Yesterday we noted that Seattle Times editorialist Bruce Ramsey had responded to President Bush's Knesset speech last week by defending the appeasement of Hitler at Munich. Now Ramsey has been one-upped by Pat Buchanan. Whereas Ramsey says the March 1939 conquest of Czechoslovakia marked the point at which appeasement ceased to be viable, Buchanan argues that Poland, because it failed to appease Hitler, is to blame for his invasion of it in September:
Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson's 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.
Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. He had wanted an alliance with Poland in his anti-Comintern pact against Joseph Stalin.
But the Poles refused to negotiate. Why? Because they were a proud, defiant, heroic people and because Neville Chamberlain had insanely given an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland. If Hitler invaded, Chamberlain told the Poles, Britain would declare war on Germany.
From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.
The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.
Pardon the interruption, but this is ahistorical nonsense on high stilts. As Wikipedia explains, "The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, . . . signed in Moscow in the early hours of August 24, 1939, dated August 25, . . . included a secret protocol dividing the independent countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries' territories. All were subsequently invaded, occupied, or forced to cede territory by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or both."
In other words, Pat, the fix was in. Hitler didn't need or want Poland as an ally against the USSR because Hitler and Stalin were allies.. Poland was going to be chopped up by the Soviets and the Nazis no matter what it did
One wonders if there is any point at which Buchanan would have said, "This time, Herr Fuehrer, you've gone too far!"
Here we see yet another example of Blair's Law in action: the "right-wing" pro-Jihadi BDS-afflicted surrender monkey Pat Buchanan and the left-wing pro-Jihandi BDS-afflicted surrender monkey Seattle Times, both attacking President Bush on behalf of Obama by defending Adolf Hitler.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/20/2008 16:36 ||
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Faulting of Obama Called Hypocritical
By James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 19, 2008; Page A04
When Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned rival Barack Obama's ties to 1960s radicals, her comments baffled two retired Bay Area lawyers who knew Clinton in the summer of 1971 when she worked as an intern at a left-wing law firm in Oakland , Calif. , that defended communists and Black Panthers.
"She's a hypocrite," Doris B. Walker, 89, who was a member of the American Communist Party, said in an interview last week. "She had to know who we were and what kinds of cases we were handling. We had a very left-wing reputation, including civil rights, constitutional law, racist problems."
Malcolm Burnstein, 74, a partner at the firm who worked closely with Clinton during her internship, said he was traveling in Pennsylvania in April when Clinton attacked Obama for his past interactions with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, members of Students for a Democratic Society who went on to found the bomb-making Weather Underground.
"Given her background, it was quite hypocritical," Burnstein said. "I almost called the Philadelphia Inquirer. I saw what she and her campaign were saying about Ayers and I thought, 'Well, if you're going to talk about that totally bit of irrelevant nonsense, I'll talk about your career with us.' "
In her campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Clinton has said little about her experiences in the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, including her involvement with student protests and her brief internship at the law firm, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. She has said she worked on a child custody case, although former partners recall her likely involvement in conscientious objector cases and a legal challenge to a university loyalty oath.
But her decision to target Obama's radical connections has spurred criticism from some former protest movement leaders who say she has opened her own associations to scrutiny.
"The very things she's accusing Barack of could be said of her with much greater evidence," said Tom Hayden, a leading anti-Vietnam War activist, author and self-described friend of the Clintons .
Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd," adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. Where does guilt by association stop? I mean, she was a partner of Jim McDougal in the 1980s, for crying out loud." Reich is now an Obama supporter.
In response to the assertion that Clinton is a hypocrite for calling out Obama's ties to Ayers, campaign spokesman Philippe Reines said: "The comparison is patently absurd." The campaign played down her friendship with a noted student protest leader and defended her work with the Oakland firm. "At the time she worked there, the firm was primarily at the forefront of civil rights advocacy cases, which was a good fit with Senator Clinton's long-standing interest in civil rights and constitutional law," Reines said.
Clinton 's associations date to her years as a student leader at Wellesley from 1965 to 1969. It was the height of student opposition to the Vietnam War, and Carl Oglesby, the president of Students for a Democratic Society, came to campus to speak.
"I gave a talk at Wellesley , where she was a student," Oglesby said in a telephone interview from Amherst , Mass. , where he is recovering from a stroke. "I can't say that I was a close friend of hers. It was more of a passing acquaintance. I liked her. I think of her as a good guy. I think she has a good heart and a solid mind. And I support her in the current primary."
Oglesby had been close to Ayers and Dohrn, but the couple split with the more moderate SDS factions to form the Weather Underground, which engaged in a bombing campaign to try to stop the Vietnam War. The FBI monitored Oglesby throughout the period.
The Clinton campaign suggested last week that she did not meet Oglesby until the 1990s, long after his activist years. But in recent interviews, Oglesby has made clear that she stood out in his memory as he traveled across the country speaking at rallies.
In 1994, Clinton told Newsweek that Oglesby's writings in the 1960s helped persuade her to oppose the Vietnam War and to become a Democrat. She visited Oglesby in 1994 in Massachusetts , a meeting that was omitted from the First Lady's official schedule. Oglesby told the Boston Globe at the time, "We mostly discussed the '60s. I may have been a little gushy in my praise of the administration, but she was extremely impressive."
Oglesby now talks warmly about Clinton . In an interview with Reason magazine, he called their association "a friendship, a comradeship, within the context of the movement. She and I, for a while, were warm with each other. She and I were semi-close."
But Oglesby said he has not contacted Clinton because he is afraid that he could harm her candidacy.
"A friend of mine mentioned me to her not long ago, and according to him she got a case of the shakes. I think it was because she could imagine if any of her considerable enemies on the right wanted to do her in, they would be happy to discover a relationship between her and me," he told the magazine.
