The Hobbesian Conservative

More dividends from the war in Iraq

So aside from Libya opening itself up for inspections and Iranian student uprisings, Pakistan and India are talking things out instead of nuking each other. (Thanks to Instapundit)

The US-led war in Iraq prodded nuclear rivals India and Pakistan to launch a process to resolve their disputes over Kashmir, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in an interview published Tuesday.
Vajpayee, however, rejected opposition claims the United States had put direct pressure on the two estranged neighbours to sort out their five decades of hostilities.

The premier told the Times of India newspaper that a "circumstantial factor" was linked to his gesture in Kashmir on April 18 last year when he extended a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan to kick off a fresh peace initiative.

"The war in Iraq was a warning to all developing countries (that) we needed to resolve our disputes peacefully and speedily amongst ourselves," the 79-year-old Vajpayee told the English-language daily.

"The number of people in Pakistan who think likewise is steadily growing," Vajpayee said, without naming individuals who back the ongoing peace process between the two South Asian countries.

This falls firmly into the "unintended benefits" column, but it's still a plus for the world as a whole. See what a little sabre rattling (especially if you actually draw the sabre) can do?


The fall of Saddam's regime has already sent shockwaves throughtout the world. We have to make sure we see this through, that a proper democracy takes root in the Arab world. The mullahs are scared-- and anything that scares them is good for everyone.

My third way is a bit different.

The Indomitable Derbyshire on what's happening in Iraq, and why it's working out to be harder than it needs to be:

Consider, for example, those news photographs we see every couple of days, of streets thronged with fired-up young men — in Fallujah, or Gaza, or Tehran — waving their fists, or sometimes automatic weapons, carrying pictures of some imam, or bearing the coffin of some tribal panjandrum we have killed. When I see one of those pictures, my thoughts run along the following lines. These young men hate us. Nothing we do will make them stop hating us, and pretty much any action we take in our own rational self-interest will end with them hating us more. The right thing to do is to kill them, while they are all conveniently gathered together like this. These demos go on for hours. We have spy satellites, remote-controlled drones, and so on. Why don't we take these people out? What are daisy-cutters for?

These are not, I admit, very charitable thoughts. I can't see anything wrong with them, though. War consists mainly in one bunch of fired-up young men setting out to kill another bunch of fired-up young men. Wars are won when one side runs out of young men, or out of fire-up. They don't end until then. Our problem in Iraq, basically, it seems to me, is that we have not killed enough fired-up young male Iraqis insistent on killing innocents.

But that goes back to my main point. Why have we not done this? Why is it (apparently) so unthinkable to firebomb a frenzied mob of America-haters celebrating Imam Kar-Bomba or mourning Sheik Kalashnikov? The question answers itself tautologically: It is so unthinkable because we don't think like that. Well, some of us do — I do — but we don't collectively, as a nation, think like that.

(Emphasis in original)


I think along those lines too.

I'm inclined to agree with him on a lot of this-- our problems in Iraq come from the fact that we are too nice. We've got this cockeyed notion of what it means to be a good guy that incorporates a fair amount of self-inflicted hamstringing when we're trying to take out the bad guys. We're supposed to be better than just blowing up a group of unarmed civilians who happen to be committing atrocities.

(I shudder to think what might happen to me were I in the military. We're good guys, they're bad guys. We have guns. Let's shoot them. Better yet, we have grenades-- let's blow them up! Better yet... That's my kind of thinking, which would probably get me court martialed or worse these days.)

Think about it-- all of our problems in Iraq right now stem from the fact that we simply didn't beat the bad guys hard enough. We took such trouble to protect the buildings that we forgot to kill the bad guys lurking within them. Consequently, though we believe the major combat is over, the former Baathists don't.

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until someone finally does it:

1) There is only one way to get the bad guys to stop trying to kill us-- and that's to kill them.

2) We know where the bad guys are-- they're in Fallujah, or Tikrit, or in some city within the Sunni Triangle.

The solution is simple-- we need to make it so that the Sunni Triangle isn't there anymore. Flatten it, and if there's a brick left standing on another brick, flatten it again. Everything we've got-- mortars, daisy cutters, arc-light strikes, SADMs, whatever we can most easily deploy. Heat it up so hot that the sand turns to glass (we can later cut it up and use it for the windows of the new schools)

Don't tell anyone you're going to do it, just do it. As Dear Old Dad always said, it's easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Then we can set about rebuilding the nation. Build all the schools you want. Open up a social center and introduce Iraqi children to a real sport like baseball. Set up community outreach programs, a welfare office, a planned parenthood-- whatever we want. Because the men that are trying to kill us won't be there-- or anywhere-- anymore.

War is messy and brutal. All efforts to make a war look like it's not messy and brutal will result in the war being messier and more brutal than it needs to be.

Another brick in the wall

There's been much talk about the "stovepiping" of information, whereby the FBI didn't talk to the CIA.

This is only occurring to people now? Anyone who's read any of the Rogue Warrior books knows that this has been going on for years, and that it's needed to be fixed. And he's been writing books calling for the end of stovepiping since 1992! I said it on this very blog last year.

I think Bush should appoint Richard Marcinko to the head of the homeland security department.

Never lost a battle, but lost the war

That's what dear old Dad used to say about Viet Nam. Today, Mac Owens explains why

The defenders of the conventional wisdom will reply that such arguments are refuted by the fact that South Vietnam did fall to the North Vietnamese communists. They will repeat the claim that the South Vietnamese lacked the leadership, skill, character, and endurance of their adversaries. But while one must acknowledge the shortcomings of the South Vietnamese and agree that the U.S. would have had to provide continued air, naval, and intelligence support, the real cause of U.S. defeat was that the Nixon administration and Congress threw away the successes achieved by U.S. and South Vietnamese arms.

