QotD: Ideological attacks on Islam

I brought prejudices acquired during the Cold War to the struggle between civilisation and Islam, but tried — and try still — to be careful to see the differences as well as the similarities between the two struggles.

In this spirit, I at first thought that whereas Soviet communism was ideologically breakable, Islam is not breakable. More than a billion souls believe in it, and however true it might be that it is evil and repulsive nonsense, saying this would accomplish very little. It would merely poke the hornet's nest with a stick. But slowly, I have been coming round to thinking almost the complete opposite. Not only does denouncing Islam as evil nonsense establish the mere right, of us civilisationers, to denounce Islam — along with our right to say anything else we might want to say — true or false, nice or nasty, sensible or daft. Such talk also, I am starting to believe, strikes a dagger into the heart of the enemy camp, by spreading doubt in it about basic beliefs and hence sewing discord and confusion. I used to think that Islamists were indifferent to such ideological attacks. Now, I am starting to believe that they fear them very much. Hence all the murder threats. They sense that this is one of their weakest and potentially biggest fronts in the struggle. The biggest front of all, in fact.

Brian Micklethwait, "Exflux from Islam?", Samizdata, 2008-04-09

QotD: Revolutionary nihilism

The enemy abroad is by turns barbarously ignorant or a cave-dwelling comic opera evil but can under no circumstances be taken seriously for his accomplishments or his ideas. Our own fifth columnists are another matter.

When Palestinians living in the West — and their academic allies — spout the same rhetoric of grievance one is forced to concede they might mean it, that their calls for blood are not entirely coerced and that their holy men are indeed representative of popular sentiment. The will of the people truly is to throw candy to their children in celebration of the death of the children of their cosmic enemy. Their aims really are circumscribed by a seventh century psychotic fugue and have nothing whatsoever to do with the years 1948, 1967 or 1973 let alone the collective would be piety of Western onlookers.

Where is the Palestinian Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine? Where is the Palestinian Burke or Voltaire? If some Dark Ages Dianetics manual is the best they can manage for inspiration there can be no surprise at their barbarism and penury and no one to blame for their condition but themselves. Though, if some democratic successor government is of a litigious turn of mind, it might consider suing the likes of Avi Lewis. Such men claim to speak for an oppressed people; they do not. These men oppress Arabs, condemning them to despotism and ignorance. These men take no pleasure but in hating themselves and could care less who else pays for a masturbatory nihilism.

Nick Packwood, "Revolutionary nihilism", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-04-08

There's regrets, and then there are "regrets"

Tom Tomorrow captures the nature of the regrets being offered after five years:

QotD: The problems of Palestinian jihadists

In Tel Aviv, not a single bar or nightclub seems to obey the rules; all are thick with smoke. It is, roughly, a mix of 20 percent hash and 80 percent tobacco. According to a prominent investigative journalist here, it isn't just Israelis who indulge in drugging. The reporter, who works for a major Tel Aviv daily, is a fluent Arabic speaker who spends the majority of his time pounding the pavement in the Palestinian Territories.

He relates a bizarre story: Last year, while interviewing a house full of Hamas members, he entered into a rather ordinary conversation on the banalities of soldiering (the journalist, like most Israelis, is an Israel Defense Forces veteran). "So how do you pull these long shifts?" he wondered. "Well, we take pills smuggled in from Tel Aviv," said the Hamas apparatchik. "What pills?" He didn't know, but graciously placed a call to a Hamas comrade, who, apparently, doubles as his pharmacist. "He says they are called the EK-STAZY." The raver-jihadists explained that these mystery pills induce a mild euphoria, and allow them to shoot at members of the Israel Defense Forces for long, happy stretches.

The Hamas-embedded journalist relates another woe-is-me-story of life as a terrorist. "I'm the Oprah of the Palestinians. They are always telling me things about their private lives." One leader of Islamic Jihad recently confessed that his manifold sexual problems were driving him to depression. It is tough, he moaned, to find a good woman, a woman willing to spend time with you, when you marked for death by Israeli intelligence. Amongst the extremists, they even manage to blame not getting laid on Zionism.

Michael C. Moynihan , "Diary of an Israel Junketeer, Part Two: Tel Aviv, the Oprah of terrorists, and raver-jihadists", Reason Online, 2008-03-17

QotD: Primary Motivation

There is a reason the urban jihadis of Amsterdam and elsewhere specifically target gay men. Islam as a memeplex and as an adaptive strategy is about access to and ownership of women and by extension the control of sexual behaviour. Any number of cults function as a means for a small, core group of men — usually around a single charismatic leader — to mate with as many women as possible while relegating the majority of men to non-breeding status. David Koresh, Mormon fundamentalists, Raelians, the SeaOrg core of Scientology, and, yes, Islam at its earliest foundations down to its most determined exponents today; the list goes on and on. We see this structure over and over again because it works, at least so long as their are neighbouring populations which can be conquered by the otherwise non-breeding males of the cult and mined as a source of slaves, concubines and the spoils these cults cannot produce for themselves. The jihadis target gay men because of the unacceptable truth their overt ideology denies in themselves. And, quite possibly, out of an unconscious recognition of the most dangerous among their enemy if Europe undergoes another phase change, enters a swarm state and carries out another apocalyptic genocide.

