultimate aim in World War IV.

I will try to continue this series, and for each new entry will put links in to previous ones.

That is all. For now.

Fool or Liar

John Kyl has an interesting article out, but it seems to me to be rather overly rosy-tinted about Iraq.

Let's go into some detail.

First, both the Iraqi leaders and Americans we met expressed cautious optimism about the new Baghdad Security Plan

Most of the Iraqi leaders were put into power by the U.S., so they know who to kiss up to. The Americans, presumably mostly soldiers, have to be optimistic. You can't survive a deployment of several months to a year without hope.

And the Iraqi government is now committed to a key part of the military plan, making sure that after an area of the city is cleared, the Iraqi army and police remain to keep it pacified.

Uh... seeing as the Iraqi Army is on the same side as the Shiite death squads, I'm not entirely certain that their staying behind is good news if our goal is to prevent ethnic cleansing and a nasty little civil war.

Two key Iraqi leaders noted a feeling among ordinary Iraqis, Sunni and Shia alike, that "something was different this time" - that this new strategy has a chance to succeed. All cautioned that there would be "bad days and good days" and that we wouldn't be able to pass judgment on the new strategy for months. But the sense of hope and optimism was still palpable.

No, Charlie Brown, I won't pull the football away this time.

The second message I took away from our trip was that we cannot micromanage this war from the U.S. Congress, either by cutting off funding for our troops or setting conditions on troop deployments.

Only the latter can be in any sense considered micromanaging, and even then it is dubious whether setting general conditions is really in that category (micromanaging would be more like Congress demanding to be consulted for every troop movement). Cutting off funds is macro in every sense of the word. What Kyl is really saying here is that the Congress cannot legitimately say anything in any way about the war and must let our glorious leader be the dictator in military matters that he so badly wants to be.

Beginning with our first meetings at Camp Arijan in Kuwait, senior military leaders consistently emphasized to us the need for Congress to pass President Bush's supplemental spending request to carry out the mission over the next several months.

I don't believe him.

Threats from some in Washington to block the request for funding or impose onerous restrictions on how the money is spent have our military leaders worried that they won't have what they need to fight and win. The troops with whom I spoke are also carefully watching the debate back home and don't want to be undercut while their lives are on the line.

Previopusly in the article he was trying to be part of the debate. But with these type of statements the goal is to distract the public from the factual aspects of the debate over whether or not the troop surge will do any good but subtly or not-so-subtly implying that any suggestion that we should not carry out the strategy will demoralize our troops. It's just a way to shut down debate.

...this "slow bleed" strategy that seeks to end the war by choking off funds and reinforcements is totally irresponsible. It would pull the rug out from under our troops just as they appeared to be making real progress against the enemy.

We have heard about this "progress" for years now. Why should we believe you now when every other time, you were wrong?

Finally, I left the Middle East with a growing concern over the pernicious role Iran plays in the region.

Ah, the call for expanding the war. Iran: the all-purpose excuse for current failures and for the need to escalate the conflict.

Part of the president's Baghdad Security Plan includes going after improvised explosive device networks and capturing those who bankroll them, regardless of their nationality. Some have criticized this approach as an "escalation against Iran" or a "prelude to war."

I don't think that anyone has suggested that going after Iranians who are in Iraq is "escalation." Kyl is just lying on that score. What people suggest is escalation is the idea that we need to bomb Iran in order to get rid of IEDs in Iraq.

We have an incredibly complex and difficult road ahead, but everyone I met in Baghdad - Iraqi or American, general or private - believed that we were finally moving in the right direction.

Either you are lying or you were carefully shown only people who were shills for the administration policy.

That is all.

Genocido-cons

Here's an interesting article by Gene Callahan.

That is all.

Anna Nicole Smith Thought

I think that what the people who want to get a paternity test for the baby should do is claim that Anna Nicole Smith's baby is really dead and Howard K. Stern has replaced her with another baby. At that point, they can demand DNA tests to determine the maternity of the baby or else the baby and her guardian have no standing to inherit any of Anna Nicole's assets in the U.S. or to continue Ms. Smith's suits for cash from her late husband.

In other words, if Mr. Stern really is in it for the cash, make the baby worthless unless they get a DNA sample. That sample can then, of course, be used to establish paternity as well as maternity.

That is all.

Thought for the Day

Wouldn't it be funny if all of the kids invovled in the "Truth" ad campaign came down with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, endometrial cancer, and/or colon cancer?

That is all.

Stupidity

This post by Mona on Unqualified Offerings is ridiculous.

Apparently she feels that there is no rational reason why straight men would be uncomfrotable showering (as in, naked) in the same room as gay men.

She also apparently feels that all men should be perfectly comfortable not just with the fact that some men like to have sex with other men, but with the idea of they themselves having sex with other men, and that if they find that idea gross, there is something wrong with them.

So this is what it comes to. Not only only should we be tolerant of gays, but if we find the idea of engaging in homosexual activity ourselves repugnant (which is why straight males are often uncomfortable with the idea of showering with gays, because of the uncomfortable thought that they are ogling you and perhaps thinking about having sex with you), there is something wrong with you that needs to be conditioned out.

Anyone who claims not to see why people would be uncomfortable being ogled ought to be willing put up nude pictures of themselves on the internet to prove it. Otherwise, they understand exactly why straight men (and likely some gay men too) are uncomfortable showering with gay men and are just poseurs.

That is all.

A Very Good Point

Daniel Larison writes:

Once again war supporters are personalising the conflict to an absurd degree. Remember how the insurgency would start dropping off if we just got Hussein and his sons? Remember how we just had to get rid of Zarqawi, and the insurgency would go into decline? This is more of the same–a weird Anglo-American trait of recent years to make every foreign policy problem into a stand-off with some mini-Hitler, which has the advantage of making the people taking on mini-Hitler into microscopic Churchills. Once we defeat the mini-Hitler, as if he were the final challenger on a level of a video game, we will have triumphed!

He makes a very good point here. Much of the ideology behind the Iraq War is based onthe idea that there is a particular person or a small number of persons who are preventing the Iraqis from coming out and supporting "their" vision of a democratic, united Iraq.

I have commented on this myself:

As long as we rely on others with different interests to protect what we perceive as our interests in Iraq, our strategy will be a woeful failure and we will be left either blaming others for Iraqi misdeeds... or trying to place all of the problems on the head of some Emmanuel al-Goldstein, such as Zarqawi or Sadr.

Another comment on this here.

I think that this focus on particular persons as the main obstacle to victory in Iraq is largely based on the fact that once you base your goals and strategy on the claim that Iraqis are hungry for U.S.-bestowed freedom and that they love us and want what we want, then you have to come up with excuses for all of the actions they are taking against us. In other words, you need some person to blame for whatever goes wrong so that you can ewxcuse any failures on our part by referring to our current bogeyman as the source of our problems. Therefore, we can laways pretend that the real problem is that we haven't caught our killed Uday and Qusay Saddam Zarqawi Moqtadr al-Sadr yet. (And we can also find some way to blame our not killing him on our political opponents and thus avoid any responsibility whatsoever).

That is all.

Wishful Thinking Is Not a Strategy

Quin Hillyer's little piece here is, unfortunately absurd.

Of course, he has a response to that claim:

Conservatives well grounded in their own traditions will not scoff at all those "what ifs" as mere pipe dreams. Rather than scoff, they will roll up their sleeves and try to turn those "what ifs" into reality.

