Spartacus

Alternate universe department: Academic division

One of the crack editorial staff members of The Hatemongers Quarterly was kind enough to email me the following inane quote from Catherine Lutz, a former professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.   Responding to a reporter's question about the "intellectual diversity" movement in academia, she responded:

“What they’re trying to do is take back the last institution in this country that doesn’t have a complete right-wing agenda because it’s founded on the notion of free inquiry, knowledge and research—and has protections in place for those reasons.”

Read all about it.   Its pretty amusing.

(And lest you think Professor Lutz is some kind of extremist wacko, she is currently a tenured professor of anthropology at Brown University and is the President of the American Ethnological Society, which is "the oldest professional anthropological organization in the United States".)

Deconstructing Kerry on Iraq

"Presumptive" Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry wrote a very useful and -- for him at least -- clear statement of his policy towards Iraq were he to be elected president in today's WaPo.   Kerry should be applauded for plainly stating that all Americans, and their government, are united in their determination to stay the course in Iraq and ensure the establishment of a "stable, peaceful and plularistic society" in that country.

Here is his essay in full, along with my comments:

A Strategy for Iraq

By John F. Kerry
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A19

To be successful in Iraq, and in any war for that matter, our use of force must be tied to a political objective more complete than the ouster of a regime. To date, that has not happened in Iraq. It is time it did.

In the past week the situation in Iraq has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected president in November, we will persevere in that mission.

This is an important statement because our enemies in Iraq and the Mideast had been hoping that a Bush defeat in November (helped along by increased violence in Iraq and possibly additional terror attacks against Americans throughout the world) might result in a Mogadishu-style US withdrawal from Iraq.   Kerry did the right thing in making it clear that this will not happen. Bravo.

But to maximize our chances for success, and to minimize the risk of failure, we must make full use of the assets we have. If our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them. Progress is not possible in Iraq if people lack the security to go about the business of daily life. Yet the military alone cannot win the peace in Iraq. We need a political strategy that will work.

Over the past year the Bush administration has advanced several plans for a transition to democratic rule in Iraq. Each of those plans, after proving to be unworkable, was abandoned. The administration has set a date (June 30) for returning authority to an Iraqi entity to run the country, but there is no agreement with the Iraqis on how it will be constituted to make it representative enough to have popular legitimacy. Because of the way the White House has run the war, we are left with the United States bearing most of the costs and risks associated with every aspect of the Iraqi transition. We have lost lives, time, momentum and credibility. And we are seeing increasing numbers of Iraqis lashing out at the United States to express their frustration over what the Bush administration has and hasn't done.

It is always easy to criticise with 20/20 hindsight   Nobody anticipated that creating a stable, peaceful, plularistic Iraq would be easy, or that it could be accomplished smoothly.   The fact that the administration's policies in Iraq have evolved over time reflects a willingness to react to events on the ground as well as the views expressed by the emerging Iraqi leadership.   While some mistakes were made (and disbanding the Iraqi army was clearly a beauty of a mistake), it is absurd to have expected that planners in Washington before the fall of Saddam could have developed a detailed blueprint for reconstructing civil society in Iraq.

In recent weeks the administration -- in effect acknowledging the failure of its own efforts -- has turned to U.N. representative Lakhdar Brahimi to develop a formula for an interim Iraqi government that each of the major Iraqi factions can accept. It is vital that Brahimi accomplish this mission, but the odds are long, because tensions have been allowed to build and distrust among the various Iraqi groups runs deep. The United States can bolster Brahimi's limited leverage by saying in advance that we will support any plan he proposes that gains the support of Iraqi leaders. Moving forward, the administration must make the United Nations a full partner responsible for developing Iraq's transition to a new constitution and government. We also need to renew our effort to attract international support in the form of boots on the ground to create a climate of security in Iraq. We need more troops and more people who can train Iraqi troops and assist Iraqi police.

We should urge NATO to create a new out-of-area operation for Iraq under the lead of a U.S. commander. This would help us obtain more troops from major powers. The events of the past week will make foreign governments extremely reluctant to put their citizens at risk. That is why international acceptance of responsibility for stabilizing Iraq must be matched by international authority for managing the remainder of the Iraqi transition. The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and re-create a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people. The primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S. military, preferably helped by NATO until we have an Iraqi security force fully prepared to take responsibility.

More carping; and some dissembling as well.   The administration has already repeatedly asked NATO members to contribute forces to help stabilize Iraq.   Does Kerry really believe it likely that France or Germany would send significant numbers of troops into Iraq if there were to be asked again?   I'm sure Messrs. Chirac and Schröder would like to help out their europhilic friend if he were to be elected President, but I have my doubts about their willingness to do so if it required putting their own citizens into harms way.

Finally, we must level with our citizens. Increasingly, the American people are confused about our goals in Iraq, particularly why we are going it almost alone. The president must rally the country around a clear and credible goal. The challenges are significant and the costs are high. But the stakes are too great to lose the support of the American people.

This morning, as we sit down to read newspapers in the comfort of our homes or offices, we have an obligation to think of our fighting men and women in Iraq who awake each morning to a shooting gallery in which it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and the death of every innocent creates more enemies. We owe it to our soldiers and Marines to use absolutely every tool we can muster to help them succeed in their mission without exposing them to unnecessary risk. That is not a partisan proposal. It is a matter of national honor and trust.

Kerry makes a valid point that Bush has not done enough to explain our policies on Iraq to the American public.   I've never understood why Bush hasn't made a prime-time television address clearly enunciating the administration's stand on Iraq and what it means for the American people.   Perhaps tonight's Presidential press conference will help on this, but I would have preferred that he'd done it sooner, and in a more scripted forum.

