One would have thought by now that the retired generals and social anthropologists who were so critical of the structure of the forces that won an historic, overwhelming victory in Iraq would quietly fade away.
But no. General Kurtz is at it again on NRO's blog, claiming novelist Mark Helprin as an ally:
Well, the war is over. And before you decide that there were no problems, please take a look at, “Analyze This,” the article by Mark Helprin in the current issue of NRODT. Helprin says what I have been saying for some time--that, despite Secretary Rumsfeld’s claims, we cannot fight two major theater wars at once; that our armed forces are too small; and that we committed too few troops to the fight in Iraq. We were lucky, because the Iraqis could not capitalize on our mistakes. But the truth is we had too few troops.Now, I'm sure General Kurtz is highly knowledgeable about anthropology. And General Helprin's novels are well regarded by many conservatives (although personally, I can't read the things). The two aspiring generals may even be right to the extent they worry that the overall force structure is too small. But to suggest "we were lucky" was the source of success in Iraq is the talk of fools.
(04-30-03 Update) General Kurtz seems much more at home with issues of incest, homosexuality, and adultery.
I am SO tired of the term "neoconservative," which means various things these days, depending on the source. For example, most people in the media use it as a broad term for those evil people they disagree with (terms like "conservative a-hole" still aren't allowed, even in the Howell Raines New York Times). And then there are the fringe Buchananites, who seem to imply a subtle (for them!) anti-Semitism when they use it.
It's probably a losing battle at this point to write about the origins of the term, and how it's misused to the point of being almost useless. Still, Jay Nordlinger sums things up pretty well:
What is a "neoconservative"? I believe that this word has little meaning today, except in the minds of the politically confused or mischievous. It was a word applied to former leftists who, in the 1970s and '80s, crossed over to the conservative camp, chiefly based on anti-Communism. This expanded to a tough-mindedness about social problems, including crime and education. Its flagship magazine was Norman Podhoretz's Commentary, of course.I like that. I'm for the spread of liberty and the principles of the American Founding at home and abroad. And that's Reaganite.Many years ago — I was there, listening to the speech at the American Enterprise Institute — I heard Podhoretz pronounce a "requiem" on neoconservatism. ("Deliver one for"?) The designation had outlived its usefulness.
Am I a neoconservative? That's a longish essay — and, come to think of it, I've written a few — but the answer is no. Not really. Oh, yes, I grew up in a leftist environment — as my regular readers know — and was educated by leftists (who wasn't?). But any ill effects were pretty much purged by the time I left college. Norman Podhoretz, through Commentary, and William F. Buckley Jr., through National Review — and Firing Line and a hundred other things — had won me.
If I have to call myself something, I call myself a Reaganite. That is the truest — as well as quickest — label. It simply takes too long to discourse on the gradations of conservatism, or the implications of genuine liberalism. You can just cut to the chase by saying: "Reaganite."
With the ongoing media blitz by the Bird Brains Dixie Chicks, whose media firm apparently feels that more stupidity is an improvement on limited stupidity, it strikes me that Jay Nordlinger's comments on that old windbag Andy Rooney apply to the Chicks and to the celebrity antiwar Left more broadly:
Last week, Frank Rich wrote a clever, deeply irritating piece on Iraq politics in America. There is much to say about it — I'll say just a little.It does seem that way.First, he quoted Andy Rooney, who complained on 60 Minutes, "I hate everything about this war except that we're winning. [This was while the war was still in progress, evidently.] You can't even be critical, either, without sounding unpatriotic." That is certainly not true. If you want to read really intelligent criticism of the war, consult Mark Helprin in our current issue. And Helprin is as patriotic as they come (and sounds it).
I think what Rooney means is that he can't be critical of the war without being disagreed with. Many war critics, I have found, want to be a) admired, b) unchallenged, or c) martyred. Makes them feel better.
Glenn Reynolds pens a nice two-thirds of a column for TCS today, using some good examples in describing the advantages of a free and open society over totalitarian societies.
But then he gets to the end, and tries to train his argument for free societies against John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act. Conceptually, the argument flows nicely from what he's written. But like most libertarians (why people continue to call Reynolds a conservative -- something even he refuses to call himself -- is a mystery to me), his examples of John Ashcroft's trampling of the free society are virtually nonexistent. Really , he offers just one, and admits that it's not all that problematic:
Taking lists of hazardous-waste locations offline is probably no threat to an open society. But the Justice Department's unwillingness to release information on how it is implementing the Patriot Act is deeply troubling. Sure, there are some tactical secrets that shouldn't be released. But it's been a year and a half since the Patriot Act was passed, and information on how the rather sweeping power that it granted has been used isn't being released.Fair enough. The government MIGHT be abusing its newly found powers. Or it might not. But we sure don't like that it has those powers, and that it hasn't sent us a detailed memo about its implementation.
Contrast the lack of examples in this part of the piece with the top part of the article. The difference is striking. Now, that's not to say that a certain vigilance against government encroachment of liberties isn't a good thing. I think it is. But is the notion (a feeling, really, since there are no concrete examples offered) that the government will rush to abridge civil liberties in the name of homeland security much different conceptually than the notion that, say, the U.S. military will take the opportunity to blow women and children of foreign nations to bits given the chance?
Sometimes, a worldview can color one's political judgments. In the case of the far Left, it colors their view of war (which Reynolds loves to point out). In the case of homeland security, Reynolds himself seems prone to overreaction.
If CNN is reverting to form, then so too is our wonderful internet, which is honing in with nearly autistic focus on the great Joshy Marshall debate over the Bush Administration's efforts to take over the world while deceiving it every bit of the way.
Tricky stuff. Why anyone would pay this much attention to Joshy or to this debate remains largely unexamined, however.
Jed Babbin reports that CNN just can't help but be true to itself:
Anti-American demonstrations continue in Baghdad, even as the Shia population enjoys the freedom of religion denied it for three decades. Many if not all of these demonstrations are organized by non-Iraqi elements as part of their plan to continue to destabilize Iraq. This morning, one CNN reporter whose name I happily forget said that despite the fact the demonstrations are organized, it doesn't mean that they don't represent the feelings of many Iraqis. She--and many others in CNN--can no longer be trusted with the news. They are captives of their own constituencies, sources and editors who depend on news from foreign governments.Yep. Rupert Murdoch must be enjoying it immensely.I did watch CNN many times during the Iraq campaign because they seemed to have more embedded reporters than anyone else, and did a good job of reporting what they saw. Now that the major military action is over, they are reverting to their old reputation as the "Clinton News Network." And it's a pity. Their dependency on the foreign governments--coupled with their own liberal view of the world--precludes objectivity. Their failure is as pronounced as the failure of the Iraqi armed forces.
The NY Times reports that President Bush could spend $200 million on his upcoming re-election campaign.
I was initially surprised that the paper could report such a matter without their usual alacrity.
But then I realized that they, and all the other (mostly) liberal proponents of McCain-Feingold, have really boxed themselves in. Having gotten exactly the legislation they proposed as a cure-all for the alleged "evil" of money in politics, it's now a very difficult matter to explain that this legisaltion will allow the incumbent Republican President to spend more money campaigning than has been spent by any previous Presidential candidate, and that fundraising by Democrats will have taken a hit by virtue of that same legislation.
Great stuff.
For those of you who think the various Saturday Night Live and other comedic skits of journalists interacting with Secretary Rumsfeld are way off base, just read the first two questions at today's press conference, and the Secretary's answers:
Q: Mr. Secretary, you spoke about demonstrations in Iraq now that the country is free. Those demonstrations include both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, and the Shi'a, of course, didn't profit from Saddam. And many of those demonstrators are calling for an Islamic republic to take over in Iraq. Would the United States support an Islamic republic in Iraq under the tenets that you've mentioned before, the democratic tenets that you expect?I watch or read the transcripts for virtually every one of these things, and it's just astounding sometimes. If anything, SNL is too easy on the journalists.Rumsfeld: Well, I don't know what the definition of "many" is. Portions of this country have been free for 15 minutes, others for a day or two, or three or a week. Characterizing anything as "many" or implying that there are large numbers that happen to have that view, it seems to me, reflects a much more insightful knowledge of the situation than I think is permitted at the present time.