Yes, but his major "what if," the one on which all of the others really depend, is "what if our Iraq strategy works?" This is not a "what if" that most Americans can really affect a great deal, unless of course he thinks that rallies for the troops somehow demoralize and defeat our enemies.

If he wants to call for a major, MAJOR expansion of the military and to call on Americans to roll up their sleeves and volunteer for service in order to send hundreds of thousands of troops into Iraq to pacify it, then maybe I will take his "what ifs" seriously. But all he offers in the way of pacifying Iraq is wishful thinking, not any actual means by which we can help assure any sort of success. And trust me, if the war in Iraq started to go well, then the otehr things would start falling into place.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Clark Stooksbury.

That is all.

Amanda Marcotte's Message, Distilled to Its Essence

WAAH! WAAAH! WHAH!

That is all.

Thoughts on HPV Vaccine

Although I have publicly disagreed with her opinions on the issue of so-called "white privilege," I want to commend Sara Anderson of F-Words for her thoughtful analysis of the isues surrounding mandatory HPV vaccination. She discusses the issue here,
here, and here.

That is all.

More on IEDs and Iran

Scott Horton does not buy the latest claims of Iranian involvement.

Over at Jim Henley's Place, Mona talks about the unintended consequences of an attack on Iran.

That is all.

Thoughts on Amanda Marcotte

Good Ol' Ampy defends the decision by John Edwards to keep Amanda Marcotte on his campaign team, even after she made disparaging remarks toward Christians (see also here.

My question is, would he be as at ease with someone keeping a campaign worker if, instead of insulting Christians, she had said that Martin Luther King Jr. was "a socialist, plagiarizing, philandering, communist sympathizing demagogue?" (I know of a reasonably well-known internet columnist who has written this - not me - but he/she has changed the wording since then, so I won't cause problems by mentioning his/her name).

That is all.

More on Sexual Orientation Issues

While not one, I think I am beginning to find asexuals to be an interesting topic.

That is all.

Homophobic? Sorry, I Was Born That Way

"The Man who is Thursday" has some thoughts on why trying to promote acceptance of homosexuality amongst males (as opposed to promoting respect toward everyone, including homosexuals) is a losing strategy.

That is all.

Rants Against Leftists

In response to A friendly challenge/dare/what-have-you on Creative Destruction, here are a few choice Glaivester comments about leftists:

Every time Matthew Yglesias or Tamar Jacoby open their gaping yawps, another person is converted into a (Kevin) MacDonaldite.

On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David once said that his brother's obnoxious behavior was the cause of most of the antisemitism in the U.S. Obviously he has not heard of Matt or Tamar. -Let's Be Honest

When people wonder why initiatives to cut spending and lower taxes are not more successful, the answer is obvious: because we let the parasites vote. - Thought for the Day

Why doesn't this bitch [Ellen Goodman] just say what she means? America's current population is too conservative and too white (non-Hispanic white) for her tastes, so she wants to replace us with leftist Mexicans. -Ellen Goodman, Be Honest

The fact of the matter is, there are two reason why the left wants open borders:

(1) To bring in more poor people from socialist countries in order to fill our countries with those who will vote for socialist policies.

(2) To make non-Hispanic whites become a minority as soon as possible, because they hate non-Hispanic whites and want us to be outnumbered so we can become the oppressed minority, because they feel we deserve it.

I'm sorry, but I hate the leftists. They want nothing more than they want to destroy white people and to destroy capitalism, and I am sick of it. -The Idiotic Left

The reason why it is bad for wealthy white women to deliberately get artificially inseminated and have a baby when not married is not that the baby she has will necessarily turn out worse than if she had a husband. It is that she will set a bad example for the poor black woman, Hispanic woman, or even lower-class white woman who decides that there is no longer a stigma to out-of-wedlock births and thus she is more likely to have bunch of bastards. And, lacking the resources of the bourgeois woman, this does not turn out so well for her, so we are stuck with a bunch of kids more likely to be delinquent and/or to go on welfare.

Of course, this is not a formulation of "white privilege" that the leftists are likely to embrace, because it suggests that sexual liberation is institutionally racist, and nothing is more important to liberals than giving unconditional moral approval to all consensual sex acts. -
"Sexual Liberation" = Institutional Racism

This next piece was written after some consternation after arguing at a well-known liberal blog.

Why? Because more than anyone else, they strip away the pretensions that a lot of the leftists tend to celebrate.

Take for example, this post by Ilkka Kokkarinen (Sixteeen Volts) [Note: post was deleted when Ilkka gave up bloging, and is not included in archived Sixteen Volts posts or at Webarchives (it's from May 2006)], suggesting that a lot of leftist positions come from the fact that the people espousing them can't, like, get their lives staight and want to blame someone for it...

...There is also the fact that one of the most frustrating things is trying to have a respectful discussion with someone who refuses to respect you. Once you realize that a lot of these people you are arguing with are losers, and feel the way they do because they are losers who cannot make it in the real world and therefore decide that the problem must be with the real world rather than with them, it is quite liberating. When you realize that you don't have to respect people who would just as soon see you subjected to forcible indoctrination of their ideas, but can call them out as losers, suddenly you feel much, much freer. -Why I Read Udolpho and Sixteen Volts

And I found I neglected in all of my blogging to point out that people who simultaneously believe that you "have a right to do whatever you want with your own body" and also that you have the right to have the taxpayers finance your choices have the morality of spoiled whiny teenagers.

That is all.

What the Hawks Believed

In order to remind people how bizarre the beliefs of the hawks were, I would like to introduce you to this very difficult to find piece by David Silverberg back in 2002.

Why does anyone believe these dolts?

That is all.

Seven Myths About Iraq

I recently read this piece of trash, about ten supposed "myths" about Iraq (all of which are antiwar, leaving the "truths" pro-war). This was fortuitous, as I had already begun to write my own "myths about Iraq," to explain the massive, stupid arguments that pro-war people, including people who used to be intelligent before they got caught up in the cult of Bush, use.

There are several canards out there about Iraq that I think we need to deal with if we are to understand the problems there.

(1) The Iraqis want exactly what we want.

I remember hearing Rusty Humphries say one time on his show that he is still convinced that all people desire freedom and have the spark of liberty, or somesuch. This meant that the democratization of Iraq is still doable, because that in the end is what the Iraqis want. The only problem, he insisted, was that they were not certain that we would stick it out with them to give it to them.

In other words, if the Iraqis were certain of us, the freedom-loving majority would stand up to the terrorists and calm Iraq down.

This is also a subtext in Hannity's insistence that with the mightiest military in the world, we could not possibly lose in Iraq if we had the will to win and the determination to do what it takes. As Hannity's goal for Iraq is a united, democratic Iraq that is a friend to the U.S., his position only makes sense under the assumption that, given enough support by the Americans to do so, most Iraqis would choose to remake Iraq the way we want it remade.

Finally, this is the underlying assumption behind any plan to "train the Iraqis faster." Any plan that relies largely on Iraqi forces must necessarily assume that the Iraqis are willing to fight and die for our vision of Iraq, and the only problem they may have is insufficient experience to do so.

In reality, Iraq is fairly tribal, sectarian, and Muslim. Many, many things are far more important to most Iraqis than political freedom, economic freedom, or even basic human freedoms as we understand them. So any plan that relies on Iraqis spontaneously acting like Westerners is doomed to failure.

(2) If we had just changed one little thing, everything would be okay.