Clinton interned at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein while attending Yale Law School . The firm defended the Black Panthers, including Angela Davis, and Clinton had been editor of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, which included articles about Black Panther leader Bobby Seale's murder trial in New Haven , Conn.
Author Gail Sheehy wrote about the internship in her book "Hillary's Choice." Sheehy, who also wrote a 1971 book about the Black Panthers, interviewed firm partner Robert Treuhaft, who described Hillary Rodham attending a New Haven fundraiser for Seale's defense that he threw with his wife, author Jessica Mitford. Treuhaft -- who, with his wife, left the Communist Party in 1958 -- died in 2001.
Clinton kept up correspondence with the British-born Mitford through the early 1990s. "Top students like Hillary were much sought after by huge prestigious Wall Street-type law firms -- some, like Hillary, were far more interested in left-wing firms," Mitford wrote to a friend in 1992.
In her autobiography, "Living History," Clinton details little of the firm's background. She wrote that she "spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case."
But members of the firm have different recollections. Burnstein recalled her working on a case involving Stanford University students who refused to sign an oath attesting that they had never been communists.
Walker said that Clinton probably worked on cases to help young men avoid the draft. "We did a whole lot of conscientious-objector work," she said.
Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven who were acquitted of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, said he is disappointed that Clinton has tried to taint Obama with guilt by association.
"Once you introduce the concept of guilt by association, everyone is in trouble because there is no end to it," he said. "The goal is to render Barack so unelectable that the party has to turn to her. Because the goal is so narrow and obsessive, she's not aware that she's also going to be collateral damage."
Researcher Madonna Lebling and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.
As a non-subscriber, I don't keep up with NYT op-eds the way I used to, so I didn't read Thomas Friedman's thumbsucker "Obama and the Jews" until today. . . . several people have written asking me to comment on the above article, so I cruised on over. The first few graphs were, as usual, mega-predictable. Friedman sets up the straw man of a whisper campaign among Jews about what Obama truly thinks about Israel (by "tricking" us by reciting Bush's views). Ho-hum. Although there's not much in this oh-so-coventional-wisdom I would disagree with, I didn't quite see the point (other than slavish fealty to the Democratic Party and its nominee). Furthermore, I haven't heard much of this supposed whisper campaign, but maybe I'm not on the right mailing lists.
What was missing from Friedman's piece... and amazingly and glaringly so... was the subject of many emails I have received from Jews and Jewish organizations - Jeremiah Wright. Although the fuddy-duddy Friedman titles his op-ed "Obama and the Jews" there is not one word about the Democratic candidate spending twenty years in the pew of and taking the title of his book from an anti-Semitic admirer (even idolater) of the racist Louis Farrakhan. There is nothing more abhorrent to me as a human and as a Jew than racism. Evidently, it doesn't mean much to Friedman. Or not enough. Now almost habitually disingenuous, the New York Times columnist tries to pretend the real (and justifiable) reason many Jews will not vote for Obama isn't there. Shame on him.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/20/2008 09:15 ||
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#1
It is amazing we even got to that point with this "candidate".
What a sorry assed country this is becoming.
#2
The Donk party is not the country [regardless of their claims]. Just because thousands of Socialist Donks jump off the bridge doesn't mean we'll follow. In my case, it's more like a golf clap.
#4
We've reached this point with this candidate because voters who've yet to reach their mid-50s don't recall the consequences of electing this sort of person.
#5
Just as Jimmy Carter was my generation's "hard lesson", Barack Obama may will be this one's.
They just better hope they survive it. And I am dead serious when I say that.
One of the more unusual responses to President Bush's speech last week comes from Bruce Ramsey, an editorialist at the Seattle Times. In a Friday post on the newspaper's blog, quoted by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, Ramsey defended Obama by . . . defending Hitler. No joke, here's what he wrote:
What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.
What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.
We live in an era when you do not change national borders for these sorts of reasons. But in 1938 it was different. Germany's eastern and western borders had been redrawn 19 years before--and not to its benefit. In the democracies there was some sense of guilt with how Germany had been treated after World War I. Certainly there was a memory of the "Great War." In 2008, we have entirely forgotten World War I, and how utterly unlike any conception of "The Good War" it was. When the British let Hitler have a slice of Czechoslovakia, they were following their historical wisdom: avoid war. War produces results far more horrible than you expected. War is a bad investment. It is not glorious. Don't give anyone an excuse to start one.
Hmm, "avoid war." Does anyone happen to remember how that worked out? Ramsey responded to the predictable mockery his post drew by totally rewriting it. The new version appears here, without any acknowledgment that it has changed. It is somewhat toned down, but still shockingly ignorant:
The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. But in 1938 people knew a lot less.
It is true that much of what Hitler did, he did after 1938. But "Mein Kampf" was published in 1925 and 1926. And here is an excerpt from "The House That Hitler Built" by Stephen Roberts, published in 1937 and quoted here last year:
At present, the German Jew has no civil rights. He is not a citizen; he cannot vote or attend any political meeting; he has no liberty of speech and cannot defend himself in print; he cannot become a civil servant or a judge; he cannot be a writer or a publisher or a journalist; he cannot speak over the radio; he cannot become a screen actor or an actor before Aryan audiences; he cannot teach in any educational institution; he cannot enter the service of the railway, the Reichsbank, and many other banks; he cannot exhibit paintings or give concerts; he cannot work in any public hospital; he cannot enter the Labour Front or any of the professional organizations, although membership of many callings is restricted to members of these groups; he cannot even sell books or antiques. . . . In addition to these, there are many other restrictions applying in certain localities. The upshot of them all is that the Jew is deprived of all opportunity for advancement and is lucky if he contrives to scrape a bare living unmolested by Black Guards or Gestapo. It is a campaign of annihilation--a pogrom of the crudest form, supported by every State instrument.