(Then again, perhaps one reason for the timing of Kerry's essay on Iraq was the fact that the President is going to speak about the issue tonight.)

Why Clarke is wrong

Former White House anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke has sharply criticized the Bush Administration's handling of Al Queda, at least since he left government service to become a soon-to-be best-selling author.  Many observers have questioned the consistency of some of Clarke's testimony as well as his motivation for publicly airing his criticisms at this time.  I'll leave those issues to others.  But I would like to address Clarke's one plausible and substantive criticism of the administration's handling of the Islamist threat: his contention that the invasion of Iraq has adversely effected the war on terror.

Clarke's position, at least as I understand it, is that the war in Iraq was unnecessary and diverted attention and resources away from destroying Al Queda's leadership in Afghanistan.  Clarke argued that the US should have put additional ground forces in Afghanistan in early 2002, allowing US forces to encircle and eliminate the Al Queda and Taliban leadership.  By leaving this task to indigenous Afghan forces and the Pakistani army, he believes, we allowed key members of Al Queda's leadership to escape and permitted the organization to "metastasize" into a decentralized movement that will be harder to contain and eliminate.  In his view, Saddam Hussein was largely out of the international terrorism business by 2002, and therefore the war in Iraq was at best irrelevant and at worst counterproductive insofar as it inflamed Islamic opinion against the US and diverted military assets from the Afghani-Pakistan border region.

I think Clarke is dead wrong on this issue, for several reasons:

1. A massive deployment of US troops to the Afghani-Pakistan frontier region would have been a risky and possibly counterproductive exercise.  It is also likely that it would have been impossible to achieve without a full-scale invasion of Pakistan and, in any case, would have taken months (if not years) to plan and execute.

2. Allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power, defying the UNSC and his cease-fire agreement with the original Gulf War coalition, and continuing his efforts to develop or acquire WMDs and the delivery systems to use them would have posed a serious threat to US security over the next few years, if not immediately.

3. Deposing Saddam and putting in place a sovereign, non-sectarian and democratic government in Iraq has had (and continues to have) have substantial direct and indirect benefits for the global war on terror.

Let's examine each point in greater detail.

Afghanistan: a country too far

Mounting an Iraq-style (or Soviet-style) invasion of Afghanistan to kill or capture members of Al Queda or the Taliban would have been a tremendously difficult and costly operation.  

Geography: The center of Afghanistan is 700 miles from the Indian Ocean, which puts it at the outer edge of the operational envelope for carrier-based aircraft.  Prior to 9/11, the nearest US base was Incirlik, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, more than 1,900 miles from Afghanistan.   The country is land-locked, and the only overland access is through Iran, Pakistan, and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.  In practical terms, this meant that we would have to go in through Pakistan (which, by the way, was the Taliban's closest ally, is politically unstable, and has nuclear weapons) or via an unprecedented "air bridge" from US bases in Europe, nearly a continent away.  

Terrain: Afghanistan has some of the world's most difficult terrain for military operations, with high mountains covering most of the country, and very little in the way of transportation infrastructure (or any other kind of infrastructure for that matter).  Armored vehicles are restricted to the valleys or narrow mountain passes where they are highly vulnerable to ambush from above.  US helicopters also have their limitations in this environment since the high altitudes limit combat payloads, range and overall performance.  

Culture: The Afghani people are proud and fiercely independent.  They successfully defeated the Soviet Union, who tried to control the country with 90,000 troops and very short lines of communication to their home bases.  Trying to base significant numbers of US ground troops in the country might well have led to a resistance movement that would have made the guerrilla war in Iraq look like a garden party.

Since mounting a massive, US-led military effort to surround and annihilate Al Queda and its Taliban supporters was never a realistic option, the notion that the invasion of Iraq diverted resources from the war on terror is simply false.

Saddam:  A threat to US security, if not an imminent one

Clarke seems to believe that Saddam had largely gotten out of the business of supporting international terrorists and therefore was not a threat to US interests.  I don't have the access to classified information that Clarke had enjoyed, but it was widely reported that Saddam's Iraq was one of the leading source of funding for Palestinian suicide bombers attacking civilians in Israel; giving payments of $25,000 each to the families of successful "martyrs".  Iraq had also granted sanctuary to a number of Palestinian and other Arab terrorists, including the infamous Abu Nidal.

As far as the notorious missing WMDs are concerned, while no weapons were found in Iraq, there was extensive evidence of ongoing programs to develop banned weapons of mass destruction.  Clearly, Saddam had not permanently forsaken his desire to obtain weapons to threaten his neighbors, Israel, and/or to be sold or given to terrorist groups like Al Queda.  And don't forget, if 9/11 had not happened, the UNSC appeared to have been on a course toward lifting the sanctions, ostensibly in order to ease the suffering of ordinary Iraqis.  Without sanctions or the threat of renewed UN inspections, Saddam would have been free to resume his banned weapons programs.

But the threat posed by Saddam was not just military and strategic in nature.   There was also his larger symbolic and political role as a living symbol of Arab and Islamic defiance of the United States and the international world order.  (Which is somewhat ironic since Saddam was not very religious and the Baath party was decidedly secular.)  While he had been militarily defeated by the first Gulf war coalition forces, he remained in power, and stood firm against the world's calls for him to disarm and comply with his cease fire agreements.  As such, he was an inspiration to those, like Al Queda and other mideast terrorist groups, who believed that the US and Western powers were decadent and weak and could be driven out of the middle east with only a modest push.

