About Face: Soldiers Balk On Iraq
Last week, I posted a preview of my article on rising and
organized dissent over the war in Iraq among active duty members of the U.S. military.
The complete and full-length piece is now published in the January 8, 2007 edition of The Nation and is available online by clicking here. It took many, many weeks of reporting to put this piece together, so please take a few moments, print it out, and read it when you have the time.
Investigating this story was an extraordinary experience for me as it brought me into direct contact with many wonderful young men and women currently in uniform. My perception is that folks on both the Right and Left have some pretty flawed misconceptions as to who serves in the armed forces. They are neither mindless gun-jocks nor pitiable victims of economic circumstance. The soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and reserves that I spoke to — both officers and grunts– were extremely thoughtful, complex, nuanced, and compassionate individuals who wanted to make a difference, for the good, in this world. It was an honor to meet them.
I also penned a sidebar on Lt. Ehren Watada, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to resist deployment to Iraq. He faces a court martial in early February.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Once upon a time, in the bad old days of the draft, the experience of life in the military – particularly the Army – was widespread. I think James Fallows once noted that 2/3 of Congress had served. Now it is less than one in three. So I am not surprised that you found the members of the armed forces to differ from their stereotypes left and right.
There is one factor though that worries me and that is the isolation from the rest of the country. Great article in the NYT about the effect of Iraq deployments on the troopers kids as seen in a Ft Bragg kindergarden class. For most of us the war is an abstraction or something we read about. At Fayetteville it is real. That’s why I find Sen. – elect Webb so refreshing. And since he has a son serving there it is no abstraction to him. See how Bush stumbled when asked why the twins weren’t serving.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:26 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,943 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following Americans yesterday:
MINTZLAFF, Brian L., 34, Staff Sgt., Army; Fort Worth; First Cavalry Division.
PICKARD, Joshua D., 20, Cpl., Marines; Merced, Calif.; Second Marine Division.
December 21st, 2006 at 5:24 am
There is a very interesting legal maze here.
The right of these soldiers to appeal for redress is formally justified at
http://www.appealfor.redress.org
as falling under the Military Whistleblower’s Act. Actually, there doesn’t seem to be any particular piece of legislation with that name. There are various DoD Directives, but these aren’t actually law, just regulation. (The last one of any relevance I’ve found was signed by Paul Wolfowitz.)
The relevant portion of legislation is here, under Title 10 – Armed Forces:
http://tinyurl.com/vprls
“(a) Restricting Communications With Members of Congress and Inspector General Prohibited.—
(1) No person may restrict a member of the armed forces in communicating with a Member of Congress or an Inspector General.”
Well, that’s good. But ….
“(2) Paragraph (1) does not apply to a communication that is unlawful.”
OK, so what is expressly legal for a servicemember to communicate to an Inspector General or Congress (or to anyone else, for that matter)? Under various DoD Directives, there are numerous restrictions on political speech, most having to do with partisan activity. For example, one thing prohibited under directive is “E3.3.3. Participate in partisan political management, campaigns, or conventions
(except as a spectator when not in uniform), or make public speeches in the course
thereof.” (DOD Directive 1344.10) Presumably these prohibitions are supportable in law, at least potentially. Further on, we find –
“(c) Inspector General Investigation of Allegations of Prohibited Personnel Actions.—
….
(2) A communication described in this paragraph is a communication in which a member of the armed forces complains of, or discloses information that the member reasonably believes constitutes evidence of, any of the following:
(A) A violation of law or regulation, including a law or regulation prohibiting sexual harassment or unlawful discrimination.
(B) Gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.”
Now, as I read the Appeal for Redress, at best it’s *implying* a gross waste of funds (since they feel the war is a waste), possibly implying gross mismanagement (how else could it continue?), but nothing specific on “abuse of authority” etc. But’s not actually pointing any fingers, and not really blowing any whistles.
In the last DoD Directive I can find on the subject of allowed and prohibited political activities, it appears that the Appeal for Redress is allowed. But wait — what about “E3.6.2. Avoid any outside activities that may be prejudicial to the performance of
military duties or are likely to bring discredit upon the Armed Forces.”?
Well, “prejudicial”. That would seem open to interpretation, wouldn’t it? “Discredit upon the Armed Forces” might likewise be in the eye of the beholder.
I’m betting that policy has been framed with a view toward servicemembers (most of them, anyway) being cheap propaganda outlets for whatever cause the military has been committed to. Let the kids say what they want, may be their thinking. They are *our* kids, aren’t they?
And the Appeal for Redress, so long as it remains a small minority phenomenon, is also good PR. The Military can say, “Well, they have a right to say what they want” (as long as we let them, which goes unstated), “and what better proof than this petition? That said, the vast majority of soldiers are, of course, in favor of this mission.” At this point, a crackdown — even if it were legal — would be bad PR, and bad for recruiting.
It’ll be interesting to see how the story develops from here, especially if dissent within the ranks becomes widespread. What concerns me most is a backlash against it within the military — the de jure protections for dissenting soldiers may not be what they seem, and the de facto protections may not be worth much at all. When we have a new DOD Directive “clarifying” what they mean by “prejudicial”, the fur could really start to fly.
Of course, if you’ve read my previous comments on this issue, I think we’d all be better served with an entirely different policy: “Politics? Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
December 21st, 2006 at 5:59 am
“They are neither mindless gun-jocks nor pitiable victims of economic circumstance. The soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and reserves that I spoke to — both officers and grunts– were extremely thoughtful, complex, nuanced, and compassionate individuals who wanted to make a difference, for the good, in this world.”
That may not the most condescending two sentences Marc has ever written, but it’s gotta be in the Top 10!
Give us a break, Marc, you only raise suspicions about your own prejudices and judgment with remarks like that.
December 21st, 2006 at 8:00 am
I disagree. With some caveats, I think these articles – bringing hte most important dissent in the country to a wide audience – are incredibly important. UFPJ should give these folks stage time at any future rallies.
December 21st, 2006 at 8:32 am
Look, we live in a democracy and all that, but when it comes to decision-making in a critical time of war, there’s only one man who’s opinion ultimately matters.
Apparently his name’s Fred Kagan…
December 21st, 2006 at 9:04 am
Gee, I’m afraid you have applied the wrong appellation to the good Lieutenant. “Resister” should be changed to “Deserter.” How can it be possible for a soldier in an all volunteer army to resist, as it were, himself? Also, a few more facts would be helpful in understanding this story. If you would permit a couple of questions: Officers in the Army are commissioned in a branch, for example, Lt. of Infantry, Lt. of Artillery, and Lt. of Finance. What branch was honored by this gentleman’s service? And is/was this “gentleman” a First or Second Lieutenant?
December 21st, 2006 at 9:46 am
Did you talk to Philip Carter?
December 21st, 2006 at 9:51 am
Sorry FB, but the posturing pedantry doesn’t make up for the stupid…
On the other hand, it could be your lucky day – Victor Davis Hanson might have a new column up.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:09 am
No, but Jonah Goldberg does.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:14 am
FB has a point though. LT Watada is disobeying what the Army considers a lawful order. I honor that but he has to be prerpared for the consequences. Just as those who went to jail for resisting the Draft in the sixties. Just as Thoreau did when he refused to pay the Poll Tax because he opposed the Mexican War. Remember Emerson asked him what he was doing in there and Hank replied by Asking Ralph what WAS HE doing Out there!
December 21st, 2006 at 10:19 am
“I honor that but he has to be prerpared for the consequences.”
True. And we have to decide whether we support or oppose soldiers who put their consciences first in the case of a war that most of us know is wrong. I support them, what about you?
December 21st, 2006 at 11:36 am
How would you support him MB? Is there a Legal Defense Fund?
December 21st, 2006 at 12:19 pm
This isn’t desertion but disobeying a lawful order by reason of conscience, i.e. a public act of resistance. So if FB has a point beyond raw tendentiousness, I’m not clear on it. Given his prediliction for laborious details, the reference (actually non-trivial, in contrast to FB’s little nits) is Article 92 of the UCMJ, not Article 85. This is pretty clear cut.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:21 pm
A defense fund and more:
http://www.thankyoult.org/
December 21st, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Just made a donation, you next rlo.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Actually, I’m wrong about the specific charges lodged against Watada – for whatever reason they’ve got a grab-bag of various charges – missing a movement, disrespect and conduct unbecoming – each of which falls well far short of desertion and seem as much directed against his public anti-war actions as his refusal to deploy.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:23 pm
“My perception is that folks on both the Right and Left have some pretty flawed misconceptions as to who serves in the armed forces. They are neither mindless gun-jocks nor pitiable victims of economic circumstance. ”
That is the classic American middle of the road approach. Where Marc has the place to mock the left is questionable given his earlier support for increasing troop levels in Iraq as a means of bringing ‘stability’ to the illegally occupied territory. Now that he has finally come around to realizing that calling for more troops to go to Iraq is not a means to bring democracy to an illegally occupied territory.
Of course, I’d love to hear the names of these ‘leftists’ who have stereotypes of the soldiers. Of course there are some out there, but as always, the urge to play the moderate man in LA can’t be resisted. Generalizations really advance the debate.
On the positive side, it is refreshing to see Cooper putting his real and enviable writing talents to work for something other than attacking the left, especially when the left was on target about the lunacy of calling for more troops even at the early stages of the illegal US invasion and occupation.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:52 pm
John Gibson Distorts News Blurb Into Vietnam Style Anti War Action
Reported by Deborah – December 8, 2006 – 46 comments
John Gibson, flushed with patriotism, claimed a woman protesting the Iraq War spit in a soldier’s face in Syracuse, New York. Gibson cited a Syracuse Post Standard story which made no mention of the accused spitter having political motives. Looking a bit deeper, a conservative blog posted that the woman in question had been arrested previously for the kind of behavior that would indicate mental instability causing impulsive aggression like spitting.
The Jawa Report also cited the vague news blurb and like Gibson blamed the left with this nasty comment.
“Someone tell me again about how the Left supports the troops, but not their mission.”
They also linked to a police report stating that the accused woman had been arrested earlier this year for endangering a child. Her companions were arrested for weapons violations, harrassment and menacing behavior. There was no mention in the police blotter of anti war involvement or political affiliation. However this didn’t stop Jawa Report from distorting the incident to suit their needs. They also posted the accused woman’s full name and address in case any of their friends wanted to pay her a visit.
Gibson chose to run with the assumption that the woman spit at the soldier for poltical reasons and not because she was volatile and unstable.
“So it is Vietnam all over again, now that the Democrats have won. Now we have anti-war protesters living again the darkest days of the Vietnam War, when American soldiers got off the plane and anti-war types spit on them.”
Then Gibson took the vague blurb and turned it into a growing movement about to engulf the country and dishonor our troops.
“But here we go again. That grotesque sense of self-righteousness has evidently overtaken the anti-war types again, and it is to the great shame of the anti-Iraq war movement that this is happening again.”
comment: John Gibson’s ploy to discredit Democrats shows a total lack of regard for our troops. Promoting this distortion can only make our soldiers feel under appreciated and that’s unforgivable. This spitting woman sounds like one unstable and erratic person who behaved badly. She does not represent any political party and is no omen of things to come. John Gibson is the one who owes our troops an apology.
December 21st, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Hey, Steve! See if you’ve heard this one:
Did you know there was a fourth Alou brother?
He had to change his last name to Powell because…
December 21st, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Lt. Ehren Watada’s case is a lot more interesting, and potentially a lot more significant, than this Appeal for Redress petition, if you ask me.
A speech of his, here:
http://thankyoult.live.radicaldesigns.org/content/view/172/
“The Nuremburg Trials showed America and the world that citizenry as well as soldiers have the unrelinquishable obligation to refuse complicity in war crimes perpetrated by their government. Widespread torture and inhumane treatment of detainees is a war crime. A war of aggression born through an unofficial policy of prevention is a crime against the peace. An occupation violating the very essence of international humanitarian law and sovereignty is a crime against humanity. These crimes are funded by our tax dollars. Should citizens choose to remain silent through self-imposed ignorance or choice, it makes them as culpable as the soldier in these crimes.”
Look at what he’s saying: the War in Iraq is illegal, and that’s why he chooses not to go — he’s not going to be a party to subverting the Constitution, even passively. (He has said he’d accept deployment to Afghanistan, which he feels is a legitimate war, and Afghanistan is no Club Med vacation these days.)
He’s not just an echo of recent opinion (“the war is a waste, let’s go home”) crouching within the narrowing confines of legally (?) protected speech for servicemembers. He’s committing flagrant civil disobedience and he knows it. He’s indicting the White House for lying, and Congress for passivity, and he knows it.
I don’t see the “nonconfrontational” aspect of Appeal for Redress as any particular virtue. Ehren Watada is confronting some real issues, and confronting some real powers, and taking a very serious serious risk. He’s a long way from “deserter”, but unfortunately only inches away from “martyr”. After all, if he wanted only to wimp out, he could have done a Conscientious Objector act. But no, he has said he’d fight in Afghanistan.
Lt. Watada’s Wikipedia entry makes for fascinating reading, and has some excellent references.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada
He’s looking at over 8 years, with 6 of them just for the things he’s said. I’d like to see what the military would do if somebody got up there with Watada on the podium and said the same (presumably actionable) things, but *accepted* deployment to Iraq because he or she felt that stabilizing Iraq was still a worthy goal, a moral (not a legal) obligation to Iraqis for the crimes committed against them — i.e., that going to fight there was itself a form of civil disobedience. THEN, maybe, we could finally debate the Iraq question in the only coherent terms possible for such an incoherent situation.
December 21st, 2006 at 11:34 pm
The Department of Defense has identified 2,944 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American Wednesday:
DAUL, Andrew P., 21, Specialist, Army; Brighton, Mich.; First Armored Division.