If the British and French were ignorant of Hitler's intentions in 1938, it is not because the information was unavailable. In any case, defending that ignorance is a strange way of defending Barack Obama today.
My previous post having inflamed a few hundred people, I'll try another tack. Forget the Munich conference. My point is really not about that anyway.
Hey wait, aren't those who forget history doomed to repeat it? That's exactly what Ramsey has in mind:
It is said we can't talk to terrorists. Get beyond the "terrorist" label, which is another device for barring communication. You have to ask: do these people represent the political aspirations of a large group? if [sic] they do, you'd better talk to them, because they're not going away. Find out what they want. You don't have to knuckle under. But talk. Hear them out. Have them hear you out.
If Ramsey had his way, the U.S. would respond to the murder of civilians by offering to "hear out" the murderers and "find out what they want." Even Barack Obama does not go this far. He has advocated talking only to those terrorists who control states.
What Ramsey is advocating is precisely appeasement: answering aggression with solicitude. It is a sure way of provoking, not avoiding, war.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/20/2008 08:22 ||
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#1
Told ya yesterday I heard the pattern of Jackboots in the messianic treatment of Obama by the press and his devout followers.
Its easy to see where these morons are trying to lead.
#3
isnt calling 1938 appeasement reasonable actually a knock on Obama? IE, his policy appears reasonable, (like appeasement in 1938) but could ultimately lead to disaster?
Wouldnt a defense of Obama have to show that appeasement did NOT look reasonable in 1938, to contrast it with Obamas proposed negotiations today?
(BTW, theres at least one historian Overy, who holds that Chamberlin gets a bum rap - he was appeasing only to buy time for UKs military buildup, esp air defense, he didnt really believe Hitler was reasonable - of course Chamberlin was still mistaken, cause Germanys internal situation meant that if hitler failed on the Sudetenland he might have been overthrown by the Wehrmacht, but Chamberlin had no way of knowing that)
#4
Chamberlain may not have known about the Wehrmacht plans (even now not everybody agrees on what would have happened); however he surely knew how strong the Czech fortifications were in the Sudetenland (somebody who was in my Synagogue, now deceased, was, according to his recollection to me, in the Czech army at the time and stationed at one of the key points of the defense line ) and, thus, how devastating it would be to give it up without a fight.
Chamberlain also would have known that in 1938, the Germans were building tanks and planes like crazy. I'll grant he may not have realized the magnitude but he surely knew that between Munich and a year from then that the Nazis would be much stronger.
Jay Nordlinger, National Review Reporting from the World Economic Forum conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
Next at the podium is Bush . . . The applause that greets Bush when he appears is very, very brief. And that is as much applause as he will get.
I will not try to recapitulate Bushs speech here, but you can read it on the White House website: here. . . .
I remember when Irans Khatami appeared in Davos: He was greeted like some combination of Elvis and Gandhi. (He was known as a reformer, to be sure.) There were also representatives of Saddam Husseins regime, and the Assad dictatorship. Was the audience as frosty to them as to Bush?
Bush-hatred is one of the most interesting phenomena of our times; to me, it is also one of the most disturbing. Consider Bushs speech at this conference, and its calls for freedom, democracy, and humaneness. If Bill Clinton gave the identical speech, what would the reaction be? And if Barack Obama gave it, word for word? I can see people on their feet, cheering. . . .
In all probability, Bush could have said nothing here in Sharm El Sheikh that would have gained approval. Nothing short of a self-denunciation.
And a thought occurs to me: Bush stands for sweeping change in the Middle East. And he was talking to a throng of people for whom life is pretty good. On the whole, they are affluent; a good number of them must have domestic servants. They have positions of power and influence. They travel internationally, including to conferences like this one. They are the haves, the societal winners.
And who is Bushs Middle Eastern constituency? You could argue, they are the poor, the imprisoned, the hopeless. The poor need liberalization more than the rich. And no one in jail attends conferences. Bushs speech would have been much better received in, say, Syrian prisons.
In the next hours, I hear many reviews of Bushs performance, and they are not good, to put it mildly. And I will tell you about a conversation I overhear an American woman is talking to some Middle Easterners in a lounge. I am typing this column.
A man asks the woman, hesitantly, What did you think of Bushs speech? Oh, I hate Bush, she says. That is a jarring sentence to hear: I hate Bush.
And she goes on. Some of her choice sentences: Democracy is overrated. All of us Americans in the audience, we were like, Do we applaud or what? His approval rating is 18 percent. No one cares about him anymore; everybody hates him.
She allows that the First Lady, Laura Bush, seems nice. But then she drops this: The rumor is he hits her, you know. Sometimes I see her on television, and Im thinking, Poor woman. Then our American seems to have a prick of conscience: But I dont know maybe they have a great relationship.
Here is a theme I have sounded many, many times, and will again: The American abroad can be tough to digest. For decades, people have denounced the ugly American the ugly American abroad. They mean conservative ignoramuses or loudmouths or bigots in Hawaiian shirts and shorts. But my idea of the ugly American is something else. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
05/20/2008 12:55 ||
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#1
I'm surprised that the woman Jay Nordlinger heard wasn't rounded up and sent to Gitmo. After all, isn't that what happens to any American who dares to criticize Bushitler?
/sarcasm
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
05/20/2008 14:23 Comments ||
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#2
It's both unsettling and depressing to hear that the world, expect for this country and Bush, seems to care little for freedom and liberty. They only care about power and greed. And yet, that is what the liberals and democrats accuse Bush of being all about: power and greed.
Something is seriously wrong when things get turned around like this. It does not bode well for the future. I fear that dark times lie ahead.
#3
I would go so far as to say that despite all his flaws, the need for a leader like Bush is more urgent than ever. By that I mean a leader who isn't afraid to "speak truth to power," in the full sense of the term.