The strategic advantages of a secular, democratic Iraq

The political and military situation in Iraq has been ugly for the past several weeks, and may deteriorate further in the run-up to the restoration of a sovereign Iraqi government.  However, if we assume that the Coalition succeeds in its efforts to establish a stable and representative government in Iraq (and the alternative is too painful to contemplate), there will be several significant benefits for the US and the West in general.

Firstly, there are significant strategic advantages to having permanent military bases in the mideast.  Since the region is the major source for the world's current energy supplies, its security is of vital importance to the world economy.  The region also has a number of non-democratic regimes of dubious stability, the collapse of any of which could provoke a regional crisis.  For example, consider the security and economic implications of a successful Islamist coup or sustained insurrection in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.   The region is also plagued by the intractable struggle over the future of Israel and the fate of the Palestinians.  Having troops, equipment and aircraft based permanently based in the region may have the same stabilizing influence that they have had in Europe, Japan and the Korean peninsula over the past fifty years.

Secondly, having Iraq as a stable and prosperous oil exporter will reduce the world's dependence on Saudi oil and thereby increase the West's degrees of freedom in dealing the Saudi/Wahabbi problem. (Iraq is blessed with 10% of the world's known oil reserves, second to only Saudi Arabia).  Lest we forget, Saudi Arabia and its fanatical Wahabbi clerics and scholars are one of the most important sources of support for radical Islamists throughout the world.  While the Saudi government is ostensibly our ally in the global war on terror, there are many elements within Saudi society and even the royal family actively supporting al Queda and its goal of establishing a unified pan-Islamic state from West Africa to Indonesia (including the former Ottoman possessions in Spain and southern Europe).  As long as the world's economic stability is hostage to Saudi oil exports, there are clear limits on our ability to pressure the Saudi's into reducing their support for the Wahabbi clerics preaching hate and religious intolerance throughout the world.

Thirdly, the West's success in destroying Saddam's hated regime by force of arms sends a strong implied threat to other countries in the "Axis of Evil" as well as others, like Syria and Libya, who have been actively supporting international terrorist groups.  For example, I believe that the breakthrough recently made in Libya (which publicly renounced its programs for developing nuclear and chemical arms), while long in the making, was powerfully encouraged by resolute Western action in Iraq.  Similarly, North Korea, after several years of stubborn rejection, agreed to participate in multi-lateral peace talks with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the US in order discuss their nuclear weapons program and regional security concerns.

Lastly, a stable and progressive Iraq would serve as an example of progress and reform for the rest of the Arab world, which desperately needs to embrace change.  Already, President Bush's call for democratic reforms in the Arab world and the military defeat of the Baath party in Iraq have had some impact.  In Syria, the younger Assad is talking about introducing political and economic reforms.  There have also been political demonstrations by restive Syrian Kurds.  More broadly, the Arab League's annual summit meeting was indefinitely postponed because (reportedly) certain member states rejected Tunisia's demand to have the subject of democratic reforms addressed in the summit's final communiqué.

To sum it all up, Clarke is wrong on a number of critical points:

• The war in Iraq did not divert resources away from the fight against Al Queda in Afghanistan.

• Saddam remained a potent (if not imminent) threat to US and Western security.

• The elimination of the Saddam regime and the installation of a moderate, democratic, secular state in Iraq (while appearing to be more difficult than it seemed to be several weeks ago) has and will continue to have important benefits to the global war against Islamist terror.

Disgusting

Al Jazeera has a photo feature titled "Aljazeera exclusive in pictures: Falluja siege" prominently featured on their web site.   Most of the photos are of dead or injured children and babies, presumably injured or killed in the recent fighting.   Of course, no mention is made of the people who chose to fire on heavily armed US Marines who were patrolling in an area where innocent women and children were living.

Back in the US, in the days of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, they called this sort of thing "yellow journalism".   I don't know what they call it in the mideast... incitement?

Update

Here is a story by Al Jazeera reporter Odai Sirra reporting on the situation in Falluja from a village named Garma on the road from Baghdad.

According to this reporter, one of the "resistance fighters on their way to help their besieged compatriots" had this to say:

“We Iraqis are tired of all this fighting, why doesn’t the US just leave us alone? What did we ever do to them?”

“You know what the funny thing about this entire mess is? If Saddam were to come back right now, all this fighting would stop in two hours, isn’t that right Ali?”

Ahmad and his companion begin laughing. The laughter ends as more images of the Falluja scene appear on TV.

Yeah, that's the ticket, let's bring back Saddam and let him patch things up...

We confess: 9/11 was really Bush's fault

All right, I give up.   I admit that 9/11 was really Bush's fault.   If only he had taken seriously the warnings from the Clinton administration to take decisive action against al Queda when there was still time to act, NYC's skyline would look very different today.

Yeah, right.

Read Gregg Easterbrook's version of an alternative history of 9/11 here.   (Hat tip to the Country Store.)

If you want to really know what's going on in Iraq...

Don't listen to what you hear from the mainstream media.   Here are some interesting insights, from ordinary Iraqis...

Jeff Jarvis with a summary of some Iraqi blogs. ( Hat tip to LT Smash.)

A view from the Iraqi left from Riverbend.   (Hint: its all Bush and Bremer's fault.)

Finally, and perhaps most persuasively, the views of an Iraqi blogger "the MESOPOTAMIAN".

How do you spell clusterfuck?

I'm disappointed to say that the Coalition's commanders have apparently not been doing a very good job of supporting troops and civilian contractors that were surrounded and under fire from Iraqi insurgents yesterday.