In general, this one thing winds up being the setting up of an Iraqi government. The idea is usually either that the Iraqis resent the fact that we "occupied" the country for so long before creating an "Iraqi-led" government, thus alienating Iraqis, or that we let the Iraqis have too much freedom in setting up their government, therefore not getting a leader we could deal with. Richard Perle has often said the former, Jack Kelly recently said the latter.

Generally, the alternative presented is that we should have installed a president of our liking, and written the constitution we wanted Iraq to have and imposed it on them.

On some level, this is accurate; if we spent more time forcing the Iraqis to do what we wanted, instead of trying to coax them to get along with us, we would have avoided some of the problems and a lot of the hypocrisy. However, the problem with looking at things this simplistically is that it ignores the fact that governments need the consent, or at least the acquiescence, of the people to be effective. We could write any constitution we wanted and install any leader we wanted,, and it wouldn't have made any difference. Unless the leader had a 300,000 or 400,000-man private army, we would still have neeed to be there to pacify the people and to enforce his rule.

Richard Perle and Jack Kelly and their ilk either believe that the Iraqi are so stupid that they would have eagerly accpeted a puppet government as different from a straightforward U.S. occupation, or else they believe that the cover of an "Iraqi government" would give us the ability to launch the mass-murderous policies that would likely be necessary to keep the Iraqi in check and submissive.

(3) The mistakes in Iraq were just run-of-the-mill mistakes, things that couldn't have been predicted.

"Mistakes are always made in war," so the saying goes, as evidenced by Orson Scott Card and Thomas Sowell. Those who complain are merely Monday-morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight.

But this ignores the fact that there were people who predicted accurately what would happen who were ignored. Pat Buchanan, amongst others, predicted the guerilla war that would follow the conquest, Eric Margolis predicted Iraq's break-up, Scott Ritter, who correctly predicetd the lack of WMDs, was vilified as being "on the take" from Saddam Hussein, and sordid personal affaris were all brought up.

And yet, we are supposed to still trust the pro-warriors more, and still denigrate the war opponents, based on the fact that "mistakes are made in war," and therefore w should judge a man's position on the war by the purity of his intentions, not by his actual ability to accurately forecast the results of his policies.

Not that war opponents have not made mistakes, most particularly in regards to the number of casualties that would occur in the initial invasion. But the main reason thatwe were wrong is that in the initial invasion we mightily avoided any urban warfare or any attempt to pacify the populace. In other words, we didn't try to complete the conquest. We bypassed all of the people who needed to be brought down at the start, and as a result they were able to create the core of the insurgency in the early days.

Other "mistakes" are simplistic rewrites of the antwarriors' positions: " Critics have been proved wrong repeatedly in their claims that elections could not be held in Iraq or a government formed there. Iraqi voter turnout, even in the face of terrorist threats, has exceeded voter turnout in the United States."

As I recall, the issue was not whether or not elections would be held, but whether or not they would actually matter in terms of breaking the back of the insurgency. We were continuously told by the neocons, and by Cheney in the VP debate against Edwards, that elections had a magical power to quell insurgencies. In reality, tribes voted in the way that would put their ribe in the best position to exercise power over other Iraqis. Claims that Iraqis braved terrorist attacks to exercise the right to vote ignores the possibility that they were also under threat if they didn't vote, and vote for particular candidates. You think that when Moqtada al-Sadr runs candidates, that he didn't send troops in to make sure that all his relatives and neighbors voted Mookie - or else?

As for setting up a government, it is easy to set up a government. The difficulty is in getting the people to actually be loyal enough to fight for the government and to support it.

The pro-warriors were wrong on many issues, and the antiwarriors were correct. No amount of "mistakes are made in war" will alter that simple fact.

(4) We have a clear enemy to defeat, if we set our minds to defeating him.

Generally, this is brought up by those who argue that the reason that we are losing in Iraq is that we are too subdued by the rules of engagement. If were simply more willing to kill the enemy instead of coddling him, we would win easily.

Jack Kelly is among the many who have argued this.

Andrew McCarthy also hints at this in this article:

Unless our actual, overriding purpose in Iraq is to crush al Qaeda and its sponsors — rather than hope we can delegate the job to the newly trained forces of a Maliki-led government — our enemies will have their victory. All we’re otherwise doing is running out the clock and running up our casualty count.

While the rest of the article seems to have an actual policy suggestion, albeit a rather extreme one - that we need to try to take on the entire Muslim world militsrily - that particular line seems to indicate that there is some way that we can do serious damage to Al Qaeda from within Iraq.

This is also implied by those who suggest that our problem is too-restrictive rules of engagement. In general, these calls seem to imply that we have a clear enemy and that if we were simply to kill him, we would win.

In fact, a recent article (which I commented on) is essentially trying to get us to believe that the "enemy" in Iraq is uniting, and is equating this enemy to Al Qaeda (presumably to encourage us to accept that yes, conquering Iraq is a good way to make progress in the war on terror.

The problem, of course, with these ideas is that they ignore or outright deny the fact that we do not have a single clear-cut enemy in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that there is no way to achieve anything resmebling a victory (which I will define as creating an Iraq whose policies are mostly those that benefit the interests of the U.S.) or pacify the insurgency without dominating the country.

Killing the enemy is not enough. They can recruit and regenerate their forces too quickly. The only way to pacify Iraq is to conquer the entire population so as to prevent those who are not currently your enemy from becoming so. A few of those "looser rules of engagement" people seem to realize this, but most still seem to think that we can "kill the enemy" without regarding virtuallyeveryone in Iraq as an enemy, or at least as a peon who lives and goes about his business at our sufferance.

No way, mister. Either we go all the way and pacify the country, or we get out. We can't look at the enemy as some distinguishable entity distinct from Iraq itself.

(5) The enemy interprets the war in the way that we do.

Critics claim that there is no connection between the war on terror and the war in Iraq. They don't seem to notice that the terrorists themselves obviously see a clear connection, which they express in both words and deeds.

Terrorists are pouring into Iraq, even at the cost of their lives, in order to prevent a free, democratic government from being established in the Middle East. They see victory or defeat in Iraq as having major and long-lasting repercussions throughout the region and even throughout the world.

-Thomas Sowell, Another Vietnam?, Part II (previously references in this post)

Let's see. Muslims, enraged that a foreign power is occupying a Muslim country, attack that foreign power.

Yes, there's absolutely no reason for them to do that other than a hatred of democracy.

And that doesn't even address the question of how many of the attacks in Iraq are actually being committed by foreigners rather than Iraqis.

One of the more egregious examples of this is this piece by Amir Taheri, which was met with glee by the Bush-bewitched Penraker. After making a reasonable argument that we are not in a simple sectarian war, with all Shiite Arabs pitted against all Sunni Arabs, and/or both/either pitted against the Kurds, he proceeds to proclaim the war is a political one. The obvious conclusion is that Iraq is moving towards some sort of Hobbesian high-stakes game of Risk, with each tribe placing first and foremost the goal of political power for those who are is relatives. Although alliances and religious loyalty being what they are, these games wind up causing a great deal of sectarian strife (because, on average, two random Sunni Arabs or Shiite Arabs are more likely to be allies than one of each), in the end we are left with many sides, shifting alliances, and in many cases a lack of clearly defined sides.

However, after that reasonably good analysis, Taheri immediately resimplifies the occupation into the political terms with which it was orignially sold to us:

What is happening in Iraq, however, is neither a civil nor a sectarian war (although elements of both exist within the broader context). This war is a political one - between those who wish Iraq to succeed as a new democracy and those who want it to fail.