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:47 am
Good comments on Watada – I think the issue of the legality of soldiers speaking out borders on irrelevance. Surely under any normal circumstance uiformed soldiers shouldn’t be organizing political opposition to the President (beyond private political participation – reservists surely have a lot of leeway to engaging in politics out of uniform). But the entire point of what’s happening now is that this is a moral and political crisis. Frankly, the more this is seen as a clash of conscience against the military’s routines, the more powerful it becomes. In the view of some, as MT suggests, it may even be a moral crisis requiring some kind of continued committment of troops to the Iraqis – despite the fact that the “leadership” deserves to be strung up for choosing this strategy and allowing a full-scale disaster to develop out of pure, willful ignorance and considerable perfidy. Somebody deserves to be prosecuted for overseeing this calamity and it ain’t Watada. Incidentally, hand-selecting a group of troops as propaganda pawns to push an escalation agenda, which is what this administration is doing with the Gates publicity tour, is just as much a violation of military neutrality as anything the opponents have done.
(When some random ideologue-without-portfolio named Fred has taken charge of defining the mission because he’s one of the few screedmeisters available who’s as nuts as the “Commander in Chief” is foolish and stubborn – and the Prez has completely lost even the last vestiges of coherence in discussing his command, we gotta be screwed 12 ways to next Tuesday.)
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:27 am
Incidentally, this is totally OffTopic, but the Hate America Right has, following the lead of Dinesh D’Souza, taken further concrete steps to align themselves with ” Islamofascism” and Sharia Law. The “Anglican Communion” breakaway faction recently made news when a bunch of Episcopalian churches in Virgina joined up – this is a big deal for the “Religious” Right in their fight against homosexual rights, women as priests, etc.
This group is now officially under the leadership of an African Bishop, Peter Akinola, who publicly endorsed legislation in his home country of Nigeria that essentially strips gays of any civil rights – even public associatioin – which was put forward by the crackpot Islamists who dominate much of Nigerian politics. Apparently the Nigerian north is completely under Sharia Law and Akinola has been helping them out in the spread of this garbage to all of Nigeria.
Presumably Michelle Malkin will devote a few blasts of her Hot Air to the Outrageous antics of “Hate America” rightwingers signing on as allies to “Islamofascist” Sharia Law in order to, you know, protect the children.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:14 am
Good comments from Turner and reg. I thought that Turner was going all fuzzy and legalistic on us in his first post, but his second makes excellent points.
Please do donate to the Watada fund at the link I gave, let’s at least put our money where our convictions are even if there is no draft.
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:02 am
Reg writes: “In the view of some, as MT suggests, it may even be a moral crisis requiring some kind of continued committment of troops to the Iraqis – despite the fact that the “leadership†deserves to be strung up for choosing this strategy and allowing a full-scale disaster to develop out of pure, willful ignorance and considerable perfidy.”
It is admittedly bizarre that we would continue fighting as part of something like “paying war reparations to Iraq.” But to say the whole thing was a mistake, even a crime (which I believe it was) and use that as the main reason for walking away might be disastrously irresponsible on almost any level you can think of, from the purely moral to the amoral, national-interest, “foreign policy realist” practical. It’s rather as if you took out the top gang in a city through extra-legal means, then walked away from the gang warfare ignited in the resulting power vacuum, leaving innocent people in the crossfire. Those poor people couldn’t care less that we put the original perpetrators of the chaos on trial if all we’ve done is leave them worse off than before. Iraqis were in the frying pan with Saddam. We dumped them into the fire.
Lt. Watada may be right that he has a constitutional and a military duty to refuse deployment to Iraq because the war is illegal. I hope he wins his legal fight. But the best response might be to do whatever it takes to put further American involvement on a *legal* footing — remove the current administration and put it on trial, but also define any further involvement in Iraq in terms that make it legal. How? I don’t know. I wish I did. I also wish I knew whether continuing is even the right thing to do. I’m pretty torn about it, and find the arguments that we can’t do anything except make things worse very convincing at times. If there is some course of action that could be effective, I don’t think it will be militarily possible until the political questions in our own country are settled by indicting the President and complicit elements of his coterie for their crimes. Americans have to be very clear that this was a mistake (which they tend to believe, now, increasingly), but moreover, NOT an honest mistake, but a conscious manipulation to gain the consent of the governed through a twisting and even outright fabrication of facts. And they have to be clear that they can’t just take it lying down. I think we’ve got a long way to go to get there, if we ever do. Years, probably. By which time, the Middle East may have even more frying pan, and even more fire.
Some are saying this is a worse foreign policy quandary than Vietnam. That’s easy to scoff at, when our casualties so far are hardly 1/15th what they were in Vietnam. But I’m starting to think they are right.
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:41 am
great piece marc!
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:03 am
Reg, no wonder Wannanotbe is deserting (missing a movement), turns out he is a Frst. Lt of Infantry. Fellow could get hurt in Iraq with that MOS (1542). By the way thanks for living up to Lib stereotype when you called me “mad” instead of sticking to the issue. The issue: The only excuse anyone has to wear an army uniform voluntarily, especially in a time of war, is to obey lawful orders. See you, Wannanotbe. You’ll love Levenworth.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:10 am
Oops. Leavenworth.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:20 am
Fred – why don’t you suit up and replace him…
In all seriousness, your attitude is morally backwards…”orders” is the excuse that was given by Nazis. Your willinness to make light of this situation is disgusting.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:42 am
Fred demonstrates that it is possible to be both mad and wrong at the same time. Just like our catatonic president.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:46 am
Freddy, pal, since Watada has volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, you need to stuff the stereotypical cowardly Malkinesque war-blogger sarcasm…unless of course you’re dodging Taliban bullets.
My point wasn’t that you’re “mad” – but that you’re a moron who reduces serious issues involving a man’s moral and – in Watada’s case, given his desisre to fight in Afghanistan – physical courage to petty semantical bullshit and taunts. You don’t have to agree with Watada to respect him. Which, of course, isn’t the case with the dead-enders and war-bloggers who’s only strategy is to insult him. So put a sock in it…
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:54 am
You know, the good news about people like Fred, and people like Woody too, is that as events unfold they become increasingly irrelevant as they get further from the reality of what is really happening. That leaves more elbow room for those of us fighting for social justice in this world.
Those are my holiday thoughts.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:59 am
jc, don’t pull that Nazi crap on me, your honor. I said LAWFUL orders. As for suiting up, how do you think I know what Wannanotbe’s MOS is. Call me wrong, Miball, but calling me mad is just bad manners. You have as few manners as Reg. Something to be proud of in Moonbat land I suppose. Again the issue is: he volunteers to join the Army, he works to become an officer, and makes it. He trains to destroy the enemy and lead others to do the same. On payday, he takes the money, everyday he takes the salutes (not to him, thank God, but to his badge of rank, which he disgraced). Now comes time to really be a soldier. Oh no thanks. That would be illegal and immoral. Hellooow. I won’t go. Come on guys. Can you give me one reason why his orders to ship were illegal under U.S. law?
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:06 am
Reg, I ain’t you pal, my friend. It is very generous for him to offer serve in Afghanistan. But what CO would want him? Wearing a uniform means I go where I’m legally told and do what I’m legally told to do. This isn’t a shades of gray issue, sir.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:08 am
I just reread what I wrote. I’m afraid it gives the impression I am now serving in the armed forces. This is NOT correct.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:29 am
MT – Vietnam was a terrible disaster, with enormous fallout in human suffering even after we left – and no one on “the left” should understate what happened there or what will likely happen in Iraq if we simply leave – but the truth is that Southeast Asia didn’t matter much for our tangible national interests while the Middle East is central (given that alternative energy advocates have been pretty much been trampled by SUVs for a couple of decades after an initial burst of influence during the early OPEC years.) This is a far worse situation than Vietnam and our ability to do influence or act strategically in the region as regards our own interests have been damaged immeasurably by the worst foreign policy team in American history. Which is why once the war was a fait accompli I was “for more troops before I was against it.” If more troops were going to turn the situation it was – possibly – precisely at the moment the security situation went to shit (or, as the Greatest Secretary of Defense Ever put it, to “stuff”). That would be, you know, about the time the warbloggers were engaged in Victory Laps and jeering against anyone who suggested that we were likely in for something we hadn’t either planned or bargained for and that the whole thing had been ill-concieved. That was when “Saddam was a tyrant, Goody for us!” , “We Won This Sucker In Weeks!!!” and then “The WMDs didn’t matter, we’re liberating the Middle East” were considered the be-all-and-end-all of serious discourse on our war in Iraq and critics of the policy were jeered at as crackpots or worse. Since then it’s been a steady downhill slide (apparent to any sane person and persistently denied by the usual grotesque suspects and BushLove crybabies).
Going in now with more troops, essentially to take on Sadr, is an absurd proposition – with all due and manly respect to Fred “Surge” Kagan and Bill “Last Shot” Kristol. It’s the military equivalent of Bill O’Reilly finally showing up in Iraq after three-and-a-half years to bolster troop moral and gain some legitimacy when he drops his pants on his show – I mean, when he opens his mouth. If I thought more troops could truly make the difference between a bloody civil war or not, I’d be for them. I’m also not for total withdrawal from the country formerly known as Iraq but for redeploying with special forces and high-tech and air strike capabilities in Kurdistan, where they’d be happy to have U.S. forces based.
I assume this administration is incapable of rational strategic action or even a glimmer of honesty, but I know that somebody smarter about military strategy than myself should try to figure out how to make the hard men pay a price when they run amok. Although I’m not convinced it’s possible. Maybe Wesley Clarke has some ideas but again, nobody should kid themselves that trying to control a civil war via airpower doesn’t exact terrible costs on the folks caught in between.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
“I’m afraid it gives the impression I am now serving in the armed forces. This is NOT correct.”
Don’t worry, pal (and FYI, I use the term solely in the contemptuous spirit common to British barrooms) none of us were under THAT impression…
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:46 am
Thanks, Reg, I’ve been waiting patiently for it. I knew it would be a Lib-long one. You did not disappoint. The Litany of charges, accusations, distortions, and insults of the Left within which the issue under discussion does not appear. But, I did enjoy the discussion and appreciate your efforts to educate me. I believe in your sincerity. Goodbye, First Lieutenant Wannanotbe, you’re gonna love Leavenworth.
December 22nd, 2006 at 10:50 am
I don’t want to stir up trouble now that we’re all being so friendly, but am I the only one who finds making fun of Watada’s name offensive? There is a certain kind of person who would do that sort of thing, looks like Fred might be one of them.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:47 am
The orders given in the context of the Iraq war were ALL illegal, considering the illegality of the war, so the point is moot. As I say, suit up and replace these folks…put up or shut up.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:51 am
I think Fred may be under the impression that Mr. Watada’s conscience is putting him in more danger. His fear is causing him to react in a sad way, striking out at “libs” and generally smirking at the idea that a man with a conscience – with whom he may disagree but that isn’t the point – may be imprisoned.
I thought conservatives were supposed to be against the coercive power of the state?
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Watanabe was the Japanese general on Iwo Jima. Or played him in the film.
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:35 pm
I think Lt Watada’s chances of winning a “Conscience” argument over disobeying a lawful order are slim and none and, as the late Jim Healy used to say, Slim is packing up to leave town. Frankly he’d have a better chance arguing that the order is not lawful as the invasion of Iraq was a war crime (“Crime Against Peace”) as defined by the Nuremburg Trials and the UN Charter – to which we are a signatory.
Frankly an Infantry MOS calls into question the “Conscience” clause. You may not like Beloit’s language but his reasoning is spot on. A commission in the combat arms implies a willingness to engage in same. So where is the “Conscience”?
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Precisely my point, RLC. I’m surprised that you’d make it though.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
You have to object to being drafted in the first place like my uncle did in WWII, and serve as a CO. That lays it on the line as it’s supposed to be, and also why this is as far from the Greatest Generation as we can get. This whole thing is only good as a Nation piece. No one will even consider what they sign. It’s a legal nonstarter like suing Rumsfeld personally.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Freddy blubbering: “charges, accusations, distortions, and insults of the Left within which the issue under discussion does not appear”
First of all, I answered your tendentious nonsense directly as regards desertion. Second, you’re the one who came in here slinging insults against this man.
So, as a last comment in your direction, quit whining and stuff your pathetic crap.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:00 pm
The democrats will do nothing toward the immediate withdrawal from Iraq. What it takes is hardcore resistance, just like the Viet Nam era – a good concomitant would be the removal of the entire administration, this is not a coup but a restoration to some form of sanity. Along with this needs to be the repeal of all the affront to the Bill of Rights, and the complete dismatling of Homeland Security with the historical extra-constitutional institutions (NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.).
If this does not occur things will only get worse, and the next episode will be the bombing of Iran. Remember this post, just like the ones I made about the Military Commissions Act and other instances – I have not been wrong yet. It would be good to be wrong in this instance. I don’t know why many who post here persist in a fantasy of things changing without massive and unprecedented resistance.
In the long run you are just in a cyclical dance until you come to the realization that this government does not represent you – it only represents monied interest. You have a plutocracy with the face of Imperialism, hell bent on expanding the empire at any cost – because they do not have to pay anything, you and I foot the bill. This will continue until the people decide to shut this merry-go-round down.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:32 pm
rls on Watada: “Frankly he’d have a better chance arguing that the order is not lawful as the invasion of Iraq was a war crime (â€Crime Against Peaceâ€) as defined by the Nuremburg Trials and the UN Charter – to which we are a signatory.”
Actually, if you read the background material, that’s pretty much what he’s doing.
Virgil wrote: “The democrats will do nothing toward the immediate withdrawal from Iraq. What it takes is hardcore resistance, just like the Viet Nam era …”
As someone who had a front-row view of some of that “hardcore resistance”, I’d say getting out of Vietnam had a lot more to do with *general* public disaffection, and *general* public favor of withdrawal. During Vietnam, opinion in favor of withdrawal among GOP voters slightly lagged Dem opinion, occasionally led it, but generally correlated with it. The high casualty rate and the draft in the Vietnam war made it a pressing issue for a great many. At this point, however, most Repubs are still in favor of staying in Iraq, even if a great many of them are disappointed about the conduct of the war. It is truly a divide.