Here is an excerpt from the female US Army military intelligence specialist quoted earlier on the non-support they received in al Kut:

... What makes it worse was that we kept trying to get reinforcements and air cover and evac, and eventually we had to do it ourselves. We called up around 1500 because it became apparent that we weren’t going to get out, requesting air cover. We thought it would be over by 1700. By then, though, we realized something else was going on---darkness falls at seven. We heard that the whole province was under control, and that Sadr’s representatives had offered a cease fire while they negotiated. No other government building in the province was not under his control. Our little force, outmanned and outgunned, held him off for better than twenty hours, and then slipped out under his nose. He wanted to keep us there, be his bargaining chips while he tightened his fist around the province. And that fucking governor went along with it. We eventually found out the governor was contacting the command and telling them, no, no Evac behind our backs. He wanted US Marines dropped off and the civilians put in the helicopters while they secured his villa and offices. His own people were running around trying to arrange Evac, and kept counter-manding him. Then he’d go on the air and countermand them. I kept overhearing conversations I wasn’t supposed to hear...

... We didn’t sleep last night. The cease fire lasted seven hours. The attack resumed at one AM with RPGs and machine guns opening up on us from across the other bank of the river. We kept calling to Higher for Air Support, for Evac, for reinforcements. They’d say, “Sure, they’re on their way…” Twenty minutes later, we’d find out--not be told---that in fact they weren’t. This happened about eight times. During the time they weren’t reinforcing us, the enemy mined the bridge that’s the sole way out of there with IEDs. Then Higher ordered us to Evac our way across that bridge. It was explained to them over and over that the bridge was mined. They’d listen, then issue the order again...

... They say women don’t belong in combat. I don’t think that anybody does, frankly. But after today, the only thing I can say is that this woman doesn’t belong anywhere where she has to listen to twits have conversations like this:

“Our ammo situation is red. Over.”

“Oh.”

“Come morning, we will be over-run, with high casualties. The enemy has stated they will eliminate everyone in the compound. Over. Have you relayed my last transmission to Higher?”

“Roger that, over.”

And then nothing. “What was their response?”

There was none.

We were running out of rounds, and they just didn’t do anything. We did have choppers and the occasional F-16, but Mark wouldn’t allow them to drop any bombs. He never did explain why. All I know is, when I looked up at the chopper, and it was close enough to see the pilot’s profile in the sunset, I thought that was as close as I was going to get to getting out.

I can’t do anything but repeat myself, now, so I’m just going to go shake.

Here is a story in today's WaPo by Dana Priest and Mary Pat Flaherty on the plight of civilian security contractors (of whom there are reportedly 20,000 in Iraq) being attacked and yet being unable to call on Coalition forces for help.   Here is one account:

While U.S. and coalition military forces fought rebellions in a half-dozen cities yesterday, the body of a contract worker, employed to guard the power lines of the Iraqi ministry of electricity, was extracted from a rooftop in Kut by his firm's Iraqi interpreter after he bled to death, according to government and industry officials.

The dead man, a Western employee of London-based Hart Group Ltd., had been pinned down on the rooftop of the house he and four colleagues had been occupying Tuesday night when insurgents overran the house. The other four were wounded.

"We were holding out, hoping to get direct military support that never came," said Nick Edmunds, Iraq coordinator for Hart, whose employees were operating in an area under Ukrainian military control. Other sources said Hart employees called U.S. and Ukrainian military forces so many times during the siege that the battery on their mobile phone ran out.

That same night, armed employees of two other firms, Control Risk Group and Triple Canopy, were also surrounded and attacked, according to U.S. government and industry sources.

In all three instances, U.S. and coalition military forces were called for help but did not respond in a timely manner, according to U.S. government and industry accounts. The private commandos fought for hours and eventually were able to "self-evacuate," said one U.S. official, who asked not to be named.

Well, at least the contractors weren't being singled-out for neglect.   Apparently the high command was unwilling to risk "escalating" to even help its own soldiers.

Oil for Palaces scandal: the French Ambassador says they had nothing to do with it

Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United States, had an OpEd in yesterday's LAT claiming that France is being slimed by the equivalent of Hillary's "great right-wing conspiracy".

...I have been deeply surprised in the last few days to see a new campaign of unfounded accusations against my country flourish again in the media. These allegations, being spread by a handful of influential, conservative TV and newspaper journalists in the U.S., have arisen in connection with a recent inquiry into the "oil for food" program that was run by the United Nations in Iraq during the final years of Saddam Hussein's government.

These allegations suggest that the government of France condoned kickbacks — bribes, in effect — from French companies to the Iraqi regime in return for further contracts. They say Paris turned a blind eye to these activities.

Let me be absolutely clear. These aspersions are completely false and can only have been an effort to discredit France, a longtime friend and ally of the U.S.

He goes on to provide some specifics regarding the modest role that France played in the program and suggests that the US and UK, which were the only two members of the UNSC who received copies of the procurement contracts, would have been in a better position to be aware of any wrongdoing.   I don't know enough about the Oil for Food program to evaluate his claims, but I do support Levitte's call for an independent inquiry to determine what actually happened.   Let the chips (or fries as we call them here, whether French or free) fall where they may.

Update

Today's NY Sun has an article by Benny Avni poking a couple of holes in Levitte's story.  For example:

Mr. Levitte wrote, “It is also suggested that the money from the oil-for-food contracts passed exclusively through a French bank, BNP Paribas. Wrong again: 41% of the money passed through J.P. Morgan Chase Bank.”

U.N. officials, however, told the Sun that all proceeds from Iraqi oil sales under the program went through BNP Paribas. Later, a certain percentage was dispersed through other banks.

A first-hand account of some of the fighting in Iraq

A female US Army military intelligence specialist has posted an incredible account of being under seige by Moqtada al-Sadr's "Mehdi Army" in al Kut, about 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.  

My captain didn’t know I heard him say what he just said. “Honestly, last night, I think every one of us thought that was it, that we weren’t going to make it back. It was that bad.”

