AUSTRALIANS have a laconic attitude to patriotism. Our love of our country is no less fierce because of the understated way we display it. Our commitment to Australian values is no less passionate because of the casual way we express it as a fair go for all.
We are similarly coy about how we express our attitude towards freedom and democracy, despite our strong support for these principles. We are squeamish about the more jingoistic style of some American pronouncements on the spread of freedom and democracy. Yet we are committed to the same goals.
Australia continues to be a significant force for the spread of freedom and democracy. We have fought wars for these values in the past, we continue to fight for them now and we will work in many ways to achieve the same outcomes in the future.
In doing so we are not simply working for an ideal. We are supporting values that deliver practical success for ordinary people. We are delivering tangible outcomes for people who deserve the opportunity to forge a future of their own. And we are looking after our national interests.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/13/2006 00:00 ||
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No one is obligated to fight to help others obtain freedom, liberty, and democracy, because any such obligation negates the principles of freedom and liberty.
Instead, consistent with those principles, one is free to choose to fight for these ideals on behalf of oneself as well as for others. Unlike those who believe that any set of values is as good as another, and thus subject to personal choice, my belief is that these principles enbody values that have inherent virtue: they are not good because "they work", but they work because they are good.
#2
"We are similarly coy about how we express our attitude towards freedom and democracy, despite our strong support for these principles. We are squeamish about the more jingoistic style of some American pronouncements on the spread of freedom and democracy. Yet we are committed to the same goals."
I think the cause of this difference has less to do with the people than with the fact that America has always had to assimilate an endless, large stream of immigrants with different traditions and values. Those folks needed to be "sold" the values of America or tribalism and chaos would have resulted. I think Austrailia's troubles with immigration can be traced in part to a lack of pro-actively and proudly "selling" Austrailian values to the new comers. So my advice is stop being coy and get out there and sell yourselves and your values. There are competitors plying their wares that you didn't have to deal with before.
We wouldn't keep beating this dead horse if he didn't keep trying to stand up. As the Kate Zernike front page Memorial Day weekend New York Times story indicates, a number of Kerry supporters were disappointed that Kerry had not vigorously defended himself against the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 Presidential campaign. According to Zernike some "are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat."
That might not only be a difficult task but it could backfire badly. As Vanity Fair's acerbic columnist Michael Wolff said in the 3-minute 2-second trailer to a Kerry-sponsored (and Kerry-censored) documentary campaign film by respected producer Steve Rosenbaum, Inside the Bubble, the real problem with the Swift Boat claims was they were "largely true." And as former Dean of the Stanford Law School Bayless Manning has cautioned enthusiastic advocates, "As an attorney, you needn't worry too much about the lies told by your opponents. Your real danger is the lies told by your client." Ask the ghost of Alger Hiss.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2006 09:12 ||
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The thing I don't get with Kerry and others who dream up nutz stories is WHY?
It was good enough he was in the NAM. He would have got some cred being a crooked sarge in CamRanBay making bucks off the one armed bandits in the NCO clubs.
He didn't need to make up stories. Why did he do it?
#3
John, if you want to end this controversy now, release your military records. I know you and your spinmeisters said you filed the request to have the records released two years ago, but we're still waiting to see them John. What's the problem? You being a hero and all, I'm sure the records will back you up.....
#4
Lies! I was in a swift boat with JFKerry in late 69. At one point we disembarked in Cambodia and I witnessed AM (we called him AM after Audey Murphy) personally take out a Battalion of NVA regulars. Of course he filed no report because we were across some imaginary line on a map and the politicians couldnt condone his actions. After some time the locals called him the French Legion because he fought like an entire legion of French (and spoke like them). On one double secret mission a CIA guy was so impressed with AM he gave him his boney hat (secret CIA boney hats were prized). AM would wear the hat while on patrol and the enemy would run away from us with fear. One time AM had had enough and gave chase to a young man armed with a RPG. Although one of our gunners hit him with the 50cal, he managed to slither away towards the jungle. AM found the boy/man and dispatched him with giving him his Miranda rights or letting him surrender. After that we feared AM as much as we feared the VC.
#8
He didn't need to make up stories. Why did he do it?
Because he thinks he's John F. Kennedy, the war hero on a PT boat. That's why he volunteered for Swift Boats when he saw them running around offshore from his ship. That's why he filmed himself recreating what few firefights he was involved in. There are reports from various sources he showed those films over and over again to people who came to his house.