Nick Packwood, "Where they make a desert, they call it peace", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-02-22

Archbishop of Canterbury surrenders

Rowan Williams knows when to set off an explosion . . . which he did yesterday by announcing that he thought that the introduction of Sharia Law to Britain was unavoidable:

The Archbishop of Canterbury drew criticism from across the political spectrum last night after he backed the introduction of sharia law in Britain and argued that adopting some aspects of it seemed "unavoidable". Rowan Williams, the most senior figure in the Church of England, said that giving Islamic law official status in the UK would help to achieve social cohesion because some Muslims did not relate to the British legal system.

[. . .]

Williams was . . . criticised by the Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi, shadow minister for community cohesion and social action. "The comments may add to the confusion that already exists in our communities," she said "We must ensure people of all backgrounds and religions are treated equally before the law. Freedom under the law allows respect for some religious practices. But let's be clear: all British citizens must be subject to British laws developed through parliament and the courts."

Sharia law sets out a broad code of conduct for all aspects of life, from diet, wearing of the hijab to marriage and divorce.

British courts do not recognise Islamic marriages performed in this country unless they are registered separately with the civil authorities. The result is that some Muslims think they are protected by family law when they are not, and others can think they are properly divorced, when they are still married. However, Britain recognises Islamic marriages and divorces conducted in Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Under Islamic law polygamy is condoned, allowing a man up to four wives and giving him the primary right to call for divorce. This means he can leave his first wife, refuse her a divorce and remarry, yet still consider himself living in accordance with his faith.

Polygamy gets its feet in the door

On the general topic of British decline, here is another fascinating precendent being set for men with more than one wife:

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.

[. . .]

Islamic law permits men to have up to four wives at any one time — known as a harem — provided the husband spends equal amounts of time and money on each of them.

A DWP spokesman claimed that the number of people in polygamous marriages entering Britain had fallen since the 1988 Immigration Act, which "generally prevents a man from bringing a second or subsequent wife with him to this country if another woman is already living as his wife in the UK".

It's a bad decision, for many reasons, but the kicker is in this statement:

In addition, officials have identified a potential loophole by which a man can divorce his wife under British law while continuing to live with her as his spouse under Islamic law, and obtain a spouse visa for a foreign woman who he can legally marry.

So . . . expect more claimants under the new policy.

QotD: Those shadowy "others"

Who these "others" are is left unsaid, though one could argue that "information warfare" hardly counts as a "secret strategy." And while it is at least conceivable that the CIA would be stupid enough to cut off Iran's lifeline to an independent media (it is the CIA, after all), ABC's source for this claim, an "Internet columnist" called Ian Brockwell, is of dubious reliability. According to his online bio, Mr. Brockwell's interests include UFOs and climate change, the latter of which he attributes to the perfidy of the former. But here's some free advice for the kids at ABC: Be slightly more skeptical of claims by online columnists whose work can be found on Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel's website, such as Brockwell's crie du coeur against "people fear those who debate the 'Holocaust'?" (Scare quotes around Holocaust in original, naturally).

Michael C. Moynihan, "Who Cut the Cables? An ABC Investigation" Hit and Run, 2008-02-04

QotD: The Afghan mission

[. . .] We recognize the conflict in Afghanistan as a liberation struggle, waged by the Afghan people and their allies, against oppression, against obscurantism, illiteracy, and the most brutal forms of misogyny. It is a fight for democracy, and for peace, order, and good government. It is also a struggle waged by the sovereign Government of Afghanistan, a member state of the United Nations, against illegal armed groups that seek to overturn the democratic will of the Afghan people.

In Afghanistan, the great global struggle for the recognition and protection of basic human rights — universal rights — is being waged with a particular and necessary ferocity. We cannot and must not retreat from that struggle.

The objective of extending and securing the sovereignty of the Government of Afghanistan to all corners of that great country cannot be achieved without a robust international military presence. Canada is one the richest countries on earth, and as such we have absolutely no excuse to shirk from our duty to make a proper and effective contribution to that military engagement.

Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, "Submission to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan", 2007-11-28

Government-provided services

I've often made the case that the government is generally bad at providing services, even in the case of soi disant "natural" monopoly situations. About the only thing that governments do well is kill people . . . and even the most incompetent government can do a crackerjack job of that. This story is an example of why government-provided goods and services are a waste of time, energy and resources, compared to letting individuals and companies provide them:

A new bus-stop has been built in Lashikar Gah as part of the 'reconstruction' effort.