Words almost fail me. This is the most insane way of reading the previous three pages that I can imagine. What seems most likely from what he wrote before is that the war is a Hobbesian multiethnic one - a bunch of tribes scrambling for their piece of the pie. How that translates into caring specifically about whether a democratic Iraq succeeds - even into Iraqis considering that possibility that a multiethnic democratic Iraq will succeed - is beyond me. No wonder they want to blame Iran entirely for the insurgency, if their understanding is so limited.

Of course, this isn't the first time Taheri has, in the closing paragraphs of his article, basically summarized his thesis in such a way as to contradict everything else in the article. Back in 2004, he wrote this piece denying that Islam is compatible with democracy, because Islam demands things that are incompatible with democracy, and makes no distinction between the secular and the religious [no "render unto Caesar" and all that]. His solution?

Muslims can build successful societies provided they treat Islam as a matter of personal, private belief and not as a political ideology that seeks to monopolise the public space shared by the whole of humanity and dictate every aspect of individual and community life.

In other words, if they do all of the things that Taheri spent the article arguing that they cannot do.

The point is, though, we cannot work on the assumption that we can put ourselves in the Iraqis shoes and anticipate their desires by looking at our own. All cultures do not value the same things equally.

(6) Iraqis don't mind it when we cause civilian casualties.

This was originally told to us in the run-up to the war, supposedly by Kenneth Joseph, a "human shield" who changed his mind when the Iraqis told him how much they wanted the U.S. to bomb them:

Rev. Kenneth Joseph said some of the Iraqis he interviewed "told me they would commit suicide if the American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny."

The estimable "Hack" Kelly also implied that the Iraqis felt this way in a previously referenced article:

Ethiopia won in short order because it unapologetically used force against vicious people who understand only force. They killed the people they needed to kill without worrying overmuch about collateral damage, and not at all about world opinion. And though the Ethiopian soldiers are Christians, they were hailed as liberators in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.

The implication, of course, is that the Iraqis would not rage with hate against us if we started slaughtering them, but would coo contentedly at the concern we showed them.

The overall message is that we should brutalize the Iraqis if that is hat pacification takes, and that there is no need to concern ourselves with blowback, because they respect power so much and "love a strong horse." There should be no concern that we make them hate us, as long as they fear us.

Maybe. But Middle Easterners have long memories. If we wield our power as a club, we darn sure better make certain to never, ever, weaken. EVER. Because once we do that, we'll be stuck doing it forever, or suffering the consequences the moment we slacken.

In truth, there is little reason to believe that the Iraqis are willing to die for the sake of our mission's success as we define it. Kenneth Joseph is most likely a fraud, and the Ethiopia/Somalia situation is difficult to derive positions on Iraq from. At least one Iraqi blogger definitely doesn't seem to think that a policy of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" is good by her.

(7) Voting means the Iraqis support democracy.

The next person to say "but Iraqi voter turnout was higher than U.S. voter turnout, so they must support democracy," gets a big middle finger.

Then running candidates in the elections must mean that someone is very pro-democracy. So why do we see people like al-Sadr as enemies, when they are eager to participate in the system?

The question answers itself. Being willing to vote when a foreign power occupies your country and makes it the way to obtain political power is not the same thing as believing that the voting booth is the best way to solve political questions, nor does it indicate an ability to sustain democracy in the absence of said occupation.


In short, these 7 arguments (and you can probably think of several more) are amongst the most potent weapons of the pro-warriors to obfuscate our understanding of the situation in Iraq. By asserting false premises such as these, they canmake very ridiculous conclusions seem reasonable, because, given those premises, the conclusions are logical.

Beware of them, and be ready to point out the falws in these arguments whenever pro-warriors use them.

Maybe somewhere there is a good argument that this is a good war and that Bush is running it well and that the Iraqis really want to be New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die!"). But these aren't they.

That is all.

That is all.

Class Apathy

Note: This was originally written on April 18, 2006, but as I was still substitute teaching at the time, I decided not to post it. Here it is now:

Steve Sailer recently posted an email where it was mentioned that the upper middle-class often has little to no respect or knowledge of the lower classes. (The email was in response to this earlier posting).

This reminded me of some of my own experiences.

I have recently been making some small amount of money by substitute teaching, and I have noticed, among other things, just how different from me a lot of the non-college-rack students are. I think a lot of people in the "cognitive elite" (basically, anyone who goes to a competitive college or to grad school) assume that the difference between an honors student and an academic student is the ability to understand calculus, or to do sumplification of trigonometric equations, or somesuch. The differences are often much more - fundamental.

This worries me tremendously; not because of some snobbish concern that the hoi polloi are a bunch of yahoos, but because I fear that the cognitive elite who run the corporations and the government are likely as isolated from this, just as I would have been were it not for my experience subbing. Ignorance, particularly when you are ignorant of the fact that you are ignorant, can be extremely dangerous. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, policy-makers have a tendency to assume that everyone thinks and responds like they do, and thus base policies on what would make sense for them. This is tremendously dangerous, though, when the people whom the policies effect react and respond to incentives quite differently. If most of them are like I was, then the elite areway too isolated in their ivory towers.

I have known about this in theory for quite some time; which, I suppose, is why I have been able to adapt to substituting so well. I don't get discouraged if all of my students do not show the potential to become rocket scientists because I was not under the delusion that they would all be able to do so. But I never really understood how stark the differences between people at different cognitive levels are.

I really think that everyone in the "cognitive elite" ought to do at least a month of substitute teaching, at a high school of middle school where they will be teaching students on the left half of the bell curve. I think it might force our future leaders to make policies based on a representative sampling of all parts of the U.S. population, not just based on what they think their friends would go for.

That is all.

How Ironic

Hugh Hewitt:

The Congressional Republicans' demand for "benchmarks" is becoming the GOP's equivalent of Al Gore's demand years ago for "lockboxes," --an empty term originally intended to convey seriousness of purpose while disguising empty policy prescriptions, but which, by the sheer implausibility of the pose, became a term attracting deserved disdain.

You mean, like, uh, victory??

In the same post:

UPDATE: The Senate GOP still can't agree that victory would be a great option.

That is all.

Bill Crawford's "Good News"

Taking over from the late (only in terms of his blog), unlamented Art Chrenkoff, Bill Crawford attempts to lull us into a sense of optimism about the state of Iraq in this January 9 article.

Reading this piece, I am reminded of two things: (a) the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," and (b) data without context is nothing.

So let's address the points in his first paragraph:


By the end of 2006, more than 2,600 projects had been completed. The supply of energy has been increased to 1.3 million homes, oil production is at 2.2 million bpd, 838 schools have been rehabilitated or constructed, 239 kilometers of road have been fixed, and 15 hospital rehabilitation projects have been completed.

Only one of those figures, the one about oil production, contains any data that is actually useful. This is the only one that gives us an aggregate figure of a metric by which to measure success in Iraq, as opposed to some small piece of information (e.g., that the supply of energy has been increased hto 1.3 million homes does not tell us how much, or how many other homes had the supply of energy reduced, or how the total energy picture has changed)?

And that one figure he mentions is devoid of context. When looking at the oil production in Iraq, as shown in this BBC article, we find that oil production has been hovering around 2 million barrels per day from November 2003 to March 2006, so 2.2 could just meanthat we are currently at a "peaky" month.

The next two sections, "Iraqi Forces" and "Security Operations" are essentially a bunch of anecdotes and generalized assertions without any real hard statistical data.