He's told these lies so many times over the years I think he now believes them himself. When he was just a junior senator from Mass, no one questioned him on them. Then he made the mistake of running for president in the age of the internet when anything can be cross-checked.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2006 17:10 Comments ||
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June 13, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - On June 12, the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR] a Saudi funded Islamist pressure group kicked off an email campaign designed gin-up anti-military sentiment at a time when their allies in the American press are conducting their own campaign of character assassination against U.S. Marines involved in a firefight in Haditha, Iraq. The CAIR email states:
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 6/12/06) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the Pentagon and Congress to investigate a music video posted on the Internet that seems to show U.S. Marines cheering a song that glorifies the killing of Iraqi civilians.
CAIR said the four-minute video, called "hadji girl," purports to be a "marine in iraq singing a song about hadji." (A "Hajji" is a person who has made the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, but the term has often been used as a pejorative by U.S. troops in Iraq.) The song, posted online in March, tells of a U.S. Marine's encounter with an Iraqi woman. It has been viewed by almost 50,000 people.
The song's lyrics include: "I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally. . .I blew those little f**kers to eternity . . .They should have known they were f**king with the Marines." Members of the audience, not shown in the video, laughed and cheered wildly for these lyrics.
We have not been able to determine if the singer in the video is indeed a Marine, regardless CAIR seriously and intentionally misrepresents the song as a celebration of gratuitous violence against Iraqi civilians.
"Hadji Girl" is a ballad about a Marine firefight in Iraq.
In the heat of battle a young girl appears out of nowhere and invites this Marine to meet her family. She is leading him into an ambush but he doesn't know it. When the two of them arrive at her home, the girl's father and brother open fire, the Marine hits the ground and the girl is killed by her brother and father's gunfire - "threw open the door and I hit the floor 'cause her brother and father shot her." The girl's father and brother are still intent on killing the Marine so he grabs the girl's sister and the brother and father then proceed to gun her down also in their haste to kill the Marine.
The Marine then "locks and loads" stating he "blew those little fuckers to eternity."
So the song is about a young woman luring a Marine into an ambush where she and her sister are killed by her jihadi father and brother, who in turn are killed with great justification by the Marine. It's quite clear that what CAIR is attempting to do here is create another Muslim cartoon incident which is not surprising, because CAIR is no stranger to controversy.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2006 14:34 ||
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I had a dream that CAIR was successfully blacklisting me and I found out. In the dream I responded by letting contracts on all the top folks in CAIR then won the lotto.
#3
Council on American Islamic Relations - I keep seeing these infiltraitors showing up in the news. Being from the south, I can tell you that MAYBE 2% of the people I work with or know are aware of these people. More people need to know that we have been invaded by a foriegn propaganda machine. I fear for my sons, who will eventually have to confront these people on our own soil.
#13
My only objection is to the suggestion that a US Marine would use an innocent civilian as a human shield. There are countless stories of Marines and GIs shielding civilians, so it seems highly unlikely.
On the plus side, CAIR is annoyed. Which is nice.
Posted by: Tibor ||
06/13/2006 23:13 Comments ||
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Talk Left raises the possibility that torture may have been used somewhere in the process of hunting down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Block-quoted handwringing moral equivalence omitted . . . you can probably imagine what they said.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed that we were all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. In fairness its possible, even probable, that the Jordanians were less than gentle with Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly. There is certainly a chance that he was tortured in the very real sense of the word by the Jordanians, though no one knows this to be true. There's also a fairly high probability that, legally speaking, Alan Dershowitz is right that from the point of view of the 'international community' "targeted killings of this kind are unlawful and unjustified."
Of course it is also possible that Mr. al-Karbouly, knowing the reputation of the Jordanians sang like a canary rather than find out if their reputed ferocity was real. And it is conceivable that it's actually not illegal to target specific individuals in war. But let's suppose for the sake of argument that the Jordanians did torture al-Karbouly and that targeted assassinations are in fact illegal. What then?
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Posted by: Mike ||
06/13/2006 07:45 ||
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Talk Left raises the possibility that torture may have been used somewhere in the process of hunting down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
That's alright. We raise the possibility that western MSM may be actually allies of enemies of the United States [and Western Civilization for that matter]. Examining their behavior, willingness to the uncritical water carrier of any enemy proclamations, magnifying every small enemy staged event as though it was something significant, and never producing weeks/months of denunciation of standard violations of the tenets of the Geneva Convention concerning the intentional targeting of civilians, one must conclude by such evidence that MSM is indeed actively working on behalf of the enemy.
#2
We can, like the early Christians choose to face the lions rather than renounce our beliefs.
The problem is somewhat differnet: eraly Christians faced their own death, here what we ahave is causing the deayth of other people, of hundreds or thousands of other people to keep our precious principles.