The report does not say whether it is a replacement for a pre-war bus-stop. Somehow I doubt it. It is very well-equipped, having its own mosque and a pharmacy, as waiting times "can be rather long".

An odd approach. In most of the world a bus-stop is a place where buses happen to stop. Of course bus-stops, like ports and railway stations all round the world provide opportunities for traders, places of worship, bars and cafes and so forth, but they seldom have them built in. Bus companies and their passengers are primarily interested in selling and buying travel. The pause at the roadside to move from foot to wheel, wheel to foot, refuel, refresh, is just procedural necessity.

Okay, you ask, what's the problem? It's a big, over-built bus station, so what is your point? This is my point:

[. . .] a government bus-stop is built to different, higher, standards. A throwaway line at the end of the report reveals just how long those waiting times are: "There are no buses yet."

You want to invade where? Are you mad?

Unlike a lot of bloggers, I don't spend too much time taking potshots at the current leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition . . . but this just cries out for comment. Stephane Dion has been pushing for a definite end to Canada's commitment to the mission in Afghanistan, but now is talking about somehow invading a nuclear-armed nation to make that mission more likely to succeed:

Any attempt to counter terrorists war-torn Afghanistan will not succeed without an intervention in neighbouring Pakistan, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said Wednesday.

Mr. Dion hinted NATO could take action in Pakistan, which has a porous border with Afghanistan, if the Pakistani government doesn't move to track terrorists.

"We are going to have to discuss that very actively if they (the Pakistanis) are not able to deal with it on their own. We could consider that option with the NATO forces in order to help Pakistan help us pacify Afghanistan," said Mr. Dion in Quebec City, commenting after his two-day trip to Afghanistan last weekend. "As long as we don't solve the problem in Pakistan, I don't see how we can solve it in Afghanistan."

That's not just ill-advised . . . that's absolutely batshit-crazy.

QotD: Final wishes

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

On a similar note, while you're free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I'll tell you you're wrong. We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.

Andrew Olmstead, posted on his blog by "hilzoy" after his death, "Final Post", Andrew Olmstead, 2008-01-04

Singapore and the age of de-MILFication

Rogier van Bakel decodes a recent decision by the Singapore bureaucracy:

It's official, because Singapore says so: There's no such thing as an over-45 MILF. When a woman reaches the age of 45, no right-minded Muslim with a dick would say, "Yeah, I'd tap that."

Muslim women under the age of 45 will be barred from making the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca unless accompanied by a close male relative starting next year, news reports said on Monday in Singapore. The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore said it would no longer appeal to Saudi Arabian authorities on behalf of women who wish to make the month-long pilgrimage unaccompanied. "We should respect the laws they have laid down," The Straits Times quoted Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim as saying.

Attempting to excuse the inexcusable

Nick Packwood writes on the recent "honour slaying" in Toronto:

A father who murders his daughter with the connivance of other family members may justify his acts as the defense of the family's honour in upholding traditions and — grotesquely — of acting morally. I imagine the experience is one of horror as his daughter transforms into something non-human that he must kill if he is to defend his own authority. I can only pray that men who do this have some love of their own children and some horror at themselves for what they do; I am not convinced this is the case.

But this is only to consider such murders as individual tragedies and at the level of "the family", the primary social unit in the minds of many religious fundamentalists. At a wider level, such acts serve to terrorize society as a whole and as a warning to other girls lest they consider disobeying familial authority. Young Muslim girls are taught from the day they are born that women have a particular place in the world and must yield to familial authority or bring down upon themselves the wrath of God and an unforgiving, homicidal malice from those closest to them in all the world.

This is true not only for medieval backwaters without the law in the "tribal areas" of north-western Pakistan or ten minute's drive beyond the Kabul city limits. This is true of suburban Toronto with its shopping malls and multi-lane highways and CNN; its parliamentary democracy, Charter of Rights and Freedoms and countless titled faculty at women's studies and sociology departments. What lesson can Muslim girls take from this but that tribal law applies to them here as surely as it is does for hundreds of millions of other girls around the world? Their own fathers will not protect them; their fathers may be their murderers. Worse yet, their friends, their teachers and a small army of police will not anticipate such crimes, perhaps because none can imagine a father strangling his own daughter to death over a supposed religious edict.

Nick is quite correct. Locally, after the shock of the act wears off, it will continue to work as a compelling argument to every Canadian Muslim girl that despite living in a Western society, the tribe still has the final say over her fate. It will encourage submission to standards and mores of societies where women are considered little more than property . . . to be disposed of at the whim of the "owner" — their fathers, brothers, or even sons — with no hope of achieving self-ownership.