The next section, "Reconstruction," contains this statement:

As of November 2006, Iraq’s oil production stood at 2.5 million barrels per day.

which makes one wonder why he gave the 2.2 million figure earlier, or if we have lost capacity since November.

He does link to an article giving specific data on Iraqi marshlands (they have gone from 90% destroyed under Saddam to 50% restored).

The next set of bullet-pointed data are equally unimpressive. He does give a little more info about hte elctricity situation, that the 1.3 million homes getting increased electricity are due to the fact that "1,420 MW of power have been added to the Iraqi power grid." Nonetheless, we do not get any context to tell us what the electricity picture has been like from May 2003 up to now, whether those 1,420 MW actually increase Iraqi electricity production to new heights or simply restore 1,420 MW that were lost previously, etc. He gives similar statistics about water purification, and reiterates the 2.2 million bpd figure along with an equally contextless figure about natural gas.

Finally, he lists "American Heroes," which names some very impressive soldiers, but which tells us nothing about whether we are succeeding in Iraq.

In his next article for January 25, he dispenses with such niceties as aggregate statistics altogether and simply lists anecdotes with no context at all.

I recall somewhere reading or hearing someone say that demanding metrics for vicotry in Iraq was a sure way to lose; what he obviously really meant was that there are no metrics by which we could be seen to be winning, so we must avoid setting any metrics so that we can convince ourselves that we are winning and thus keep staying in Iraq and hoping for a miracle.

Obviously, Bill Crawford is a strong believer in the "avoid using metrics when they don't favor you" school. The sad thing is, it seems that that is the philosophy of the people who are fighting this war.
That is all.

Bush Wants to be Caesar

Thus spake James Bovard.

That is all.

A Contrary View on the Border Patrol Case

Andrew McCarthy presents the other side.

Any thoughts?

That is all.

Our Enemies are Uniting - YAY!

This is an extremely stupid article - so of course the usual suspects think it is brilliant.

Essentially, Nibras Kazimi's the claim is that there are fewer and fewer Sunni insurgent groups, which is evidence of our success at defeating the insurgency. Of course, he also says that a particular group - the Islamic State of Iraq , which he claims is part of Al Qaeda - is "cannibalizing" these groups.

To be more direct, what this means is that the different insurgent groups are uniting.

Of course, he spins well:

In other words, battling the insurgency now essentially means battling Al Qaeda. This is a major accomplishment.

Of course, if he is correct then the only reason that we are battling Al Qaeda is that we have gotten an increasing number of the insurgents to join Al Qaeda - this is rather like the "broken window fallacy," in that it ignores the growth of Al Qaeda while focusing on the increasing number of Al Qaeda-ites we are killing.

We are also supposed to believe that the insurgency is "running out of steam" and, if Penraker is to be believed, that the increased rate of hostile fatalities over the last four months is due to an Iranian "Tet Offensive." In other words, our enemies are getting desperate.

Please. We've been hearing this since the war started getting hotter back in October and November of 2003.

Penraker writes:

Our media hid the fact that the Sunni insurgency was being defeated, and pretended it was growing stronger, when in fact something else altogether was happening.

Of course, neither Penraker nor Kazimi offer any real evidence that the insurgency is getting weaker or being defeated, other than alluding to unnamed "sources," and in Penraker's case, going back to the old neocon canard of downplaying Iraqi violence by pretending that it is really Iranian violence.

It is possible that the Sunni insurgency will eventually be defeated by the Shia. But in that case, we will not see the democratic, pluralistic Iraq we dream of, but a Shiite theocracy where the Sunnis are killed or oppressed (and with strong ties to Iran). I don't see that that will be a victory in any strategic sense for the U.S.

Two last points:

(1) Cheney's statement that the insurgency was in its "last throes" was back in May of 2005, more than a year and a half ago. So it is hard to argue that he was correct if it is only running out of steam now (assuming that it really is).

(2) It is a common tactic of the pro-warriors to artificially divide the conflict in Iraq so as to indicate that they were correct:

Oh, are our troops still getting killed? Yes, but by a different insurgency than two years ago, so we really did defeat them, you see, because they aren't the ones attacking us anymore. Oh, and by the way, it's really all coming from Iran and Syria - which we desperately need to attack. The real Iraqis are still joyously dancing a "thank you" dance for us and wondering what they can do to help Texaco and Exxon Mobil, just like we predicted, and love Bush and hate the Democrats and the antiar protestors - so listen to the Iraqis, and listen to us!

The one bit of joy out of this whole mess in Iran is watching the jerkiest of the people who supported this war - and who are still unwilling to admit mistakes - slowly implode as they attempt to justify their positions.

That is all.

HIV Myths and Economists

This article by Emily Oster, brought to my attention by Robert from Creative Destruction, is interesting to me mostly because of what it leaves out.

Namely, the theory that AIDS in Africa is not being spread sexually, but through bad sterile technique when dealing with intravenous medications and vaccinations. And that the cases that are transmitted sexually are transmitted mostly through anal sex (and therefore, most men who contract it sexually do so through homosexual sex).

Read the discussion at Creative Destruction.

That is all.

Fake Conservatives Support Giuliani

Deroy Murdock is trying to convince us that Rudolph Giuliani has a good enough pro-life record to be a suitable Republican presidential candidate. Essentially, the argument is that the rate of abortion in New York dropped more than it did nationwide, and Giuliani must be responsible, so pro-lifers shold like him.

That Murdock is a two-faced liar trying to trick the social conservatives into giving up their principles is obvious when ne reads his positions on, say, gay issues.

Steven Malanga, on the other hand, supports Giuliani by esssentially writing social positions out of the conservative movement.

These are impressive conservative credentials. And if social and religious conservatives fret about Giuliani’s more liberal social views, nevertheless, in the general election such views might make this experience-tested conservative even more electable.

Shorter Malanga: The social conservatives can go to Hell.

Same to you, Malanga.

That is all.

Adding Two New Blogs to my BlogRoll

Mean Mr. Mustard (Russell Wardlow) and The Man Who is Thursday.

That is all.

Are the Neocons Lying About Iran?

Jim Henley points out flaws in the "Iran is supplying the Iraqi insurgents" theory.

That is all.

The Portia-Shylock Fallacy

Por. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow;
Yet in such rule that the Venetian law
Cannot impugn you as you do proceed.
[To ANTONIO.] You stand within his danger, do you not?
Ant. Ay, so he says.
Por. Do you confess the bond?
Ant. I do.
Por. Then must the Jew be merciful.
Shy. On what compulsion must I? tell me that.

-The Merchant of Venice Act IV. Scene 1 ll. 171-179

I have decided to draft a more general principle from this post.

The Portia-Shylock Fallacy is the belief that the strength of your moral values, goals, etc. places any mandate of demand on anyone else that they will feel compelled to respect.

Put another way, it is the belief that "You simply have to do (a)" actually compels anyone to do anything.

For example, any plan that requires the Maliki administration to do something without some serious consequences if he doesn't. Arguing "Maliki will have to stop the Shiite death squads" based on nothing more than the fact that we need him to do so for our plan to work, is worthless and stupid.

The one good thing about the Democrats taking over Congress is that Bush now is finally forced to make decisions about how to bring the war to a colse, rather than drag it on endlessly without closer to some resolution. This means that using the Iraqi's unwillingness to fight for our goals (repackaged as a tempoerary inability that can be fixed if we just give Bush more time) as a delaying tactic is no more.

That is all.