The principles the president has put forward are clear, and that is that there should be a country that is -- has its territorial integrity protected; a country that is not a threat to its neighbors; a country that is organized and arranged in a way that the people in the country are -- the various ethnic groups and religious groups are able to have a voice in their government in some form; and we hope, a system that will be democratic and have free speech, and free press and freedom of religion. The -- in the last analysis, the Iraqi people are going to decide what that form is, not the United States, not the coalition and not anyone else.
Yes?
Q: Would an Islamic -- excuse me, sir, if I may follow, just very -- an "Islamic republic" connotes the idea of an Iran, a government such as that in Iran. Would that be acceptable to the United States -- a government not only based on the tenets of a religion but ruled by the tenets?
Rumsfeld: I don't think that I would characterize what's going on in Iran as a democratic system. I don't think I would say that it fits the principles that I've just indicated. I think there are an awful lot of people in Iran who feel that that small group of clerics that determine what takes place in that country is not their idea of how they want to live their lives.
Only a writer who describes himself as "a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism" can use so many words to say so little (and so incoherently at that)!
Sampling:
Look around: How many political candidates advertise themselves as liberals? You don't have to go looking for conservatives. Why, then, the need for so many cobbled-together indictments of a political philosophy whose adherents have all died off or gone underground?Found, unsurprisingly, at Arts and Letters Daily, where the attitude about ideas seems right in line with the capricious relativism evident throughout this piece.One answer is that these books provide conservatives a bracing tonic. They validate their resentments. In truth, liberals have had some of this coming. Democracy, H.L. Mencken said, was the theory of government based on the notion that the people know what's best for them, and they deserve to get it good and hard.
But it's one thing to beat an opponent when he's down and another to keep at it when he's gone into rigor mortis. It would serve conservatism better if some of these best-selling authors -- no one would call them writers -- trafficked more in ideas and less in impulses.
No impulse is so pervasive in these books as deep-seated contempt. "Let me say this before I go any further," writes Sean Hannity, the author of "Let Freedom Ring" and a Fox Television talk-show host. "My quarrel with liberals and liberalism is not personal. Just because I think liberals are wrong on the issue doesn't mean I don't like them."
Believe it if you wish. To my ear, it's disingenuous.
Robert Novak reports that that GOP senators are getting tired of fighting (if you can call it that) for President Bush's judicial nominees:
Senate Republicans are tiring of the battle to confirm contested judicial nominees, indicating that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's Democratic plan to prevent President Bush from shaping the federal judiciary is succeeding.It's much more exciting to capitulate to Democrat schemes to redistribute wealth if you're a bored "moderate" Republican Senator, I suppose.Weekly meetings of Republican senators produce increased grumbling. The complaining senators ask the White House and the Republican leadership why they should keep fighting to confirm as appellate judges Washington, D.C., lawyer Miguel Estrada and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen. Not only liberal GOP senators but also some old guard committee chairmen claim this fight is neither important nor politically prudent.
Kennedy's unprecedented plan to block Bush's judicial selections always has been based on the theory that Republican senators soon would tire of the struggle.
President Bush is going to have to stump more for these nominees now that the Iraq War is militarily complete. Let Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, and the rest of the pro-abortion lobby continue to obstruct an onslaught of judicially sensible nominees at every level. It will play well in 2004 for Bush and GOP challengers to vulnerable Dem Senators, and the judiciary will eventually be remade (just think back to FDR's strategy after court-packing failed, when time and persistence eventually gave him everything he wanted judicially).
One might have thought after the wholly discredited Iraqi (Dis)Information Minister skipped town (shortly before his forces completed their defeat of the infidels) and CNN admitted it was an Iraqi propaganda organ for years, that journalists might think twice before engaging in Arab mythmaking.
But after reading this Times piece, I'm convinced that journalists will forever be journalists, and any chance to "correct the record" when it comes to the United States will be seized, never mind the source of said corrections or whether said "corrections" have any validity.
And yes, I've used that favorite device of journalists, the quotes, to cast aspersions on their efforts in this article. But I'm going to leave it at that. Our fine readers are welcome to comment on the silly article, of course, as always.
John Edwards simply had to run for President this time, because it's becoming increasingly clear that he's going to have trouble winning his current Senate seat again, and that even if he retained it, he'd be too damaged to run for President in the next cycle:
Sen. John Edwards remains a popular political figure in North Carolina, but the Tarheel state loves its Republicans too. And while Edwards appears prepared to run for re-election if his presidential aspirations don't pan out, he may be in for a more serious challenge than he expected six months ago when he committed all of his energies to the Democratic presidential nomination.Elsewhere, Senator Daschle is said to be in deep trouble. That filibuster-proof Senate majority is looking within reach.Republican Rep. Richard Burr, Karl Rove's handpicked candidate to challenge Edwards, or whoever may fill the Democratic Senate slot, has already been highly successful in his fundraising, raising more than a million in the latest reporting cycle. But the cash isn't what is surprising, it's where the cash is coming from: Democrats. In the northern part of the state, where Democrats tend to lean to the conservative side, Burr is pulling in cash and has even been able to get Democratic fundraisers once loyal to Edwards to make introductions for him.
"We're beating him in his own backyard," says a Burr staffer on Capitol Hill. "We don't doubt that Edwards will be getting money from these people, but some of them are also giving money to us. And we're getting it at a time when it's helping us establish our name early in the campaign."
An interesting bit of news from the Telegraph:
Demoralised soldiers from Iraq's Republican Guard thought Saddam Hussein was "mad" and deserted en masse before the first American tanks rolled into Baghdad, according to a colonel in the supposedly elite force.Remember how, only a few days into the war, so many media talking heads (and a fewSpeaking in the shabby family quarters given to Republican Guard officers in Baghdad, Col A T Said explained how the units that Saddam relied on most never had any intention of fighting for his regime.
That sort of illustrates the folly of trying to determine who's winning a war a few days after it's started. Now that we look back, it seems that the war planners were right in this, and most other, assessments.
I wish nitwit journalists had never discovered the term "neoconservatives," because now the ill-defined, nearly meaningless term is used to describe almost any (Jewish) person who has ever advocated a muscular foreign policy.
We're starting to see nitwit journalists refer to "the neoconservatives" as if there is some monolithic group of thinkers adhering to a well-defined doctrine -- which just isn't the case. Nonetheless, set your browser to search for the term "the neoconservative" in this Ron Brownstein piece for the liberal LA Times, and you get just that impression.
I suppose it's better than "those stinking Jews" which is all too often what certain conservatives mean when they use the term. But not by much.
Democrats continue to work on the assumption that the war on terror has ended each time any major battle in that war concludes, and given their views on national security and foreign policy, I suppose it's easy to see why they would rather talk about wealth redistribution schemes. But this notion that they've become ever more moderate is kind of funny (delusional?):
Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kansas, said growing budget deficits have united the party against Republicans. But he also gives Pelosi credit for moving more toward the center.That's it. Just keep telling yourselves that, and maybe Karl Rove can build that filibuster-proof GOP Senate in 2004.
"I supported her opposition in the race for leader," Moore said. "I have been very, very pleasantly surprised by the way Nancy Pelosi has conducted herself and listened to all elements of the party. She understands as the party leader, she represents a much broader spectrum."
It's just rich that the American President less interested in and less tested by foreign affairs than any other in recent memory has such criticism of the current President's handling of foreign policy in highly tumultuous times:
Former US President Bill Clinton blasted US foreign policy adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.It's also interesting that the President who assembled the most underwhelming set of foreign policy advisors in recent memory would be so critical of the President who has assembled perhaps the most impressive in history (with at least four people who have either considered or might one day consider running for President: Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice)."Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board (news - web sites).