BTW, if anyone wants to make fun of Lt. Watada’s name, you might want to know that the Japanese characters could be roughly translated as “many peaceful ricefields.”
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:19 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,946 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
DYKMAN, Scott D., 27, Specialist, Army; Helena, Mont.; 25th Infantry Division.
VOLKER, Robert J., 21, Specialist, Army; Big Spring, Tex.; First Cavalry Division.
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:13 am
reg writes: “Maybe Wesley Clarke has some ideas but again, nobody should kid themselves that trying to control a civil war via airpower doesn’t exact terrible costs on the folks caught in between.”
No, if it takes anything, it takes boots, not bombs.
Gates, true to his promise, went to Iraq shortly after being sworn in. With the generals still saying that more troops wouldn’t make a difference, the frontline troops Gates met were apparently unanimous that more troops would be better.
Now, this is head-jarring. What gives?
It could all be Kabuki. The generals could be supporting the status quo, Bush’s policy of “don’t ask for anything I’m not going to give you anyway”, since he hasn’t announced any change of mind about troop levels. But at the same time these same generals might have stacked the deck when it comes to Gates meeting with certain carefully selected boots on the ground. Playing such a hand might not have been very difficult. The troops already have a good (self-interested) reason to favor more of themselves, even if they mostly think Iraq is a lost cause. More of themselves means less time in Iraq and more time at home. They are stretched thin and really feel it.
But what if the troops feel that the game IS worth the candle, and that more boots are better for that purpose? And what if there’s something more to that belief than blind allegiance to a lost cause?
It does appear that control is possible, and if so, the troops are the most likely to know that, first-hand, if the appearance is also something like the reality. I.e., they might have seen it work in cases where they saturate a region and STAY. I doubt if these places are quite the Diamonds in the Rough of the New Middle East that the Army portrays. But a few other places seem to show that “clear, hold and build” does work, so long as you add “stay”. All the clearing, holding and building in the world apparently means little after U.S. troops leave a region — a city just gets reinfiltrated and falls under militia/insurgent control again. And, as things stand, the troops have to leave — some other place flares up, they move on to the new trouble spot. There aren’t enough of them to keep making a difference in the places they leave behind.
A mere “surge”, of a mere 20,000-50,000 troops, isn’t likely to do anything but clear temporary space in Baghdad. Rummy didn’t like “clear, hold and build” — he said U.S. troops should clear, Iraqi troops should hold, and Iraqi civilians should build. For him, Iraq was just a series of internal surges, each of which was supposed to have some permanent effect. But Iraqi troops are apparently not up to “hold”, and in an economy as rife with corruption as Iraq’s, even the most civic-minded citizens’ desire for “build” will be sapped by vampires making off with the money and anything of trade value, whether to line their own pockets or to supply their own militias.
If the record so far is reliable (and that’s a big IF, I admit), it appears that rescuing Iraq from the collapse we triggered with our invasion might only be possible with a far larger force, operating for much longer, across the entire country, and basically running the government. That might be half a million or more, including nonmilitary. It would require a draft, probably several years of continuous buildup, and maybe up to a decade of occupation (towards which our years so far do not really count). It might be the right thing to do for Iraq. But is there the national will for it in America? Somehow I don’t think so. It just seems like more reality than people will want to face. Finally, it reminds me rather uncomfortably of this snippet from the International Herald Tribune in 1899:
—-
NEW YORK — An extraordinary sensation has been created by Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s new poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” just published in a New York magazine. It is regarded as the strongest argument yet published in favor of expansion. It reads as follows: Take up the white man’s burden/ Send forth the best ye breed/ Go bind your sons to exile/ To serve your captive’s need/ To wait in heavy harness/On fluttered folk and wild/ Your new-caught sullen peoples/ Half devil and half child.
—-
Not to mention that I’m starting to sound like a more pessimistic version of Fred Kagan. If I’m not careful, I might even end up saying “nonkinetic assistance” — I guess Fred just loves the way it trips off his tongue. (“Wa-a-ah?!” cries Kiping, rolling in his grave.)
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:11 am
As the new bumper sticker says, “Believe The Generals.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801477.html
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:42 am
Some really crazy idea keeps popping up in these comments. It is this: This is an “illegal” war. Someone please explain to those who keep saying this that The Congress and the President of the United States have approved of it and that the Courts have not made any decisions to the contrary. In what way could this war possibly be considered illegal? International views of disapproval do not make our laws. As for my good friend, Reg, he is saying some churlish things about and to me. I’m beginning to think he’s French.
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:13 am
“International views of disapproval do not make our laws”
Every once in a while we get someone on this blog who seems eager to show us his profound ignorance. Fred is very eager. The US is a signatory to the UN Charter which specifies when it is legal for one nation to take military action against another. Go read it.
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:18 am
btw, why is that some Americans are angry with the French? Oh right, I remember now. The French said that the inspections should go on in Iraq and military action should be a last option, while the US said that it was positive there were WMD and so the inspections should stop and the war should begin. Wow, the French were really wrong on that one, weren’t they, since Iraq was stuffed to the gills with WMD wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 am
Finally, ignorant people like Fred with shit for brains show up on this blog all the time, so it’s no big deal. The problem is that one of these people managed to get himself elected president.
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:33 am
Always the insults. A sure sign of uncertainty and doubt. Again, the UN does not make our law. This war is perfectly legal under our law. It is not an illegal war. Begin to accept this fact. Your ideas will be the better for it. With all due respect, Fred.
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:38 am
Incidently, Mr. Balter, the French thought Iraq had WMD, along with the whole of the Western World. Thank you.
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:54 am
Mr Balter please go to your copy of the US Constitution – I assume you have one – and read the section that makes all treaties entered into by the United States the Supreme Law of the Land. Then go to the UN Charter (a Treaty we are a signatory of of and duly ratified by the US Senate) and read the conditions under which military action against a member state is permissible. I see two possible conditions:
1. Self-Defense
2. Inder the auspices of the Security Council.
Neither condition applies here. While I doubt a US court would have the cojones to find this war illegal it would make a pretty good argument and, in fact, it was good enough for the Attorney General of the United Kingdom to issue such an opinion and render Mr Blair a potential War Criminal. As Casey Stengel said, you couild look it up.
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:59 am
Re the French. No they didn’t Mr Beloit as hirac made clear at the UN. And as his Foreign Minister reiterated. They were all for the continuation of the IAEA Inspection team doing its job.
And while we’re on the subject its rather interesting to note that recent evidence has come out that the French Forces in Afghanistan had cornered Osama Bin Ladin but the US would not authorize their capture of him. Guess they were too busy eating “Freedom Fries” and making jokes to say “Yes”.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:00 pm
If a court doesn’t find a war illegal, it is legal. That’s what courts, not blog commenters, are charged to do. Again, accept this war is legal, your thinking and arguments will be improved.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Mr. Locicero, the French believed as we did that Iraq had WMD. That is why they wanted more inspections of Iraq and not, say, of Norway.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Its not a matter of who believed who had WMDs nearly four years ago. Its a matter of aggressive war, which, the US a signatory to the UN as noted, can be heald responsible for what US prosecutor Robert Jackson himself referred to as the “Supreme International Crime.” The attitude of M. Beloit (French name?…just kidding) is like Nixon “its not illegal when the president does it.” It is illegal. You may not recognize the sovereignty of supranational organizations, but they do make international law. Why do you think Bush and Gonzales, etc. did so much to find loopholes against prosecution of Americans for their actions during the GWOT? They know that they are international outlaws. By any reasonable standard, killing 650,000 people is a crime.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
“Mr. Locicero, the French believed as we did that Iraq had WMD.”
Sorry, but you’re repeating it doesn’t make it true. Give us some proof, and from French sources. And careful there, because I know France pretty well.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:41 pm
btw the insults aren’t a sign of insecurity, they are an expression of the absolute contempt that I have for people like Fred whose minds are filled with the garbage that they pick up from watching Fox news and reading rightwing blogs. They are like pigs at the trough, and boy do they lap it up and then vomit it out in places like these.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Proof, Mr. Balter? My dear sir, it is you who have to prove that France thought Iraq did not have WMD. If they thought this they would have voted against inspections and the 17 UN resolutions concerning Iraq and WMD, would they not. The burden of proof is on he who makes the most improbable statement, for example, the UN decides what U.S. or U.K. law is. By the way, Mr.cummings, my name is pronounced Belouah. I was on the side, politically speaking, of Free France in WWII. Your interest is much appreciated.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
And I apologize MB, my remarks were made for Mr Beloit.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:59 pm
In the face of raw and absolute contempt, from one who is, so to say, unreachable, why not show courtesy and a little humor? After all it is Leftists who love humanity and wish to advance it. It is no wonder then that one who questions their ideas should be hated.
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I’m glad you sided with the Free French. God knows you seem like a Vichy supporter.
Tht being said, why the snide remarks about the French, given that it is your own background.
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I acknowledge insults, like your Vichy crack, and at times express disatisfation with them in a context like this; it seems unprofitable to seriously answer them, in or not in kind. I confess though that sarcasm sometimes leaks out, almost unintentionally. I’m not French and no French background. The French remark was an attempt at humor. One finds these attempts do not often elicit laughter. Perhaps one should give up the attempts, but in the face of absolute contempt, well…
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:06 pm
“And I apologize MB, my remarks were made for Mr Beloit.”
I realized that, rlo, no problem.
Really, though, people like Beloit have already lost the argument. The US is on its way out of Iraq, sooner or later. Watch the reaction of Americans if Bush tries to send more troops.
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:07 pm
See any good text on US Constitutional Law and turn to the Section on “Treaties” There you will learn that international agreements we voluntarily agree to have the force of law. The Supremacy clause does the rest.
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:10 pm
But you have a point. Considering the number of Federal Judges appointed by the Bushes and Reagan, including members of the Federalist Society, it is probable that their Constitution doesn’t include these provisions any more than it seems to include the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Ammendments.
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:17 pm
And while we’re on the subject the LAT reports that Generals in the Field now say they want more troops (boy I’d love to have been in on those arm twisting sessions) while the Joint Chiefs are still opposed. But, not to worry. According to the TIMES the JCS are not part of the “Chain of Command” and are merely advisory!
WTF!
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Silly stuff like “the whole world thought there were WMD” – which is on the order of arguments that Ric Santorum “found” the WMD that were casus belli in 2003 – elicit the “absolute contempt”. A bogus national security argument was made on the basis of – undeniably and provably – hyped, cherry-picked intelligence and false statements. Par for the course from this administration. As for the peanut gallery, I’ve never seen such a bunch of screwballs turn out to be so consistently wrong and then prove to be little more than pathetic cowards when it comes to facing a record on Iraq of – almost exclusively – feverishly recycling half-baked and hysterical assertions, faulty analysis, wild exaggeration, selective facts, false predictions, crackpot accusations against critics and terrible judgement.
December 23rd, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Let’s return to my original point, shall we? No? Yes, I sez. Lt. Watada, Lt. Wannanotbe, I sez, seems to have disobeyed a lawful order to proceed to a lawful war. It also seems he’ll be court marshaled for this. This is just and proper if he is found guily, as he seems to admit he is.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Fred: thanks for elevating the discussion here. Some of your comments are insightful and thought-provoking, unlike virtually every other right-winger that posts here. Keep ignoring the insults. It’s a rare treat to engage a right-wing voice on the issues.
You are wrong, however, that the whole world thought Iraq had WMD.
Sure, the loudest, most powerful people SAID they thought he had them, because, like someone who thinks their shit doesn’t stink, they had been marinating in their own excremental fumes of propaganda about the Iraq regime for a decade. (Prediction: this comment will generate strawmen claiming I said the Saddam regime was good.)
You argue that the UN inspections took place because the French, along with the “whole world” thought Iraq had WMD. Your argument works much better in the reverse. If the UN KNEW Iraq had weapons, there would be absolutely no need for “inspections.” The only way they would KNOW would be to have PROOF of their existence, which would almost certainly include their location and extent. If that was known, “inspections” would have been plainly superfluous and no one would be have this discussion.
As for your point about Lt. Watada. I agree, in one sense: He is breaking the law and will be convicted for it.
Instead of worming around about this, people opposed to the war should use it to emphasize that, in Bush’s America, it is perfectly legal to kill half a million people in speculative military aggression launched on the basis of lies, half-truths and unabashed chauvanism.
Fred is absolutely correct that anti-war campaigners would be much better off acknowledging this.
“Pajama Party Liberals,” of which Marc is surely among the standard bearers, are grasping at straws like this one because they are unwilling to face the fact that the core opposition to this war is coming from people they don’t feel they can defend: the Al Gores, Cindy Sheehans, George Galloways, Dennis Kucinichs, ANSWER, and so on.
Marc’s breathless praise for soldiers who bravely–though illegally–want out, and potty-mouthed vitriol for people like Gore and Galloway, shows more than anything how he and fellow Pajama Party Liberals unwittingly embrace the Fox News Channel paradigm for viewing the war and its opponents.
Having said that, I too support Lt. Watada. I hope that his brave campaign will ultimately lead to the impeachment of Bush on the simple, compelling grounds that the president started and extended this war on false pretences as part of a broader pattern of disregard for basic truth and Constitutional government.
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:00 pm
“BTW, if anyone wants to make fun of Lt. Watada’s name, you might want to know that the Japanese characters could be roughly translated as “many peaceful ricefields.â€
or “Cottonfield”
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Well, bunkerbuster, I disagree with most of what you’ve said, but at least you know, sort of (“…in Bush’s America, it is perfectly legal to kill half a million people in speculative military aggression launched on the basis of lies, half-truths and unabashed chauvanism.”) how to differentiate between reasonable debate and unreasonable blather. This isn’t Bush’s America, as you well know, any more than Pelosi’s America. As for “many peaceful rice fields”, I used to “date” a Japanese lady named Tadsuko or Tadzuko. She told me her name meant “too many cranes.” I thought this was odd because cranes are birds of good luck in Japan. In any case I used Wannanotbe not for translation but because he wanna not be in Iraq. Corny but seemingly effective. See comments above. Thanks for your reply.