Why do so many people in this country seem blind to that? I don't think that is something I will ever understand.
May 20, 2008 -- DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?
If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.
Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.
But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.
You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.
To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:
* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into "Abu Ghraib, The Sequel."
Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The "atrocity" didn't get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.
* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who'd turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.
* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.
* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.
Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There's peace in the streets.
Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq's government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.
My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?
Didn't think so. The basic mission of the American media between now and November is to convince you, the voter, that Iraq's still a hopeless mess.
Meanwhile, they've performed yet another amazing magic trick - making Kurdistan disappear.
Remember the Kurds? Our allies in northern Iraq? When last sighted, they were living in peace and building a robust economy with regular elections, burgeoning universities and municipal services that worked.
After Israel, the most livable, decent place in the greater Middle East is Iraqi Kurdistan. Wouldn't want that news getting out.
If the Kurds would only start slaughtering their neighbors and bombing Coalition troops, they might get some attention. Unfortunately, there are no US or allied combat units in Kurdistan for Kurds to bomb. They weren't needed. And (benighted people that they are) the Kurds are pro-American - despite the virulent anti-Kurdish prejudices prevalent in our Saudi-smooching State Department.
Developments just keep getting grimmer for the MoveOn.org fan base in the media. Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who had supported al Qaeda and homegrown insurgents, now support their government and welcome US troops. And, in southern Iraq, the Iranians lost their bid for control to Iraq's government.
Bury those stories on Page 36.
Our troops deserve better. The Iraqis deserve better. You deserve better. The forces of freedom are winning.
Here in the Land of the Free, of course, freedom of the press means the freedom to boycott good news from Iraq. But the truth does have a way of coming out.
The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.
When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.
Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.
Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.
Is Jane Fonda on her way to the earthquake zone yet?
Operations are now underway in Mosul to rid the city of al-Qaeda. The streets are calm, indicating that the terrorists realize they are too weak to fight.
May 19, 2008 - by Mohammed Fadhil
Although we havent written anything about the operation in Mosul which started a week ago, Ive been closely following its developments. The reason why I waited is that we had often heard about a new operation, which would then turn out to be just a rumor. Anyway, the operation this time has actually started, and the arrival of Maliki and his defense and interior ministers in the city leaves no room for doubt about the seriousness of the government in seeing to the plans success.
The interesting thing about the operation is that its been suspiciously quiet, to the extent that one wonders if theres actually any operation going on. In fact, Mosul has seen the calmest eight days of the last five years.
The operation won broad approval and support even before it started, which -especially among Sunni blocs- is another positive product of the Basra operations. As we can see, the usual sectarian rhetoric about biased targeting of Sunni regions without Shia ones has been absent this time. In addition to the parliamentary approval, the operation won public support represented by the tribes willingness to take part in the operation. The chief of the awakening councils in the province, Fawaz Jerba, said that there were ten thousand men ready to take part in the operation.
However, the government preferred not to get them involved right now and is moving forward to form seven battalions of police from the residents of the province. These battalions are likely to have an important role in maintaining security and order after the operation ends. Two of these units will be assigned to Tal Afar: one will guard the bridges in the city, another will operate fixed checkpoints on the main highways leading to the city. The rest will be added to the existing security forces in Mosul. All are to be led by former army officers.
Initial results of the operation included the capture of 1,100 suspects and wanted individuals, according to the spokesman of the defense ministry, Mohammed Askari. Most of those are officers in the former army and members of the military bureau of the Baath Party, along with a bunch of al-Qaeda emirs; yet to be named, three of them are described as being among the most dangerous in Mosul.
Whats special about the name of the operation - the Mother of Two Springs - is that its the adorable second name of the city which it gained from the relatively nice climate it enjoys. Its a smart replacement for Lions Roar, which some found to be needlessly scary, especially since we need a real lion more than we need the roar!
Whats unique about this city is its prestigious military history. The Iraqi army had long relied on Maslawis to build its officer corps, which is a source of pride for the city. In the beginning there were rumors in the Sunni community that stemmed from the fear that the operation might turn into an organized act of cleansing against those officers or a twisted implementation of the de-Baathification law. However, the defense and interior ministries strongly rejected that allegation and announced that 80 of those detained were released after they were not found guilty of crimes. The Ministry asserted that arrests were based on accurate intelligence. Actually, some in the government are boasting that this is the first operation in which most arrests have been made according to legitimate warrants.
In my opinion, the suspicions of both sides are understandable due to many years of distrust between Mosul and the government. On the one hand, the targeting of former officers and Baath Party members is based on the fact that they made up the bulk of al-Qaeda hosts and supporters in many places in Iraq. On the other hand, there are former officers who dont have blood on their hands but are terrified by the countless stories of Shia militias particularly the Badr Brigades undertaking acts of revenge against officers who fought against Iran in the 1980s.
As in Basra, the government gave an ultimatum for militants to hand in their weapons and offered amnesty to those not involved in crimes involving murder in order to make the operation as bloodless as possible. And indeed reports indicate that scores of militants have already handed in their weapons - an encouraging sign in a turbulent city that hardly ever trusted the government.
Among the results of the operation was the discovery of many weapons caches, which included several thousands of pounds of explosives and hundreds of rockets and artillery/mortar rounds. The amount may sound small given whats expected to be found in a city that is the last urban stronghold of al-Qaeda, but its still an encouraging start since the operation began only a week ago.
Another important thing that distinguishes this operation from previous ones is the active participation of the infant Iraqi air force through transportation and daily reconnaissance sorties. Iraqi officers say that this is the first time they are able to rely on the Iraqi air force for valuable live imagery of the spread-out city.