"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."
The Democratic former president, who preceded George W. Bush at the White House, said that sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large.
"We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal."
At least one might assume the former President is speaking authoritatively when he mentions going straight to hell.
While I don't think the United States has a serious intention of moving against Syria militarily in the near term, the LA Times gives precisely the wrong advice here:
The Bush administration and some members of Congress are saying things that make many worry that U.S. and British forces might cross into neighboring Syria for a preemptive attack on President Bashar Assad's regime. The United States should take that card off the table.No card should be taken off the table unilaterally by the President, including the credible threat of the use of force against ANY rogue regime in the world.
Indeed, taking such "cards" off the national security table has largely defined liberals and the Democrat party at least since Jimmy Carter. Whether it's been Strobe Talbott or Sandy Berger or Madeleine Not-At-Albright, Dem foreign policy experts have long preached a toothless American foreign policy. They have long forgotten that for a non-belligerent policy of deterrence to be effective, the THREAT of force must be credible.
In constrast, we (conservatives) maintain and reserve force as an instrument of statecraft not because we like war, but because we hope to avoid war.
Democrats like Scoop Jackson (and even JFK) understood that seeming paradox. Former Democrats and serious foreign policy thinkers like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard Perle had no place in (more recent) Democrat circles because they understand it.
Furthermore, it's a little amusing that liberals haven't caught on to the modus operandi of this Administration. They seem to think that the Administration has gone off half-cocked and agitating for another war, when in actuality this is a concerted rhetorical effort to bring Syria into line without having to resort to a potentially costly and deadly war. Even many conservatives (among them, hawks who would like to go to war against Syria) have misunderstood what the Administration is up to. John Podhoretz, however, gets it:
The verbal targeting of Syria is systematic and administration-wide. It began with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week. Then the president spoke over the weekend. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell took a shot as well, warning of sanctions or worse: "We will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward."Exactly.Some suggest that the administration's harsh words are reckless. They are the opposite - prudent and preventive.
Syria has been behaving very badly indeed in the past week. The administration is concerned and angry. Assad and his cronies have taken in at least two senior Iraqi officials responsible for chemical-weapons programs and have sent buses filled with wannabe suicide fighters across the border.
If Assad gets the message that we will not stand for his interference, and that we will make him pay for interfering, then there will be a cold peace on the Iraq-Syria border. That's what we want. It's what's best for our troops, and it's best for the peoples of both countries as well.
But the warnings to Syria have a deeper and more significant purpose. They indicate that Syria will be expected to comply with the set of standards for international conduct that govern other nations.
One would think that Ralph Peters (along with ground-advocate buddies Barry McCaffrey and Wesley Clark), having been spectacularly wrong in criticizing the war plan, would have the good sense to SHUT UP about it. But no, instead here's Ralph Peters trying to rehabilitate himself:
Certainly, we won a magnificent victory. But our military won it despite OSD's micro-management....Peters is highly invested in this view, which is so far from reality that it can only be described as ideological. Sadly, he's so invested in this view that, even after being proven wrong, he won't give it up. He's an ideologue, and an ever more annoying one.THIS has been a brilliant campaign. But it was won by soldiers, not by civilian "experts" who regard our troops as nothing more than strategic janitors. The recent suggestions by party hacks who disdained military service to the effect that they and their ideas won the war is conduct unbecoming. Even by Washington's standards.
Now, one of the major lessons we learned from this war is not mentioned once by Peters, and that's because it also runs contrary to his ideology. That lesson is that ground forces, no matter their size, are much more effective when buttressed by non-Army air support (i.e. Navy and Air Force aircraft, rather than Apache helicopters, which proved wholly inadequate whenever they were used as primary air support for ground troops).
We can all be thankful Peters is retired, because the harm he inflicts with his ideology from his armchair is far less than it would be if he were actually involved in more important matters.
Oh well, at least I haven't heard much from McCaffrey lately, and I think General Clark's Presidential ambitions have gone *poof*.
In my judgment, the United States is not going to march on to Damascus. At least not in the near future. But regardless, it's fun to hear from the Sky-Is-Falling Libertarian crowd on foreign affairs from time to time:
America has slowly (since at least the Spanish-American War) been killing that which was most lovely, unique, and irreplaceable about itself: a limited, representative government dedicated to protecting its citizens' life, liberty, and ability to pursue happiness. It was meant to be a nation where the government's mission was tightly prescribed and the people's liberty and property were theirs, a nation that could successfully live in peace—a coiled snake, yes, as per the Gadsden flag, but one that struck only when stepped on.Thanks Brian. We'll do that. And we trust the CIA, Dr. Cambone, and a few other serious people will be also.To some, this is less glorious or lovely than a nation waging perpetual war until evil is wiped from the earth. Some careful conservatives used to call that fool's mission "immanentizing the eschaton," and were aware that it was an evil temptation. Now, almost all who wrap themselves in the conservative mantle embrace America's seemingly never-ending mission to destroy all evil.
War is not safe, alas, for republics or other living things. Keep your eyes on Damascus.
But please, Brian, keep up with those dire proclamations on foreign policy. It's a welcome change from the more frequent charge that John Ashcroft is destroying civil liberties via Kroger-card snooping, and no less entertaining.
We've previously commented on Paul Craig Roberts, and the unfortunate columns he writes when he steps outside of his area of expertise.
In the interest of being fair and balanced(!), we'd like to point out a very good Paul Craig Roberts column on this Tax Day of 2003.
The welfare state and its confiscatory practices is one quagmire that Roberts speaks on authoritatively.
Isn't it interesting where some of the world's worst terrorists turn up?
Of course, according to the antiwar crowd, the war on Iraq is a distraction from -- rather than a part of -- the war on terror.
This round is too easy.
CNN says its silence on Iraq atrocities had nothing to do with maintaining access -San Fransisco Chronicle
"It was all about denying hawks' credibility," the cable network maintains.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld fired off a nice shot against Secretary of State Colin Powell on Meet The Press today:
MR. RUSSERT: Colin Powell had a doctrine that—the use of overwhelming force in any military situation. This particular war seemed to focus around—and we’ve talked about this before—speed, flexibility, and use of intelligence data, real-time. Has speed, real-time intelligence, flexibility, the Rumsfeld doctrine, replaced the Colin Powell doctrine of overwhelming force in 2003?Completely accurate, but sure to annoy the Secretary of State and his boosters. And Rumsfeld surely had to know that.SEC’Y RUMSFELD: Well, first, I don’t think there was a Powell doctrine. I think it was Cap Weinberger who fashioned that list and it evolved over and it became called the Powell doctrine, but my recollection is it was Cap Weinberger’s doctrine. And second, it certainly is—I wouldn’t call it a Rumsfeld doctrine. I think it’s the law of physics. In this case, speed was more important than mass. And in fact, the plan that General Franks and his team and the president and the National Security Council and I all were involved in, worked. And it worked brilliantly. And General Franks deserves a lot of credit and his wonderful team of people, Tim Keating and General Moseley and General McKiernan and the people who implemented it.
It's hardly a surprise to me that Arts and Letters Daily posts a link to Edward Said's latest, while seemingly expressing no judgment on the nonsense. And it's lacking any context at all, since Said has long hated Bernard Lewis (and, presumably, the respectability that Lewis's meticulous scholarship demands). Here's the conclusion of the man who would critique Lewis:
This is the most reckless war in modern times. It is all about imperial arrogance unschooled in worldliness, unfettered either by competence or experience, undeterred by history or human complexity, unrepentant in its violence and the cruelty of its technology. What winning, or for that matter losing, such a war will ultimately entail is unthinkable. But pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally 'liberated'.One can only assume that the editors of Arts and Letters Daily find this compelling for some reason that completely escapes me.