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:09 pm
“This isn’t Bush’s America, as you well know, any more than Pelosi’s America.”
I didn’t mean to suggest that Bush controls all of America absolutely.
Indeed, my point is that a rapidly growing part of America sees Bush’s rule as illegitimate and while though most concede the basic legality of Bush’s presidency, they do not identify with it or accept it as embodying American principles, values or history.
In this America–arguably now a majority–the legality of U.S. military aggression in Iraq remains an open question on several fronts because it was started under false pretences.
In “Bush America,” as represented by Fox News Channel, Wall Street Journal op eds, talkradio and the mainstream pundit class, questioning the war’s results–let alone its legality–is tantamount to treason.
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:27 pm
“…the legality of U.S. military aggression in Iraq remains an open question…because it was started under false pretenses.” I disagree on three points: one, liberation of Iraq versus aggression, two, “under false pretenses” versus all observers felt Iraq had WMD (wrongly, perhaps), this is not “false pretenses”, this is mistaken intelligence, three, this is certainly a legal war, three branches of our government agree. Finally, it is not treasonous, in my opinion, to question the war. To question the war’s legality is futile. It is clearly legal. It is treasonous to aid our enemies. What aiding the enemy means is up to the legal system to define.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:16 pm
I must confess to being emotional about the “gentleman” in question. My early comments show it, I suppose. But I was in the same branch in the same rank as this guy many years ago. I don’t claim to be a combat vet; I was not. But this guy, I have to say, IS a deserter. The Army has almost always had a habit of lessening charges to make PR problems go away. We cannot afford to have junior officers in our armed branches decide what a legal war is and what it is not. (This man is not an international law expert.) This would bring military anarchy. Military anarchy, believe it, is not what we need in America. This poor misguided guy took, perhaps, the example of General W. Clarke. But Clarke waited until he was safely retired to attack our political and military policy. {I guess the ofays on this site won’t believe me, see Reg above. But that’s the truth.)
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Incidently, Mr. Balter, the French thought Iraq had WMD, along with the whole of the Western World.
I’m loathe to enter this debate since Mr. Beloit’s style of argumentation seems to be inspired more by Monty Python than anything else, but the above statement merely makes the case for continuing the inspections and does not make the case for an invasion.
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Mr. Paul, welcome to the “discussion” of insults. Congratulations on the mildness of yours. Much appreciated. It is great to converse with another anglophile, one more of the many. But isn’t it a distraction to bring Monty Python into this issue? I wonder if it might be remotely possible that Monty Python is irrelevant here. I had the impression we were discussing a junior officer’s attempt to make a decision way beyond his authority and ability. Sandhurst, what, what. Silly me, and cogent you.
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Ah yes, the case for “invasion”. I was under the impression that has already been made. Our Congress and our President have already made that case and decided to liberate Iraq
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Thank you Marc for allowing me to express. Great site. Smart commenters. Ease of use. A winner.
December 24th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Marc, just passing through to say how excellent the Nation article is. May it get the wide reading it deserves.
I take it as a good sign that I’ve had a number of people call it to my attention, telling me I MUST read it!
Merry Happy……everything, y’all.
December 24th, 2006 at 1:27 am
Fred opines that: “all observers felt Iraq had WMD (wrongly, perhaps), this is not “false pretensesâ€, this is mistaken intelligence.”
Hans Blix, possibly the most qualified individual on the planet on the issue, argued passionately for continuing inspections and rejected the Bush team’s request for support for an invasion.
Hundreds of newspaper, magazine, television and radio news reports refer to people who insisted that the Iraq WMD allegation lacked proof. High-ranking intelligence sources are among those who said there were doubts about whether Iraq had WMD.
The widely suppressed Downing Street Memo makes clear that the U.K. government warned Bush that the intelligence was flawed. No one can rationally argue that Bush was not aware there may be flaws in the intelligence. He clearly chose to ignore the concerns, which might have been acceptable, had he chosen to present the case for war with those qualifications.
But he didn’t. He and Cheney and Powell and their acolytes in the media repeated the charge on numerous occasions in starkly unequivocal terms: It is certain that Iraq has WMD.
The word “certain” is the lie. Bush and his team didn’t say Iraq may have weapons or may be tangled up with Al Qaeda, they claimed to have PROOF that he was. They didn’t they were lying. You’re apparently a smart guy, Fred, so please do explain how you square that particular circle.
Whether Cheney-Bush WANTED to liberate Iraqis or just wanted the oil and the chauvanist/Pajama Party vote doesn’t matter. He knowingly lied about the nature and extent of WMD intelligence. And we all know that without the WMD and Al Qaeda allegations, at least two branches of the government, and the people, would not have supported the war.
What are the consequences of allowing an American president to get away with lying starting a disastrous war?
Unless and until that question is taken seriously, it doesn’t really matter how many protesting lieutenants get heard or thrown in the slammer.
December 24th, 2006 at 1:46 am
Fred Beloit, what proof do you have that France, Germany or any of our allies (beside the Anglo-Protestant Imperials) thought Iraq was stockpiling WMD?
Not even Bush believed they had them.
It seems, it was primarily the right-wing nationalists’ within the American media that were convinced of this lie.
December 24th, 2006 at 2:02 am
Fred B. Lout (go ahead, complain that that’s unfair, SO unfair!) writes: “Someone please explain to those who keep saying this that The Congress and the President of the United States have approved of it and that the Courts have not made any decisions to the contrary. In what way could this war possibly be considered illegal?”
Longer answer: by way of analogy, some cops fabricate some evidence against a suspected perpetrator. They take it to a judge to get an arrest warrant. The judge approves the warrant, assuming the evidence was bona fide and obtained legally. The suspect gets arrested.
It comes out that the evidence was fabricated. The suspect walks, charges dropped. The cops involved go down for their illegal acts.
Almost every decision and action made in the process (except by those cops) might have been legal in some sense, but as a whole, the operation was only possible because of the illegal and deceptive actions of a few participants who abused their power.
Shorter answer: duh. The legality of the war is not a fait accompli just because it passed muster initially, but has yet to be determined.
“… this is not “false pretensesâ€, this is mistaken intelligence ….”
No, it was very dubious intelligence, much of it from very dubious informants, that somehow (totally by accident, I’m sure!) got trumped up, twisted and, and in one key incident (Colin Powell’s case for Iraq WMD before the U.N.) directly *misquoted* for effect.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001238.html
Which pissed me off, because I had some respect for Powell, I would have voted for him in a heartbeat if he’d run in 1996 or 2000. I’d still like to think he was duped, that he had come around to absolute certainty based on being unwittingly fed lies and distortions. Unfortunately, that possibility is now precluded. He went before the UN describing, as facts and logical conclusions from them, quite a number of things about which his own intelligence analysts expressed serious doubts, in their written comments on a draft of the speech he was then about to give to the UN. If he reviewed those comments before giving the speech, he lied. If he didn’t (unlikely), then he also lied — because he was ignoring intelligence when he claimed he had “facts and conclusions”.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000640.html
Desperate and sad. Illegal? OK, I’ll admit: I’m not 100% sure, in this case. It might actually be legal for a Secretary of State to go before the UN and lie. Any number of lies told within and from this administration may actually have been checked out first by internal counsel and cleared as being legal. That, to me, is what is significant about Lt. Watada’s case. Nonviolent civil disobedience has the legitimate function of exposing how existing law (not just a sitting official abusing it) is inadequate or unjust. For all I know, the greater good might be even better served if Watada is legitimately convicted in a court martial. The evident injustice of that might lead to a conviction of this administration in a large enough court of public opinion that the legislature and the courts have to react seal the legal loopholes these people jumped through on their way to war. I’d prefer a citizenry kept alive to the fact that the system is never perfect, and always subject to abuse, but nevertheless well worth repair, than a citizenry that believes that it’s only a question of electing the right people.
December 24th, 2006 at 2:16 am
Forget it, NeoDude, Fred says that we have to prove France did not know.
Robin Cook, who was foreign secretary under Blair until he resigned to protest the impending war, stood up in parliament shortly before the invasion. He had been in on all the cabinet briefings where WMD were discussed. He told the parliament, and whoever else wanted to listen, that he did not believe based on what he had heard that there were WMD in Iraq as usually defined, ie weapons capable of being used beyond a very local, limited area. His statements were part of the reason that the overwhelming majority of Brits were against their country going to war.
December 24th, 2006 at 3:01 am
“No one can rationally argue that Bush was not aware there may be flaws in the intelligence.”
Actually, there is one rational argument for Bush being unaware: maybe his minions insulated him from the doubts, to give him plausible deniability. If I were Bush, I’d put it all on Cheney, who is much more likely to die years before the judicial process got a head of steam.
He wouldn’t even have had to ask for that deniability explicitly. All he’d have to say is, “be sure not to tell me anything I shouldn’t know”. Wink, wink. Nod, nod.
The last thing I expect is a paper trail all the way to the Oval Office. It’s going to come down to weight of sworn testimony about private conversations, if it comes down to anything, and that’s going to take the jaws of justice gnawing away very persistently on a very stiff tissue of personal loyalties.
December 24th, 2006 at 7:18 am
Ah, many of you are back. Jolly good, jolly good. So many objections, so many misinterpretations, so many accusations. But to be fair, so many questions as well. In the face of all this what is one to do? Road trip? No. Change the subject: “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” Yesterday the Security Council of the UN voted to place sanctions on Iran. What? Why Iran, which sits above an ocean of oil, is simply trying to improve its energy picture, isn’t it? Let me see if I can remember what countries compose the UN Security Council. France? Yes, I think so. UK, yes. US and Russia and China. Have I left anyone out?
December 24th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Why would the UN Security Council do such a thing? Oh no. Don’t tell me they suspect Iran is trying to develop nuclear WMD. Don’t tell me FRANCE SUSPECTS IRAN WANTS WMD! Oh, I forgot. As one of France’s most famous detectives may once have said: “I suspect everyone…and no one.”
December 24th, 2006 at 7:28 am
I think it was pretty evident that the inspections were not turning up wmd. It rapidly progessed into wishful thinking, and finally an imagined impending danger. They were bluffed by a Arab known for bluffing. That sort of lack of critical thinking is not what one wants in leaders.
December 24th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Let us get out of this hot sun, take our turbans off and let something sink in, shall we? France doesn’t just suspect Iran wants WMD. France wouldn’t vote for sanctions on that basis alone would it? No, nor the UK? They must have reason to believe Iran is developing nuclear WMD. I don’t know if Iran is trying to develop WMD or not. But don’t come back here five years from now and try to tell me France didn’t think Iran was trying to develop WMD. It just won’t wash.
December 24th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Hi, Publius, nice to encounter you again. Hope all is well with you and yours. Well, your opinion, if I am reexpressing it correctly is: We know better. Perhaps you are right. I don’t think we know better, but you may be right. However, I don’t see how in future anyone will be able to claim that France, on a Saturday in Paris and New York in 2006, never thought Iran was trying to develop WMD.
December 24th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Cheney-Bush can’t have plausible deniability on this because they both claimed in public to know for certain there were WMD in Iraq. One of the more memorable formulations from the Bush war team was: “We know where they are.”
Plausible deniability is based on a claim of incomplete knowledge, i.e. no one told me about it. That won’t work here. Bush can’t say, I was certain there were WMD, because no one told me they weren’t there.
They only way Bush could have honestly claimed certainty would be to have seen proof. We all know such proof didn’t exist. The pre-war Kissingerian claims that: If you knew what we knew, you’d agree, never panned out. They didn’t have the evidence because the WMD weren’t there.
Moreover, the Downing Street Memo and other documents showing the Bush administration intended to make war on Iraq, WMD or not, Al Qaeda links or not, sap any plausibility from the claim that the misreading of intelligence could have been an honest mistake.
Similarly, Fred B. gives his game up by repeating the Cheney-Bush-Fox News claim that “the whole world” thought Iraq had WMD. A 2-minute search of the NY Times or any other paper of record will produce hundreds of stories showing there were people who doubted it and that some of those people made those doubts known directly to the Bush administration.
The fact that Fred now repeats the “whole world” claim only shows the degree to which the Cheney-Bush lies were promoted by themselves and the media as a legitimate cause for war.
Is a war of choice started on false pretences legal in America?
Is the message we want to send to the Lieutenant Watadas of America:
If we send you into a disastrous war on false pretences, we will back that war 100 percent with every last dollar and every last drop of human blood until we achieve victory and move on to the next war or are utterly defeated.
or
If we send you into war on false pretences, once the lie is discovered, we will try the people primarily responsible for perpetrating them, punish them and end the war forthwith.
December 24th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Hi, BB. Let me sum up in simple English. Just as France, and the rest of the UNSC members, now have reason to believe Iran is trying to make WMD, so France, and company, had reason to believe Iraq had WMD. I was alive during that period. The West thought Iraq had WMD. This belief was reinforced by Iraq’s impeding the UN inspectors and finally throwing them out. Lt. Watada has very publicly disobeyed a lawful order and is going to go down for it. This is fitting and proper.
December 24th, 2006 at 8:21 am
I really have to go now, it is Christmas Eve after all. Will try to come back later. Merry Christmas or happy holidays. For all you Druids out there, happy Yule. Take your pick. Oh, Happy Kwanza, as well.
December 24th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Wow, where is Woody when we need him? At least he tried to back up his assertions with evidence, even if his evidence often turned out be to ill chosen and bogus. With Fred, he keeps repeating the same statements over and over as if somehow that will make them come true, but offers no evidence at all. His fuzzy thought processes and faulty logic do not constitute evidence, but somehow he presents them as if they did–guess that’s just more proof of how fuzzy his thinking really is.