Some of the critics of the operation noted that announcing the operation before its launch gave al-Qaeda a chance to leave the city for other places, including neighboring countries, thus enabling them to dodge the strike which might waste the chance to crush them in their last remaining stronghold. I personally disagree with this argument. What matters, after all, is to clean the city of al-Qaeda, preferably without fighting. This illustrates a very important trend that we first saw in the Baghdad operations last year; that al-Qaeda now knows that it cannot afford to confront the security forces anymore. Now, instead of digging in and fighting glorious battles in Fallujah or elsewhere, al-Qaeda is more inclined to run away than fight. This is a true sign of al-Qaedas weakening and of their ultimate defeat.
Last but not least, I was surprised to see the leading opposition newspaper Azzaman, which had always been skeptical of everything the government does, praise the operation. To see a headline on Azzaman that says Al-Qaeda Is Limping, Its Leaders Flee Mosul means a lot to anyone familiar with Iraqi affairs.
Mohammed Fadhil is PJM Baghdad editor. His own blog is Iraq the Model.
#1
I was surprised to see the leading opposition newspaper Azzaman, which had always been skeptical of everything the government does, praise the operation. To see a headline on Azzaman that says Al-Qaeda Is Limping, Its Leaders Flee Mosul means a lot to anyone familiar with Iraqi affairs.
Now, if we could just do that with the New York Times . . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
05/20/2008 17:38 Comments ||
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May, 2008. To those who watched the American-led war on Iraq unfold in the spring of 2003, the fighting in most cases seemed distant and confused. No matter which television station one watched or which internet site one monitored, it was very difficult to gain a clear understanding of the events taking place during the American march to Baghdad. Reporters and bloggers could only offer their own limited perspective of the events, and watching and listening to multiple sources (which often contradicted one another) made for a cacophony of noise from which it was very difficult to gain a clear understanding of the situation in Iraq and within the collation military efforts.
For the officers and soldiers of the U.S. military, by contrast, the war made sense. The fog of war was dense at times, sure, but the way the war was fought by armored and infantry units backed by air support and commando operations was entirely logical and in keeping with the warfighting doctrine developed by the U.S. military since the end of the Second World War. The Iraqis played by the rules, and they lost to a U.S.-led military machine far more accomplished at large-scale maneuver warfare than its nearest rivals, much less Saddam Husseins weakened army.
The years that have followed, by contrast, have been fairly confusing for the U.S. military. It took a full three years for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to adopt the kinds of population-centric counter-insurgency tactics that have helped create a little breathing room for U.S.-led forces and Iraqs politicians in 2007.[i] During that time, the enemy quite often refused, as successful guerrillas usually do, to play by the established rules of maneuver warfare. These same guerrillas also proved more than capable in manipulating the imagery of war to further their political aims, causing General David Petraeuss chief counter-insurgency strategist to remark that the enemys efforts could all to often be described as armed propaganda campaigns.[ii] Not only did the U.S. military have little idea how to fight a proper counter-insurgency campaign in 2003, it also had no real conception of information operations and how such operations fit into the strategy of both the insurgents and the U.S.-led coalition.
Until recently, complains U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, one of the authors of its new counter-insurgency field manual adopted in 2006, information operations was a field of battle completely abandoned to the enemy. The U.S. knew only how to engage the enemy in physical battle it had no plan to exploit or explain such operations in the public sphere. When U.S. forces clashed with the Taliban in Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban contacted Arabic-language satellite channels immediately following the clash to make claims of civilian casualties and, in short, spin the battle in their favor. The U.S. public relations officers, by contrast, valued caution over timeliness and often waited days before issuing a statement confirming or denying the casualties.
What is worse, from the perspective of the U.S. military is that while the ponderous American defense bureaucracy has been slow off the mark, the enemy the insurgent groups against which the U.S. has fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan have proved more than proficient at the art of propaganda, media manipulation and shaping the way operations and events are perceived by enemy, friendly and neutral populations. In the same way, though the U.S. and its allies talk of the comprehensive approach, it is more often than not groups like Hizbullah and Jaish al-Mahdi who best understand military operations as part of a combined effort incorporating political, military, diplomatic, economic and strategic communication efforts.
To a large degree, though, the U.S. military cannot be blamed for being caught off-guard by their enemys sophistication in managing the way battles and campaigns are perceived. In the past two decades, insurgent, terrorist, and guerrilla groups in the Middle East have grown exponentially more sophisticated in the way they use the media available to them in order to affect the way battles are perceived. From the perspective of someone who studies military innovation, it is a remarkable achievement.
This paper focuses on the evolution of insurgent media operations in support of political-military objectives. Groups like the Taliban and Hizbullah did not start off, from the beginning, as sophisticated manipulators of popular perception. They learned, over time, how to shape the way in which military operations are perceived, and in the process, have taught Western militaries a valuable lesson in the nature of war itself.
Hizbullah and al-Manar
The history of contemporary information operations begins with Hizbullah. In 1990, when the Lebanese Civil War finally ended after 15 years of brutal fighting, the first television station to earn a license from the Lebanese government was al-Manar, Hizbullahs own outlet.[iii] The way in which Hizbullah used al-Manar, however, was both innovative and reflected a careful study of their adversary, Israel, against whom they fought for control of southern Lebanon until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000.
One of the founders of al-Manar, Nasser Akhdar, explained to researchers Dina Matar and Farah Dakhlallah that the primary concern of al-Manar was to communicate the daily realities of the occupation of South Lebanon to Lebanese society and the heroic acts of resistance to the occupation in an effort to bolster the resilience of the Community of the Resistance in Lebanon.[iv] Accordingly, 40 per cent of al-Manars daily output in the 1990s was devoted to its coverage of events in southern Lebanon and insurgent attacks on Israel and its Lebanese allies.[v]
Hizbullah soon discovered, though, that its broadcasts had an effect not just on the Lebanese population but on the Israelis as well. On the field, we hit one Israeli soldier, one Hizbullah official explained. But a tape of him crying for help affects thousands of Israelis we realized the impact of our amateur work on the morale of the Israelis.[vi]
Hizbullah, which employs a small army of Hebrew linguists to monitor the Israeli media, soon learned that for Israeli news outlets, broadcasting images of dead or dying Israeli soldiers was taboo. If a Lebanese outlet were to broadcast such images, though, and those images were then picked up by the international news wire services; the taboo was lifted. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and Israeli outlets began to re-broadcast the images most Israelis could watch anyway.