#3
Many of the posters at Belmont Club pointed out that Talk Left actually has no proof that torture was used, and thus had to resort to weasel words to scratch up some credibility and moral position to criticize. This, of course, leads to the question of whether they, themselves, are being moral in proceeding to criticize in the absence of evidence.
I must credit that discussion at Belmont Club for this recent brainstorm: why exactly are those who do not believe in God moralize as if there is one? Leftist philosophers are notorious for asserting that there is no truth, so why act as if there are moral truths (a double non-existent in their eyes) that must be acted upon?
The answer, of course, is that Christians, and the children of Christians (which covers the majority of those in the west today), actually CARE about beinv moral and actually ACT upon that morality. Leftists sniff at morality and make it a point NOT to act upon it as a demonstration of their "liberation from primitive religion". They talk it because THAT'S THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN GET PEOPLE TO DO WHAT THEY WANT. Christian morality, for these people, is NOT a way to discover how to serve God, but a convenient belief held by good people that allows them, the enlightened, to manipulate them into doing stupid things.
This gets at the core of the difference between Christian preaching that condemns sin and moral failings, and Talk Left's moralizing: The former is intended to bring the sinner to a state of repentance and reconciliation to God, leading to obedience and service to God, while the latter is an attempt by men with little integrity and no conviction to manipulate those with more integrity and conviction into doing what they want.
#4
If torture was used to find Zarqawi I think perhaps its proof that torture can work. I'm not sure they want to open that can of worms if they are againt torture.
#5
Much like Dennis Miller's stance on animal testing to cure AIDS, I'd agree that if hooking up terrorists to car batteries is the only way to stop al Qaeda, then I can only say;
#2
You're welcome, GG. It's a honor to be able to share articles that I find interesting here. And I thank the Rantburg moderators for being patient with my sometimes sloppy posting practices. Long Live the 'Burg!
Last week, when three prisoners at the Guantanamo detention facility committed suicide simultaneously by hanging themselves, it was clearly no coincidence. The suicides were, in fact, consistent with the message and methodology of jihad, acts of defiance rather than acts of personal desperation.
We in the West are accustomed to using the word �suicide' to describe those who, in desperation or deep depression, take their own lives. When they do so, it is almost always in isolation, and rarely in concert with others.
It is therefore difficult for us to understand that for a Muslim jihadist, taking one's life under certain circumstances can be a positive act of faith which makes a powerful political and religious statement. These three men chose a martyr's death rather than be dominated by infidels. They may well have believed that their suicides would help to speed the liberation of their brothers in captivity at Guantanamo. Their act was a two pronged attack against their captors: while their deaths were calculated to strike a blow against the American administration that created the detention center, they also provided moral and substantive support for their cause.
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On Sunday, June 11, a boycott of Israeli academics, which had been adopted a few weeks earlier by the U.K. University and College Lecturers' Union (NATFHE), was lifted after the move threatened to derail a merger plan with the larger U.K. Association of University Teachers. The development comes as the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) passed a resolution at the end of May to "support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions" against Israel. These actions, gaining steam on multiple continents, did not develop out of thin air. Lurking behind them, and many similar moves, is a little known U.N. cadre which is the subject of a report released Monday by EYEontheUN.org.
The multibillion-dollar U.N. system was once largely closed to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as the private playing field of member states. But NGOs have now found their way into the most intimate recesses of the U.N. It is a development, however, that is not a one-way street with the members of so-called "civil society" as mere supplicants looking for an opening. Both the U.N. secretariat and member states have found it extremely useful to operate through NGO "partners" or proxies. One element of this phenomenon is so familiar that the term "GONGO" has been coined, to discredit "government-operated non-governmental organizations."
But there is a much darker side to the U.N.-NGO nexus than the rise of these obvious interlopers in NGO circles. It is the large number of NGOs that have been empowered by U.N.-accreditation to spread anti-Semitism, hate, and encourage terrorism from a U.N. platform. The call for boycotts and sanctions against Israel is a central plank of this campaign.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/13/2006 13:18 ||
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The number of U.N. regulations violated by this U.N.-NGO cabal is voluminous, but one particular rule matters above all. It's called the Charter of the United Nations, which bears repeating under the circumstances. The organization was intended to "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small."
I omitted an important element from my farewell to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in last week's Slate. This is the role played by Jordanian intelligence in the tracking and elimination of one of the Hashemite kingdom's most hardened and experienced enemies. In debates within al-Qaida, Zarqawi was known for his advocacy of concentration on "the near enemy"—regimes, such as Jordan—over the more remote, such as the United States. This was often a distinction without much difference. He took part in a foiled plot to blow up the Radisson and other hotels in Amman in 1999, and he directed the murder of the USAID official Laurence Foley in the same city just before the intervention in Iraq. Most striking of all, he took time off last November to send operatives out of Iraq to blow up three hotels in Amman, killing fifty-odd random civilians, including the members of a Palestinian wedding party.