As I keep saying, it’s too late to try to tell us now that the war was justified. Way too late. Americans have had enough of it, and they will have the last word. When US military deaths top 3000, that will be the watershed, and sending more troops to Iraq–well, bring it on.
December 24th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Fred B. Lout, inanely repetitive: “Just as France, and the rest of the UNSC members, now have reason to believe Iran is trying to make WMD ….”
Actually, what they have reason to believe is that Iran is pursuing a uranium enrichment program that will yield reactor-grade uranium. By continuing in enrichment activities for long enough (I believe 10 years is the current estimate), they might be able to make weapons-grade uranium.
As of the last inspection activity, Iran is still in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and at the rate things are going, it will be a while before it crosses the line into non-compliance.
Just to put things into a non-Chicken Little perspective.
“…so France, and company, had reason to believe Iraq had WMD.”
Actually, that belief was based almost entirely on U.S. and British intelligence reports that have since been shown to be ridiculous. If so many people believed, it was probably because they thought that the U.S. and the Brits weren’t likely to engage in such fabrications. They were wrong. You’re trying to compare “Iraq has hidden WMD” to “Iran has apparent ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon one of these days (though not soon). That’s not even comparing apples to oranges. It’s more like comparing apples to gerbils.
“I was alive during that period.”
So why do you come off like someone who was born yesterday?
“The West thought Iraq had WMD. This belief was reinforced by Iraq’s impeding the UN inspectors and finally throwing them out.”
Be specific about time periods. In the late 90s, Iraq threw out inspectors at one point, then readmitted them, then sequestered them in Baghdad after lodging complaints that the U.S. was abusing the UN inspections to spy beyond the mandate of inspections. Some UN inspectors actually agreed with that accusation. Those inspectors didn’t leave Baghdad because they were thrown out. They left Baghdad because Clinton was about to lob hundreds of cruise missiles at Baghdad.
“In 1998 the UNSCOM weapons inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq. They were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his infamous “axis of evil” speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant, it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes which eventually took place from from December 16-December 19, 1998.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Then we have the renewed UN inspections in 2002, at Saddam Hussein’s invitation, please note. Blix complained of being slow-rolled, but said that progress was being made. When the inspectors left this second time, again, it was not because they were being thrown out. It was because yet another attack on Iraq was coming.
Fred, I assume you were alive at both times. From your shoddy reasoning, and slim command of the facts, I can only assume that you weren’t paying close attention.
“Lt. Watada has very publicly disobeyed a lawful order and is going to go down for it. This is fitting and proper.”
Oh, you’ve decided to change back to the original subject! What happened? Did you get out of the sun and take your turban off? Or is the eggnog rendering you *thoroughly* incoherent?
December 24th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Didn’t insult Mr. Beloit, just what I believe to be your style of argumentation: unsupported contradiction as well as inferences made based on little or no actually evidence, IMHO, the basis for your support for the Bush administration.
To wit, I am neither anglophile nor anglophobe, yet you inferred that the mere mention of Monty Python made me an anglophile.
As for the reasons for the war, in the run up to the war, what was hammered into our heads was:
All of that turned out to be poppycock. Keep on attempting to put lipstick on that pig and it will still oink.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:06 am
High folks, glad to be back among friends. But really the same old charges over and over and the number of them make it necessaary for me to refocus you on Watada. Remember him? He was the subject of Mr. Cooper’s post. Also, there are, as usual, too many charges to refute. I’ll just take one, for example. Mr. Paul wrote: “…what was hammered into our heads was: ‘The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.’” This statement, and I can’t say it is exact, it may be exact, if not it is very nearly, was made once by the President in an annual state-of-the-union speech. Your head may have been hammered, Mr. Paul, but not by the Bush Administration by the media. Since you have not attributed the other statements and I am not familiar with them, I have no response to them. But what about the new IRAN sanctions and France’s agreement? Don’t know about Mr. Turner’s 10-year comment. Funny though that he knows more about this situation than the Security Council. They obviously see some danger now. So, all y’all, I guess, feel the Security Council should have left Iran to its own devices? The UN wrong again?
December 24th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Amazing.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Looking back over the battlefield, I find there is one statement I simply must answer. Mr. Dude (may I call you Neo?), you said that not even Bush thought Iraq had WMD. Wow. This IS news. Few people know GW well enough to know what he thinks and believes. Thank you for sharing this with the world. Unfortunately, I really don’t think you know the President that well. I think, rather, that in this case at least you don’t know what you’re talking about.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:36 am
And now, with a clean conscience, as I’m sure all of you have also, I bid ye fare well.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Mr. Beloit,
Blame my failure to link on Marc’s antispam measure arbitrarily leaving out links.
Here they are in descending order:
Condi Rice: http://tinyurl.com/u2sw8
Dubya: http://tinyurl.com/vkvxz
Colin Powell for the last two: http://tinyurl.com/vh9lm
Tragic that you can’t use Google.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Your head may have been hammered, Mr. Paul, but not by the Bush Administration by the media.
So much for being the party of personal responsibility. The buck doesn’t even pause to catch its breath as it zips through the Bush Administration.
December 24th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
“Nope, no Bin Ladden over there,” said Mr. Bush, as another picture showed the leader of the free world looking under a couch. “Maybe under here,” he continued to more laughter.
From:
“How to Appease Bin Ladden and Keep His Backers Happy? (Washington Time)
“What Excuse Can You Use to Kill 100,000 Iraqis?” (Weekly Standard)
“How Do You Lose the Man Who Killed 3000 Americans?” (National Review)
“How to Avoid Saudi Arabian and Pakistani Rage For Capturing the Man Who Killed Thousands of Americans?” (Commentary)
“How Can Bush and Patriotic Right-Wing Americans Assist Terrorist Who Desire To Kill More Americans? (Talon)
“How Can Bush and Patriotic Right-Wing Americans Assist the Spread of Iranian Influence In the Region? (NewsMax)
December 24th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
“Tragic that you can’t use Google.”
What’s tragic is that Fred doesn’t even know the Bush administration talking points, which even clowns like Woody know by heart. That shows a level of ignorance unprecedented on this blog. Congratulations, Fred!
December 24th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Merry Christmas…
December 24th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Iran sanctions = Iran still ten years away from nuke, US wants them obsessively so world appeases US all the while making sure that they actually have language that would render war impossible. Sanctions are symbolic, as Russia did not want Iraq style sanctions. There will be no conflict with Iran. Iran will help US stablize Iraq. Eventually Ahmedinijad will lose power to left/student forces (no thanks to US) and relations will improve.
December 24th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
My take is let France be France. I happen to be half French and the other half English. Beloit where I come from is a French name. Nobody had any recent reason to believe Iraq still had significant wmd, and that as I aid, was looking to be clearer when they cut off the hint. Of course some still think they were hauled to Syria in invisible convoys. Belief trimps all reason in some camps.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:54 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,948 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans on Friday:
BURGESS, Ryan J., 21, Lance Cpl., Marines; Sanford, Mich.; First Marine Division.
MAYHAN, Ryan L., 25, Lance Cpl., Marines; Hawthorne, Calif.; First Marine Division.
December 25th, 2006 at 6:52 am
I have it on good authority that Fred B. Lout was actually Stephen Colbert, the noted right-wing TV commentator, whose density has been compared with that of the cryogenic metallic hydrogen core of Jupiter, where your cojones would be compressed into eentsy-weentsy diamond-like particles if you were so careless as to drop them over that planet. (And since we’re all surrender monkeys here, with our heads off in outer space, isn’t that a distinct possibility? Except, erm, of course, for the ladies here, excuse my Portuguese with that “cojones” bit, ladies.)
Colbert was just dropping by this forum to drum up some business. Ignore him. Pay absolutely no attention to him. Especially, you should avoid his interview with Ron Suskind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9esRb2-WTI&mode=related&search=
December 25th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Hi Marc, Merry Christmas.
Fine article, especially the real details:
“He was on patrol with his Iraqi unit when they came upon an illegal checkpoint set up by Sadr’s Mahdi militia. The militants were using ambulances taken from the Ministry of Health to block the roads, thereby preventing American troops from maneuvering. He was flabbergasted when the Iraqi Army troops refused not only to take down the checkpoint but also returned to the militia a number of automatic weapons that had been seized from them by the army. ”
Too bad there is NO MENTION, at all, of what Iraq decends into if the US pulls out. The Appeal folk are willing to accept Killing Fields levels of 100 000s of Iraqis dying? Why isn’t the likely alternative discussed?
I recall post ’75 Vietnam and Cambodia as being bloodbaths, just like the anti-commies claimed they would be.
Folks who favored pull out favored–what outcome? Killing Fields? Commie victory.
If the choice was mine to do over again, I wouldn’t have Henry K sign the Paris (Toilet Paper) Peace Accords; and certainly wouldn’t cut funding in ’75.
Would you?
In Iraq today, the way the US military is fighting, or not fighting the Shia’ majority militia, seems frustrating. They (US!) have been unable to track and kill/ stop the Sunni terrorists — group revenge death squad justice probably seems better to Shia victims than no justice.
Stopping Sunni terrorists is still more important than stopping Shia majority militia supporters; the local ethnic cleansing (which I don’t like) will continue until the Sunni people turn in the Sunni-supported terrorists.
3 000 dead in 3 years is no disaster. It’s a Limited War. Limited War means the losers get to decide when to lose–the winners just have to keep fighting until the losers make that decision.
Shia death squads killing Sunnis, in collective group punishment and semi-justice, seems more likely to make the Sunnis stop terrorism soonest.
December 25th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
3 000 dead in 3 years is no disaster. It’s a Limited War.
Especially when it’s not your ass under fire.
Merry Christmas.
December 25th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Tom Grey,
3 000 dead in 3 years is no disaster. It’s a Limited War. Limited War means the losers get to decide when to lose–the winners just have to keep fighting until the losers make that decision.
Where was this wisdom on 9-11, you scared wimp.
December 25th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Tom Grey,
By the way, you sadist, there have been hundreds-of-thousands of children and such, killed because of our “Limited War”.
I’m sure a fascist like you would never count them among the dead.
Unless, of course, they were white Christian fetuses.
December 25th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
9-11 meant that American nationalists gave up on rationality.
December 26th, 2006 at 1:49 am
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Three more American soldiers were killed in Iraq, officials said Tuesday, pushing the U.S. military death toll to at least 2,975 — two more than the number killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The tragic milestone came wi110th the deaths of the three soldiers Monday in two separate bomb explosions southwest of Baghdad, the military said.
The deaths — announced Tuesday — raised the number of troops killed to 2,975 since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes at least seven military civilians.
December 26th, 2006 at 2:39 am
If you get tired of arguing with the willfully ignorant, just send them Juan Cole’s “10 Ten Myths about the War in Iraq”.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/top-ten-myths-about-iraq-2006-1.html
Tom Grey writes: “If the choice was mine to do over again, I wouldn’t have Henry K sign the Paris (Toilet Paper) Peace Accords; and certainly wouldn’t cut funding in ‘75. Would you?”
If ALL the choices were mine to do over again, I think I would have nipped that one in the bud in the late 50s — i.e., get out entirely before even committed.
December 26th, 2006 at 4:23 am
MT — “in the bud” means NOT allowing France post-WW II to reassert control over the colonies they were unwilling to protect, in Indo-China and Africa.
But we (the US) supported their stupid re-colonization to get France to join NATO and oppose the greater evil of expansionist communist Russia, and our ex-ally Joe Stalin who had been, prior to the War, the biggest mass murderer in history.
Always supporting the lesser evil to oppose the greater evil. We thought. Which is also my point about Iraq — is Iraq today worse than under Saddam? I don’t think so, but the killing of Iraqi Shia by Iraqi Sunni, and vice versa retaliation, is terrible. And arguably Saddam was NOT as bad — though few here are willing to honestly state they support more Saddam rather than the Bush invasion.
Such intellectual dishonest is often accompanied by ad hominem attacks, and calls that those against Saddam are “fascists”, or other jr. high insults. If the choice is 100 000 killed or 500 000, the rational choice choice seems clearly to be supportting the lesser evil of 100 000.
Those wanting to pull out here have refused to estimate how many Iraqis they expect to be killed (in 5 years) if the US leaves.
I think we’re looking at some 100 000 more if we stay, vs. 500 000 if we leave.
December 26th, 2006 at 5:02 am
Tom Grey: unless and until you understand why there is a moral chasm between sins of commission and ommission, there’s little hope that you will understand even the most rudimentary issues at stake in Iraq.
December 26th, 2006 at 6:44 am
How many would have been killed if we hadn’t gone in? I posit many more less than this. This isn’t the Pandora’s Box some claim.
December 26th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Tom Grey you are a right-wing nihilist.
I call you a fascist because that is what you are.
Words have meaning.
Certain truths are not relative to political culture.
You casually embrace war and all of the rape and killing that go with it, to advance a particular political culture.
You are a fascist.
If you believed that non-Americans were as valuable as white Christian fetuses, you would not be so eager and willful to “abort†them.
December 26th, 2006 at 10:28 am
For all you Anglophiles a happy Boxing Day and I hope all had a merry (fill in your favorite religious or secular holiday)!
In the spirit of the season I will refrain from any more comments on the unfortunate LT Watada and the legality of the Iraq War or the existential knowlege of the French.
But when I see Liberty Daddy still fighting – if only metaphorically – in the jungles of SE Asia I weep for the future dialogues here, say in thirty years or so, as our own Lawrences of Arabia chide us for losing Iraq. Hopefully I’ll be out of here!
Now can we please get back to Miss USA? I promise I’ll be good!
December 26th, 2006 at 10:48 am
What is disturbing is not that Tom Grey thinks 3000 American dead is no disaster, because he is a nobody whose opinion counts for little. But it’s disturbing that the president of the United States has the same attitude. That is what we should be concentrating on.
December 26th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Two points that may or may not be related.