Be All that You Can Be - However Much that Winds up Being

A chart of the Army's relaxation of standards.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Karen De Coster.

That is all.

Was Apartheid in South Africa So Bad?

Of course it was, if your goal is the genocidal murder of white people.

that is all.

On the Triumphalist Atheists

Interesting thoughts on Sam Harris by David J. Theroux.

That is all.

"Reverse" Hate Crime

Lawrence Auster on a crime that the media does not make a big deal out of.

That is all.

Thoughts on the "Surge"

I think that we ought to be seeing how to get out of Iraq, so I am not really in favor of the surge.

On the other hand, at least Bush is starting to realize that (a) we need to see benchmarks in the way of pacification of the populace, not just meaningless symbols like elections (which do not indicate a decrease in the violence), (b) things are not going well; it's not just that the media isn't reporting our glorious success, (c) mistakes were made, even if he doesn't actually admit that he committed them, and (d) we don't hgave neough troops for any reasonable pacification strategy and need more if we want to have one.,

That is all.

Thought for the Day

When pople talk about how we need to be willing to "kill the enemy" in Iraq, and not to worry much about collateral damage and civilian casualties, have they considered that there are already people in Iraq who are "killing the enemy" and not worrying about collateral damag and civilian casualties?

They're called the Shiite death squads.

That's right., The people they are killing are the Sunnis, who make up most of the actively anti-U.S. insurgency. But now we have realized that that is leading to civil war and chaos, and we are horrified.

Yet they are doing exactly what it is that the pro-warriors are saying that we should be doing to solve the problem. Or at least, to solve the previous problem.

What will the solution to our current problem bring?

I know an old lady, who swallowed a fly...

That is all.

More on the Other Hussein

According to this, Jamil Hussein's existence is still in doubt.

More on this as it develops.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Penraker. Even if I don't like him or agreee with him, I believe in being fair.

That is all.

BUSH IS A TRAITOR

After the horrible injustice done to two border patrol agents because they shot a drug-smuggling Mexican, I think that Buysh's refusal to pardon ought to cause Republicans to seriously campaign for his impeachment.

That is all.

Predictions for 2006: Was I Right or Wrong?

Remember these? I probably will not be making a list of predictions for 2007, as my zeal for blogging has someone lessened with the commencement of a steady salaried job this June, but let's see how I did:

(1) Killing of U.S. and other coalition troops will be down (< 50 hostile deaths for the entire coalition per month) for January and February, and then will start to climb again in March. Unless major changes in the way the war is fought occur, (see next prediction) there will be >1000 U.S. deaths in Iraq (hostile and non-hostile) by the time 2007 rolls around.

824 U.S. deaths in 2006. Wrong
44 hostile deaths in January, 48 in February, 27 in March right on Jan and Feb, wrong on March.
And the war hasn't been fought amazingly differently from 2005, as far as I can tell, so no getting out on a loophle.

(2) There will be at least one "Lebanon attack" in Iraq this year against the coalition. By "Lebanon attack," I mean that a single attack will kill more than 50 coalition troops, as with the Beirut barracks bombing.

Wrong.

More later. Tired now.

That is all.

It is Official

Andrew C. McCarthy is a lying scumbag.

Andrew McCarthy essentially argues here that attacking Iran and Syria will reduce the insurgency in Iraq, even beyond whatever effect the loss of Syrian and Iranian support will have on it, because apparently it will scare the insurgents into retreat. He also seems to imply that this is why the insurgency was so weak in the first few months after the war - it wasn't that these things take a while to develop, or that the Iraqis' attitudes toward the U.S. change over time and with occupation - it was that the insurgency, which sprang fully grown out of the ground of Iraq in May 2003 was scared of us because of the shock and awe from our conquest of Baghdad.

Let me repeat what he says and interpret it:

More importantly, though, [fighting Syria in Iran as part of the Iraq War] is not a zero-sum game. It is not a case in which, if the Iranian/Syrian influence were, say, 30 percent of the problem, subtracting it would leave the same 70 percent we face now.

No, even if you wish, for argument’s sake, to consider the war as existing only in Iraq, dealing decisively with these terror-facilitators would have a dynamic effect on the insurgency. It could be the difference between how the United States was perceived in the first six or so shock-and-awe months after the March 2003 invasion and how American resolve was seen in the ensuing three years — characterized by temporizing in Falluja, negotiating with terrorists (even some affiliated with al Qaeda), and abiding the provocations of Tehran and Damascus.

In other words, stopping whatever help Syria and Iran are giving the insurgency is not the issue. If we attack Syria and Iran, it will quell the insurgents because they will know that we mean business.

Let me clarify:

He is saying that attacking Iran and Syria will solve parts of the insurgency that have nothing to do with Iran and Syria.

This is ludicrous. Not only is it a very uncertain proposition that such an attack would demoralize the enemy in Iraq, it might even create more enemies - not the least because attacking Iran would enrage the Iraqi Shi'a, which are still not that big a problem for U.S. forces per se (the death squads may be threatening civil war, but they aren't usually attacking our troops). It is also a dangerous idea because it ignores the fact that in Syria, any disruption could lead to the overthrow of the government, and the only people likely to take over are even worse than Assad - a secular leader, and personally the member of a minority sect who maintains some level of religious tolerance because his own people need the tolerance of the majority. The idea that there would be no repercussions from an attack on Syria or Iran to add into the equation, which apparently is what he believes, is daft. And beyond that, there is the question of how much of the insurgency is really dependent on whatever help it may be getting from outside sources. If Iran and syria were responsible for 30% of the problem, and they taken out of the picture, how do we know that local forces would not take up the slack?

Of course, I don't think he really believes this. More than anything, this shows that McCarthy is willing to use the situation in Iraq as nothing more than a tool to get us to expand the war. That is , he wants us to attack Iran and Syria, and seeing that the situation in Iraq is what is making the U.S. cautious about expoanding the war, has decided to promise us that the war he wants will solve that problem, too.

That is all.

Stupid Comparisons

Why those who compare the murder rates in Iraq to those in the U.S. and find parity are stupid.

That is all.

Osama bin Farah: "Kill 'Em All, Let God Sort 'Em Out"

Here's another analogy to Somalia.

Oh joy.

That is all.

Hack Kelly: "Kill 'Em All and Let God Sort 'Em Out"

Aside from the fact that the comparison of Somalia to Iraq is ridiculous and aside from the fact that Ol' Hack is making some pretty dubious assertions about how Americans were initially greeted in Iraq, what is disturbing is that his general m,essage appears to be: "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." What is more disturbing is that he seems to suggest that if we purpursued that strategy, Iraqis would love us for it.

There are at least four major differences between Somalia and Iraq:

(1) Somalia had only been under the rule of the Muslim extremists whom Ethiopia threw out for a few months, and had a pre-existing elected government that wanted to take over again.

(2) There is no indication so far that Ethiopia is planning to occupy Somalia for the long-term and to try to rebuild its government to its own liking.

(3) There is a lot greater likelihood that those who took over can be distinguished from the rest of the population, if only because a lot of the rest of the population is ticked off at them and willing to identify them

(4) Ethiopia is fighting a single enemy with a united goal, not myriad groups with myriad goals and myriad loyalties.

Moreover, there is the fact that Ethiopia has only been there for a week or two (maybe three by now)? Wait a year, and if the Ethiopians are still there, see what happens.

Remember, a lot of Muslim Lebanese welcomed Israel when it fitrst invaded, too. And contrary to what Joseph Farah would have you believe, it is not because they were quietly replaced by Iranians.