The Jordanian authorities thus had excellent reasons of their own to follow Zarqawi, and the kingdom's Mukhabarat—or General Intelligence Department, which generally earns high marks for efficiency—had been trailing him ever since he left Jordanian soil for Afghanistan, and then Afghan soil for Iraq. It is from this source that we know that Zarqawi was in Baghdad at least as early as June 2002, almost a year before the invasion. Indeed, as the Senate intelligence committee report has confirmed, it was in that month that the G.I.D. contacted the Saddam Hussein regime to "inform" the Iraqis that this very dangerous fellow was on their territory. Given the absolute police-state condition of Iraq at that time, it is in any case impossible to believe that such a person was in town, so to speak, incognito. And remember that in 2002, even states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were at least ostensibly expelling known al-Qaida members from their turf or else arresting them. Only Saddam's Iraq—which did not reply to the Jordanian messages—was tolerating and encouraging the presence of men who were on the run from Afghanistan.
It is customary to dismiss evidence of this kind with a brisk and pseudo-knowing sneer about the "secular" nature of Saddam's regime and thus its presumed incompatibility with theocratic fanatics. Quite how this CIA-sponsored "analysis" has survived this long is beyond me. At least from the time of its conclusion of hostilities with Iran, Baghdad became a center of jihadist propaganda and sponsorship. Saddam himself started to be painted and photographed wearing the robes of an imam. He began a gigantic mosque-building program. He financed the suicide-murderers who worked against the more secular PLO. He sent money to the Muslim separatists in the Philippines. His closest regional ally was the theocracy in Sudan, which had been the host of Osama Bin Laden. (You can see a similar process at work with the other "secular" Baathist regime in Syria: It has long had very warm ties to the mullahs in Iran and to Hezbollah, and in its current and one hopes terminal phase, is forbidding all non-regime propaganda except the Islamist type.)
Continued on Page 49
A good compilation of good happenings to Iraq EFL
Beyond the death of Zarqawi, it has been a hard couple of weeks for terrorists in Iraq. I like to think of the current scene in Iraq as Wrapping up al Qaeda.
General Happenings Around Iraq
Prime Minister al-Maliki finally finished naming his officials in the government on Thursday: In a stormy session, Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki presented Shiite Jawad Polani as interior minister, Sunni Abdel Qader Al Obeidi as defense minister and Shiite Shirwan Al Waili to head national security. All the candidates were approved by an overwhelming majority of the parliament after they read out their credentials and were subjected to questioning from parliamentary members.
I mention this not because it wasnt covered, but because of an interesting statement made by the speaker of the parliament after the debate: We are doing like our uncle America; it is democracy speaking, he said.
The Pentagon has released an unclassified version of its quarterly report on Iraq. Of particular interest is the section on Iraqs security forces: The report says the Iraqi army and police forces are growing in numbers and capability. It says 71 army units are taking the lead in combat, and 40 others are fighting in support of foreign troops. Iraqi units have taken primary responsibility for security in several parts of the country.
We quit while we were ahead, and rapidly fell behind. That's the message of Cobra II, the best book so far written about the war in Iraq. Cobra II was the code name LtGen. David McKiernan gave to the battle plan for the invasion of Iraq. (The first Operation Cobra was Patton's plan for breakout from Normandy to liberate France in World War II.)
"The U.S. military commanders who battled their way to Baghdad and endured the long hot summer of 2003 believe that there was a window of opportunity in the early weeks and months of the invasion, which was allowed to close," wrote Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor in their epilogue. "Though some degree of opposition was unavoidable, the virulent insurgency that emerged was not inevitable but was aided by military and political blunders in Washington."
Unfortunately, that judgment is the least supported part of the 507-page book, most of which is the story about how the battle plan evolved, and a gripping, unvarnished account of all the battles soldiers and Marines fought on their way to Baghdad.
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#2
There'll be more Monday Morning Quarterbacking to come, and more books.
But say, is this a news item, or an opinion thing? With all the MSM blather, I get confused....
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/13/2006 6:33 Comments ||
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More analytically vapid mush from the mediocre second-guessing punditocracy. I was able to stop one TV type here who was gushing about the book and its "documentation" of errors by asking "so does it explain why it took 3 whole weeks to take Baghdad?". He and the other MSM reporters present laughed, but went quiet. The ridiculous nit-picking over every conceivable imperfection in planning and execution of a wildly successful campaign is, of course, exactly what one expects from Gordon and Trainor.