We faced a force of four to five hundred rebels, with mortars, RPGs and various handheld weapons. There were four US soldiers---myself and the other people in my team----about twenty Ukrainian soldiers, and thirty or so scared British and Aussie expats, including the British governor. The Ukrainian soldiers had a couple tank/hybrid vehicles, but they didn’t have much ammo for them. By midnight, everyone was running out. We kept impressing this on Higher, and they just couldn’t get that through their heads. What the fuck good are they? We are running out of ammo. We will be over-run if light hits this place in the morning and finds us still here.

More than that, it was the concrete reality that you were going to die. I felt that a few times yesterday, last night, and this morning. Escape attempt after attempt fell through, and those mortars started hitting the grounds, the gate, the vehicles. The enemy sent word that when darkness fell, they were going to over-run the compound and exterminate everyone there. The whole Iraqi security force just up and quit. One guy claimed that his mother had had a heart attack and he had to go home. I heard that on the radio myself. It’s the dog-ate-my-schoolwork excuse as applied to battle.

Fallujah was on everyone’s mind, but nobody---thank God----said it.

You can read more of this brave soldier's posts at her web-journal here.   (Hat tip to Alan Brain at the Command Post.)

Update

More on this interesting woman...  Here is her homepage on Livejournal and here is her personal webpage.   If you want to send her some positive feedback, you can email her here.   (If you want to send her an anti-war rant, please don't.   I think she has enough on her mind trying to do her job and stay alive.)

Get off your high horse and ask the world to come to this effort?!

Below is a transcript of John Kerry's interview with Bob Edwards from NPR's Morning Edition recorded yesterday, Tuesday April 6th, and broadcast this morning, Wednesday.   (Click here to hear the audio from the interview.)

BOB EDWARDS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

Senator John Kerry is back on the campaign trail after shoulder surgery last week. Today, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee gives a policy speech on the economy. I spoke with him yesterday about his economic plans and also the US role in Iraq, where violent anti-American clashes took place in at least six cities yesterday. Twelve Marines were reported killed in two different uprisings. President Bush says the intensified fighting will not derail plans to turn over civilian control of Iraq on June 30th, but Senator Kerry says stabilizing and getting out of Iraq requires a new approach.

Senator JOHN KERRY (Democratic Presidential Candidate): The best way to accomplish this goal is the fastest way you secure the broadest-based coalition, the broadest-based consensus about the kind of government that can emerge, the minimal amount of risk to American troops and the minimal cost to the American people. That's the best way to do it, and in every case, the president has not chosen the best way.

EDWARDS: But because of the danger in Iraq, there isn't a lot of international interest in a greater role.

Sen. KERRY: Well, that's partly because of the way the administration has proceeded. I mean, what makes me so frustrated and even angry, and I think the American people are, is the stubbornness of this administration which has refused time after time after time to share power and responsibility in determining the governmental transformational process. Can we do it this way, ultimately? Sure, but the question is at what cost to our troops, at what cost to the American people, at what cost to our reputation in the world? This is not the way the United States of America should conduct thoughtful, productive diplomacy.

EDWARDS: So you need more US troops right now.

Sen. KERRY: Yeah, I think the commander over there has suggested that he may well need more, and that's the difficult situation the administration has put us in. I don't think anybody's going to leave our troops exposed, but on the other hand, if that's all we do, it is asking for the most expensive, most dangerous route rather than the most productive route.

EDWARDS: What about holding on to that June 30th deadline for hand-over of power in Iraq?

Sen. KERRY: I think the June 30th deadline is a fiction, and they never should have set an arbitrary deadline which almost clearly has been affected by the election schedule in the United States of America. The test for the transfer of sovereignty is a sovereign entity to transfer it to, and the stability of the region, not some arbitrary date, and I think now they'll wind up with a fiction of a transfer. There'll be some sort of symbolic transfer, but you won't see that much transition in what's happening.

EDWARDS: But what's the alternative to that? I mean, you just continue an occupation.

Sen. KERRY: The alternative to that is to get off your high horse and begin to show a little humility and begin to share responsibility and share risk and ask the world to come to this effort. The world has a legitimate interest in not having a failed Iraqi state. The world has a legitimate interest in beating back terror, and it is astonishing to me that given the legitimacy of that interest, this administration has managed to proceed so unilaterally, so I think, you know, it's a serious effort.

Well, I guess that settles that...  If only we were to ask our friends in Paris and Berlin for help, this whole mess in Iraq would be straightened out!   Why didn't I think of that?

Update

For more of Kerry's thoughts on the situation in Iraq, particularly the bits that NPR chose not air, see this excellent post over at the American Digest.   Here is an excerpt excluded from the broadcast:

"They shut a newspaper [belonging to al-Sadr, the cleric whose militias are currently killing Americans] that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq."
[Short pause]
"Well, let me ... change the term 'legitimate.' It belongs to a voice — because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment."

Sad days in Iraq

My heart goes out to the families of those Marines killed or wounded in battle in Iraq.   Ever since reading Thomas E. Ricks' Making the Corps, I've had a soft spot in my heart for the USMC.   These young men and women are full of heart, full of warrior spirit, and represent some of the finest qualities of our country.

Today's events in Iraq (the loss of more than a dozen Marines, the wounding of a score more, and the deaths of several score of Iraqis), are tragic.   But a far greater tragedy would occur were we to lose heart and step back at this critical period.   It is unmistakably clear that the enemies of a democratic, secular Iraq see the next several months as the critical moment.   If the US public can be stampeded by a "Mogadishu moment" into clamoring for disengagement, they believe they can regain power (in the case of the Baathists and former military commanders) or seize power (in the case of that Geraldo among Shiite clerics, Moqtada al-Sadr).   If John Kerry were President today, I would be worried.   One of the reasons I remain a strong supporter of Dubya is my confidence that he understands tactics like these and is determined to resist them.