In any case, "unwillingness to kill the enemy" occurs largely because we have difficulty identifying the enemy. According to "Hack Kelly," the Ethiopians:

...killed the people they needed to kill without worrying overmuch about collateral damage, and not at all about world opinion.

In using this as an example to follow, Kelly is almost certainly pointing us in the direction of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

That's fine if his goal is merely the subjugation of Iraq to our will. But don't pretend that the Iraqis will cheer us as liberators for it, and don't assume that it can lead to a long-term gain in U.S. security, or that we would then ever be able to achieve the sort of victory that we supposedly are trying for, one where Iraq produces an independent government (unless it is with a dictator that we install).

That is all.

Huh?

Can anyone tell me what exactly is the course of action that Niall Ferguson is advocating in this article?

That is all.

Thoughts on House

In trying to figure out how the Tritter situation in House will be resolved, one thing that no one has thought of - why was Tritter visiting House in the first place?

That's right. V.D. He thought he had V.D.

Anyone think that Tritter may have a secret of his own that he can be blackmailed with?

Update: Appears I was wrong.

That is all.

Prediction

If the Democrats do try to get control over the war in Iraq by cutting funding or if they try to force a withdrawal by cutting funding, Bushg will suddenly "discover" some "inherent war power" to appropriate money without the support of Congress. At this point, all of those who insist that Bush can do almost whatever he wants with the military as Commander-in-Chief but that there is still a system of checks and balances because the Democrats have the power to deny funding, will either have to admit that they believe that it is appropriae for Bush to take dictatorial power or else denounce him.

That is all.

Thought on Christianity

After the recent discussion on atheism and religion, I should point out that I consider myself an evangelical Christian, so my defense of Christianity is not simply based in an idea of social utility.

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Jamil Hussein Does Exist

For all of those who were doubting him as way to deny the growing sectarian violence, oops, you're wrong.

Big Tent Democrat explains the case.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Jim Henley.

That is all.

Interesting Focus

Everyone is talking about the "surge."

I find it interesting that in these three pieces by Andrew Sullivan, Keane and Kagan, and John Keegan, only the last one seems to be concerend about the practicalities of maintaining high troop levels; that is, do we have enough troops. According to the article, we do, but the article does not seem to suggest that we can maintain an increased force level for very long.

But it strikes me that few people seem to want to consider that there may be limits to our military power beyond our willingness to use it.

That is all.

"We're not Racists. We Just Needed the Money."

I just saw a re-run of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Raw." (See a summary here).

Long story short: The SVU gang gets sucked into a case involving white supremacists when a white supremacist kills a young adopted black boy.

It turns out in the end that his adoptive parents had arranged for his killing so that they could collect on an insurance policy they had taken out on him.

Assuming that they share an ideology with the white supremacists that they used for the murder, Detective Benson asks what people would think of racists like them adopting a black kid.

Her response was: “We’re not racists. We just needed the money.”

That these people were more concerned over being perceived as racists than about how people perceived them for arranging the murder of a child says a lot about how sick their sense of priorities is. And, to some extent, our sense of priorities as well, as these people's concerns were definitely informed by society's.

That is all.

Death Tolls in Iraq

Statistics from Iraq Body Count.

Here are the Coalition Hostile Death Tolls for the war (all coalition countries, and only deaths due directly to enemy attack):

2003: 397 (510 annualized)
2004: 757
2005: 709
2006: 749

So, since 2003, there has been a pretty constant rate of hostile deaths: 738 +/- 26 per year, or a little more than 2 a day.

Now the last three months of 2006 were pretty bloody, but the first three months and July were pretty mild, so things even out.

I would suspect that if we stay in Iraq, the death tolls will be somewhat higher in 2007, but then again, I believe I have been wrong about these things before. (Which reminds me, I'll have to check out my predictions from the beginning of 2006 and see how I did).

That is all.

Impeach the Traitor President

The latest outrage.

That is all.

What People Don't Like About [Some] Atheists

Occasionally I hear an atheist complaining on TV about how he and his fellow atheists are so maligned by the general U.S. population, and how everyone assumes that he is evil and tries to make him an outcast.

I think that this is major B.S.

It is not the atheists that bother people, but the antitheists, or those whom Udolpho would refer to as atheist "geeks." (I would link to his posting, but his archives are not very user friendly).

Update: here is the relevant Udolpho quote:

Atheists who can't wait to bring it up (at work, at parties, in all their thousands of message board signatures): useless assholes to a man. And most of them are geeks, too, so they really double-up on the hideous personality flaws.

That is, it is those people whose major goal in life is to point out how much smarter they think they are than those stupid theists. Those who cannot stand the idea that someone else believes in God when they do not. Those who blame religion as the root cause of all human problems. They deny that religion is socially useful (ignoring the reality that, real or not, without religion probably 50% of America's population would turn into complete thugs the way they are doing in the U.K.).

Heather MacDonald is a good example. Sam Harris is another.

[Note: I am not talking here about people who get insulting toward religion whenever a religious person starts vigorously proselytizing them. I am talking about people who go out of their way to make the first move in insulting religious people every chance they get].

I think that most religious people don't have a problem with atheists; what they have a problem with are condescending snobs who are constantly looking down on them.

That is all.

Glaivester History

My first use of the tag-line "that is all."

The birth of the Glaivester.

For those who are newbies, I was using his pseudonym on the internet for four and a half years before I started a blog.

And outside of the blog posts, I do not use the tagline "that is all," very much. So no, I am not insane, with a compulsion to end everything I say with a catch-phrase.

That is all.

Lawrence Auster Can Be Naive

Mr. Auster is good on a variety of topics, but I find his belief that there was anthing that Saddam could have done to stop the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. to be fairly naive.

Mr. Auster asks:

"What more “face” would he have lost by turning over to the inspectors all his actual information on his WMDs? "

Has Mr. Auster considered he possibility that whatever information he turned over to the inspectors, Bush would still insist that he was hiding something?

"People say that Hussein was not crazy. But his behavior of appearing to conceal WMDs (which apparently he did not even have), which forced America to invade his country and destroy his regime, was crazy. I wonder if he ever realized this."

I think that there is some desire here in Mr. Auster not to consider the possibility that he was duped by the administration.

Of course, this brings up Mr. Auster's reason for believing that Bush could not have lied about the WMDs - esentially, the damage to his reputation from us not finding them would be too great, so he must have thought that Saddam had WMDs for him to make it the public purpose of the war.

This is a reasonable point, but I think that there are good responses to it. I will try to write something about that in the future when I have more time.

That is all.

Quote of the Week

The Dujail reprisals were a war crime, no doubt about it, a bigger sham of justice than Saddam’s own trial, by two orders of magnitude. They were also the sort of war crime that people like Ralph Peters and a hundred other pundits and parapundits think the United States should be committing. Every time you read a complaint about “politically correct rules of engagement” you are reading someone who would applaud a Dujail-level slaughter if only we were to perpetrate it.

-Jim Henley

That is all.

Ding Dong the Bastard's Dead

I'll try to post some thoughts on Saddam's execution at some point.

For now, suffice it to say that it was richly deserved, but will not, I think, effect the situation on the ground much.

That is all.

Sorry for Light Posting

I've been away from my computer for a while, and when I got back to work on Tuesday I was too tired to post.

I'll try to post more later, maybe not until 2007, though.

That is all.