Anyone who looks at today's security problems in Iraq and thinks that any US decisions might have simply avoided them is either delusional or stupid.
Anyone who thinks that Iraqis were remotely ready to take over almost any of the key functions of state in 2003 is ignorant - they're far from ready in mid-2006, as I see every day up close. What am I missing in this preposterous, illogical assertion that handing over responsibility to utterly unfit Iraqis before June 2004 would have helped? How? Where? Which problems would have been avoided? The important problems are military, and in June 2006 the Iraqis are just barely able to help out, in a limited fashion. They were non-factors entirely in the period under discussion, and no plan or alternative policy could have possibly changed that.
I'm waiting to see any of these geniuses to stumble upon the obvious: skipping the war part of war and reconstruction sort of screws up your whole strategy. This dialogue of the lightweights is scary - all this silly argument about non-issues based on ludicrously false assumptions, and nobody's even addressing how perhaps military issues might be pertinent to how a war is progressing.
The idiotic focus on "planning" betrays an unserious and sophomoric approach. In human affairs such as this, planning is rarely important - it's adaptation and execution of a changing plan that matter.
Clearly, many in the Arab world were shocked by the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the "Boss of all evils" in Baghdad. The murderer of women, children, young and old, Sunnis and Shiites, Sayyids and Sheikhs, Arabs as well as foreigners.The masterminded responsible, for last year's bombings in Amman that killed sixty innocent people in three weddings., the man who couldn't tell the difference between bird hunting and cold blooded murder.
His role as a corruptor was well documented, bearing in mind that his last message to the world encouraged civil war in Iraq. Yet despite all this, there are those who were saddened and shocked by his death. To them we should extend condolences.
Our deepest sympathies go out to all the fundamentalist websites, particularly Alsaha.com. Our sympathies also go out to all the conspiracy theorists, who said that Al-Zarqawi was a fictional character created by the Americans, to justify their shortcomings in Iraq at the expense of innocent Iraqi and Jordanian lives.
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Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/13/2006 01:16 ||
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The ultimate symbol of Radical Islam, for both Radical and General Muslims + America, remains embodied in Osama Bin Laden. However simplistic, Osama is to Radical Islamism and Global Islam what ROBERT E. LEE was to the Civil War Union - destroy Lee and his potent Army of Northern Virginia and the South is defeated, and defeated regardless of any other Southern mil force in the field. OSAMA IS SALADIN = MAHDI = SULEYMAN, ETAL. INCARNATE, NOT ZARK OR ZAWI OR MULLAH OMAR, ETC. IOW, Osama > SYMBOL OF HOPE AND STILL-POSSIBLE VICTORY. The USA must quash that hope lest it be at the USA's peril.
#2
These mooks will need to look over their shoulders for the rest of their short lives as the US Spec Ops look at Zarkboys records of who gave him money.
One reason I supported the initial attack, and the destruction of the Saddam regime, was that I hoped it would serve as an example, deliver a psychic shock to the whole region. It would have done, if wed just rubbled the place then left. As it is, the shock value has all been frittered away. Far from being seen as a nation willing to act resolutely, a nation that knows how to punish our enemies, a nation that can smash one of those ramshackle Mideast despotisms with one blow from our mailed fist, a nation to be feared and respected, we are perceived as a soft and foolish nation, that squanders its victories and permits its mighty military power to be held to standoff by teenagers with homemade bombsthat lets crooks and bandits tie it down, Gulliver-like, with a thousand little threads of blackmail, trickery, lies, and petty violence.
Just ask yourself: Given that Iran is the real looming threat in that region, are we better placed now to deal with that threat than we would have been absent an Iraq war? If we could ask President Ahmadinejad whether he thinks we are better placed, what would his honest answer be?
We are not controlling events in Iraq. Events in Iraq are controlling us. We are the puppet; the street gangs of Baghdad and Basra are the puppet-masters, aided and abetted by an unsavory assortment of confidence men, bazaar traders, scheming clerics, ethnic front men, and Iranian agents. With all our wealth and power and idealism, we have submitted to become the plaything of a rabble, and a Middle Eastern rabble at that. Instead of rubbling, we have ourselves been rabbled. The lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush, the bureaucratic will to power of Donald Rumsfeld, the avuncular condescension of Dick Cheney, and the reflexive military deference of Colin Powell combined to get us into a situation we never wanted to be in, a situation no self-respecting nation ought to be in, a situation we dont know how to get out of. It's not inconceivable that, with a run of sheer good luck, we might yet escape without too much egg on our faces, but it's not likely. The place we are at is surely not a place anyone in 2003 wanted us to be atnot even Vic Davis Hanson.