If we fail in our mission to create a democratic, stable, secular Iraq, I fear that we will face a generation of Islamist, terrorist escalation against Western civilization.   If we prevail; as we can, if only we care enough to make it so, our future, and the future of those living under various shades of tyranny in the mideast, will be much improved.

It's "gut check" time, ladies and gentlemen.   Do we have enough confidence in ourselves, our way of life and our beliefs to stay the course?   As a father of two, I sincerely hope that we do.

The lawyers of Madison County

Overlawyered.com has found a good one; trial lawyers in Madison County, Missouri pocketed $84.5 million in fees and expenses in a class action suit over the "exorbitant" rates charged for household telephone rentals in a settlement that ultimately paid only $8.5 million in damages to the members of the settlement class.   Sheesh.

Genocide as a spectator sport

Today's NYT has a pair of OpEd pieces on the unfolding genocide in southern Sudan.   Here are some excerpts:

• Congolese refugee, chemist, teacher and novelist Emmanuel Dongala on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and the reluctance of some African intellectuals and leaders to condemn the Sudan:

  Some of our outdated ideological ideas must be challenged. With the backing of the government, Arabs are carrying out a massacre of genocidal scale against black Africans in Sudan, yet many academics and leaders in Africa are reluctant to speak out because of a misplaced sense of solidarity. We are also reluctant to face other unpleasant realities because we are afraid that would project the wrong picture of Africa to the world.

• Pulitzer Prize-winning author (and Harvard instructor) Samantha Power on the current situation in Sudan:

  The horrors in the Darfur region of Sudan are not "like" Rwanda, any more than those in Rwanda were "like" those ordered by Hitler. The Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has armed nomadic Arab herdsmen, or Janjaweed, against rival African tribes. The government is using aerial bombardment to strafe villages and terrorize civilians into flight. And it is denying humanitarian access to some 700,000 people who are trapped in Darfur.

  The Arab Muslim marauders and their government sponsors do not yet seem intent on exterminating every last African Muslim in their midst. But they do seem determined to wipe out black life in the region. The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur, said Mukesh Kapila, the former United Nations' humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, "is the numbers of dead, murdered, tortured, raped."

Power goes on to say that unless the US shows some leadership on this issue, the UN and our european pals are unlikely to do anything on their own.   She's right about this, of course, and also correct in calling for the US to step up the pressure on the Sudanese government.   Bush's phone call last week to Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, is a step in the right direction, but it may be time for the President to take a more public position on the issue.   There may not be time to waste if the genocide is to be stopped this time.

Time to draw a line in the sand in Iraq

Mark Bowden, the award-winning journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of Blackhawk Down, has a thought-provoking OpEd piece in today's WSJ.   His title says it all: The Lesson of Mogadishu: America must answer last week's barbarity in Fallujah.   Here are some excerpts:

The picture is haunting. The bodies of the dead dangle overhead, twisted and grotesque, while the living frolic beneath them, posing for the camera. The joy and laughter on the faces of the celebrants is unmistakably genuine. These are people exulting in hate, glorying in their own cruelty.

It was taken on Aug. 7, 1930, and it shows the bodies of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two black men falsely accused of rape who were beaten, tortured, mutilated and then strung up by a mob in Marion, Indiana. The picture is remarkably similar to the ones we saw last week from Fallujah, or those we saw nearly 11 years ago from Mogadishu. Mobs reduce human nature to its lowest common denominator, whether American, Iraqi or Somali. They are savage and ugly, but they are not irrational.

... Lynching is deliberate. It is opportunistic rather than purely spontaneous, and it has a clear intent: to insult, to challenge and to frighten the enemy, and to excite and enlist allies. The mutilation and public display of bodies follows a distinct pattern. The victims are members of a despised Other, who are held in such contempt that they are considered less than human. Respectful treatment of the dead is the norm in all societies, and a tenet of all religions. Publicly flouting such basic dignities is a communal expression of hatred designed to insult and frighten. Display of the mutilated remains must be as public as possible. In Fallujah they were strung high from a bridge. In Mogadishu, where there were no central squares or bridges, the bodies were dragged through the streets for hours. The crowd, no matter how enraged, welcomes the camera--Paul Watson, a white Canadian journalist, moved unharmed with his through the angry mobs in Mogadishu on Oct. 4, 1993. The idea is to spread the image. Cameras guarantee the insult will be heard, seen and felt. The insult and fear are spread across continents.

The other message at a lynching isn't as obvious. It is also an appeal. It is a demonstration of potency designed to sway and embolden those who are sympathetic but fearful. It says, Look what we can get away with! Look what we can do! The sheer horror asserts the determination of the rebel faction, and underlines the seriousness of the choice it demands from its own community. It draws a line in the sand; it is a particularly graphic way of saying, You are either for us or against us. With the potential for further such atrocities afoot, critics of the rebels are frightened into silence and acquiescence.

...The worst answer the U.S. can make to such a message--which is precisely what we did in Mogadishu--is back down.

My own first reaction was more circumspect.   With the handover of power to an Iraqi regime only weeks away, I wasn't sure that wading into the center of anti-American resistance in Fallujah was worth the inevitable human cost on both sides.   However, Bowden does have a valid point that public challenges to the Coalition's power and the rules of civil society should not be treated lightly.