The proof lay in the 1972 Easter Offensive. This was the biggest offensive push of the war, greater in magnitude than either the 1968 Tet offensive or the final assault of 1975. The U.S. provided massive air and naval support and there were inevitable failures on the part of some ARVN units, but all in all, the South Vietnamese fought well. Then, having blunted the communist thrust, they recaptured territory that had been lost to Hanoi. Finally, so effective was the eleven-day "Christmas bombing" campaign (LINEBACKER II) later that year that the British counterinsurgency expert, Sir Robert Thompson exclaimed, "you had won the war. It was over."

Three years later, despite the heroic performance of some ARVN units, South Vietnam collapsed against a much weaker, cobbled-together PAVN offensive. What happened to cause this reversal?

First, the Nixon administration, in its rush to extricate the country from Vietnam, forced South Vietnam to accept a cease fire that permitted PAVN forces to remain in South Vietnam. Then in an act that still shames the United States to this day, Congress cut off military and economic assistance to South Vietnam. Finally, President Nixon resigned over Watergate and his successor, constrained by congressional action, defaulted on promises to respond with force to North Vietnamese violations of the peace terms. Sorley describes in detail the logistical and operational consequences for the ARVN of our having starved them of promised support for three years.

As they say, read the whole thing. It's important that we understand the mistakes of the past so they don't become the mistakes of the future.

Blogging Bush Live

I'm sitting here breaking precedent for myself. I don't usually watch press conferences, because I get the information I need from reading the text.

But I felt the need to watch Bush's speech tonight. It struck me as important somehow.

I can sum what I'm seeing up in a word: Wow.

Why doesn't Bush do this more often? He's brilliant. He knows just what he needs to say and he's saying it.

I tell you what: If Bush does this more often between now and November, I can't understand how he could possibly lose. He's projecting strength, resolve-- things that Americans used to revere.


*BAM! Bush just smacked down the people who think that Iraq can't handle Democracy-- I'll paraphrase:

Some people think if you're muslim, or if you have brown skin you somehow can't handle freedom. I would strongly disagree with that. Freedom is a basic human need.

That's not the exact words, but it's close-- he actually mentioned "brown skin." That's a slam dunk, fearless readers. Bush just managed to couch the issue of Iraqi independance in racial terms, which means the Democrats just lost an argument. Big time. I don't like racialisation on general principle, but when in Washington...


*Another BAM! Bush just mentioned that Khadaffi submitted to inspections because of the war in Iraq. He mentioned WMDs (50 tons of mustard gas) that we have already found "in a turkey farm." Where are the WMD's? Libya.


*Another one! Bush just made it clear that Iraq is just one theatre in the war on terror. It's a strategic fight. I knew that, but it's nice to see Bush making that point.


*OOOOOOH! Asked if his stand on remaining in Iraq until the job was done would be worth it, "even if he loses his job" because of it. Bush answered: "I don't plan to lose my job... The American people are with me, and they understand the stakes." He continued to say that he doesn't want to see young men die in vain, and that they will have died in vain if we pull out of Iraq before the job is done. Again, I ask: Why isn't he doing this more often?


*Bush still plans to find the WMD's. He says they could still be hidden, like the Libyan mustard gas. Loyal Readers know that I still believe that there were WMD's in Iraq, and they're either still there or in Syria or even Pakistan. Bush is still on the hunt, and that is good news. Make no mistake; I'm just as happy to see Hussein gone no matter whether we find WMDs eventually or not, but the partisan hack in me just can't help but feel giddy at the prospect of holding up a few dozen tons of Sarin and saying "SEE? DO YOU THINK IT WAS A MISTAKE NOW? DO YA?"


*You know one of the things I really like about Bush and the War on Terrorists? He freely admits that he won't be able to finish the war on his watch. He doesn't try to sell the people a bill of goods about the men being home for Christmas when he knows different. You may not like the fact that we're in this for the long haul, but like it or not we are-- as long as there are wicked men who think the best way to heaven is to wear a vest made of semtex. They declared war on us, and now people are lambasting Bush for acting like we're in a war that we've been in for more than ten years. Good for him.


*Last question: Bush just admonished the crowd saying "those who yell will never" be called on. Priceless.


*Bush just laid it out: He said the voters have to decide who is better equipped to win the war on terror. It's the question nobody's supposed to ask, but it's the most relevant question out there right now. Well, Bush asked it. Kerry will no doubt burnish his medals again, claiming that he's better equipped because he got a purple heart thirty years ago.


UPDATE: The text of the speech is here.

Have a little fun with the election. Goodness knows it needs to lighten up a little

Have you visited the Kerry Sloganator yet? (Link via Right-Thinking)

I have, and I thought up some good ones.

Like this one.

And this one.

And this one. (From James Carville)

And this one, which has the added benefit of being true.


This one's a bit of a cheap shot, but I just couldn't resist.

Have you forgotten standing order number 347?

Remember to read Larry Miller.

Message to the administration: No one in Europe or on the left is ever, ever, ever going to like you from seeing a photograph of a marine handing a bag of groceries to a woman in a burkha. Jacques Chirac is never going to say, "Well, they have built a lot of community centers. Maybe Bush was right."

Win. Stopping building schools. Win. There's plenty of time and need for hospitals, but first . . . Win. Yes, yes, Iraqi girls can be very empowered by seeing a female colonel running an outreach program, and we can all chip in for the posters that say "Take Your Daughters To Mosque Day," but in the meantime, would you please win.

This is the one gripe I have about the Iraq war effort. I supported going in. I support the tanks that support the infantry that try to keep the peace.

What I don't support is the way we're acting like we might offend the people that are trying to kill us by, you know, stopping them.


Last night on the O'Reilly factor, Dick Morris put forth precisely the opposite argument. He says we should have turned the government over to the Iraqi people months ago. He says it would be better to let the place become a pseudo-democratic Mullohcracy than keep American troops in Iraq to make sure a real liberal democracy (small "l" small "d") emerges instead of just letting the Shiites micturate on everyone elses cornflakes (if I may paraphrase Jonah Goldberg)


As my Grandfather used to say; "Never time to do it right, but always time to do it over."