I've griped plenty about Generals Wesley Clark and Barry McCaffrey, who have been spectacularly wrong about the war and spectactularly wrong in the way they have criticized the war's planners. If Robert Novak's sources are reliable -- and they usually are -- it sounds like Colin Powell is none too happy with them either:
Friends of Secretary of State Colin Powell say he was very unhappy with unidentified "former four-stars" who, as paid military analysts, went on television to criticize the U.S. war plan for Iraq in its early stages.Too bad Secretary Powell couldn't keep his boys from making fools of themselves. I'd be disappointed too.The only four-star officers who meet that description are Army Gens. Barry McCaffrey and Wesley Clark. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Powell boosted McCaffrey to major commands despite considerable opposition in the military establishment.
Powell's criticism was matched by the uniformed military in the Pentagon. Clark's interest in seeking the Democratic presidential nomination has made him suspect. McCaffrey, who after his retirement served as President Clinton's drug czar, is not well liked inside the Army.
I'm not a particularly religious person, but I can't help but think there's a place in Hell reserved not just for Saddam Hussein, his creepy sons, and the rest of the crew that perpetrated their crimes against humanity, but enablers such as CNN reporters who chose to bury the news of the crimes against humanity instead of reporting them -- and now try to claim the moral high ground!
Some might say that Mr. Jordan's startling editorial yesterday -- and subsequent comments defending his actions -- indicates some remorse and guilt for not having reported these crimes. Surely such introspection is a first step towards morality, but one can't help but wonder after watching Mr. Jordan flop this way and that if the secular Left is even capable of assessing morality (instead preferring to hide behind such noble efforts as protecting its sources and "journalistic ethics" -- too often no ethics at all).
Mr. Jordan sounds all too much like those peace protestors claiming, in the name of the Iraqi people no less, to be against this war -- never mind that Saddam Hussein killed, tortured, and maimed many thousands more of those Iraqi people than the minimal collateral damage caused by a war intended to END the Tyrant's oppression. In protecting his "sources," Mr. Jordan was ultimately protecting nothing but CNN's interests, since there is no protection for any person living in a brutal regime ruled by a Tyrant who jails and tortures children and gases certain ethnic groups. If Mr. Jordan could just admit that he and CNN chose CNN's interests (and, by extention, the Tyrant's interests) over those of any people in Iraq, it would be a step in the right direction. Instead, his attempts to portray CNN's decision as somehow courageous and moral further illustrates the problem, doesn't it?
Expect to see more of this message from the Loony Left on Iraq:
The relatively quick fall of Baghdad shows that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a "paper tiger" rather than a major threat to world peace, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said Thursday.Soon, the liberated Iraqis themselves will be in a position to explain to the Senator the threat the Tyrant's regime posed to them."What we were told and what you saw in the press last fall and earlier this year is that he had a massive war machine," said Harkin, the most outspoken critic of the war in Iraq among members of the Iowa congressional delegation.
"It looks now like this was just a Third World country - there were people fighting with tennis shoes on, on the Iraqi side," Harkin told reporters. "I don't know what else we're going to find, but they didn't fly even one airplane in the air. They had almost nothing.
"So if they were that weak, where we could just roll over them like that, tell me again how he was such a big threat in the past?" the senator added.
And soon, we will have plenty of proof of the Tyrant's collection and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, not to mention ties to global terror.
But for now, we can remind the Senator that we fought this pre-emptive war because we -- including the Senator, who voted in favor of this war when he judged there might be electoral consequences involved -- made the judgment that the combination of an irrational Tyrant with a grudge against the United States and weapons of mass destruction was something we could not allow.
Of course, the Senator would prefer to talk about mechanisms to transfer money from some Americans to others, but there are more important things going on in the world at the moment.
It's a sad thing when the effort to portray the VastNeoconConspiracy (which seems to have replaced the VastRightWingConspiracy that noted all of the Clintons misdeeds of the 90s -- since the Clintons apparently did not possess free will, and were forced into said escapades by the conspiracy) as fantastically as possible results in such dreadful grammatical errors in the lead paragraph of a "news" article:
The fall of Baghdad is a victory not only for the U.S. military but also for a group of foreign policy hard-liners who have realized the first step in an audacious a bold plan to reorder the Arab world and global institutions.An audacious a bold? Nice job, USA Today! Fair, balanced, and coherent?
Hard to take the analysis contained within this "reporting" seriously considering the errors in grammar littering the piece.
Pathetic.
The Eurocrats are becoming ever more laughable:
The European Commission is examining contracts awarded by the US for reconstruction work in Iraq to find out whether they breach World Trade Organisation rules and discriminate unfairly against European companies.We are impotent obstructionist Eurocrats -- and we always have the WTO!The move could throw up a new irritant at a time when relations between Washington and Brussels are already severely strained by the highly critical stance adopted by many European Union members towards the war in Iraq....
Officials also said that they were not aware of any complaints from European companies regarding the current tenders for reconstruction work. "We have not yet identified any particular problems. We hope that they respect the rules. But if they don't, there is the WTO," a Commission official said.
Quite a battle cry.
Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, has a startling admission in today's NY Times:
Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.The rest of the story is basically an admission that CNN's reporting from Baghdad was biased and unreliable because of these omissions -- that effectively CNN's broadcasts from Iraq served as propaganda for the regime. As Orrin Judd asks (permalinks not working so no direct link unfortunately),For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.
Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).
Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.
What in the name of Sam Hill was the point? The gist of this story is that not a single report from Iraq by a Western media source could be considered trustworthy, so why were they there and why were their stories presented as if they were valid?Exactly.
For twelve years this went on. For the last year or so, we've been engaged in a vigorous debate over the Tyrant, and whether the United States could allow a madman to proceed in his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. We were told by some who opposed any action in Iraq that "deterrence" would work -- never mind that this dated Cold War strategic concept assumed the presence of rational actors, and that at the heart of the debate was the rationality of the Tyrant of Baghdad. But since CNN sat on all of its stories that made it clear the Tyrant was brutal, craven, and irrational, it made that debate much more rancorous that it needed to be.
Thanks, CNN.
My boss told me of this odd exchange between Bill Bennett, James Woolsey, and others taking questions from a student audience.
The guys at the Claremont blog have picked up on it.
The strange thing is, somebody fed these students these questions. Their (mis)interpretation of Strauss is not something they could possibly have come to from their own reading of Strauss. Some professor opposed to Strauss's teachings has had to promote an ideological (mis)reading of Strauss to get these ideas in these students' heads. That professor does a disservice to education and to philosophy. I wish I knew who it was.
Is it any wonder pessimistic outfits like MSNBC/Newsweek are circling the drain? Here's their "Conventional Wisdom" of 7 April 2003:
What a bunch of silliness.
(link via NRO's Corner)
(Update) Bob Tyrrell notes that 7 April issue of Time is dreadful as well.
Orrin Judd (whose archives aren't working properly, so I can't link directly -- search on the post beginning "SWINGING AWAY") has been making this point for a while, but I haven't seen it made by any pundits with wide print circulation:
When the books are written about the Bush years, one of the most remarkable achievements of this period will be one that has gone nearly unnoticed, even by those who are willing to give credit when due: he has forced regime change in Palestine merely by the force of his rhetoric.It is unsurprising that liberals would not credit Bush for this remarkable feat, since they were highly critical of the major speech on the topic (which Orrin highlights), and this method of regime change doesn't fit their stereotype of Bush as dullard, warmonger, cowboy, etc. The question is, why has this largely gone unnoticed and unreported on the Right?