Consequently, Hizbullah invested much effort and blood in videotaping their attacks on Israeli columns and positions. As soon as the attack had taken place, the cameramen would race back to Beirut to make sure footage of the attack went up on al-Manar in time for the next news cycle. Footage of these attacks had a galvanizing effect on a portion of the Israeli population but also fueled the growing movement against the war and occupation in Israel.
Timur Goksel, the UNs longtime spokesman in southern Lebanon, explained in 1993 that Hizbullah knows theyre not going to win the war on the battlefield, so theyre not taking on Israels military might on the ground. Theyre taking on the Israelis psychologically.[vii]
Hizbullah pressed their advantage. They understood, correctly, that the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon was only possible so long as it was tolerated by the Israeli populace. Consequently, much of Hizbullahs propaganda was not just aimed at the Lebanese population but at Israelis as well. One of al-Manars daily news broadcasts, even today, is in Hebrew. During the occupation, Hizbullah ran a constantly updated photo gallery of Israeli casualties with the phrase Whos Next? written in Hebrew at the end.[viii] We arent doing this to show off, said one Hizbullah official We want to get into every [Israelis] mind and affect Israeli public opinion.[ix]
When the occupation finally ended in 2000 as Israel and its Lebanese allies retreated back behind the Blue Line in humiliating and chaotic fashion, one UN official was moved to remark that 75% of Hizbullahs war against Israel was those videotapes.[x]
America in Iraq and Afghanistan
When the U.S. Army and Marine Corps were writing the new counter-insurgency manual currently in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, the authors of the manual borrowed as an example of proper counter-insurgency operations the operational design used by the 1st Marine Division under the command of then-Major General James Mattis in 2004. The motto of the 1st Marine Division under Mattis, one of the most respected counter-insurgency practitioners in the U.S. military, borrowed heavily from the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm.
Maj. Gen. Mattis sketched out the goals of the 1st Marine Division: to promote effective local governance; promote economic development; provide essential services; and develop Iraqi security forces. All of this would undermine the insurgency, Mattis believed, and all of this was to be made possible by Marine combat operations. In turn, everything done by Mattiss Marines the entire strategy of the 1st Marine Division rested upon effective information operations.[xi]
Information operations is defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as the integrated employment of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.[xii]
If that definition sounds confusing, that is because information operations is a field of military study around which the U.S. military is still trying to wrap its head. It has become clear to the U.S. military, though, is that perception matters as much as reality in contemporary combat. The approach to warfare adopted by the 1st Marine Division in 2004 and its subsequent inclusion in American counter-insurgency doctrine represents a mini-revolution in the way of war for Western militaries. The way military operations were perceived by the enemy and by the neutral population was now viewed as being as important the material results of the operations themselves.
It should surprise no one that insurgent groups tend to learn from the experiences of other insurgent groups. Political scientist Robert Pape argues that tactics such as suicide bombing are adopted from Hizbullah by groups such as the Tamil Tigers and Hamas largely because they are perceived as being successful.[xiii] Insurgency scholars Michael Horowitz and Erin Simpson, meanwhile, argue a functionalist explanation only goes so far to describe the diffusion of tactics among insurgencies.[xiv] Horowitz and Simpson highlight the importance of close ties between groups, noting that suicide bombing is no where to be found in the insurgencies of Latin America yet has flourished as a tactic in the Middle East and South Asia.
You cannot, in short, simply examine the strategic environment to determine why certain tactics are adopted. As Horowitz writes, Networks of religiously-motivated groups, through the direct diffusion of knowledge from group to group and demonstration effects that influenced non religiously-motivated groups, distributed suicide terrorism around the world.[xv]
Indeed, the spread of suicide bombing as a tactic to both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is an interesting case study, one that highlights both long-standing ties between Hizbullah and Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and also the way in which Hizbullah emerged as a model for successful resistance against Israeli occupation.
In the same way that insurgent groups borrow tactics such as suicide bombing, insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan have learned from the way in which Hizbullah used psychological warfare to great effect against the IDF and have applied such tactics to their resistance struggles against the American-led occupying armies. In Iraq and Afghanistan, however, there are two key differences between Hizbullahs media and propaganda strategy against the IDF and that of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
First, the enemys propaganda has not been aimed to any great extent at undermining the support for the Iraq War in the United States or in allied nations. And second, whereas Hizbullah used traditional media a television station, primarily, but also radio stations and newspapers for its psychological operations, the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have more often made use of the new media.[xvi] For Hizbullah, broadcasting a video of attacks against Israelis meant putting the video on television. But who needs al-Manar or television in general when you have the internet and YouTube?
The most effective insurgent propaganda in Iraq has made use of the internet and slick sites such as BaghdadSniper.com. On BaghdadSniper, the internet viewer who could be anywhere from Iraq to London to Indonesia is greeted with the option of viewing the site in one of six languages: English, Arabic, Urdu, Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese, or German. (But not Persian as the site is affiliated with the Sunni resistance groups.) Viewers can then watch videos of (alleged) attacks on U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq by the anonymous Baghdad Sniper.[xvii]
As interesting as the videos are, however, the claims made by the site are just as interesting. The site makes three main contentions: One, in harsher conditions than those in which the American soldiers and Marines operate, insurgents out-perform the American soldiers. Two, unlike the Americans, they are moral never targeting innocent women or children, whereas the Americans often kill innocent civilians. And three, they, the resistance, have the technical and tactical know-how and skill to challenge the mighty American army on the field of battle. This boast is particularly telling:
Our snipers are superior to those in the U.S. army. Our men have only minutes to stop, scope, shoot and retreat while American snipers always shoot from a safe place under American control. us snipers hit easy targets. You hardly ever hear that they killed a fighter. [emphasis added] Our men only ever hit armed enemies.