And that's precisely what will happen if we leave Iraq to the Iraqis now. We'll pull out and the Iranians will move in.

Ted Kennedy and John Kerry will take credit for averting another Viet Nam by "forcing" Bush to abandon his position-- until we have to go to war with Iraq again because the Shiites started getting a little medieval payback on everyone else. At that point, Kerry et al will talk about how Bush left the job unfinished and how Republicans lack resolve. And nobody will question them.


Make no mistake: Iraq could very well become another Viet Nam, but only if we show the same lack of resolve that put a million South Vietnamese people in chains for the rest of the cold war. So long as Bush stays the course and, as Larry Miller says, go on about the business of winning, everything will be just fine.

I'm so there!

April 15th is BAG day

(Thanks to Lee at Right-thinking)

I've got my eye on something. Must be fate.

Rattling someone's teacups.

Mark Steyn, via Instapundit.

The coalition approach to Iraq was summed up a year ago by a British colonel. Explaining how they were trying to secure Basra without blowing up buildings and causing a lot of death and destruction, he said, ''We don't want to go in and rattle all their teacups.''

The avoidance of teacup-rattling remains a priority. Last week in Fallujah, American troops had rockets fired at them from a mosque. So they fired back, but with the state-of-the-art laser-guided weaponry that kills the insurgents but leaves the mosque virtually untouched. I'd have been quite happy to see it blown up with the old-school non-laser imprecise munitions. But leveling mosques is felt to be insensitive, so on we go, avoiding the rattling of teacups, whether Sunni or Shiite.

The problem with this deference to the locals is that, partly in consequence, most of the folks who are getting rattled are on our side.

I'm big on rattling teacups. You rattle someone's teacups, they know to take their elbows off the table.

So, it would appear, is Mr. Steyn:

And in the Arab world, the indifferent are the biggest demographic. They sit things out, they see which strong horse has jostled his way to the head of the pack, and they go along with him. The Turks. The British. The British-installed king. The thug who murders the king. The thug who murders the thug who murders the king.

The passivity of the Arabs, the sensitivity of the coalition and the defeatism of the media is a potentially disastrous combination. Rattling teacups gets you a bad press from CNN and the BBC. But they give you a bad press anyway. And in Iraq, the non-rattling of the teacups is received by the locals not as cultural respect from Bush and Blair but as weakness. In that cafe in Fallujah, as a parodic courtesy, the patron switched the flickering black-and-white TV from an Arabic station to the BBC, which as usual was full of doom and gloom.

The Iraqis will go with the winning side. And, though the Americans had a bad week last week, the insurgents had a worse one, losing as many men in seven days as U.S. forces did in the last year. The best way to make plain you're the winning side is to crush the other guys -- and rattle their teacups so loudly even CNN can't paint it as a setback.

I concur most wholeheartedly. CNN and the BBC are going to call us brutes (Remember; the New York Times is staffed almost entirely by people who spent the late sixties throwing bags of pig blood at American soldiers) no matter what we do.

So we might as well flip them a one-fingered salute and go about the business of winning.

That's what I like about Rumsfeld. He always looks as if he'd just as soon blow up the whole Sunni Triangle and tell the whole bunch of reporters to go suck a lemon. It's in his eyes; that look in his face that seems to say "what are all these people doing here? Don't they know I've got a job to do?"

He never says "neutralized the threat." He says "Killed the Terrorists" and you can almost hear him thinking the word "bastard" after he says the word "terrorist."



So rattle away, boys.

Hi boss. Thanks for reading! :)

Ya gotta love this woman

I love Mona Charen. She's wunnerful!

President Bush has been forceful in his commitment to democratizing the Middle East. What remains up for debate is how long it will take before Iraq is ready for free elections. A simple respect for the rule of law must precede self-government. Among the fractious, suspicious, violent and emotional Iraqi people, such respect has not been much in evidence yet.

...

The U.S.-led coalition has already accomplished an enormous amount, including introducing a new currency, reopening schools (with revised textbooks), re-establishing power grids, arranging for adequate water supplies, presiding over the opening of more than 100 newspapers and numerous radio and television stations, helping to establish democratically elected local councils, training new police and a professional and non-terrorist army, and more. The task we have set ourselves is Herculean. And most Americans do not speak the language.

But the question of the moment is not whether we've done enough good, but whether we've been tough enough. We Americans hate being occupiers. We are liberators. But Iraq cannot be truly liberated until it has been transformed. And it cannot be transformed if the bad elements are not afraid of American soldiers. Those gleeful faces in Fallujah make the point: They think we are patsies.

This is something I don't think the people whining about "exit strategies" understand. What was our exit strategy in Japan during the 40's? What was our exit strategy in the War Between the States? What was our exit strategy in the Revolutionary War?

I'll tell you what our exit strategy was in each one: Freedom and self determination for the people who lived on the land. All of them.

I keep hearing that "we have no exit strategy" with regards to Iraq. Of course we do. Just because it's hard to accomplish doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Defeating the Soviet Union was a tall order too, but we managed it.

Iraq is going to take a long time to fix, and everybody knew that going in. Bush told us repeatedly how long this fight would take-- it will to the next term and beyond. The price of failure is too great for us to forget that.


Yeah, it's going to be hard. Anything worth doing is.

Not so long ago, Americans understood that.

The Twits in Pitts

Alphecca's weekly check on the bias is up. We lose again, but there's some heartening breakthroughs.

First the good:

A Montana newspaper's editors talks about what "gun control" really means.