In Iraq, where the traditional means of maintaining public order (as practiced by Saddam and his Baathist colleagues) was to rule through fear, a demonstration of the limits beyond which the US will respond with force may not be a bad idea.   In any case, we shall soon see.   According to reports in today's papers, the Marines and Iraqi security forces have sealed off Fallujah as the first step in what a Marine Lieutenant called "... an extended operation. We want to make a very precise approach to this. . . . We are looking for the bad guys in town."

Given the challenges made to the Coalition's authority in both Fallujah and Sadr City, the only alternative to using force to arrest the instigators would be to abandon Iraq to civil war and mob rule.   And that is something that we can only do at our peril.

Bienvenue to Eurabia

This piece by Niall Ferguson was interesting.

UN official says Arabs are waging a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Sudan

According to the UN director responsible for relief efforts in Sudan, Jan Egeland (Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs), there is an active campaign of "ethnic cleansing" being undertaken in the Darfur region of Sudan.   Apparently, the atrocities are being committed by armed militias and government troops attacking black Sudanese.   Here is how Egeland described the situation in a press briefing on Friday:

Speaking to correspondents following his briefing to the Security Council, Mr. Egeland said there were daily reports of widespread atrocities and grave violations of human rights. Stopping those attacks was the number one priority. An organized, forced depopulation of entire areas was taking place, resulting in the displacement of hundreds of thousands. Most of the relief efforts were targeting those displaced populations. Linked to that were limitations in access to the estimated 1 million people affected.

Most of the attacks, he said, had targeted civilian populations. Entire villages had been looted and burned down, and large numbers of civilians had been raped, tortured and killed. There weren’t even proper camps for the refugees and displaced. The attacks primarily targeted communities of black Africans.

Last month alone, he said, there were reports of 59 violent attacks with 212 civilians killed, of which 166 deaths were attributed to the Janjaweed, or troops associated with the Government. Forty-three killings were linked to rebel groups. “That was just the tip of the iceberg.” It was not possible to say just how many were killed due to lack of access.

You'd think it would be about time to spool up those black helicopters and send some of those blue helmet types in to the rescue, wouldn't you?   Perhaps Germany and France would view this human rights crisis as a an appropriate way for their countries to shoulder a fair share of world's peacekeeping duties.   (Don't hold you breath.)

Update

The current President of the UN Security Council (by strange coincidence Germany's Gunter Pleuger) had this to say about the situation in the Sudan:

The Security Council was briefed today on the humanitarian situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland.

The members have expressed their deep concern about the massive humanitarian crisis.

Council members call on the parties concerned to fully cooperate in order to address the grave situation prevailing in this region, to ensure the protection of civilians, and to facilitate humanitarian access to the affected population.

Council members welcome the negotiations taking place in N’Djamena under the auspices of Chad and the African Union and with the support of the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, and call on the Government of the Sudan and opposition groups to conclude a humanitarian ceasefire and to reach a political settlement to the dispute.

That'll show those genocidal bastards!   I bet they are shivering in their boots right about now.

NYT writes about possible liberal bias in academia

Of course, the article was stuffed in the Arts section on a Saturday, but it is a start.

But, carping aside, the piece by Yilu Zhao was pretty even-handed and fairly summarized the ongoing controversy over the proposed Academic Bill of Rights.   Like I said, its a start.

Killed by a mob, burned to a crisp and hung from a bridge? Well, screw you.

Liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (better known as the author of the daily Kos) has been caught with his foot firmly lodged in his oral cavity.   Reacting to the graphic photos of the civilian contractors murdered and immolated in Falluja, Zúniga had this to say:

I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

I linked to Tim Blair's blog for the quote because Kos has stuffed his original post down the memory hole and substituted this watered down version on his blog.

Fortunately, the wickedly funny Allahpundit and the gang at LGF were there to record (and comment) for posterity.

Now it is true that the "civilian contractors" were ex-military and were working for a US security firm.   But they were decidedly not mercenaries, fighting for pay.   As far as I know, they were hired to protect other foreigners in Iraq who are working to rebuild the country's infrastructure.

For my part, I am saddened by their senseless deaths and grieve for the families they left behind.   I am also disappointed that our own citizens, including a refugee from a war-torn country and veteran of the US armed forces like Zúniga, would be so blinded by partisan politics that they could not see the injustice of this wanton act of violence in Falluja.

Kofigate

Today's NY Post has a couple of good opinion pieces on the UN Oil-for-Palaces scandal.   The paper's editorial calls for Kofi Annan's ouster as Secretary General, describing the UN under his leadership as a "corrupt enterprise".   There is also an OpEd by Andrew Apostolou providing more details on the program's French connection and its unfair treatment of Iraqi Kurds.

Update

Predictably, today's NYT lead editorial has a different view of the situation.   Responding to the murder and public mutilation of American civilian contractors this week in Falluja, the Times calls on the US to turn over control of Iraq's future to UN leadership:

Decisions will not be any easier to make after the election, and policy choices still available today may have evaporated in six months. That especially applies to the course this page has long championed: a more multilateral approach under the United Nations' leadership. The chances of achieving that are slowly ebbing as the Bush administration's arbitrary June 30 deadline for handing power to Iraqis approaches with no workable political architecture in sight.

yada yada...

More on expensing options

TheStreet.com has a few interesting articles on the options expensing issue.   This one, by K.C. Swanson and Ronna Abramson highlights the negative implications for technology stocks if the FASB proposals for option expensing are adopted.   The article also has some estimates for future earnings dilution produced by Goldman which are similar to the work I did back in February.

This piece, by Troy Wolverton, handicaps the chances of Congress intervening to defeat option expensing like it did the last time FASB tried to close this particular accounting loophole back in the mid-1990s.   His bottom line?   This time, after Enron and Worldcom, no politician wants to touch accounting rules with a 10-foot pole.