1. The NYT reports that GWB DOES read Newspapers!
2. The International Herald Tribune reports that The US Army, in an attempt to meet recruitment goals, is considering opening recruitment offices overseas and offering citizenship to foreign recruits. Someone tell Tom Tancredo that undocumented workers may soon be Army Strong!
December 26th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
This article is worth reading. And, righties, it’s not particularly partisan (though it does take for granted that the invasion was poorly planned and unleashed some serious problems. Does anyone still disagree with that diagnosis?). It’s trying to examine real life for Iraqis.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19793
December 26th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
I suppose it can be relative to a point? Over a half a million US soldiers were killed in WWII in the same timeframe. Bush did say that this loss of life anguishes him, but it just doesn’t dissuade him from the mission he has in his mind. One could not beleive him on this matter, or one could and still disagree with the position.
December 26th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Fighting to defend one’s nation (likw WW2) is one thing.
But fighting because your political leaders are liars is quite another thing.
We were lied into this war.
December 26th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Yes, I think that’s essentially the difference between a real threat and an imagined one, like ‘all the muslims are marching against us” based on the views of groups of radicals. It’s not the same thing.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:30 am
“2. The International Herald Tribune reports that The US Army, in an attempt to meet recruitment goals, is considering opening recruitment offices overseas and offering citizenship to foreign recruits. Someone tell Tom Tancredo that undocumented workers may soon be Army Strong!”
Not just recruiting them, but also fast-tracking their citizenship applications. Shades of the Roman Empire! We might soon have naturalized imperial citizens who have set foot in the U.S. only for purposes of military training.
This might be the solution to the problem of the Melts-on-Contact Iraqi Army — recruit Iraqis into the U.S. Army instead. Educations Benefits. Real Rights. Citizenship in the world’s lone superpower. And for an aspiring Jihadi who can holds the cards close to his chest, a priceless opportunity.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:38 am
“What is disturbing is not that Tom Grey thinks 3000 American dead is no disaster ….”
Well, it isn’t a disaster, except relative to what’s been accomplished at that price, and the dim prospects for anything better. Better to call it a “tragedy”.
Daily life is more dangerous for some in America:
“The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.”
http://tinyurl.com/pdap2
You want a disaster report, read the Lancet study.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:07 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,956 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
BARTA, John, 25, Specialist, Army; Corpus Christi, Tex.; First Cavalry Division.
BIXLER, Evan A., 21, Pvt., Army; Racine, Wis.; First Infantry Division.
McMILLAN, Jacob G., 25, Staff Sgt., Army; Lafayette, La.; 25th Infantry Division.
NOLEN, Kyle A., 21, Hospitalman, Navy; Ennis, Tex.; Fourth Marine Division.
NORRIS, Curtis L., 28, Sgt., Army; Dansville, Mich.; 10th Mountain Division.
SHEPPARD, Joshua D., 22, Specialist, Army; Quinton, Okla.; 10th Mountain Division.
TAMAYO, Fernando S., 19, Lance Cpl., Marines; Fontana, Calif.; First Marine Division.
WILKUS, Eric R., 20, Pfc., Army; Hamilton, N.J.; 57th Military Police Company, Eighth Military Police Brigade.
December 27th, 2006 at 5:09 am
There are 8 names of the dead awaiting moderation, but no disaster, really. Just routine.
December 27th, 2006 at 5:23 am
I hope everyone will bow their heads in remembrance of one of our greatest presidents, Gerald Ford. The Ford presidency, short as it was, may be a distant memory to some, and a prenatal event to others, but those of us who were alive in that blissful dawn can still recall the Ford era and its devotion to social justice–the pardon of Richard Nixon comes first to mind–as well as the epoch that gave us some of the best ever episodes of Saturday Night Live. Of course, all presidencies are tarnished in one way or the other, and Liberty Dad will no doubt remind us that it was during the Republican presidency of Gerald Ford that the US handed Vietnam over to the Communists–an act of surrender that will live in infamy. But that can only slightly detract from the legacy of a president whose tenure was short enough to insure that he could not do much harm.
So, please, a moment of silence….
December 27th, 2006 at 7:44 am
Breaking the silence …. a very odd story about how we almost got Gerald Ford as Reagan’s 1980 veep candidate.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3492521.html
How different history might have been if there hadn’t been a Bush presidential dynasty. Or maybe we would have gotten one anyway. Spinning out the counterfactuals on this could get dull.
If I had to pick one thing I’d hang on Ford, it’s his and Henry K’s greenlighting of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/press.html
Easy to do to a tiny country, recently establishing some kind of stability, though not recognized by many neighbors, and ideologically suspect in a polarized world.
If we have a latter-day parallel, it may turn out to be the Ethiopan invasion of Somalia, most of whose population is under Shariah rule by the Union of Islamic Courts.
Google on “somalia” and “soccer”, and you’ll read about 10 year olds being dragged out of theaters that were showing British soccer matches. Unfortunately, this report seems to be sourced only from some Somali sports federation official allied with a “government” whose president lives doesn’t even live in the “internationally recognized” pro tem seat of government, but in Kenya. And I read about a visit to Mogadishu by some reporters the other day, who discovered that, yes, women are covering their heads, but no, their traditional Somali public dancing to music has not been banned. Everybody watches soccer. The reporters played soccer with a bunch of young kids until the call to prayer. This government flogs criminals, but it’s not the Taliban by a long shot. Actually, ICU-controlled Somalia sounds considerably less oppressive than our ally, Saudia Arabia.
The invasion by Ethiopia was at least tacitly endorsed by the U.S. Ethiopia is far better armed, communications out of Somalia are now very poor, and the situation seems ripe for serious harm to Somalis in the ICU-controlled parts of the country. But you probably won’t hear much about it. Just as people didn’t hear much about what happened in that total backwater of East Timor — the slaughter and starvation of perhaps a quarter of the population.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:16 am
The Only Man Whose Opinion Really Matters as regards Iraq – a guy named Fred – clarifies the “Surge” (writing with his buddy Gen. Jack, Retired – The Only Military Man Whose Opinion Really Matters):
http://tinyurl.com/ylzjlk
Uh…the “surge” is obviously a major, long-term escalation, throwing more troops in the middle of a civil war – troops who don’t actually exist, so it’s really rotating the same troops more often.
http://tinyurl.com/yhaavv
Meanwhile, to make sure we can meet recruiting goals under these conditions, the Beltway Geniuses Running The Show have come up with the notion of going abroad and recruiting foriegners into our military by dangling citizenship as the prize. This is appalling. Truly. Not for reasons of xenophobia, but because this strategy is, as MT notes with reference to Rome, the hallmark of an imperial power that engages in military adventures using what can only be called foriegn mercenaries. That the “pay” is a promise of eventual citizenship doesn’t change the picture. I don’t want to exaggerate the nostalgia for past Presidents and past eras – not even RIP Ford – because it’s always selective and biased by one’s age, but what the hell kind of a country have we become under this Little Shit of a President ? (Unfortunately, maybe just one that’s being run by a group less evasive about underlying corruption and base motives.)
On a lighter note, go see The Good Shepherd. A less than convincng finale that dissolves into allegory, but still an insightful movie.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Since Fred seems concerned that some people have started batting about the idea of a “surge” without committing to a major open-ended troop escalation, here’s where the term was generated:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25292/pub_detail.asp
Here is the core argument of this document, written a year ago, by…a guy named Fred.
Quote:
o Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority.
o We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.
o These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.
o After the neighborhoods have been cleared, U.S. soldiers and Marines, again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to maintain security.
o As security is established, reconstruction aid will help to reestablish normal life and, working through Iraqi officials, will strengthen Iraqi local government.
This approach requires a national commitment to victory in Iraq:
o The ground forces must accept longer tours for several years. National Guard units will have to accept increased deployments during this period.
End Quote
Note the nature of this “national commitment to victory” – the people who’ve already sacrificed the most are just going to have to buckle down and sacrifice some more…and, oh yeah, Don’t Forget To Support The Troops.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:32 am
One more thing, which aside from the movie suggestion, is the only good news I’ve got this morning – I’m convinced people who are behind this kind of debased, “y’all need to sacrifice more so me and Bill Kristol can win the war we saddled you with” thinking are destined to burn in Hell.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I didn’t bring up the analogy to Rome because it was too easy – even if true. What I’m waiting for though is the reaction of that “Renouned” Classicist and PJ Media Analyst Victor Davis Hansen. But then he was alsways the shabbiest Roman of them All.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Re the 38th President of the United States. Remember he was a Ford not a Lincoln. Far better than the Edsel we have today.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Edsel? Christ, we have a Trabi in the White House.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:57 am
I think Hansen will love this because it’s What Empires Do !
The American people have shown themselves to have no spine as regards Iraq, so why should they be trusted with future wars ?
December 27th, 2006 at 11:00 am
And just one more thing (he said as he put on his shabby raincoat and headed for his Peugot). I was interested in the new film “The Good Shepard” which seems to be about the life of James Jesus Angleton one of the most interesting spooks who ever stayed in the cold and who has had a shelf of books – both fiction and nonfiction – written about him.
But what fascinated me was the fact that the lead character is given the name “Ed Wilson”. Those of us who wallowed in Iran-Contra will remember an Ed Wilson as one of the main characters in that little drama and the comings and goings from his ranch in Costa Rica were one of the central threads. I was surprised at the choice of name but maybe the filmakers were tring to tell us something.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:09 am
“According to Zladko Kjarkja, the Trabant is ‘Pretty much the coolest car ever.’ ”
A google search of “Zladko Kjarkja” yields one reference – the Wikipedia Trabant entry RP linked, the last line of which is quoted above…
December 27th, 2006 at 11:18 am
At close to 3 hours The Good Shepherd is, as one critic wrote (I forget who), a Godfather 1 & 2 about the WASP elite – whose country, as “Edward Wilson” puts it in a great scene with Joe Pesci as a Lucky Luciano character, “everyone else is just visiting”.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Beating a Dead Thread (Dumbest Pundit)…
If anyone harbors doubts that among the leading lights of the contemporary Right reside a significant contingent of The Stupidest People On The Planet, check this out:
http://author.nationalreview.com/latest/?q=MjE5NQ==
December 27th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Beating a Dead Thread (Dumbest Pundit)…
If anyone harbors doubts that among the leading lights of the contemporary Right reside a significant contingent of The Stupidest People On The Planet, check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/mvmcc
This guy wouldn’t even last long at a late night colloquium of college sophmores ripping through their six-packs.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:57 am
sorry for the double post….
December 27th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Support the troops…
http://tinyurl.com/yda4kk
December 27th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Reg.
I actually rode in a Trabi once. The heating system is the only one I’ve ever seen that had a pilot light one had to light.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Did it double as the cigarette lighter ?
December 27th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
It was the cigarette lighter.
December 27th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
I’ll stick with the Edsel thank you! Why go to some commie car when we can roll our own!
December 27th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Ah yes! Jonah Goldberg retires the cup doesn’t he? I can see him now pouring over the STAR WARS films as Dennis Prager studies the Torah in order to find wisdom to impart on “Luke” Bush. Can’t you just see him telling Shrub “Use the Force!”
Trouble is “Darth” Chaney is right there too whispering “Come over to the Dark Side” in the boy-emperor’s ear.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
“[Jonah Goldberg] wouldn’t even last long at a late night colloquium of college sophmores ripping through their six-packs.”
Hey! Cut Jonah-boy some slack! So this column isn’t even sophomoric reasoning. So what? He probably got slammed up against a deadline empty-handed (happens to the best of us) and decided to submit one of his *freshman* English essays.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Some relatively kind words for Gerald Ford, RIP, from Juan Cole
http://tinyurl.com/y3an4r
George Will said on TV last night that Ford’s main accomplishment was allowing the system to right itself in the wake of the Nixon disaster, and made the interesting point that Ford hadn’t had to do what it takes to be elected president, and therefore didn’t share the flaws of most of those who did do what it takes. He had some principles — he didn’t jump on the Reaganaut bandwagon just because it was convenient for his career. Lots of others did.
I suppose I’m feeling a little nostalgic for Republicans I didn’t like very much at the time. But now that I have a basis for comparison like Dubya, even Nixon is starting to look like he had some redeeming qualities (a real brain, if nothing else.)
December 28th, 2006 at 1:00 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,967 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
ALGRIM, Wilson A., 21, Pfc., Army; Howell, Mich.; First Battalion, 125th Infantry.
BUBECK, John T., 25, Sgt., Army; Collegeville, Pa.; First Infantry Division.
DENFRUND, Jason C., 24, Sgt., Army; Cattaraugus, N.Y.; 10th Mountain Division.
ELIAS, Elias, 27, Specialist, Army; Glendora, Calif.; Second Infantry Division.
MEJIA, Bobby II, Pvt., Army; Saginaw, Mich. First Battalion, 125th Infantry.
MOON, Jae S., 21, Sgt., Army; Levittown, Pa.; Second Infantry Division.
MORRIS, Stephen L., 21, Lance Cpl., Marines; Lake Jackson, Tex.; Third Marine Division.
PRESTON, Aaron L., 29, Specialist, Army; Dallas; First Infantry Division.
NELSON, Andrew H., 19, Pfc., Army; St. Johns, Mich.; First Infantry Division.
SEBASTIEN, Myles C., 21, Lance Cpl., Marines; Opelousas, La.; Second Marine Division.
VOLLMER, Chad J., 24, Specialist, Army; Grand Rapids, Mich.; First Battalion, 125th Infantry.
December 28th, 2006 at 1:02 am
Awaiting moderation: 11 names of the dead. There were 8 reported yesterday. Where is the antiwar movement? Enjoying the holidays no doubt. It is a nearly a month until the next scheduled march in Washington.
December 28th, 2006 at 2:18 am
At least Ford had the sense to know that invading Iraq was a mistake. His embargoed interview with Bob Woodward:
http://tinyurl.com/ybd9hh
December 28th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Gerald ‘pardon me’ Ford:
Juan Cole talks about Ford striding confidently – all I remember was Ford falling down alot.