The liberation of Baghdad is only minutes old, really, but CNN reporters already have their (pardon the language) panties in a wad over the goings on:
This is a moment that people have been fearing, even those who are very opposed to the regime, who have been wanting and anticipating the fall of the regime.Imagine that! The people are angry over real oppression -- not the kind of oppression imagined by American Liberals and Libertarians (you know, that John Ashcroft might take a peek at your Kroger Club card to see how much lettuce you've been buying), but the deadly and maiming variety that the Left has preferred to ignore over the years in such lovely places as Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, etc.They always voiced concern, when I was in Baghdad, about what happens when [Saddam] falls. What comes next? Who's going to take over?
There was fear that there would be chaos in Iraq -- no law and order, that the country would disintegrate.
And there's also concern and fear of people trying to settle old scores. Many people in Iraq are very angry at the regime.
Those who supported the regime -- who were members of the ruling Baath Party, people who benefited from the regime, people who were government officials, even on a level of bureaucrats and technocrats, who benefited from the government -- must be very concerned now that someone, somewhere, will try to settle old scores, just to let the anger out after so many years of oppression.
But wait, there's more from the losers at CNN:
This follows intense airstrikes over the past several days against this southeastern sector of the northern front. What we're seeing here is a recently abandoned Iraqi position.As Callie asked in an email, "Does dude realize he's answered his own question?"But really, all of this brings up the question: How much of what's happening in Baghdad is getting to these remote locations?
And they wonder why they're looking WAY UP at Fox News as ratings go.
(Update) Jeffrey Tiel over at the Ashbrook blog has this observation:
I have been watching the liberation in Baghdad and Basra, the people pouring into the streets, throwing flowers onto American tankers, ripping up pictures of Saddam, and hauling out of government buildings the possessions that have been stolen from them for 30 years. It’s just like Paris in 1944. Pity the French don’t remember. I’ve been impressed with Fox News for telling the truth about the "looting," namely that the target is not one’s neighbor but the tyrannical hierarchy. It’s completely different from the LA riots where a group of racists and thugs tore into their neighbors homes and businesses merely because they were vulnerable and Koreans. Calling both cases "looting" is a moral mistake.Yep. More kudos to Fox News for getting it right.
Schramm's post just below is good also.
The Fox News website is running a great photo on the front page at the moment:
Have any of us mentioned we love Fox News? Oh, I see we have.
(Update) This one is pretty good too:
This line from Jed Babbin made me laugh out loud:
An evil genius of my acquaintance has asked me to point out that it took Janet Reno 51 days to conquer Waco, and we have brought Saddam's regime to the brink in less than half that time. But it's not over, not by a bunch.I wonder why nobody at the NY Times called Waco a quagmire?
This is an interesting observation:
This paragraph from today's Washington Post piece about U.S. designs on Syria provides about as damning an indictment as you'll find of both the State Department's negotiating savvy and its famous moral clarity:From the conservatives at the Weekly Standard? National Review? Nope. The New Republic.Although Syrian support of terrorist groups was always on the agenda, said one former diplomat with direct experience in the area, "Assad was a clever negotiator and insisted his country was not being used as base for operational activities." In addition, he kept reminding the United States that "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."Translation: For reasons apparent only to the exquisite minds at State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, we spent years accepting Assad's patently absurd denials that his country was harboring terrorists--even when Assad himself contradicted those denials by explaining why he was, in fact, harboring terrorists. And the amazing thing is that it's a State Department official who's now--today!--trying to pass this off as an explanation for why we never got tough with Assad.
Well, at least State's not going to have any say over what happens in postwar Iraq....
Someone needs to tell those guys that you can't be a respectable rag of the Left and criticize the State Department. Actually, the Nation will probably tell them at some point....
The most dramatic images so far of the liberation of Iraq are on TV right now. American tanks and armored vehicles are in place all around a giant round-a-bout in front of the Palestine Hotel, surrounding a giant statue of Saddam.
There are crowds of people around this statue in the center of Baghdad -- right in front of where the Iraqi Information Minister was just hours ago denying that U.S troops were in Baghdad. They are throwing shoes, rocks, and ripping metal plates off the base with their bare hands. The more ingenious among them have got a ladder and climbed up on top of the base to tie a rope around Saddam's kneck in an apparent effort to bring the statue down.
But my favorite image is the sign carried by some in the crowd. It is a giant banner saying "Go Home Human Shields, You U.S. Wankers." A man from SkyNews is going around interviewing the Iraqi people in the street. One man, in his broken English said something to the effect of "We feel safe now, we are happy." Other live pictures are coming in of pictures of Saddam being burnt down while men clap, cheer, and wave their shirts in the air.
If there is a more complete repudiation of everything the ant-war leftwingnuts have been saying, I can't imagine what it would be.
On the face of it, it looks like a horrible image. In context, it is an incredible sign of hope.
The folks getting mauled are Fedayeen agents. The maulers are a Basran mob. While I can't muster much sympathy, I'd much prefer the agents be arrested and dealt with through official channels.
So why does this image leave me smiling?
Kris Lofgren calls it "sick" and my friend Heidi Rogers (who was kind enough to re-introduce me to the correct spelling of "Fedayeen") points out that it doesn't mean that they welcome our invasion. While both points may be accurate, it does mean something.
So what does it mean? Let's explore the possibilities:
1. They welcome our invasion and wanted it to happen so that they could be free.
2. They don't welcome our invasion, but forced to choose between Saddam and the Western Coalition, they choose us.
3. They view us both as evil, but Saddam and his cronies moreso.
4. They view us as equally evil.
5. They view us as being more evil, but while they have an opportunity to throw a few wacks at the still-evil Saddamites, they'll take the wacks.
6. They hate us more than Saddam but side with us because we won.
7. They are just putting on a show because they think we will kill them.
Okay, having covered the bases, let none of us pretend to know which of the above is true. None of us do.
To an extent, though, it doesn't matter right now. Nor do the cheers and jeers we've been greeted with. What matters is the complete and total lack of resistence from the rank and file citizenry, which for whatever reason we appear to have gotten by all accounts.
If it's disingenuous, which it might be, why does that matter so much?
Let's back up for a moment to the invasion of Afghanistan or, to me more precise, slightly before hand. I honestly believed that it would be more difficult than it was to rout the Taliban. I feared that given the choice between us and them, the Afghanis would choose the more local (and ruling) army. I also feared the same in Kosovo roughly three years prior. Both were touted as possible Vietnams and, in all honesty, both could have been.
So why didn't they become Vietnams? Well, each is a unique circumstance with its own peculiarities. Would Iraq be more like Afghanistan or Vietnam?
Evidence like this suggests it will be more like Afghanistan and whatever the motivations for the goodwill we've gotten, they're all good signs. Even if they hate us.
Why? Because either (a) they fear us, (b) they hate the Baathists more, or (c) they just want the war to stop and whoever is controlling the area at the time is perfectly alright by them.
If this holds up, and we don't know that it will, it means that we will not meet up with massive resistence in the future. That's the big fear. The big fear is that we will be patrolling Baghdad while the Fedayeen and their cohorts continually take swipes at us; that even when the war is over, it won't be over over.
to do this, the Fedayeen would need the goodwill of the citizenry. They would need freedom to stealthily move about without having to worry about the average Iraqi turning them in. They need the confidence of their people and some degree of desire on the part of the people for their goal to be met. Whether the Iraqies have disposition 1-7 or motivation a-c, the Fedayeen they're not getting what they need. And as long as we (by this I mean the US, UK, Australians, Polish, Kurds, and the provisional Iraqi government that gets put into place) are the controlling power, they're not going to.
The hypothetical question I've been asking myself is, when we're patrolling Baghdad and guerilla agents attack, will the Iraqi citizenry promote it even to their own detriment (the more incidents happen, the more instability it will cause and the more imperiled they become).
This suggests that for whatever reason, they won't, and that makes me happy. This is not a justification or rationalization for the war, but it is an a nugget of encouragement that the road ahead and winning the peace ahead will not be as hard as many have feared.
For more, including Kris's and Heidi's comments, see the accompanying post at Disagreement, Inc.