Read the whole thing. Agree, disagree, Rantburgers?
#1
Same old, same old. Lefty hand wringing at its best.
Obviously a guy who doesn't keep up on Iraqi view of things.
Posted by: DanNY ||
06/13/2006 8:46 Comments ||
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#2
Derbyshire is a vomit-brained "peasants need to be kept in line" Tory, thatisall.
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
06/13/2006 9:48 Comments ||
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#3
Derbyshire is actually quite conservative (it's National Review's blog, after all). It's just that he hoped for something quick and shocking and wasn't prepared for what was basically inevitable -- a long war. Derb can be a very penetrating analyst but he's got a streak of gloom in him and he's not really capable of looking beyond the worst case.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
06/13/2006 9:50 Comments ||
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#4
Derbyshire has fallen victim to the "TV solution" syndrome. If something can't be started, finished and wrapped up in a tidy bow within an hour or two at the most, it's a dismal failure.
Notice he doesn't point out exactly how leaving a pile of rubble in Iraq was going to improve the situation, beyond shocking a few people.
Its hard not to think, though, that if wired up to a polygraph and asked the question: Supposing you could wind the movie back to early 2003, would you still attack Iraq? any affirmative answers would have those old needles a-jumping and a-skipping all over the graph paper.
This is as dumb an assertion as one could say. Firstly, it is assumed that we would know in 2003 what we know now in 2006. Knowing that, we'd have played up the liberation of Iraqui people angle more, eliminate the real WMD threat of Saddam Hussein, AND would have deployed our people differently and with uparmored Hummers before, during, and after the conflict. We'd have gone after tater and been more agressive along the borders. We'd have stationed a platoon at the bridge where zarky jumped out of his truck and captured him then.
but then, if we had that knowledge THEN, then it would have been a success, and Derbyshire would be crowing and boasting and preening himself about his good advice, instead of whining and carping and taking potshots like a critic who'd blanch at being invited to STFU, get his ass out of the stands, and onto the field, because his MOUTH is bigger than his character.
We still did a good thing in getting rid of Saddam, who killed Iraquis at a clip of 3000 per day, and carps about "international law" comes from neo-stalinist pharisees who would do as their hero did, who didn't hesitate to feed human bodies into a legalistic meatgrinder to meet the goals of a postulated utopia.
#6
DanNY: Same old, same old. Lefty hand wringing at its best. Obviously a guy who doesn't keep up on Iraqi view of things.
This is righty handwringing. Lefty handwringing consists of saying America is to blame. Derbyshire is saying that we should have turned Iraq to rubble and left. This would be the classic Roman punitive expedition. Instead we muddled the situation by sticking around to rebuild the area while taking unnecessary casualties, and tying troops down that could be used against Iran (to do more or less the same punitive expedition all over again). His whole proposal was to rubble the area and let the Arabs fight it out. The ideal scenario would have been a re-enactment of the Iraq-Iran War, where 1 million died on both sides. This is what conservative strategic thinking is all about - inflicting maximum damage to as many of the nation's enemies as possible while using a bare minimum of the nation's resources. What Bush has done is gotten a huge chunk of the nation's ground troops tied down in Iraq for what may turn out to be a decade.
Derbyshire's complaint is not that the administration's incompetence is what's keeping the insurgency alive, but that we should have bailed out as soon as we had killed enough Iraqis. More importantly, his take is that sticking around to fight insurgencies is simply too resource-intensive to be sustainable, and both terrorists and America's enemies are encouraged by what they see in Iraq, because they see the likelihood of another such invasion - of another country - as low, because we have knowingly tied ourselves down.
#7
I think Derbyshire's whole theme was this - after an American invasion of an enemy nation, mothers should be able to get their children to behave by threatening to hand them over to a GI for punishment. In their current role as social workers and bringers of candy, GI's are severely diminishing what was once a fearsome reputation, which does have a negative effect on deterrence.
#8
ZF: The US way is "kill the violent and make deals with everybody else."
It is a technique used when teaching a small child. That is, when they do the innumerable things that they can do without being bad, they are allowed or encouraged to do them. When they do bad, they get a gentle (hopefully) slap and a raised-voice "No!"
It accepts that the violent are always a tiny minority of any group of people. And if you can imprison, segregate or kill them, then everyone else tends to cooperate.
For the vast majority, the US wants to project the image of wealth, prosperity and charity, not intimidation, control, and exploitation. It does this so as not to turn the moderates into makers of violence. Moderates who, by the way, tend to be far more ferocious to fight than the avowedly violent.