Variations of George Will’s “allowing the system to right itself” comment have been echoing around the MSM. What they really mean is thank God Ford’s pardon of Nixon effectively swept under the rug not only Watergate but the really egregious chicanery of the Nixon years: the decimation of Camdodia, the domestic spying, intimidation, assasination etc…
December 28th, 2006 at 8:23 am
“We need to start leaving Iraq.”
–John Edwards, announcing he’ll run in 2008
Anti-war Democrats are where you find them.
December 28th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Edwards seems almost too good to be true…..they’ll destroy him…..Obama will guilt liberals into rejecting him.
I hope I’m wrong, because Edwards actually seems to be as good as it gets for Democrats. I don’t remember when class struggle (two americas, bourgeois and proletarian) was a popular issue. That Edwards is running a similar campaign to Lula is a good sign.
December 28th, 2006 at 10:47 am
I was also interested in Ford’s interview with Woodward. Boy are the long knives coming out now! David Ignatius tried to suggest the other day that Bush was “agonizing”. What a joke!
I’d like to comment on the Pardon. What that act did was exactly as Watters said. It swept Watergate and the crimes of Nixon under the rug and led to his rehabilitation. A decade later the more serious crimes of Iran-Contra were unpunished and the culprits free to resurface in the most criminal administration yet. And that is where we are – a corrupt, unamerican crew that came to power thru a stolen election with nary a peep from the Great and the Good. And they are now only beginning to bleat because even the dullest of them can see what a disaster these people are.
I’ll give Gerald Ford the benefit of the doubt and suppose he did it for the best of reasons (“Closure”, ending our “Long National Nightmare” etc) but it was the worst presidential decision of the last quarter of the late century.
And maybe if we had faced the Watergate squarely and cleanly our current national nighmare might not exist.
December 28th, 2006 at 11:39 am
The local papers have adopted as fact the hypothesis that Ford lost in 76 because of the pardon. Sorry, but that was but one factor. The country was really not working then…inflation was nearing 20% annually and Ford’s response was the “Whip Inflation Now” program, represented by the WIN button. And there was the gasoline shortage and a general feeling of hopelessness that Ford did little to overcome.
So people were willing to take a leap of faith with a relative unknown…Jimmy Carter. But I guess you would say Ford did OK with what he had. He was pretty much Denny Hastert, with a little more pop.
Requiescat in pacem.
December 28th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
I’d like to nominate Marty Peretz for the “Coveted” Jonah Goldberg Award for his remarks today on Saddam Hussain’s death sentence. Now as John Aravosis remarks you can be for the death penalty or against it but its a real feat to be both for and against it at the same time as Peretz is today. He takes issue with Romano Prodi, the President of Italy, who is an ardent foe and has come out strongly against killing Saddam. Peretz says he too opposes Capital Punishment but asks, rhetorically I believe, if Prodi would have opposed the execution of Eichmann. Well, yes I guess since he says he is against it. But I suppose that Marty will make the occasional exception for those he really, REALLY, doesn’t like.
It is a real shame that this mediocre man has been able to use his wife’s money to ruin what was, once, one of this country’s leading journals of opinion and turn it into a joke.
December 28th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
When was the New Republic truly a leading journal of opinion?
December 28th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Great story, Marc!
December 28th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
When it had people like Otis Ferguson and Robert Brustein on film and drama. When Walter Pincus and James Ridgeway dug up the dirt. When Edmond Wilson wrote for it. I could go on and on but I remember that in the sixties and seventies it was must reading.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Swingin’ Saddam watch:
I’m no fan of Marty P, but I do make some exceptions when it comes the capital punishment. I unequivocally oppose the death penalty in all but one circumstance: I get to perform the execution with my own bare hands.
December 28th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
I understand that the Iraqi Justice Ministry plans to videotape the execution. So at least FOX will have something to replace its OJ Special with.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:41 am
The Department of Defense has identified 2,976 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
CLAYTON, Hayes, 29, Capt., Army; of Georgia, First Infantry Division.
CRUTCHFIELD, Michael J., 21, Specialist, Army; Stockton, Calif.; Third Battalion, Fourth Air Defense Artillery.
KOPRINCE, William C. Jr., 24, Lance Cpl., Marines; Lenoir City, Tenn.; Second Marine Division.
LANHAM, Jane E., 43, Lt. Cmdr., Navy; Owensboro, Ky.; Naval Branch Health Clinic, Bahrain.
NAPPER, Roger Jr., 30, Petty Officer Third Class, Navy; Greensburg, Pa.; Mobile Security Squadron Three, Bahrain.
SCHMITZ, Joshua M., 21, Cpl., Marines; Spencer, Wis.; Second Marine Division.
STRONG, Joseph A., 21, Specialist, Army; Lebanon, Ind.; 25th Infantry Division.
TINSLEY, Douglas L., 21, Specialist, Army; Chester, S.C.; 25th Infantry Division.
WHEELOUS, Dexter E., 37, Sgt. First Class, Army; Winder, Ga.; First Infantry Division.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:44 am
Awaiting moderation: 9 more names of the dead today. That makes 28 I have posted in the last three days. Their deaths are hardly noticed in the media. They are obviously expendable.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:13 am
MB you’re in Paris so you probably don’t get the PBS “Newshour with Jim Leher” but they close each broadcast with pictures of the dead as their names become available.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Glad to hear that, rlo. When Fox news starts doing it maybe the surge will get cancelled.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Well there was progress of sorts at FOX. The other day, while trashing Cindy Sheehan, Fox said her brand of protest had been supplanted by “more Mainstream” dissent. So even they understand that opposition to Mess-O-Potamia is mainstream.
(course someone may get fired for telling the truth)
December 29th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
So does Stephanopoulos “This Week” for their In Memoriam (not pictures, just names). Of course the Rightwing considers such things bad etiquette. Honoring the dead is “demoralizing”.
Also, let’s quit using the term “surge” – which was popularized by a guy named Fred, via the Weakly (No) Standards – and refer to what Fred is asking the people who actually bear the burden of fighting this war to do, which is provide him and his cohorts with the wherewithal to escalate the war – by going back into Iraq more often and for longer tours. This goddam thing is going to go on through the 2008 election. Bush is going to escalate. So we might as well call it that.
An Aside, just to get juices flowing on a dying thread: It’s all well and good for folks to shout at the Beltway Dems for not immediately cutting off funds, but frankly, cutting off funds isn’t going to happen for two reasons – number one is that even Dems who oppose the war are too divided over exactly how we extricate ourselves (which I don’t think is an issue that deserves simple glib derision), probably not so divided over the politics of how we extricate ourselves and of who gets blamed for the inevitable and more than likely multiple ensuing debacles (and it’s absurd to assume politicians will rise above politics, which defines their profession) and because cutting off funds for an ongoing military adventure isn’t the way these things are supposed to be decided (although admittedly it’s the only option for a quick end to the war – and one which, frankly, could hand the Iraq issue back to the GOPers for relentless exploitation because the Dems would “own the defeat”. That may not make sense to a lot of us who have never soiled ourselves in the context of any political space that actually matters as such things are generally understood, but I would certainly put my money on that happening, given the shamelessness of American politics and weird vagaries/short memories that drive public moods.)
December 29th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
I’ll add that I’m not sure that GWB/Dick Cheney would allow a cutting off of funds for the war to actually end the war. I’ll bet that there are existing contingency plans for emergency funding of the war even if funds are “cut off” – if you think that’s a weird notion, apparently you’ve forgotten about Iran-Contra. Of course, the amounts of money involved in continuing the Iraq war versus funding the Contras are vastly different – but I could see a showdown sort of like a reverse of the “shutting down the government” deal whereby the requisite number of Dems – after a tight vote to cut funds – get bludgeoned into “supporting the troops” in a face-off with Bush-Cheney. This could also backfire against the GOP, but I wouldn’t put some such scenario past this administration. They seem to me to be as crazy as…well, as they seem to be. Which is hella crazy… Pure speculation, but given their brush-off to the ISG, it’s clear things are going to get “interesting” in some ways we might never have anticipated.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
I I don’t harbor any particular animus toward Gerald Ford. I believe the speech he gave as the Vietnam war ended calling for the country to put the sorry episode behind them and not “refight a war that is finished” was the best one could expect in that context. And he gets credit for his distaste for Reagan , for apparently becoming buddies with Ex-Pres. Jimmy Carter and for at least privately noting GWB’s terrible judgement as regards Iraq. But if we’re going to remember the man for this brief eulogic moment, let’s be honest about his Presidency. He doesn’t deserve to be blamed for a crappy economy under his short tenure and he seemed like a relatively decent sort personally by Beltway standards. But beyond his blanket pardon of Nixon, here’s a note on the “dark side” of Gerald Ford.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/press.html
December 29th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Thanks Reg I forgot about “This Week”. Remember when Ted Koppel did that “Nightline” where they showed pix of the Iraqi War dead (ala the famous LIFE article from 1969 on Vietnam)? The Right went ballistic and that same group that did the “News Special” on the Swiftliars refused to carry it on their affiliates. What you don’t see you don’t care about I guess.
December 29th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
And before Marc comes back from his holiday break, tan fit and rested, to snark on John Edwards as the latest lame Dem I thought I’d at least praise two things about his announcement the other day for the Presidency.
First, the fact that he did it from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and took the government to task for its miserable effort in Katrina clean-up and his continuing spotlight on “The Two Americas” make him the only major figure that is making poverty and the “Other America” an issue. He talked about how people should not wait around but start working on solutions but made it clear that GOVERNMENT has a central role. We need to hear that.
Second, he has more than made up for voting for that resolution on Iraq. Not only does he call for immediate withdrawal (or as soon as possible) but he calls a spade a spade. He said that McCain’s and Bush’s “Surge” is “A dangerous escalation.” Get it? “Escalation”, as in Vietnam, as in “waist deep in the Big Muddy”. And he not only took on Bush but attacked St John Mcain and tied this war around Mr “Straight Talk’s” neck.
Good for him on both points. And I think his positions will serve him well in the primaries. I am beginning to wonder if Hil will even run. Where is her support? Those polls are a measure of name recognition. She is so far behind on Iraq that she is becomming irrelevant. Even Joe Biden says “NO” to a “Surge”
But, true to form, “Holy Joe” Lieberman loves it as he says in a WaPo Op-Ed. Thanks CT voters – there is your “Anti-War” Senator!
Joementum! Can’t you feel it!
December 29th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
For a group of people prepared to call themselves smart and the right dumb, I noticed that no one said nothin’ about the 20% inflation rate under Ford. In reality, it was around 12% when Ford took office and under 6% when he left. Under Carter it didn’t go much higher (13.5% falling to around 10% when Carter left office. This article shows the rates of inflation for the last 35+ years
December 29th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
So it’s odd someone didn’t mention a 20% inflation rate that you say was really 12% sliding toward 6% ? Huh ? Guess I’m too dumb to figure that one out…and my mention of a “crappy economy” doesn’t count because I didn’t cite inflated inflation figures…or something. Not trying to be mean…but am I missing some obvious point here ?
Incidentally, I don’t think the Rightwing is as dumb as it is mendacious, dishonest and self-serving. Shamelessly so. (Although there are some real dummies – like Jonah Goldberg and Fred Barnes – and over the long term it’s dumb to be persistently mendacious, dishonest and self-serving. (Or at least that’s what I learned in Sunday School and it’s generally borne out as a useful rule of thumb.) Sort of like President Bush’s assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism on CNN yesterday who, when questioned about the failure to capture bin Laden, said that he didn’t think of it as a failure but “a success that hasn’t happened yet.” He’s either incredibly dumb or assumes the rest of us are. In either case, a jerk.
I might also add, per the snark, that the person in these threads who has probably made more assertions about how mentally impaired – literally unable to reason – his opponents are than anyone else (at least as often as the bigger liberal assholes who comment here such as myself) is your buddy Woody. It’s an article of faith with him and apparently applies to all liberals, ever and always on any topic discussed in his fevered imagination. Sort of like his tedious assertions that we have no sense of humor or don’t care enough about sports to be “normal Americans”. I certainly don’t care much about most sports – my bad, but I can’t imagine anything more boring than televised games as a steady diet – but if Woody values periodic in-depth commentary about sports from political bloggers I’d suggest that he spend some time following young liberal punks Matt Yglesias’ and Spencer Ackerman’s blogs, both of whom are obsessive fans and seem pretty smart about it.
December 29th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Saddam is hanged for having 148 men killed and Justice is steeped in irony…
http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/iraq/2006/1106usguilty.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2006/0831appeasers.htm
December 29th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
There is some strange editorializing on the imminent Saddam execution over at Juan Cole. Timing his hanging for the Hajj at a time of unparalleled tension between Sunnis and Shi’ites, and before the administration announces new plans for Iraq, does seem strange. Or is it timing? Maybe it’s just irrational haste.
Speaking of death in high places, while Ford’s passing is attended by considerably less mournful pageantry than Reagan’s, they are taking the unusual step of having him lie in state at the House and the Senate. And this news comes not longer after the posthumous revelation that he believed invading Iraq was a mistake.
Ford wasn’t a great president, certainly not an ideal one. However, despite not having been elected, he was a better example of how to be president than a great many who were — not least including the twice-elected one we have now. He was no giant, but Bush will now have to pedal furiously to get out from under his shadow any time soon.
Perhaps there will be a salutary psychological impact on Congress, just seeing him (though dead) over a period of a few days, more frequently than they saw him (living) over the past 6 years. Ford was very much a creature of Congress, particularly of the House — he confessed to having no greater ambition than to be Speaker there one day. Perhaps, in death, he will speak louder to Congress than any words from the living can at this point.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:58 am
Well, Saddam is dead, and so is the rule of law – rather, the rule of law never was, you just thought it existed. Here is another in your face proof – how many do you need? Is either house howling about this? Is there any strong judicial voice condemning this? No, they know there is no rule of law, when will you find out?