The Ralph Peters vendetta against Secretary Rumsfeld is getting tiresome.
Fox News analyst Colonel David Hunt has been telling Peters and other (retired) armchair generals that they should shut up for a while now.
But when even Washington Post and NY Times columnists turn on your argument, maybe it's really time to take Colonel Hunt's advice.
Peters's embarrassing little tirades are even more sad, because his analysis of the war has been pretty good when it hasn't been clouded by his grudge match with Secretary Rumsfeld.
In our ongoing quest to indoctrinate Mr. Duff into the VastRightWingConspiracy, Callie sends along a couple of snippets from CNN.
First, their assessment of the goofy (dis)information minister:
A black military beret on his head, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has become the face and voice of Iraqi defiance.
*ahem* No, he's become the face and voice of people everywhere who should be locked away in a mental institution and given serious drugs until they get better.
Second, this assessment:
American troops met stiff resistance Tuesday morning from Iraqi paramilitary forces for control of an agricultural complex on the outskirts of the central town of Hillah.My goodness, a firefight that lasted an hour?! That constitutes "stiff resistance?" I'm a little shocked they didn't break out the term "quagmire." Maybe that's reserved for two-hour fights.Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, 3rd Brigade engaged in an hour-long firefight with Iraqi soldiers believed to be members of Saddam Fedayeen 50 miles south of Baghdad, said CNN's Ryan Chilcote, who is travelling with the unit.
Goofs.
If anyone out there has not already discovered that Jonah Goldberg is one of the best writers of the day, you should make it a point to read a few of his columns at NRO. His talent is insight and clarity married with a very sharp wit.
Here's a choice tidbit from today's column:
Only the delusional jihadists think a traditional war between Islamists and the rest of the world could possibly result in anything other than a lot of very, very sorry — and mostly dead — Muslims (see "Wanting a War They Can't Win"). This has been demonstrated once again just recently by these Syrian and Egyptian fighters who've volunteered to defend Iraq. Racing into Baghdad to repel the infidel invaders, they might as well have volunteered to leap headfirst into a wood chipper.
The Ouachita Mountains were refreshing, as always, despite the bad weather (rain and hail!) that helped cut the trip a day short. Along the way, we ran across some of the good folks of rural Oklahoma, who are always quite a pleasure. And as I've been catching up on the news I've missed over the last few days, I ran across this post by John Derbyshire:
From a reader: "I've been fascinated by the media's fascination with the Jessica Lynch story. ... it dawned on me what has been keeping the media entranced: old-fashioned small-town America virtue. It's not just Lynch herself, so much as it is her family, that has mesmerized the media, which is unaccustomed to encountering the kind of qualities the Lynch clan seems to typify: simplicity, compassion, religious faith, inner strength, humility, patriotism, love, courage, family unity, and above all the complete incapacity to present oneself as anything other than exactly what one is. The Lynch family is precisely the kind the people the media sophisticates usually love to belittle as uneducated rubes, religions nuts, trailer trash, etc. But the power of that family's simple virtue--their manifest goodness--has not only mesmerized the media, it has humbled them. In the last couple of press appearances I've seen, the reporters were not just seeking a "story" from the Lynches. They were seeking wisdom. From that burly man whose grammar would otherwise make them cringe, from his plain wife whose strength makes possible and protects her husband's gentleness, the urbane reporters were seeking nothing less than a lesson in how to live virtuously. And they were getting it."While backpacking, Callie and I ran across a hunter in the woods who had brought his kid out for the opening of turkey season the next day. He had left his kid at his camp, and was ahead doing some preliminary scouting. We had a good chat. He was one of the most friendly people I've ever met, and had a real love for the Ouachitas. I couldn't really figure out what it was I liked so much about this fellow, but Derbyshire's emailer has gotten it: this was a genuine person, and a virtuous man. And this is not at all unusual in that part of the country.
I think that's why I reacted so negatively to that vile "Beverly Hillbillies" reality show that was proposed a while back (did anything ever come of it?), whereby the sophisticated producers would go find a real-life hillbilly family to put on television to ridicule. ha ha ha. Won't that just be great fun?! Maybe they could get Jessica Lynch's father?! ha ha ha. More fun than a Hollywood elite ought to be allowed to have!
Or maybe not. I can certainly say I'd rather be hanging with the Lynch family -- or the hunter from the Ouachitas -- than most East and West coast elites. And when my country is under attack, it's good knowing some of those folks are around. And maybe the fact that media people are turning to Jessica Lynch's dad for wisdom is a good sign for our country. One can hope.
Anyway, that's my personal political note (since Evelynne gave us one, I figured I might also). It's good to be home. :)
If I may, rather than linking to an article, I'm gonna link to a first-person account (mine) of a "Support the Troops" rally held on Saturday in Philadelphia. Lots of photos of a lot of people and flags.
I was reading Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus today (as everyone should), and ran across this:
If you haven't yet read Orianna Fallaci's interview with an Iraqi POW — from 1991, and as relevant as ever — please do. It is a powerhouse.Jacques Chirac, take note!I will quote from one section: "In the Iraqi Army, we cannot wear white underpants. It's forbidden, like wearing white vests or white socks or white handkerchiefs. Do you know why? Because with white underpants and white vests and white socks and white handkerchiefs, soldiers can make white flags and surrender."
From Callie comes this choice tidbit from the NY Times:
Yet whether the good will evident here can be nurtured by the American military is another matter. There were signs today that the sprawling military contingent moving northward through Iraq may be too focused on matters of war to do much in the way of winning over the Iraqis.One would think removing the murderous tyrant, restoring an actual oil-for-food program (instead of oil-for-arms and Saddam's family), and working towards a democracy would be a good start, even if the primary goal of this war was not "winning over the Iraqis" but destroying the threat posed to the security of the United States by a hostile madman pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
But in the worldview of the NY Times, no good can ever come of war. Especially this war. And so the unfortunate line quoted above in a story that is otherwise somewhat hopeful (did Howell Raines pencil that line in, or did the reporter, knowing that raises and bonuses are tied to pleasing Howell and his subordinate editors?).
So continues the decline of a once-great newspaper.
This is an unfortunate example of what can happen when intellectuals (in the case of Paul Craig Roberts, a good economist who was an integral part of the Reagan supply-side revolution) venture way outside of their areas of expertise:
Despite stiff and unexpected Iraqi resistance, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is likely to succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein -- and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush, the Republican Party and American neoconservatives.What is he smoking? And what is he talking about?Wars have unintended consequences as well as unexpected developments. The White House, the Pentagon, our troops and the public were surprised that Saddam Hussein did not "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder," as Richard Perle, the principle architect of the war, had optimistically predicted. The promised "cakewalk" quickly bogged down into a stalemate, and other major setbacks have occurred.
The Pentagon has been sobered by the halting of our vaunted invasion force by lightly armed Iraqi irregular troops and tribesmen. U.S. reinforcements have been ordered that will double our fighting capability. In the meantime, there will be 40 days and nights of bombing to soften the as-yet-unfaced soldiers of the Republican Guard.
The casualties, both civilian and military, that are now expected to await us in Baghdad were not anticipated when our soldiers embarked on the liberation of Iraq. As serious as this miscalculation is, other miscalculations may prove to be even more deadly.
The American invasion has made a Muslim hero out of Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator who has spent his political life suppressing Islamic political parties. Even worse, the invasion has achieved the "Palestinization" of the Muslim world and has united Muslims against us.
Further on the topic of intellectuals who sound like loons when they venture outside their areas of expertise, it's probably too easy to pick on Lew Rockwell, isn't it? But apparently Loony Lew has decided that because we know planned economies are not efficient (never shall they use the word "moral"), it therefore makes no sense to engage in war planning (or war gaming). Never mind, of course, that the supply lines necessary to conduct a war don't really organize themselves like a spontaneous economic system, and never mind that many (deadly!) contingencies must be planned for, and war gaming is a proven method of taking into account those contingencies.