Also, a paper in my home state reports that Mitt Romney has decided that gun buy-backs (among other forms of governmental self-love) don't reduce crime. Indeed, it's good news for anyone who pays taxes in Massachusetts:

"One of the most important points that I believe we make in this report is that you have to be extremely cold-blooded about how you invest in social programming," said Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, a professional criminologist who chaired the commission. "Social programming should not be layered one on top of the other. If something doesn't work, you need to peel that funding away, or else your budget for this sort of thing will only ever grow."

Gee, and it only took how many years to figure this out? About bloody time that Romney started acting like he has an R next to his name. Still, better late than never.


There's a lot of bad and ugly to go around, and Jeff covers it well. One particularly bileous piece of writing comes from some schmuck in Pittsburg, PA.

He lists some "funny" things that a person might do at an upcoming gun show. These things include:

*Dress up in a white sheet and pointed hood and carry a noose. Then ask gun salesmen whether they have anything to "help create the perfect matching ensemble."

Har har har. What a riot! Charming fellow.

I don't like to engage in gratuitous namecalling, but I don't think I'm out of line in calling this guy a Grade A Prime American Fribble.


And, on top of being a Nimrod, he's ignorant too:

*Find a table specializing in the sort of teflon-coated bullets that are capable of piercing bulletproof vests. Tell the seller you were considering becoming a police officer until you saw them.

This is complete bunk! Bullflop! Stuff and nonsense!

There is nothing magic about teflon that makes it penetrate bullet-proof vests (which are not bullet-proof, they are bullet resistant). You can't slap a coat of any polymer onto a 9mm slug and make it shoot through armor.

The only "teflon coated" bullets that shoot through body armor are rifle bullets, which would penetrate the armor whether they're coated or not. "Bullet proof" vests are not meant to stop a .308 slug fired from a deer rifle, and they don't. Rifle bullets are long, skinny and pointy. They penetrate by the same principle that nails penetrate wood-- a lot of force focused on a small area. The vests meant to stop handgun ammunition, which are short, fat and round (A 9mm slug is bigger around than a 30-06 slug, but the 30-06 slug is more lethal). And there's no treatment you can give a handgun bullet that will change that, because it's all in the shape of the bullet. You can't make a 9mm bullet longer and skinnier and pointier, because then it's not a 9mm bullet anymore. You don't need to be a gunsmith to see that.



This kind of thing galls me. We keep having to fight the same battles, have the same arguments over and over again because the other side just. Won't. Listen.


UPDATE

I just had a thought regarding the stereotypes and who's allowed to publish them.

Mike Seate-- the ignorant fribble I mention above-- comments on the upcoming gun show:

There probably won't be this many white men packing heat in our city since the 1918 Armistice Day parade.

We'll leave the grammatical flaws aside, and consider the sentiment.

I wonder what would happen if someone posted a similar article about how to "have some fun" at an NAACP rally. Would the Tribune Review have published an article that remarked that "There probably hasn't been this much chocolate in a Pennsylvania city since Hershey opened up it's doors." (Note to Mr. Seate-- that's how the sentence should have been constructed. You're mixing your tenses.)

Would the Trib Review have published an article suggesting "amusing" pranks to play at the rally? Would a white author have gotten away with writing a column recommending that someone go to the NAACP event and ask when Amos 'n' Andy are showing up?

Or if Mr. Seate had recommended selling twinkies at a GLAAD event, would he even still have a job?

I doubt it, and rightly so. These days we're supposed to be tolerant of people who are different from us.

But I guess some people are just more tolerable than others.

Viet Nope

I meant to link to this last week, when it was on Jewish World Review, but JWR's permalinks don't work so well.

On the worst day in a string of exceptionally bloody days for U.S. troops, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, serving as John Kerry's designated rhetorical bomb-thrower, said precisely what our enemies wanted to hear.

He shouted: "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president."

Now, I'm not saying he's a traitor. I am saying he made an outrageous and shameful charge that puts politics above the safety of our troops, success in Iraq, and national security.

First, let's be clear. Kennedy wasn't offering sober military analysis. He didn't attempt to explain how Iraq and Vietnam were comparable strategically or tactically.

After all, Vietnam is a jungle nation where America fought for nine years and lost 58,000 troops. We've been in Iraq about a year and have lost about 650. The North Vietnamese received support from two Communist superpowers. Iraq has the support of scattered jihadists and terrorist groups.

He makes the point that Kennedy's overheated rhetoric helps our enemies by creating the perception that America doesn't have the stomach to see this thing through, and that all the terrorists have to do is beat up another couple of charred corpses and we'll pack up our freedom and go home.

In other words, thanks a lot Teddy. You just made the job harder just so you could get one of your bay state cronies a better shot at the White House.

Now for the $47,000 question: Does he know it?

Fighting the Grey Menace

Greetings fearless readers! I am back from the weekend with a tale of fear and mild inconvenience, all brought on by suicide squirrel terrorists.

Saturday morning I saddled up the old truck to rustle up some vittles at the grocery store. As I pulled away from my apartment, I noticed the truck was making what I like to call a WTF noise (WTF noise [noun] That noise that is made by something expensive that causes the owner to say What The F***?!)

I pulled into a nearby parking lot and killed the engine. Opening the hood I found that the drive belt was off the spindle, and the tensioner had been trashed somehow. The alternator was clogged up with grey fur. I didn't connect the two at first-- I just figured my air filter needed to be replaced.

Thanking my lucky stars that I had a cell phone, I called a tow truck and got myself dragged to the garage. The mechanic who looked at my truck asked me if I was missing any pets, because the whole engine was full of fur. He found fur in the alternator, fur along the drive shaft, and chunks of skin with fur all through the vehicle.

What happened is this: A squirrel crawled up into the truck during the night to "sleep." When I started the car, the little bugger panicked and took a wrong turn. It got snared up in my drive belt, and the rest is history (and so is the squirrel)

From the service guy, I learned that they get two or three cases like this per month! This was no accident-- this was part of an apparent coordinated effort by the jacobin squirrels to disrupt our way of life. First they were blowing up transformers, now they're getting into our engine blocks.