December 30th, 2006 at 7:40 am
MT:
Strange editorializing indeed. I linked to a blog from Al Jazeera where the case was being made that bombs were being planted in Iraqi cars and trucks at US-run check points. Some were found bfore exploding. Anyway,alot of bloggers seemed convinced that at least some of the bombing in Iraq is perpertrated by the US.
The above, plus the timing of Saddam’s execution (and so much of what’s been labeled as the “incompetent handling of Iraq’)seem to indicate Bush’s strategy for Iraq: incite the locals to each others throats.
December 30th, 2006 at 7:48 am
It seems worth noting that Saddam was convicted for signing the execution orders for 148 people: all of whom were allegedly tried and convicted for involvement in attempting to assassinate Saddam.
If you think those trials could have been fair and that what Saddam did in that case was not a war crime, you’re pretty far around the bend.
There was another assassination attempt allegedly involving Iraqis, around 1995. But this time, the target was ex-president Bush. When the plot was discovered, there were no arrests, no trials and, of course, no convictions. There were, however, executions, delivered at the behest of President William Jefferson Clinton via cruise missile attacks. Scores of innocents were killed and no one yet has been held responsible in a court of law. How can Saddam’s slaughter be a war crime and Clinton’s not?
Perhaps the fate of America’s current foray into Iraq is but a measure of justice for that seldom acknowledged war crime.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Leaving aside the moral issues of the death penalty, Saddam has been made a martyr by a seriously flawed judicial process in which the Americans were intimately involved at every step–the notion that this was a solely Iraqi endeavor is complete nonsense, as a detailed article in today’s International Herald Tribune makes clear. The fact that all of us might think he was guilty as charged makes no difference to that, nor to the negative consequences his execution is sure to have for both Iraqis and Americans in the very near future.
Good going all around.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:29 am
“…incite the locals to each others throats.”
A peculiar strategy, perhaps half-credible if you permit a rough analogy: for Sunni vs Shi’a, read Soviet Communism vs. Maoism. If you want a new Cold War, you also want the enemy divided against itself.
I don’t know if that’s what Bush & Co want, and I don’t know if the analogy works anyway.
If there’s some strategic purpose behind the timing of moves so as to create more friction, I think it’s more likely it’s something like this:
Iraq itself is now a strategic weapon. If we leave it in chaos, we leave the region to that chaos, which might metastasize. An analogy I’ve used before is that it’s like we’re holding a grenade with its pin pulled, and can teleport out of the way after letting go. That’s leverage against regional actors. But only if they can see the fuze fizzling. All the time.
This works on a strategic regional scale in the Middle East, but perhaps also on a tactical provincial scale within Iraq. Consider:
U.S troops *have* been able to go into cities and towns, take them back from the insurgents, and stabilize them. However, there aren’t nearly enough of troops in there to pacify all of Iraq, so they have to keep moving around, and every time they move on, the local situation slides back into militia/insurgent rule. Also, you can’t do this in a very large city like Baghdad, at least until it is fairly neatly divided regionally along fracture lines that are still more social than regional (thoug this appears to be happening — a local “ethnic cleansing.”)
Looked at one way, this is a treadmill. There is, however, another way to look at it: how local mentalities change in the process, possibly to the benefit of ultimate U.S. control.
In WW II, we firebombed the Japanese into submission. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were little more than particularly advanced firebombs, proof that our industrial and technological might, our ruthlessness and our unwillingness to take more casualties on our own side knew no bounds. But, as Bush pointed out in a speech some years back, those days (of mass slaughter of civilians to compel total surrender) are over. It’s, y’know, immoral? But something like that is perhaps sometimes necessary to subjugate a nation. So what we need is some passably *moral *equivalent of urban firebombing. How do we get that? Through a combination of adequate and inadequate security — controlling an area, then letting it go, giving the hapless subjects a taste of both. That way, we’re not the perpetrators (directly) of the heinous massacres.
Now, I’m not asserting that this has been the secret Bush strategy all along (or even their strategy after it became clear that our troops would be pelted with objects considerably harder and hotter than flowers). Nor am I saying I believe that it would work. I don’t know, but I lean towards doubt. What it is, however, is a strategy that *might* be thought to work under the constraints: limited U.S. forces, no prospect for any dramatic increase in those forces, limits on the ruthlessness of force application; and no shortage of kindling for “virtual urban firebombing”, in the form of hostility among Iraqis, whether the animosity is born of differences that are clan-based, sectarian (or in the degree of religious fervor within a sect), racial, political, whatever.
The Lancet Report offered estimates of the number of violent deaths since the invasion that roughly compare with violent death rates from Allied aerial firebombing attacks on the cities of Japan. Yet most of these deaths in Iraq were at the hands of other Iraqis. (A great many of them might not even have been politically motivated — the conditions are such as to promote a high rate of homicide, suicide and accidental deaths from gunshot wounds.) It takes a lot to turn a nation away from internal leadership and swallow the indignity of indefinite control by foreigners. But I do know it can happen to a nation, because I live in a nation where it happened. Any strategy for Iraq from here on out, one that’s even halfway workable, will probably take into account the crushing conditions Iraqis live under now, and try to use that suffering for its political leverage. But it can only work if there is realistic hope of a better life under U.S.-proxy subjugation. And I think we’re a long way from establishing that as credible, with the average Iraqi. The lever is useless without the right fulcrum, and I don’t think examples like a cleaned-out Tal Afar and Fallujah are likely to be enough.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
No one will shed tears for Saddam but this is so bad that even Tallyrand’s famous injunction of an action being worse than immoral – a blunder – comes to mind.
Let’s see he was killed for killing a few hundred people. Hell, we do that almost daily in Iraq. In Baghdad alone! And we execute him during the Haiji? During Ramadam? What Bush never fried anyone in Texas on Good Friday? And can’t you just see him mincing around the White House (or Crawford) making jokes the way he did when he whacked Karla Faye Tucker (as reported by Tucker Carlson in the WEEKLY STANDARD)?
Putting aside Saddam’s guilt does anyone here think the trial was fair? Amnesty International sure didn’t. Human Rights Watch Didn’t. And does anyone think it was an IRAQI Court and not the US behind the sentence? See the piece at HUFF POST – what did Hussain do to us? And then there is the death penalty. The President of Italy opposed it. Tonight the candles will burn in the Colleseum for a “Martyr”. And how does this help Tony Blair who claims to be anti-death penalty? Bet the papers there will love this.
And Saddam? Well I understand he went to his death clutching the Koran. Great! nother holy martyr to Islam slain by the Western Infidals! Think that’s how it will be seen all over Sunni Land – and I don’t mean only Iraq. And a great way to teach the Shia moderation while we waste our enemies.
Somewhere, in an undisclosed location on the NW Frontier Osama Bin Laden is laughing his ass off. “Wanted Dead or Alive”?
Right?
December 30th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Personally I’m glad Saddam’s dead and think his death was well-deserved…BUT…
Saddam’s worst war crimes and crimes against his own people weren’t what he was tried for. He was tried for what were clearly the least of these. I’m convinced the reason he was executed without being tried for undeniable and massive war crimes during the Iraq-Iran war was because players wiithin the U.S. government were complicit and providing direct assistance to his efforts at the time, not to mention that the option of violating international law to strike against Iran is something that our current administratioin wants to leave on the table with the fewer questions asked the better.
Trying Saddam for crimes against his own people in the wake of Gulf War 1 was also problematic because it raised a thorny issue – not of why the U.S. didn’t march into Baghdad in ’91, which would have been stupid, but of why the U.S. allowed Saddam to fly helicopters against the rebels who Bush’s dad had incited and had our implied support. That wasn’t a war crime on our part, but it was “criminal” in any moral sense not to destroy Saddam’s ability to respond with a superior force from the air, which could have been easily done and which no international body would have criticized in the circumstance of an internal rebellion. (That last clause doesn’t really matter much, but it’s the explanation that the Crazy Right uses when it’s convenient, i.e. the UN resolutions forced us to invade Iraq or UN resolutions kept us from toppling Saddam in ’91. Weird folks, they, but they have their widdle blankies when such issue are discussed, so one has to take their lack of seriousness and meandering logic into account.) It’s also the case that the Kurds haven’t had the opportunity to use a court to prosecute their brief agaiinst Saddam. My bet is that, although Kurds must be enjoying the image of Saddam swinging at the end of a rope, the Kurdish judiciary and political class would have preferred to see their own considerable case against Saddam through in a public trial.
As it occured, the bizarre trial and hanging of Saddam for ordering 148 executions that were no doubt arbitrary and vindictive comes across as…arbitrary and vindictive rather than a serious effort to call Saddam to accounts before his people, the region and the world or to reinstitute a consistent standard of law in a country where any official avenues of justice have long been denied. At this rate, they should have just shot the bastard when they first found him in his hole.
I’m not given to conspiracy theories and am politically someone who would no doubt quickly part company with Ed Watters on most issues, but it’s hard not to imagine that this was timed to stir up some internal shit to rationalize Bush’s next move. My theory – pulled directly from my ass, which has unfortunately been a better source of likely scenarios than the mainstream press throughout this mess – is that they want to set off a series of events to justify officially partitioning Baghdad into “security” zones (which will need “more troops”, yes Lord) and to go with guns blazing into certain enclaves of resistance. Won’t work because the countyr is now a crazy quilt, but they gotta give the grand scheme another shot and stick this sucker out.
(Otherwise the hair on the neo-cons’ chests will stop growing, Victor Davis Hansen will have to settle down and live out his golden years coming to terms with the fact that he’s just a goddam Classics Professor, even Rupert Murdoch will have second thoughts about paying Bill Kristol the big bucks to put out a money-losing magazine with zero credibility and Fred Kagan will have little left to do save write another book with the word “Delusion” in the title, although this time it will be his memoir.)
PS. Has anyone else noticed how deeply the Right-Wing has mired itself in exalting a bunch of university professors (and the occasional son-of-somebody) who’ve never really spent any time anywhere actually doing anything outside of academia or the Beltway as their oracles? Wierd.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
One more thing – playing the videotape of Saddam clutching a Koran and, despite certain of the Warbloggers claiming that he showed fear, seeming to calmly go to his death – with reports of his last words being “Palestine is Arab” along with the requisite Islamic incantations – is an incredibly stupid bit of PR. So stupid that, again, one wonders what the purpose of it all was. Even the way the video was shot up close and personal, the hooded executioners, the gigantic noose, all conspire to create an image of a martyr for anyone crazy, bitter or fevered enough to be so disposed. Which is, of couse, untold millions.
Of course one fairly sensible, measured view of Saddam’s well-deserved death was being promulgated in the Middle East, so maybe things aren’t as bad as I fear. Iran seemed very pleased, as they clearly are with the entire turn of events for which we’ve taken 25,000 combat casualties…
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-12/30/content_5550896.htm
December 30th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
“Osama Bin Laden is laughing his ass off.”
Osama isn’t laughing his ass off. He’s experiencing a sense of anquish at having been caught…which just hasn’t occured yet.
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/TSR-Townsend-Denial.mov
December 30th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
“Saddam’s worst war crimes and crimes against his own people weren’t what he was tried for. He was tried for what were clearly the least of these.”
It was what they could convict him on most easily and quickly, through something resembling due process, to get him into the ground as soon as possible — which, as we can see from the haste of this execution, was obviously the goal. 148 deaths is a drop in the bucket of blood, but in this case there was a direct line of causality and clear motives — an attempt on his life, followed quickly by disproportionate and collective punishment.
For a good many large-scale massacres in Iraq, you might find much longer reporting chains (thus much more potential for Saddam deniability) and a plausible rationale for draconian measures: Iraq was in a state of civil war, with proven external enemies — the U.S., Iran — supporting rebellions against the central Iraqi government. Civil wars are very bloody, and typically feature serious crimes against civilians. When you add external threats … well, that’s a considerable hatred-amplifier. Having been one of those external threats also gets you into legal trouble. Congress passed “regime change” legislation in the late 90s, a clear declaration of its lack of regard for norms of international sovereignty, after having approved, in the early 90s, a war against Saddam in the name of the shining principle of national sovereignty.
Noam Chomsky has said that, as war crimes are currently defined, every post WW II president is guilty of one war crime or another. That’s an inflammatory way of putting it (no, really!), but nevertheless accurate on some level. If national sovereignty is “organized hypocrisy”, so is your average war crimes tribunal.
December 31st, 2006 at 6:33 pm
He’s experiencing a sense of anquish at having been caught…which just hasn’t occured yet.
Reg,
Just like my being the filling in a Salma Hayek/Scarlet Johansson sandwich is a success that hasn’t occurred yet. Neither is my scoring the game winning goal on a 35 meter free kick to win the US it’s first World Cup Championship.
January 1st, 2007 at 1:07 am
MT:
Stop worrying about offending our host and and post what is on your mind. Is inflammatoriness independant of accuracy?
Are war crimes vague and arbitrary or are they subject to clear and strict interpretation?
January 1st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Premature Congratulations on your amazing scores, RP….
January 13th, 2007 at 11:18 am
From 1st Lt. Wannanotbe to Saddam. They are all innocent or at least there guilt is excusable, according to these fine folks. But who is guilty, and deservedly so? Why the President of the United States of America and his supporters of course. Never mind legality, never mind the Iraq government is soverign and has made several decisions of which the US didn’t approve, never mind 17 UN resolutions and all the rest of the realities that interfere with left-wing pronuciamentos. By the way, old chap, does anyone else find it rather crude to make sport of someone’s name? This question from the folks who use insults the way Michael Moore uses salt on his fries (chips). By the way, old fellow, who’s going to stand in the football matches? Oh brave new world that hath such people in’t. Such people indeed. And go on, keep listing the names of the brave American dead, there, Vlad the Impaler. Hope it makes you happy. Oh, and have a nice day.
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