Cutting through the Nuancy Boy's BS

James Lileks has posted a masterful deconstruction of John Kerry's recent appearence on MTV's Choose or Lose in his Daily Bleat.   Its an absolutely must read.   I just wish I could write a quarter as well as he does...

Great moments in legal history...

The trial lawyers are close to completing an impressive achievement here in New York state; destroying yet another industry in their pursuit of easy money.   Supported by stalwart figures like Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the NYS Assembly and himself a partner in a firm of trial lawyers, the plaintiff's bar has been successful in keeping NYS' "vicarious liability" law on the books.   This law makes leasing companies and car rental firms 100% liable for damages or injuries caused by the vehicles they own.   As a result of this law (among others), there are only 50 independent car rental firms left in NYS, down from an estimated 400 two years ago.   In addition, it is now nearly impossible to lease a car in this state, because most of the major auto leasing companies have pulled out of the state.

Read all about it in this excellent feature in today's NY Sun by William Tucker.

The ostrich strategy for defending against the next major terrorist attack

The always-brilliant Heather Mac Donald has an important OpEd in today's WSJ decrying the failure to use technology to defend ourselves from terrorist attack due to misplaced privacy concerns:

The 9/11 Commission hearings have focused public attention again on the intelligence failures leading up to the September attacks. Yet since 9/11, virtually every proposal to use intelligence more effectively--to connect the dots--has been shot down by left- and right-wing libertarians as an assault on "privacy." The consequence has been devastating: Just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction.

The privacy advocates--who range from liberal groups focused on electronic privacy, such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, to traditional conservative libertarians, such as Americans for Tax Reform--are fixated on a technique called "data mining." By now, however, they have killed enough different programs that their operating principle can only be formulated as this: No use of computer data or technology anywhere at any time for national defense, if there's the slightest possibility that a rogue use of that technology will offend someone's sense of privacy. They are pushing intelligence agencies back to a pre-9/11 mentality, when the mere potential for a privacy or civil liberties controversy trumped security concerns.

Read all of her column and see my previous posts for more information about the anti-terror systems she mentions, including the unfortunately-named (and now defunct) "Total Information Awareness" system and the threatened "Matrix" system.

Oil for fraud?

I'd missed this editorial from last Friday's WaPo calling on the UN to launch a thorough and independent investigation of the UN's Oil for Food program in Iraq.   Here is an excerpt:

Over time, the oil-for-food program in fact became a surrogate Iraqi trade ministry, as even a cursory look at the list of products Iraq imported under its auspices proves. "Humanitarian needs" -- a phrase that conjures up an image of beans, rice and emergency medicines -- came to include plumbing and sanitation for swimming pools, four-color offset printing machines, cigarette paper and photography lab supplies, according to the United Nations' Web site. Clearly, those managing the program on behalf of the United Nations were not trying to limit imports to rice and beans, which is hardly surprising: On every barrel of oil sold -- about $40 billion worth -- the United Nations earned a 3 percent commission, divided as 0.8 percent going to the weapons inspection program and 2.2 percent to the program's administrative costs. The fundamental problems with the program were public knowledge. Far worse now are the mounting allegations of behind-the-scenes corruption...

Where is the outrage?

The long-running civil war in Sudan appears to be heating up again, as the Sudanese of Arab descent (who live in the northern part of the country, are Moslem and control the government) resume their campaign of oppression against their darker-skinned, largely Christian, southern neighbors.

Here is what Nick Kristof has to say about it:

Some 1,000 people are dying each week in Sudan, and 110,000 refugees, like Mr. Yodi, have poured into Chad. Worse off are the 600,000 refugees within Sudan, who face hunger and disease after being driven away from their villages by the Arab militias.

"They come with camels, with guns, and they ask for the men," Mr. Yodi said. "Then they kill the men and rape the women and steal everything." One of their objectives, he added, "is to wipe out blacks."

This is not a case when we can claim, as the world did after the Armenian, Jewish and Cambodian genocides, that we didn't know how bad it was. Sudan's refugees tell of mass killings and rapes, of women branded, of children killed, of villages burned — yet Sudan's government just stiffed new peace talks that began last night in Chad.

So far the U.N. Security Council hasn't even gotten around to discussing the genocide. And while President Bush, to his credit, raised the issue privately in a telephone conversation last week with the president of Sudan, he has not said a peep about it publicly. It's time for Mr. Bush to speak out forcefully against the slaughter.

Kristof is once again unfashionably ahead of the curve, doing original reporting on newsworthy events from remote parts of the globe.   If only people were listening...

Personally, I think the US (and the Bush administration) should make the violence in Sudan an international issue.   In addition to the obvious humanitarian interest in stopping genocide, Sudan has also in the recent past been a locus of Al Queda activity and was Osama bin Laden's home for several years before he moved his headquarters to Afghanistan.   An outlaw regime in Sudan would provide an excellent sanctuary for Al Queda and other Islamist terrorists.   We (hopefully with the help of the UN and members of the OAU) should not allow this to happen.

NYT Correction of the Week

Whoops... how did this happen?

Because of an editing error, a front-page article on Sunday about the difficulty of distributing drugs to AIDS patients in poor countries referred incorrectly to President Bush's January 2003 plan to spend $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS in the third world. While United States spending thus far has not kept pace with the plan, the president has issued a five-year budget plan that foresees reaching it; his requests have not fallen short of the goal. (Go to Article)

Veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke dies at age 95

Alistair Cooke's "Letter From America" which was broadcast weekly by the BBC for 58 years, was one of the masterpieces of modern journalism.   He was a great man and will be missed.