#9
Derb can be a very penetrating analyst but he's got a streak of gloom in him and he's not really capable of looking beyond the worst case.
I used to like him in spite of the gloom, but no more. Over the past year, Derb's also come out in full-throated defense of Michael Schiavo and written a Kos-worthy verbal assault on fellow NR author Ramesh Ponnuru's new book Party of Death, in which he describes those of us who oppose abortion as "cult members." Oh, and he opposes legal immigration on grounds of eugenics, which seems a deuced odd position for the immigrant father of two biracial children to take.
Now, either he's taking all these positions because he enjoys being the skunk at the garden party--in which case he's being frightfully immature--or because he actually believes in eugenics, abortion, and euthenasia--in which case I fear for his soul.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/13/2006 13:20 Comments ||
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#10
I have gotten VERY tired of the so-called conservatives (I don't know if Derbyshire is among them) who simultaneously decry the current administration as imperialist while at the same time decrying them as incompetents for not following the standard imperialist doctrine of setting up a minority government as tyrranical tribute farmers and leaving.
The idea that just because we can't be 1820's Agrarian Virginia we must therefore be The Conquering Romans Raping Thrace Thrice is to me not just a bad idea, but potentially a disastrous one.
Posted by: Phil ||
06/13/2006 14:18 Comments ||
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Among those quietly celebrating the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week, no doubt, were Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leaders of Al Qaeda, who have watched their nominal ally wreck the standing of their organization among Muslims around the world. After Zarqawi began his bloody operations in Iraq, in 2003, support for suicide bombingsthe signature of Al Qaeda since the destruction of the American embassies in East Africa, in 1998plummeted in Islamic countries. Muslims surveyed in the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes Project reported in substantial numbers that Islamic extremism was a threat to their own countries. Jordan, Zarqawis homeland, seemed to be the exception. Then Zarqawi sent suicide bombers to three hotels in downtown Amman, killing sixty people, including prominent Jordanians and Palestinians, many of whom were celebrating a wedding. The next day, tens of thousands of Jordanians poured into the streets to denounce Al Qaeda.
Zarqawi was the herald of a new generation of terrorists whose roots were in street crime, not in Islamic militancy. A former thief and sex offender, he memorized the Koran while he was in prison, and began issuing fatwas and calling himself sheikh. Theres certainly been a downgrading of ideological purity, Niall Brennan, a special agent on the joint terrorism task force in the New York office of the F.B.I., told me on the morning that Zarqawis death was announced. The next generation is in many respects less disciplined and doesnt have the same respect for command and control. Bin Laden, despite his own appetite for slaughter, disdained Zarqawis rough manners, prison tattoos, and unruly independence. But after the American invasion of Afghanistan Al Qaedas founders were immobilized, reduced to making occasional videotapes designed to rouse aspiring jihadis and berate Western leaders. Deprived of the managerial oversight of bin Laden, an international businessman, Al Qaeda began to shape itself around Zarqawis organizational experience, which is to say that it turned into a gang. This was a model easily replicated by would-be jihadisas in Madrid, London, Torontowherever alienated young Muslims yearned for destruction.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian and the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda, was always closer to Zarqawi than bin Laden was. In 2000, Al Qaedas Egyptian security chief, Saif al-Adl, helped Zarqawi establish a camp in Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. Young fighters from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanonthe area historically called the Shamgravitated to the camp and formed the Army of the Sham. Although Zarqawi was not yet a member of Al Qaeda, he remained under the protection of the Egyptians. According to Iraqs former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who claims that he discovered the information in the archives of the Iraqi secret service, Zarqawi travelled to Iraq in 1999, around the same time as Zawahiri. Saddam Hussein was courting Al Qaeda at the time. Inspired, perhaps, by Irans relationship with Hezbollah, he may have believed that he could use terrorists to conduct his foreign policy without undermining his rule. Contrary to Secretary of State Colin Powells assertion before the U.N. Security Council, in February, 2003, that Zarqawi provided the link to Al Qaeda in Iraq, bin Laden and Zawahiri spurned Saddams overtures.
Continued on Page 49
#2
These attacks were characteristic of Zarqawis method, which was to target the people who could turn Iraq into a functioning societyteachers, doctors, courageous political thinkers, anyone with the skill and education to pull the country away from chaos.
*shrug* That's what the Palestinians have been doing since the 1920s. And we see how well that turned out for them. Even Hamas, the local version of Islamofascism, find the Palestinians to be both impossible to govern and impossible to frighten into submission.
#3
So left's new spin on Al-Qaeda is that they're really misunderstood and sensitive guys, and that all this beheading people and blowing up babies was just one guy who went astray?