Anyway, I got out of it pretty well. The mechanic made me a great deal on the repairs-- a really, really great deal. Plus, the mechanic happens to be a fellow NRA life member (which may have been a factor in the deal-- 'round these parts it's kind of like being a mason, since there are so few of us.) with some reloading equipment to sell for cheap, which I plan to take full advantage of.

So the squirrels didn't win this day. But be on the lookout. They might try to sabotage your car next.

No wonder it's so cold this winter! Hell froze over!

Greetings fearless readers.

Because it's Friday, and I'm basically killing time until I get to go meet the Hobbesian Girlfriend, I thought I'd do one of those personal posts that some of you like so much.

Tonight I'm going to a party.

That sudden shiver you just felt was the rending of the fabric of the universe.

I'm not a social animal. I'm not anti-social, mind you (though I am anti-socialist) but I'd just as soon not be around people as be with them. Dear Old Dad calls that "asocial," which from anyone but him would be an negative term (D.O.D's dream is to retire someplace in the mountains that's so far from another human being that he'll have to have food airlifted in from The Sportsmans Guide. Dear Not-So-Old Mom isn't thrilled about the idea.)

But, as I've noted with no small amount of despair in other cases, things change. Often change isn't for the better, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't a good thing. After all, there's lot's of people. If I'm going to have to live with them, I might as well learn how to enjoy it.

Who knows. Maybe the Hobbesian Girlfriend might make a respectable man out of me.




Nah. It's probably just the abundance of free food that's going to be at the party.

Lileks is at it again

Go read it.

Listened to Dr. Rice’s testimony today while cleaning, doing puzzles, coloring – the usual morning routine. I thought she did okay. But the 9/11 commission has changed my view of the administration. I now believe that if Al Gore had been president, he would have invaded Afghanistan right away, fortified the cockpit doors, issued an executive order that made the CIA and FBI share intel, grounded all planes the moment “chatter” started mentioning “a winged victory, like the bird of righteousness,” and subjected all young Arab males to full-body searches in airports. Pakistan would have come around to our point of view right away.

Yep.

Is it hopeless to think that we can pull together and realize that A) the Marines are fighting some Very Bad Men, and B) it would be good for the region to defeat them? No, it’s not:

It turns out that Tom Daschle (!) has come around and is supporting the war on our nation's enemies. Marvelous.


Yesterday I had a rather animated discussion with a coworker regarding Iraq. The main thrust of his argument was that he thinks it's a great thing that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, except for how we did it (The invasion was too much like a real war), when we did it (he wasn't a threat to us when we invaded, and we're forsaking Al Qaeda to do it) why we did it (where are the WMD's?) and, I'll infer, who did it.

Later in the conversation I found out he's been reading Richard Clarke's book, which explains all the allegations of Bush's malfeasance. Though I did manage to get him to concede that Bush hadn't actually lied.

Generally I try to avoid political discussions, because I am terrible at open debate. I always end up conceding too many points, then thinking of air-tight rebuttals late at night while I'm trying to fall asleep. These internal rebuttals have cost me too many hours sleep in my lifetime (last night they cost me about 4 hours) so I find it's just easier to let people say any damn fool thing they like and not engage them. One of the reason I started this blog was to avoid the kind of obsessing that comes with an argument.


Maybe Tom Daschle coming around means that I shouldn't give up so easily.

Happy Good Friday!

Hello fearless readers. Happy good friday.

I, for one, am managing to cheese off all the major monotheistic faiths today-- lunch is a roast beef sandwich with lettuce, tomato and bacon.

Never let it be said that I discriminate.

Two jerks with one bleat!

Lileks takes on Kennedy and Kerry today and wins.

The best part: He uses Kennedy's and Kerry's own words to do the job.

I can't decide what to exerpt, it's all so good. Go read it yourself.

What's the problem?

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Coalition forces fired upon a mosque compound in Fallujah Wednesday that officials said was a safe haven for enemy fighters as U.S. Marines continued their advance into northern areas of the city.

Marines waged a six-hour battle around the Abdel-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque with militants holed up inside before a Cobra helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at the base of its minaret and an F-16 dropped a bomb on a wall surrounding the compound, said Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne.

Good!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what "stamping down hard" means. We can't be afraid to shoot back because it might offend our enemies. That mosque ceased to be a holy site the moment shots were fired from it.

I'm glad somebody is taking this war seriously.

Propaganda can be a good thing

Jonathan Foreman on how to win in Iraq.

Certainly it is vital to calibrate U.S. tactics according to the psychology of the insurgents and the people they move among, and with a constant awareness of the propaganda war in Iraq and at home. This should include going to soft caps and frequent foot patrols in quieter areas — thereby demonstrating confidence, and immediately stamping down hard and in force on districts where Coalition personnel have been attacked — thereby demonstrating resolve and usable military might. Such measures will at least make it possible to regain the propaganda ground lost in Fallujah.

I agree, though I suspect we have different ideas about what constitutes "stamping down hard" on districts where Coalition troops have been molested.

As loyal readers remember, my definition of "stamping down hard" involves pulling troops out to a safe distance and calling in an arc-light strike .

Wankers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your whips and chains!

You know, I really admire Glenn Reynolds. He's smart, he writes well, and he knows it. Unfortunately, he occasionally shows his true colors as a zealot of a high-school ideology.

MISPLACED PRIORITIES: With a war on terror underway, the Justice Department is planning a war on porn.

I blame John Ashcroft. No, really, this time I mean it. And if the Administration thinks that this is a good use of their "computer forensics" experts, then they must have decided that terrorists aren't a threat any more.

This is so ham-handed and sure to blow up in the Administration's face, making them look like stooges for the religious right while accomplishing nothing, that one almost suspects a Democratic mole in their ranks.

The article states:

WASHINGTON - Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other "computer forensic specialists" like him, has become the focal point of the Justice Department's operation to rid the world of porn.