Disturbing News

On the "flying imams" case. (I don't let the fact that I find Andrew McCarthy repulsive get in the way of realizing how stupid bending over backward for these agent provocateurs can be).

Thanx and a tp o' the hat to Lawrence Auster.

That is all.

German Government: We Want Your Kids

Educational tyranny in action.

(Admittedly, it is from WorldNetDaily, so take it with a grain of salt, but the story is not implausible).

That is all.

We, the Androids of the United States...

In the next 50 years, with robots potentially developing sentience, they may be recognized as having rights.

I'm sure that Optimus Prime is relieved that the Autobots will not be regarded as chattel.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to WorldNetDaily.

That is all.

A Good Article by Rich Lowry

It isn't all the media's fault.

That is all.

This is Interesting

Maybe not everyone believed that Saddam had WMDs.

That is all.

Bush Sinking

I think that this is a reasonable article.

At the very least, Bush needs to seriously rethink his strategy in Iraq. We are not winning, and simply adding a few more troops without also altering the strategy will not avail us much. Yes, we need more troops if we want to gain control of the country, but that alone won't help us if we are committed to a losing goal and a losing strategy to achieve that goal.

That is all.

Tet for Tat

A common refrain from war-bots is that the media lost Vietnam by obscuring our victories. The most obviously example, of course, being the Tet Offensive, which the media supposedly presented as a loss for our side when it was actually a victory.

But think about it for a second. We were in Vietnam until 1973. Tet occurred in January of 1968. Are we to believe that it was the media that prevented us from finally defeating the Viet Cong Communists for good during those five years?

In addition, according to this Wikipedia article and this one, the press coverage of the Tet Offensive did not greatly influence public support for the war (Ameican casualty counts did that) and the major negative effect on American public opinion from the Tet Offensive was their realization that the U.S. government, which had prior to Tet reported the Communist side as a spent force, had badly underestimated the enemy.

Largely, that is what is bothering the public about Iraq as well. During the first two years or so of the war, we were constantly assured that the insurgency was almost defeated, that there were only a few dead-enders, or that we were fighting 5,000 disgruntled "Islamists," and once we killed or captured them democracy would break out. Instead, there has been a gradual uptick in the amount of violence, and for a year and a half or so, in American and other coalition casualties.

When the predicted pacification did not happen, the public slowly began losing confidence in this war and in how we were fighting it.

Some true believers, unable to comprehend that the leaders of the country either lied to them or were grossly mistaken, have taken to denying that the people fighting in Iraq are Iraqi at all. But tales of foreign fighters have mroe to do finding an excuse for the violence that allows the initial predictions to be accurate than with actual facts. That is, they can claim that we did defeat the Iraqi insurgents by denying that those we fight now are Iraqi insurgents:

But it really hasn't been. It was dead enders, just as Rumsfeld said, at first. Then the jihadists joined in, then Iran and Syria were able to build an insurgent war machine within the country.

Ultimately, the goal is to to never admit a mistake and to blame those who expose your errors for your errors' inevitable results.

That is all.

Thoughts on Mary Cheney Getting Knocked Up

I think it was a bad idea.

That is all.

Race and Races

Steve Sailer cuts through the B.S..

That is all.

Support Our Troops

When one of thsoe moronic hawks keeps telling us that you cannot support our troops unless you support the war, the current strategy for fighting it, and the President, remember that the President does not really support our troops that much, at least in terms of making sure that their service is adequately compensated.

So remember that those who equate support for Bush and support for the troops really are either woefully ignorant or else really do not care a whit about our troops. In reality, they are part of the Dubya cult of personality and they just want to use them as human shields to protect their idol.

That is all.

Victory, Schmictory

Despite the anger this position will surely engender amongst hawks, I agree with the idea that we should exchew the use of the term "victory" in Iraq, at least for the time being.

This is not, however, because I want to see the U.S. lose in Iraq, or because I see "victory" as an inflammatory term. Rather, it is because the term "victory" has become a substitute for a thoughtful articulation of what we hope to accomplish in Iraq.

"Victory" is not a strategy. Technically, in fact, it is not even a goal. Victory is the state of having met your goals. Therefore, saying that "our strategy is victory" is like saying "our strategy is to meet our goals," which is meaningless, as strategy is the proccess by which we hope to achieve our goals. Saying that "our goal is victory" is similarly tautological, amounting to "our goal is to meet our goals."

Rather, I like to talk in terms of concrete policy.

If we are to stay in Iraq (which I do not think is a wise idea), the goal ought to be pacification. That is, to bring Iraqis under our virtually undisputed control and for them to peacefully accept our dominance. Only a pacified country can be democratized (which would still be a pie-in-the-sky goal), or more realistically, defanged (i.e. we set up a stable government that is non-threatening and compliant with U.S. interests and desires).

The main failing in the occupation of Iraq is that we concentrated on democratization first, rather than pacification. We did this largely because we assumed that the Iraqis were on the "same page" as we were and wanted the same things. Still today, we portray our strategy in Iraq as helping the Iraqi to be able to police themselves, or more specifically to be able to train the Iraqis to work towards our goals in Iraq for us, which of course assume that they have the same goals for the country that we have and only need to be trained on how to realize these goals.

As long as we rely on others with different interests to protect what we perceive as our interests in Iraq, our strategy will be a woeful failure and we will be left either blaming others for Iraqi misdeeds (the constant chorus that the insurgency is enitrely foregin fighters or entirely a proxy army fighting on behalf of Iran and/or Syria), or trying to place all of the problems on the head of some Emmanuel al-Goldstein, such as Zarqawi or Sadr.

Some people argue that the way we fight in Iraq is criminal. I say that it is worse: it is stupid.

That is all.

Ancient Greek Computer

This is interesting.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to LewRockwell.com.

That is all.

Qu'Ran Swearing In

Via Jim Henley I found this piece by Julian Sanchez and then this one by Dennis Prager.

I must say that I think that Prager is being ridiculous. I think that it is reasonable to allow a Muslim to be sworn in on the Qu'Ran. If the U.S. people do not like this, then they ought not to elect Muslims. Prager says that Jews and secularists have long been sworn in on a Christian Bible, but I do not see why that matters. If true - and I do not know that it is - it is probably because they decided not to object to it. If a Jew asked to be sworn in on a Torah, I doubt that most people would mind. If they do, then they ought not to elect Jews.

He also tries a reductio ad absurdum by asking what if we elected a Nazi who wanted to be sworn in on Mein Kampf (he actually says "a racist," but I think that it is fair to say that someone wanting to be sworn in on a book written by Hitler would probably hail from the Nazi wing of the racists). It does not appear to have occured to him that if we elected someone who believed in Nazism, what book he was sworn in on would be the least of our problems.

In fact, if we read Prager's piece, Prager nowhere suggests that non-Christians were not allowed to choose a different book, just that they chose not to object (and as I recall, John F. Kennedy was sworn in on a Catholic Bible rather than a King James Version, so I do see that there have been some accomodations made.

This does not mean that having an official sworn in on the Qu'Ran mnight not be troubling for various cultural reasons, but if it is a problem, then surely electing a Muslim to higher office would be a bigger one, and the fact that people voted for a Muslim should be the real issue, not the fact that the Muslim takes his faith seriously.

That is all.

Some Stuff from Henley

Jim Henley makes an excellent point about all of the hysteri over the "false story" (whether it is or not I do not know) about Iraqi Sunnis being burned alive.

It is folly to get vaught up in individual atrocity stories. What matters is the overall trend.

I think that this is one thing that a lot of people forget.

That is all.