#4
So left's new spin on Al-Qaeda is that they're really misunderstood and sensitive guys, and that all this beheading people and blowing up babies was just one guy who went astray?
Yeah, kinda like communism never being implemented properly.
Beneath the surface of the immigration debate is a debate about shared values. If we look at just three of those values -- the English language, family and hard work -- we see a higher level of Latino assimilation than is often presumed.
Despite claims to the contrary, census data show that most Latino immigrants learn and speak English quite well. Only about 2.5 percent of American residents speak Spanish but not English. The majority of residents of Spanish-speaking households speak English "very well."
Only 7 percent of the children of Latino immigrants speak Spanish as a primary language, and virtually none of their children do. Just as they did a century ago, immigrants largely come knowing little English. But they learn, and their children use it as a primary language. The United States is not becoming a bilingual nation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/13/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
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#1
Once again trying to mask illegal immigration issue with legal immigration. Most of what is written here is about those who came here legally. They don't want to write about these illegals.
#2
For the most part, the Latinos are taking the path of the Irish and Italians. They are working blue collar jobs for two or three generations before joining the white collar work force. Yeah, they are turning some cities to crap with gangs and crime, but so did the Irish and Italians before 1923. I agree that this wave of immigration needs to come to an end. But I have no doubt that they will for the most part be assimilated by 2060.
The Chinese and Koreans are following the Jewish path of assimilation, with the bulk of their kids going on to college and becoming fully asimilated by the end of the second generation. And believe me, there are plenty of poor Asian neighborhoods. They're just better at hiding it.
Immigration is a double edged sword. On the one hand it brings new life and ideas to a society. On the other hand it brings a lot of friction and strife. I can tell you one thing, without immigration, big chunks of the US would look like Europe. I'm sure that some of you have gotten off the interstates and drove around the rural Northeast and Midwest. Big swaths are depopulated, full of abandoned properties. As painful as Latino immigration has been in the LA basin, the alternative would have been much worse. We were starting to shut down schools here in the mid-70's. A generation later, we would have been looking at whole neighborhoods abandoned and awaiting the bulldozer as caucasian urban TFR dropped from near 4 to about 1.7.
#3
The question is not "can they speak English?"; the question is "are they willing to speak English?" Some are, some aren't-but ability and willingness are quite different things.
#4
Experience and reality are superior to opinionating and speculation.
I live in San Antonio, and am only speaking from personal experience and first-hand knowledge. This city is racially diverse, but does of course have a predominantly hispanic population. The vast majority of hispanic citizens here speak english. However, there is a vast population of illegals, mostly on the south side, that do not. Nor do they have any interest in doing so. An entire sub-culture exists so that they don't have to. They take cash for work, pay no taxes, speak spanish only, and of course, lay low when it comes to citizenship issues because they don't want to be discovered.
I agree that this story misses the point. Confusing illegals with legal immigration only clouds the issue. As far as the US becoming a bi-lingual nation, I'd say that depends on where you are. San Antonio is very bilingual on the north side, but almost exclusively spanish speaking on the south side. Virtually every LEGAL immigrant I've spoken to despises the illegals, and feels that they are not interested in the American dream, but only in exploiting America for personal gain.
#7
LOL! These guys' arguments are all debunked there in the second paragraph. All of this is based upon Census data, which, in turn, is only filled out by LEGAL immigrants. My personal experience too says that the legals for the most part will whole-heartedly assimilate....it's the illegals, who have taken over entire cities and counties in Georgia (poultry farms are huge here) to the point that cities that were "redneck" just ten years ago now have main streets with all commercial signs in Spanish. Now, I almost think that even 2nd & 3rd generations of ILLEGALS will somewhat assimilate (almost have to, at least related to English to get by in school, work, etc.), but to see entire Spanish-only, run down areas doesn't give me much hope (not to mention increased gang activity, etc.).
Posted by: BA ||
06/13/2006 14:55 Comments ||
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#8
The problem is not immigrants, it's ILLEGAL immigrants. Not once, do I see the word ILLEGAL mentioned in this puff piece.
#9
Everyone likes hardworking Mexican immigrants who live the American dream. Pointing that out is a red herring for the issue that is infuriating Americans today - but it's not working.
If the GOP can't grasp that, and certainly the Dems have gone off the looney deep end - then we will find candidates and representatives who can. The issue won't go away with puff pieces about the nice Mexicans who live next door. They aren't the problem. Our law makers selling us out for votes from illegals is the problem. There will be payback.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
As the Kate Zernike front page Memorial Day weekend New York Times story indicates, a number of Kerry supporters were disappointed that Kerry had not vigorously defended himself against the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 Presidential campaign. According to Zernike some "are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat." 