In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains.

...

The law itself rests on the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller vs. California, which held that something is "obscene" only if an average person applying contemporary community standards finds it patently offensive. But until now, it hasn't been prosecuted at the federal level for more than 10 years.

So 32 prosecutors are spending millions of dollars (out of a budget of how many billion?) to enforce a 30 year old law that nobody's enforced in 10 years.

If you ask me, the problem is not that Ashcroft is enforcing it now. The problem is that Janet Reno wasn't enforcing it. Justin Katz is on the same page. I'm with him: If you hate the law so much, instead of whining that the government is actually doing it's job, try getting the law changed. Or are you just afraid that maybe you don't have as widespread support as you like to believe?



The article points out some of the effects of not enforcing obscenity laws:

Obscenity cases came to a standstill under Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's attorney general [Big shock! --Greg], who focused on child pornography, which is considered child abuse and comes under different criminal statutes. The ensuing years saw an explosion of porn, so much so that critics say that Americans' tolerance for sexually explicit material rivals that of Europeans.

That tolerance could prove to be the obscenity division's biggest obstacle. Americans are used to seeing sex, experts say, in the movies, in their e-mail inboxes and on popular cable shows such as HBO's Sex and the City. There is no real gauge of just how obscene a jury will find pornographic material.

I don't think this is disputable. The evidence is manifest-- from the Girls Gone Wild commercials in the morning to the unsolicited email about "hot barnyard lovin'" you just can't get away from it. Look at some music videos from the mid 1980's. Compare them to the stuff you see now. Janet Jackson used to bust her moves in slacks and long sleeves. Now Britney Spears writes around in a simulated (?) orgy, and who bats an eye? Even some of the racy videos from the late '80s look quaintly puritan these days.

Never mind the shows, how about the commercials? Have you seen the ads for Tripping the Rift, a computer animated show Scifi channel? One of them featured an impossibly buxom, purple haired woman having an orgasm.

Then there's the magazine racks (pun intended). Modern men's magazines are a whisp of fabric away from being Playboy. Heck, Playboy isn't even considered porn anymore!

And what about comic books? Go to your local comic store, and you'll see a new addition. Mangas-- Japanese comic books that are read right-to-left-- are now in stock. I've examined some of them, totally at random, just to see what they're like. First time I opened one to a random location, and saw an two-page spread of a female character being ravaged by something with tentacles. I put it back and tried another one, figuring I'd just made a bad choice. This one just featured a naked female character in a shower-- for several pages. One more try, hoping that they weren't all like that, gave me a graphic view of another female character being stripped and raped by men with horns and fangs. After that I gave up. These weren't behind the counter wrapped in black plastic, they were out on bookshelves that didn't reach higher than four feet off the ground.

A trip to a local music store called "Newbury Comics" featured stylized action figures of porn stars. The package boasted of the removable clothing. The store also featured shelves of DVDs apparently modeled after the mangas I saw in the comic shop. I'm sure that tentacle scene really "pops" on a 52 inch plasma screen.


So don't tell me that porn is only for "consenting adults" who "invite it into their homes." It's everywhere.

I doubt that Mr. Ashcroft will be able to do anything about it. But I'm glad someone is trying.


UPDATE

I just wanted to say a few words about the phrase "consenting adults." In the Harvard Republican, Josh Barro writes:

I think that the Supreme Court was wrong to decide that obscene speech is not constitutionally protected. I think that much of the pornographic content that Justice is trying to stop--which the article describes as "not only some of the most egregious hard-core porn but also more conventional material"--does not meet the Court's standard for obscenity. But beyond the constitutional issues, it baffles me that anyone believes that putting an end to pornography would be good policy. If someone buys or sells images of adults having sex--even weird, gross or unsettling sex--whose rights is he infringing? Why would it be any of the government's business to stop him? Nobody is making John Ashcroft pay for or watch "Wicked Temptations", and it's none of his business if his neighbor does so in his own home.

This is what I like to call the high-school argument. "Who am I hurting? Why can't I do what I want? You are so unfair!"

Well, I'll tell you who gets hurt. Society.

Every sicko that pays to view the sites that come, unsolicited, to his email box just gives that porn company incentive to send out more spam.

Those people who spend nearly as much on porn movies as the rest of us spend on normal movies just give the movie studios incentive to push the envelope that much further. (Movies seem to be trending away from it right now, though. This might mean that maybe people aren't so enamored of the pornification of America as some would like to believe. Or maybe it just means that Ashcroft's "crusade" is working.)

And as taboos gradually wear away, we'll be left with a cultural cesspool. And with the demise of sexual decency, can civility be far behind? When sex is treated as a commodity or a form of entertainment, what will become of love? Surely we can already see the bonds weakening before our eyes-- high divorce rates, single parent households, teenage mothers-- can anyone look at the simultaneous decline of sexual mores and say there is no connection?

There are more kinds of harm than the physical. Just because you didn't run over some kid in the street on your way home from renting "Debbie Does Dallas" doesn't mean you didn't do some harm to the world he'll grow up in.

Another UPDATE

Clayton Cramer is with Justin Katz and me on this one. And he's had the same problem with spam that I mentioned:

Sorry, but there is a lot of uninvited porn that comes through the Internet. I get hundreds of pieces of spam a day; my wife gets dozens; my kids get dozens to hundreds. A big chunk of this is not even solicitations to purchase porn, but pictures that pop up (at least under Microsoft Outlook) that are actual, legally obscene material, as defined by Miller v. California (1973): "Barnyard Fun," "young teens," and various forms of excretory fetishes.