Granted, war games are not perfect. Who ever said they were? But if they do not perfectly reflect reality, then what can be said about this?
Wallace's open admission that something was amiss was highly unusual. How many times in recent days have we received assurance that military planners have "full confidence in the plan"? Why do they persist in making such radically implausible claims? Do they really expect us to accept the idea that they are infallible, to ignore all the piles of evidence pouring in that events have belied every expectation? And why do they believe that we are going to be comforted in the fact that they are ignoring every bit of this evidence?Since coalition troops now control Saddam International airport in Baghdad after one of the most extraordinary ground campaigns in military history, I'm left to wonder also what it is that Rockwell is smoking. In his case, I've been wondering that for a while.
As Richard Posner has noted, when academics (though he might have said intellectuals) venture outside of their areas of expertise, "quality tends to go to hell." Judge Posner may be a rare exception to that tendency.
Uh oh.
You know all those experts who kept predicting the "Arab street" would rise up against those invading Iraq?
Now it's started.
Sort of.
My favorite liberal, Gregg Easterbrook, accutely decyphers Reductio Ad Absurdum's favorite former general, Barry McCaffrey.
So now [McCaffrey]'s taking pot shots from the outside. Note that his big complaint is that it was unrealistic for the Pentagon to think a large armored column could move 250 miles rapidly without more support. McCaffrey moved a large armored column roughly this far and fast during the "left hook." Decoded, what he's saying to the Pentagon is, "You chumps, I am the only guy alive who could do this, and you fired me."...
Why people keep saying events are occurring too slowly--speeding up would surely mean more civilian deaths!--is incomprehensible. Can't we at least wait till the third week before we lose heart? Also, bear in mind that the Iraqi military may still collapse and the U.S. side may still take mass surrenders; there is still plenty of time for this to happen and to happen very quickly by the standards of combat.
The top Republican Congressional leadership criticized John Kerry for his remarks today.
But here's a fun little mistake from the Washington Post (reproduced here because they'll surely fix it soon):
Sen. Bill Frist, R.-Tenn., the senate majority leader, said the statement called into question Daschle's fitness for presidential office.Oops. I think they meant KERRY, not DASCHLE.
It is hard to keep up with those wacky liberal Senators.
Kevin referred recently to the reported argument within the administration over who should run Iraq after the war -- State or Defense. Khalid Kishtainy suggests in this article for NRO that neither would be a good solution, that we should ask the British to do it.
Robert Scheer and the noxious LA Times editorial page are not new to bloggers, to be sure, but I was amused to hear Bill O'Reilly ranting about them a few nights ago. His "talking points memo" is finally posted to the Fox News site.
Sad thing is, that's probably not the worst thing Scheer has written for that paper.
I may not know a lot about foreign affairs, military strategy, or the intricacies of politics, but I do know what I like about ordinary American citizens, including the ones in our military. And I appreciate that Fox News does too.
Not only do we risk our best men to rescue a handful of POWs, but our troops manage to display their humanity and their respect for the Iraqi people everywhere they go, as FoxNews.com reports:
The rescue operation included Air Force pilots, Marines, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers -- "loyal to the creed they know that they never leave a fallen comrade," Brooks said.
[...]
"We hope your city will return to normal, and that you will no longer live in fear," Brig. Gen. Rick Natonski, commander of the Marine's Task Force Tarawa, told doctors ... "We want to return Iraq to Iraqis."
[...]
Earlier Wednesday, U.S. forces spotted a 20-year-old Iraqi woman in labor in a pickup truck. The woman's family had been displaced from another city and was living in tents in Nasiriyah.
"I got the ambulance and sent her to the battalion aid station and delivered a healthy baby girl and named her America. It was a pretty cool way to start the day," said Navy Hospitalman First Class Kyle Morris, 39, of San Clemente, Calif.
Social anthropologist and aspiring general Stanley Kurtz just won't give it up:
Today’s Washington Post has an analysis of the military situation by Vernon Loeb which I think is very fair (and balanced). Overall, the war is going remarkably well. The Pentagon’s plan has achieved spectacular advances, with relatively few casualties, and has extracted a tremendous price from the enemy for such harassment as they’ve been able to level. At the same time, more troops on the ground earlier on would have been a real help, given the early pressure on our supply lines. That seems right to me. This plan is a great overall success, for which the Pentagon and Secretary Rumsfeld (not to mention our spectacular soldiers) deserve high praise. But a relatively minor and correctable bump at the start teaches a lesson about the ongoing need for boots on the ground, even in a high tech world. Too bad that in this polarized environment, it’s been so hard for people to simultaneously acknowledge these dual truths.No doubt, Tommy Franks would have LOVED to have more troops on the ground for rear-guard security early on. But at what cost? At the cost of the early decapitation strikes that might have taken out the leadership (one day soon, we'll know how effective that was)? At the cost of losing the surprise that allowed us to take oil fields and ports with no significant damage (to us or to the property)? At the cost of the Iraqi regime having time to blow every bridge to Baghdad, increasing the time, danger, and casualties because the Corps of Engineers would have to bridge every crossing?
Getting more troops on the ground at the start would have cost us TIME and, ultimately, the INITIATIVE -- and maybe more lives. Hard to know, that. It's a luxury we didn't have when political considerations were factored in (as Mac Owens, ever the student of Clausewitz, notes).
General Kurtz doesn't talk about any of those matters. But those are precisely the matters that the real generals -- guys named Franks and Myers and Abizaid and Brooks -- have to consider, along with Secretary Rumsfeld and the President. And that's why it's best that most social anthropologists stick to splitting their infinitives for NRO.
With Colin Powell endorsing the war plan of Tommy Franks and sounding as hawkish as anyone in the Bush Administration on Syria and Iran of late, no doubt left-leaning newspapers were beginning to fret. After all, such facts don't fit the story of deep divisions between State and Defense they've been telling since Day One of the Bush Administration (never mind that any administration that is serious about foreign policy will ALWAYS have institutional differences in opinion).
But give 'em credit for being crafty -- they've managed to resurrect the "deep-divisions" argument. The chorus in this WaPo article is the same, although the verse is about postwar Iraq:
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has rejected a team of officials proposed by the State Department to help run postwar Iraq in what sources described as an effort to ensure the Pentagon controls every aspect of reconstructing the country and forming a new government.Gee, I wonder if those "sources" are in the State Department?
In any case, it's hardly surprising that DoD wants the career Arabists at State -- the same people who were so influential in betraying the Iraqi people in 1991 and heading off any attempt to march to Baghdad (in the name of "stability") -- isolated from any important decisionmaking in postwar Iraq.
The State Department should be charged with carrying cables and telegrams to the other diplomats of the region following the war -- and that's just about it.
Unlike most political bloggers, I don't read Mickey Kaus. Or maybe I should call him General Kaus, since he seems to be one of many pundits who has decided he is qualified to comment authoritatively on war strategy, and that we need more troops on the ground.
Leaving that aside, since I don't read Kaus regularly, I read this excerpt several times today trying to figure out if he was actually serious. And I'm still not sure. Here it is:
What Was Rumsfeld Thinking? On Thursday, a James Kitfield article highlighted by bloggers Noah Shachtman and Phil Carter) raised an issue that's now broken into the mainstream press -- the charge that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld actually cut in half the number of troops the Pentagon's daring war plan called for. Even now, according to a link from Josh Marshall (who's been on fire lately, now that he's not for the war anymore!) Rumsfeld is pressuring General Tommy Franks to move on Baghdad before the 4th Infantry can redeploy from Turkey and provide additional firepower.As I said above, I still can't decide if Kaus is serious, or if he's making fun of these nitwits. If he's serious, then he IS one of the nitwits, and he might seriously consider changing the name of his column from KausFiles to X Files.As I've been reading these reports, I've been scratching my head and asking myself, 'Why would Rumsfeld do this?' Presumably he doesn't like to take chances with American lives. And the reason can't be that he didn't want to "deploy people and wreck their lives and move them" --the justification given by Rumsfeld's defenders in today's WaPo. That's surely a second-order consideration when success or failure in combat is at stake. Sure, Rumsfeld wants to prove that his theories about lighter, more maneuverable high-tech forces are right and the Army's plodding theories about "boots on the ground" are wrong. But why does he want to prove these theories so badly? It can't just be intellectual vanity, or the desire to win an internal Pentagon budget battle. Again, those aren't worth risking lives for.