It is not in the character of a U.S. Marine Corps sniper commonly regarded as among the worlds most skilful to brag about their confirmed kills. But that is exactly what the Baghdad Sniper does because he understands the claim to have killed an American and, better, a video showing the act is more important than the act itself.
A key difference between the kind of insurgent propaganda broadcast by Hizbullah in the 1990s and the kind broadcast by the insurgents of Iraq is that whereas the propaganda broadcast by Hizbullah was often aimed at its enemy, Israel, the propaganda broadcast by the insurgents of Iraq is neither aimed at the Americans nor, for the most part, Iraqis. As evidenced by the languages in which BaghdadSniper is available, much of this propaganda is aimed at inflaming young Muslims spread from Lahore to London. Its having an effect, too. A recent study by al-Qaeda expert Jason Burke demonstrated that insurgent propaganda videos on the internet had played a significant role in the radicalization process of young British Muslims convicted of planning or carrying out attacks on civilian targets in the UK.[xviii]
Audrey Kurth Cronin describes the process by which young Muslims are radicalized via insurgent propaganda on the internet, a kind of cyber-mobilization revolutionizing warfare to the degree that Napoleons levée en masse revolutionized continental warfare at the end of the 18th Century.[xix] When the armies of Napoleon marched across Europe, Frances enemies were caught off-guard by the size of the armies and the way in which they were quickly raised from the whole of the population. In the same way, the militaries and security services of traditional nation-states in the West and Middle East could be surprised by the way in which jihadist armies are raised and deployed, drawn as they are from the disaffected children of the Egyptian middle class and the residents of the slums of Paris and London both. For both, the insurgent propaganda functions as a kind of empowering call to arms. British journalist Amil Khan, who has worked extensively with radicalized youths in the UK, says the following:
These videos give you an alternative narrative. Instead of feeling like your community is powerless or weak, they give you the sense that your people can be strong and even stronger than the worlds leading powers. Its a seductive alternative to the self-image many Muslims, you and old, have that their community, the umma, couldnt organize a picnic much less challenge the worlds only superpower.
#1
There is no excuse in the information age, to have given the information battlefield to the enemy.
I'm not sure I blame the military though. It seems to me that the CIA and others should have been working this sort of thing and I see little evidence they even tried.
#2
Actually, the Jihadists insisted on conducting illegal warfare: bombing of uninvolved civilians and mosques, collective punishment, and refusal to wear distintive insignia. Kinda hard to wage conventional war against cowards who hide behind women and children when they are not killing them...
#3
The US, as currently organized, cannot win the propaganda war. If the information coming from the US DoD is not 100% accurate, even in the fog of battle, there is no end to news and governmental organizations eager to rake the Americans over the coals for the next 30 news cycles. The other side, whether jihadis or communists don't operate under the same constraints. Many in the journalistic trade are more than eager to carry their water and those who are not are killed and the rest cowed.
So don't expect the win the propaganda war. Give out accurate info, pay attention to the attitudes of those who pay the bills, make sure the trends are going our way and our color fills the theater map, and stack up the enemy bodies. We can't change the hearts of those who wish us dead. We can kill them and take their goodies.
Posted by: ed ||
05/20/2008 16:50 Comments ||
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#4
You dont' make it look like it came from the DoD. You create an organization called Crimson Jihad and you have them say the things you want. Have them take credit for bombings and for the catering arrangements at Bin Laden's Bar mitzva complete with photos of Bin Laden enjoying his Bacon and wine. Whatever it takes.
Have a CIA fellow become an Iraqi stringer working for the AP. Have him slip in bits of info that might slowly erode the Jihadi case to fellow Muslims. Then Zarkawi did this while the others prayed. When asked about it Zarkawi suggested that the Holy Warriors worry less about his actions and more about preparing for Martyrdom.
Have another CIA fellow spread rumors of Iranian connections to this and that. Or Mossad's capturing weapons in transit from Iran and soiling them with pig greese and setting them to explode prematurely. Of North Koreans urinating on Sunni graves and/or Korans.
Whatever it takes. We're fighting a culture that traffics in rumors worse than the National Enquirer and we're not feeding that rumormill to create dessention and distrust in our enemies we're failing.
#5
How about releasing a plan to attack the Oscars because of Hollywood propagating their whores and gays all over the world (Jihadi words, not mine). Lots of high priced targets. Might get some of the folks in Hollywood to reconsider who exactly their are supporting in their Bush hatred.
Many readers have complained that Michael Moore, in the conduct of his latest crusade against whatever he is against this month, has illegally used one of my photos on the banner of his website. Mr. Moore is not the first to have done so, and my readers can get pretty upset when it happens.
My lawyer has demanded that Mr. Moore take it down.
I usually freely grant use of my work to truthful, peaceful, non-commercial, non-political outlets. For instance, a church group wanted to use one of my photos for their congregation. I was honored and gave it to them freely. On another occasion, a peaceful, non-profit Islamic organization wanted to use the same photo that Michael Moore has infringed upon (Major Mark Bieger cradling a little girl named Farah), and I was honored to contribute to their peaceful cause. Ive seen grandmothers use my work in technically illegal ways, but since theyre not a big company, they probably have no idea about copyright, and usually use the work in tasteful, appropriate ways, I just smile and say Go ahead, Maam.