He also mentions the proliferation of nasty material in places other than email:

In some circles, it is very fashionable to be unconcerned about the coarsening effects of pornography on our society, especially on young people, whose concepts of male-female relations are still developing. A steady exposure to any idea will certainly have some influence on the viewer; that's the whole point of political propaganda and commercial advertising. This is even more true when the viewers are young people. Most adults can correctly identify the world of pornography--where women are available for sex with strangers at the drop of a hat, all sex is spectacular, and there are no STDs, unexpected pregnancies, or emotional damage from being manipulated into sex--as fantasy. The same is not true for 12 and 13 year olds, who are increasingly being soaked in pornography through email solicitations, and through its omnipresence on unsecured cable TV. (I'm just amazed at the movies that many adults consider appropriate for 5 year olds--not pornographic, but so violent that it is certainly going to create problems.)

See? I'm not the only one notices that it's not just something that people "invite into their homes."

Again: Cheers for John Ashcroft for enforcing the laws that are on the books.

How to lose a war

This story sparked some discussion that has me very worried.

I don't mean the standard volley from leftist pundits claiming this proves the war's a quagmire. I expect it from them, it's their job to be idiots.

No, I'm talking about an actual discussion I had with people I wait for my morning train with.

One of them remarked, off handedly (to the extent that such a remark can be off-handed) that "pretty soon we'll need another wall like the Vietnam memorial" for all the dead in Iraq.

First, some facts: Even that Pentagon Propaganda Mouthpiece CBS reports that the casualties in Iraq up through April 2004 is 605 US troops killed, including non-combat related and accidental deaths (Even in the most peaceful of times aircraft carriers lose men to accidents).Sites that advocate victory for the other side give a total near 625 dead, but they pad it by telling the reader that the pentagon is somehow covering up the dead in a war that is being covered live 24 hours a day by four news networks.

Now some perspective: WW2 cost America more than 295,000 men. The Marines alone lost nearly 20,000 of their own by 1945. The evening of June 6th, 1944 (that's D-Day, to those of you who are reading the current crop of history textbooks) the sun set on 10,000 killed and wounded American troops. I won't even bother trying to count the dead from the Civil war on either side, but individual battles routinely cost more than 625 men per side. The battle of Gettysburg-- that's three days, people-- buried more than 3,000 Federals. (UPDATE: I got word from Dear Old Dad that the number of Union dead far exceeded 3000 for the three days. Dad is what you'd call a Civil War Nut, so I'm inclined to believe him. But I suspect he was counting all casualties, and I was only counting the dead. At any rate, it doesn't change the fact that the number of dead in 3 days during the War Between the States was an order of magnitude larger than the total number of dead in a whole year in Iraq.)

Would anyone argue that these fights weren't worth winning? Can you argue that it wasn't worth it? Are we all not better off for their sacrifice?


Nobody likes to see American troops die. Especially if you're someone like me who holds his manhood cheap because he's not among them.

But if we're going to quail at a death toll that has yet to exceed triple digits, we will lose this war.

If we look at twelve Marines as an unacceptable loss in a given engagement (especially in an engagement where those deaths were answered by 60 enemy kills), we will lose this war.

If we submit to the idea that there is a price too high for victory, we will lose this war.


I can only pray that the current administration has more resolve than the people I wait for a train with.

Bush League is no longer a derogatory term

Go read this. (Link via Instapundit, from a post that you should also read)

It's about the continuing saga of Terror Titan Richard Clarke.

In Mr. Clarke's best-selling book "Against All Enemies," he writes that during a transitional briefing in January 2001, Miss Rice's "facial expression gave me the impression that she'd never heard the term [al Qaeda] before."
But the Clinton administration's final national security document, written while Mr. Clarke was a high-level national security adviser, never mentions al Qaeda.
"Clarke was on the job as terrorism czar at that point," said a senior Bush administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He played a significant role. His concerns should have been well-known."

Oh that's just character assasination! I mean, really! What kind of crude individual employs such nasty tactics as to use facts to discredit someone? It's unheard of!


That anonymous Bush official (I'll lay you eight to five it's Don Rumsfeld) went on to say something I've been thinking all along:

"It's a shame we are not focused more on moving forward, instead of about who was concerned more," he said.
The official said he found the lack of bin Laden and al Qaeda references in the final Clinton terror assessment interesting, but downplayed such "word-counting games."
"We don't measure progress or response [to terrorism] by how many speeches, words, utterances or meetings were held on a particular issue, but by action taken," he said.

Bingo!

There's some benefit to having no readers.

The inimitable Lileks spares a moment to comment on the dreaded Kos Konspyracy.

For those of you untainted by this intensely boring debate, here's what happend: A blogger named Kos said, essentially, that the Americans burned and strung up in Fallujah deserved what they got. In Kos's own words: "Screw them."

Other bloggers responded by saying "Hey! You're an idiot!" (or words to that effect). Individual bloggers stopped linking to him and advertisers started pulling their ads. It's a lot like what happened to Bill Maher when he said that the 9/11 suicide pilots were "brave" because they were willing to fly a plane full of civilians into a building full of civilians.

Like Maher, Kos claims to be the victim of censorship because people who heard or read about the asinine comments got mad and stopped supporting the speakers. That's America; You are guaranteed the right to say any darn fool thing you like, but you are not guaranteed a forum or an audience. You'd think people would understand that by now, but no. When people stop listening, it's "censorship."

Anyway, I read about it but didn't comment here. And here's why: People like Kos are like those Billboard Monsters in that Treehouse of Horror episode of the Simpsons. They stomp around, make a lot of noise and raise a little hell. But if you don't pay attention to them, they lose their power and fade away.

Call it preemptive de-linking. Not only did I stop linking to Kos, I never did.

Anyway, Lileks sums the whole scenario up perfectly:

Cut back down to the bone: Americans strung up and burned. Big-time blogger says “screw them.” Blogger suffers blowback, just as a mainstream columnist would suffer if he wrote that it was time to nuke Mecca or pave Fallujah. And there are consequences? Welcome to the real world.

Absolutely.