Then, reading Marshall's Washington Monthly piece on the military side of the grand neocon strategy, it hit me. Of course! If "regime change" in Iraq were the only goal, there'd be no reason not to provide plenty of soldiers to do the job, with an ample margin of safety. But regime change in Iraq isn't the only goal. Rather, neocons in the Bush administration see the Iraq campaign as the opening move in a series of potential power plays that might involve at least credibly threatening military action against Syria, North Korea, Iran, and maybe even Saudi Arabia. The first two threats have already, in fact, been issued (and I'm not saying there aren't good reasons to want to be able to intimidate some of these countries -- e.g. North Korea -- even while fighting an Iraq-sized war).
If we can take Iraq only with a huge, heavy force --or if the Powell Doctrine that we should use overwhelming force even if we don't need it still applies -- well, we can't very credibly claim that we can take on (or take over) all these other countries at the same time, or even in rapid succession, can we? But if we can topple a heavily-defended government in Iraq with a light, quick non-Powellesque force -- using but a small portion of our strength -- then taking on multiple targets suddenly becomes a real possibility, and a real threat to regimes in Tehran, Damascus, and Pyongyang.
That's why the slowdown in Iraq (and the coming furor over "troop dilution") is a bigger blow to the neocons than the actual military situation on the ground, which doesn't seem that bad, might indicate. We aren't very likely to 'lose' the Iraq war. But if it becomes a big, convulsive, multi-month slog -- stopping the nation's economy in the process -- we're not likely to have much stomach for the next war.
This is now so obvious to me that I can't believe it's not obvious to others -- and it is, to the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland. (Plus he's got a blind quote from a "Washington official"!)
Why would a hawk like Rumsfeld prefer less to more? My Washington source offers an astonishing explanation: "So they can do it again." The logic is simple. Rumsfeld and co know that amassing an army of quarter of a million is a once-a-decade affair: 1991 and 2003. But if they can prove that victory is possible with a lighter, more nimble force, assembled rapidly - then why not repeat the trick? "This is just the beginning," an administration official told the New York Times this week. "I would not rule out the same sequence of events for Iran and North Korea as for Iraq."
I still don't completely understand, however. Let's assume Rumsfeld wants to prove his theories for the neoconnish long-term, strategic reasons identified by Marshall and Freedland. ("Spread democracy, and carry a small, lethal, GPS-guided stick.") Why would Rumsfeld need to risk losing a war to prove them? Why couldn't the coalition have waited until the 4th Infantry division was standing by in Kuwait, so we could at least quickly throw them into the battle if they were needed -- if, say, some of Rumsfeld's assumptions about the ease of moving through the Shiite regions of Southern Iraq weren't borne out? Then, if the extra, "heavy" troops weren't needed, Rumsfeld's theories would be vindicated (and, as Brad DeLong suggests, pictures of hundreds of "extra tank crews cooking BBQ in the Kuwaiti desert" would effectively dramatize our excess warmaking capacity). If the troops were needed, the U.S. would regain momentum quickly, without the distracting wait and debate that's now taking place.
(The only answer I can think of is the if the 4th Infantry or a similar force had been ready in Kuwait, there would have been no way to prevent General Franks from working them into his initial battle plan and screwing up the grand experiment. No way, that is, except an order from the Secretary of Defense. If Rumsfeld could completely cut half the troops from the plan why couldn't he require that some of the idled troops be held in reserve?)
There's also a second question: If this is the neocon game Rumsfeld was playing, did Bush know about it? Or did he just trust Rumsfeld's assurances that there were enough troops to do the job? ... This Warren Strobel story ("Bush Reportedly Shielded from Dire Forecast") seems to shed some light, but not enough. There are always unheard "dire forecasts" that come out of the woodwork when any decision appears to have been wrong. It seems to me the issue isn't so much whether Bush knew that Saddam's irregulars might give our troops trouble -- Bush doesn't have to know everything in every report, and he himself hasn't been one of the overoptimistic "cakewalkers." The issue is more whether Bush knew the biases that might be distorting the advice he was getting. The possible wishful self-delusion of people who talk a lot to Iraqi exiles (as discussed in the Strobel story) would be one distortion. The desire of neocons for the ability to threaten multiple simultaneous wars with small, fast-moving forces would be another distorting bias. Bush might a) share this military vision in full; b) be skeptical of it but still want to disarm Saddam and spread democracy, or c) be unaware of its full sweep and influence. ... I agree that (c) is hard to believe. ... Update: Josh Marshall sees more in the Strobel story than I do. ...
But we might suggest to those who are just as confused as Kaus to pay attention to what the people who HAVE actually planned this operation are saying (or, since some are indisposed, what their proxies are saying). And the first two sets of articles linked from this page aren't bad either.
The whiners in the Pentagon -- many of whom should be fired for their behavior in wartime -- continue to find receptive journalists to spread their complaints, although I was pleased today to see Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers dispel some of their nonsense, not to mention Senator Warner and Fox's invaluable Colonel David Hunt.
To illustrate how silly much of the whining has been, here's a classic paragraph:
For example, in an effort to find money for an arsenal of new, high-technology weapons, some of Mr. Rumsfeld's senior advisers proposed cutting 2 of the Army's 10 active divisions; it is still not known how seriously Mr. Rumsfeld considered the case, but the divisions survived.Okay. So what's the beef? The civilians raised a point (allegedly), a discussion ensued (presumably), ultimately the military made a case (presumably), and no changes were made (fact). Sounds like that's how it ought to work.
Barry McCaffrey must be hearing some of the criticism directed his way, because the WSJ has published an op-ed from him today that seems to be an effort to back away from some of his earlier inflammatory attacks on Secretary Rumsfeld -- attacks that have intimated the Secretary has been nearly derelict in his duties because of a desire to promote his pet theory of warfare.
Now, McCaffrey contends the plan is moving along just fine, and he does not repeat his earlier estimate of 2000-3000 casualties (presumably that would result from Rumsfeld's machinations). He does offer the following tactical criticism of the war plan:
The "rolling start" concept of the attack dictated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has put us in a temporarily risky position. We face a war of maneuver in the coming days to destroy five Iraqi armor divisions with only one U.S. armored unit (the Third Mechanized Infantry) supported by the modest armor forces of the First Marine Division and the Apache attack helicopters of the 101st Airborne. We will succeed in this battle because of the bravery and skill of our soldiers and Marines combined with the ferocious lethality of the air power we will bring to bear on the enemy force.THIS is precisely the sort of analysis that we ought to value from these retired generals. Obviously, McCaffrey is an old land-force guy who doesn't much care for this plan's heavy use of special ops and air power. And he may be right. We'll know after the war.This will be risky business. We should be fighting this battle with three U.S. armored divisions and an armored cavalry regiment to provide rear area security. We also have inadequate tube and rocket artillery to provide needed suppressive fires for the joint team. However, the 100,000 troops en route to the battle will give the operational commanders the ability to control the pace and tempo of the fight if we sense trouble.
In any case, this sort of analysis is far better than the intimation that Rumsfeld and his senior civilian advisors (many of them with, heaven forbid, doctorates) intentionally put American lives at risk in pursuit of their pet theories and political considerations. I expect silliness like that from "journalists" like Seymour Hersh, but former military officers should show better judgment while we're at war.
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003