But frequently, big companies and individuals who are knowledgeable of copyright laws filch my work and use it in ways that many readers consider partisan, highly political or incendiary. When this happens, I usually go after the infringer, and so do my readers.
Now heres Michael Moore, the latest infringer, using my work for his own crude political purposes. I recall some years ago watching one of his movies in Paris, and thinking how sad it was that an American would make propaganda so flagrant that it seemed pornographic. It was sad but at the same time uplifting, because Mr. Moore was able to exercise his right to free speech, rights that should never be infringed upon.
Mr. Moore is influential, rich, and could likely intimidate most photographers. But I ask my readers to please leave him be. Attacking him likely will be counterproductive. I know how to fight, and though I would fight for Mr. Moores right to free expression, I will fight against him if he steals my work and uses it in an inflammatory fashion.
Its got nothing to do with the fact that Michael Moore is anti-war (hes not just against the Iraq War, but he was also against the war in Afghanistan). I respect Moores opposition to the Iraq War; I might even agree with him on some particulars. But I object to the tone of many of his arguments, especially the manner in which he uses my work to further his causes. As I said above, sometimes it seems pornographic. Thats a strong word, so Ill explain.
Justice Potter Stewart once defined pornography by saying, I know it when I see it. Pornography and propaganda are closely related, as they are both cynical attempts at manipulation, rooted in a lack of respect for humanity. War Porn is one of the more disturbing developments in the new media, as people on both sides of the Iraq War get their kicks watching video images of death and destruction as long as its their opponents who get killed. Whether its an Al Qaeda cell-phone video of an IED attack or the grisly footage of a Coalition air strike, War Porn is degrading and incendiary. Of course, some footage is newsworthy and informative and the public deserves to see it. There is also great value to soldiers in watching footage for training purposes and to better understand battlefields and weapons. But at some point, especially when the material is used to make political points, images of combat can cross the line into pornography. People die in war, but we must never forget that each casualty is a human being, even people as deserving of death as Al Qaeda. Denying our opponents humanity, we lose a little of our own.
When someones grandmother disseminates the photo of Major Beiger cradling a dying girl in his arms, I allow the usage because I feel she is trying to share the human tragedy. When Michael Moore puts that same photo on his web site, alongside images of George Bush, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, the clear implication is that Farahs death is their fault. That is a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground, as well as the story of the photo. Farah was killed by a suicide car bomb in Mosul on May 2, 2005. Major Bieger and other soldiers literally risked their own lives to save many children and adults that day, but Farah didnt make it. Michael Moore apparently does not understand or refuses to acknowledge the moral distinction between a man who would murder innocent people, and a man who would sacrifice himself to save them. The photo, as I took it, is the truth, but Moore uses it illegally to convey falsehoods. His mind is that of a political propagandist who sees Farahs death not as a human tragedy, but a tool.
A photograph can be a signal event in a war. Think of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing her napalmed village, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. These photos were not just important journalistically, but also strategically each one literally shifted the course of a war. Photographs can be immensely powerful because they are single images, deep with meaning, able to resonate with disparate audiences, straight through language barriers, at an emotional, even visceral, level. A picture can tell a thousand words in a thousand languages, but placed in the wrong context, a photograph can be turned into propaganda, and the truth becomes a lie.
We need to know the truth about the wars we are currently fighting. Thats why I went to Iraq in the first place. Sometimes the difference between War Porn and the truth can be subtle, ambiguous, even subjective. But I know it when I see it. And if Michael Moore learned to respect not just my work, but other aspects of the truth, not to mention respecting his audiences intelligence, he would better serve his own cause.
#3
Michael Moore apparently does not understand or refuses to acknowledge the moral distinction between a man who would murder innocent people, and a man who would sacrifice himself to save them. The photo, as I took it, is the truth, but Moore uses it illegally to convey falsehoods. His mind is that of a political propagandist who sees Farahs death not as a human tragedy, but a tool.
The mindset of Moore is the mindset of the left. Their attitude is damn the facts so long as I can push my perverted agenda. This is the attitude also of many of the Hollywood left and the MSM elites. They are part of the "hate America" crowd.
#5
Amen, Remoteman. The only thing better would be for Yon to sue Mikey for $50 million more than his net worth - and win.
Sweet dreams!
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/20/2008 21:50 Comments ||
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#6
you can still get Yon's book in hardback - yeah, I'm pimping it hard. Why? Because it sticks a fat finger in the eye of the MSM assholes who stayed in the green zone, made erroneous assumptions based on reports from agenda-driven stringers (who were prolly AQ-members)
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/20/2008 22:58 Comments ||
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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.
What was missing from Friedman's piece... and amazingly and glaringly so... was the subject of many emails I have received from Jews and Jewish organizations - Jeremiah Wright. Although the fuddy-duddy Friedman titles his op-ed "Obama and the Jews" there is not one word about the Democratic candidate spending twenty years in the pew of and taking the title of his book from an anti-Semitic admirer (even idolater) of the racist Louis Farrakhan. There is nothing more abhorrent to me as a human and as a Jew than racism. Evidently, it doesn't mean much to Friedman. Or not enough. Now almost habitually disingenuous, the New York Times columnist tries to pretend the real (and justifiable) reason many Jews will not vote for Obama isn't there. Shame on him.
* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who'd turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play. 
The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months. 
May, 2008. To those who watched the American-led war on Iraq unfold in the spring of 2003, the fighting in most cases seemed distant and confused. No matter which television station one watched or which internet site one monitored, it was very difficult to gain a clear understanding of the events taking place during the American march to Baghdad. Reporters and bloggers could only offer their own limited perspective of the events, and watching and listening to multiple sources (which often contradicted one another) made for a cacophony of noise from which it was very difficult to gain a clear understanding of the situation in Iraq and within the collation military efforts. 