I find this amusing, because I have repeatedly called for the paving of Fallujah. In fact, I've called for the crispification of the entire sunni triangle. No uproar that I could find-- I guess there are benefits of having exactly 30 readers. (I am in no danger of fading away, because I don't write this to get attention. I don't care if anybody ever reads this blog. I write it for me-- It's a place where I can shout at Tom Brokaw without disturbing the neighbors. Besides, it's much more cathartic than throwing that foam brick at the TV screen.)

Ground control to Senator Ted

Kennedy's rant inspired another Hobbesian Song Parody.

Hatchet Man;

The big windbag came on last night
Zero substance rant again
And he's frothing loudly at the mouth again
He skips the truth so much, he just ain't right
It's lonely on the left
On such an endless fight

And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till 'lection day rolls round again to find
He's got no substance to his argument
Oh no no no he's a hatchet man
Hatchet man ranting out on the television

Iraq just ain't another Viet Nam
In fact, it's going well
But there's just no way to get him to admit
And economics, he don't understand
It's just his job five days a week

A Hatchet Man, a Hatchet Man
And I think it's gonna be a long long time... ('Till 'lection day)


Yeah, I know. It ain't that good. But it has the virtue of being first.

Why is Ted Kennedy still talking.

I was going to put this into my last post, but that one already ran too long and this deserves it's own post.

Not knowing when to quit while he's (a) behind, Ted Kennedy continued his rant to bash Bush on foreign policy too. I guess he figured he was in the neighborhood...

"This president has now created the largest credibility gap (search) since Richard Nixon. He has broken the basic bond of trust with the American people. He's the problem, not the solution. Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president," he said.

Are we still on this? Are we still playing "Quagmire, Quagmire, who's got the Quagmire?"

And what's Kerry's plan to fix Iraq? His campaign site features a lot of blather about building "real" coalitions and not being "unilateral" but offers very little else. As if the UN's presence in Iraq will magically transform the Sunni Triangle into a wonderland of peace and understanding.

I can hear the mob in Fallujah now: "Hey! That's a French uniform. Maybe we've been too hard on these foriegn devils."



This doesn't bode well for the Kerry campaign. Ted Kennedy is a big gun to be trotting out this early in the campaign. If Kerry's high-profile hatchet man's best shot is to regurgitate old pabulum about Iraq being Viet Nam without the humidity, Kerry's in big trouble.


UPDATE:

Michale Graham agrees. He also makes a good point about how the term "Vietnam" is bandied about by the left.

Credibility? What's that?

Ted Kennedy is bashing Bush for-- get this-- fiscal irresponsibility!

WASHINGTON — Democratic candidate John Kerry's chief surrogate, Sen. Ted Kennedy (search), accused President Bush on Monday of "happy talk" about budget deficits that he said makes Democrats appear fiscally frugal.

"The administration's only economic policy is more and more tax cuts for the wealthy. What [President Bush] doesn't mention is larger and larger budget deficits, the largest in our history, mind-boggling budget deficits (search) that make Democrats look like budget balancers," Kennedy, D-Mass., told an audience at the Brookings Institution.

And he's got examples:

On the Medicare prescription drug benefit that Bush recently signed into law, Kennedy said the White House deliberately concealed over $134 billion in costs above and beyond the $400 billion the president initially said it would cost.

"This administration misled Congress, misled the public and misled even members of their own party about the cost of the Medicare (search) bill," Kennedy said.

Someone please tell me the last time any politician has ever been honest about the actual costs of a given government program. Not once has a program ever come in under budget-- or even on budget for that matter.

But, just for giggles, let's have a look at Kerry's plan for Medicare, direct from Kerry's campaign site:

The American health care system has the world's best doctors and nurses, the finest hospitals and the most effective drugs. But far too many Americans can’t afford or access the system. John Kerry’s health care plan will start by expanding health care coverage to 96 percent of Americans – including nearly all children. Kerry is also committed to assuring high quality health care by including a strong enforceable patients’ bill of rights and reducing medical errors*.

So Kerry basically wants to socialize the whole system (Presumably, that 96% excludes the wealthiest 4%, who will of course be expected to pay for the system with the tax increase Kerry has promised to levy on them if he's elected).

Let's recap; Ted Kennedy, who supports John Kerry, thinks that George W. Bush is spending too much on Health Care. Meanwhile he has nothing to say about John Kerry's plan to extend full medical coverage to 96% of America.

Don't think about that logic too hard, or blood will shoot out of your nose.


Look, I'm not happy about the medicare bill, or the highway bill for that matter. It's all about buying votes, that's really what all domestic handout policies are truly about. Democrats have been doing it (and running up huge deficits, by the way) since Franklin Roosevelt, and now they're crying fowl when a Republican tries it? Try again, Mr. Kennedy.

And what's Kerry's plan for "fiscal responsibility?" Cut spending? Har! Kerry's own website indicts him as being an even bigger medicare spender than Bush. And his plan to shore up the deficit is to raise taxes. There have been 350 instances when John Kerry has been given a choice between low taxes and high taxes, and he's picked the higher each time. He even admits it on his campaign website!

He pretends that voting for high taxes isn't really voting for high taxes because several times he merely voted against lowering taxes. In his websites own words:

None of these votes [from the 4 examples given just before this paragraph] would have resulted in a tax increase, and most of the votes on the Bush lists are like that. Whether they would have resulted in "higher taxes" depends: higher than what? Bush campaign officials argue that in each of the votes they list, Kerry was presented with alternatives and chose the higher of the two. Perhaps the President should have said Kerry voted 350 times for "higher taxes than Republicans prefer."

He's not even denying being for higher taxes, he just figures that high taxes are a good thing.


So we're left with the choice: A tax and spender or just a spender. At least Bush's plan to cut taxes has a chance of reducing the much maligned deficit because the economic growth it creates will generate lots of revenue for Kerry to vote for spending.






*Random observation: If America has the world's best doctors and nurses, why do we need John F. Kerry to work to reduce medical errors?