If you don't think this is utterly wrong, there is something seriously wrong with your world.

Update: Damian Penny has more.

Soccer uniforms now considered offensive

Soccer team Inter Milan is now the least favourite team in Turkey, because of the offensive nature of their soccer uniforms:

The reason for the appeal is unusual: the celebratory shirt for Inter's centenary worn by the team that night, and on several other occasions this season, offended many people in Turkey.

The shirt's scheme saw a big red cross on a white background, a symbol of the city of Milan, and reminded many of an emblem of the order of the Templars, which is considered offensive in Islamic culture.

Inter consciously did not wear their 'centenary shirt' in their first match against Fenerbahce in Istanbul, but at home, they did not think it was necessary to do the same.

It'll be interesting watching how UEFA handles this complaint, because if it's upheld, there are a number of countries whose national flags will cause at least as much offense . . .

Oil prices

Megan McArdle links to a very useful chart at WSJ Online, saying:

One of the things that I was struggling to get across at a dinner a few weeks ago is how discontinuous prices on inelastic goods can be. That is, a few percentage points increase in demand against a relatively fixed supply doesn't produce a few percentage points increase in price: it can produce huge spikes. That's not intuitive; we feel as if prices and demand should grow at approximately the same rate. But people in the world have a lot of spare income they can use to bid up the price of oil; the speed with which its price is increasing is a measure of just how useful the stuff is.

Part of the problem is that most media folks are too young to personally remember the first two oil crises, so that the current situation is unique in their collective experience. They communicate that in so much of their coverage of the oil market and the political ruckus influencing it.

15 Days

I'm not yet finished reading Christie Blatchford's latest book, but on the whole, I agree with Lewis MacKenzie's review:

Blatchford has the rare ability to make her descriptions of combat, particularly those involving loss of life or serious injury, almost embarrassing to the reader. You feel that you are eavesdropping on very private matters. Her extensive research and her own recollections as she was caught up in the thick of some of the heaviest fighting are compelling, gut-wrenching and, unfortunately, real. Her admission that on one occasion during a firefight her bowels turned to water and got the best of her is ample proof that that she walked the walk. Her description, witnessed up close and under fire, of the evacuation of fatally wounded Corporal Anthony Joseph Boneca, shot in the throat and bleeding on the dirt under her feet, exposes the reader to the gut-wrenching reality of close combat.

During three extensive stays with the Canadians in Afghanistan, Blatchford was able to penetrate the macho façade presented by soldiers in combat, and to see the cohesion and affection born of an obligation to those vets who have gone before them, and of an intense dedication to their fellow soldiers. Contrary to popular myth, soldiers don't risk their lives — and in some cases die — for God, Queen, country or even the regiment. They do so for their fellow soldiers, their buddies, frequently only a few meters away due to the tunnel vision generated by the rush of adrenalin when someone is trying to kill you.

So far, my only complaint is that she takes some discredited research about combat as a proven issue: US Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall's Men Under Fire, with its contention that only a tiny minority of soldiers ever fire their weapons in combat situations. She doesn't reference Marshall by name, but talks about this factoid in one of the early chapters.

Alcohol and Islam

Jennifer "Chotzi" Rosen tries to get to the bottom of the Islamic prohibition of alcohol (and it's notable lack of success, early on):

So what is it with Islam and alcohol? The ban is actually more about social engineering than theology. It started when Mohammed (his name be praised) couldn't get his party-animal neighbors to shut up and let him sleep. His first decree merely pointed out that harmful effects of liquor sometimes outweigh good ones. Later, he forbid followers from drinking while praying. When none of this made a dent in local keggers, he finally outlawed drinking altogether.

This left some technicalities to quibble over. For example, alcohol is considered an abomination of Satan as well as najs (impure), khamr (mind-fogging) and haram (forbidden). But while all forbidden things are impure, not all impure things are forbidden. For example, Hashish and Qat, two highly intoxicating herbs, are najs, but allowed.

But what about other products containing alcohol? Are Old Spice and Listerine unholy? What about cough syrup? And if alcohol is the devil’s work, how do you explain Paradise, whose delights, along with the infamous virgins, include rivers of wine flowing free for the drinking?

The explanation is that alcohol, itself, isn't really sinful, only the behavior it causes. Since everything is different in Paradise, it follows that wine there is not intoxicating; it just has "pleasing effects." Whatever that means.

This column isn't up at the usual site, but will get posted to her personal site, http://www.corkjester.com/ soon (well, soon-ish).

But what will they play for Cheney Putin?

Perry de Havilland shares a joke with an unknown military music director:

I was watching the Channel 4 news coverage of the state visit of the King of Saudi Arabia to Britain, when something I saw nearly made me fall off my chair laughing.

So what does the British Army band for the guard of honour strike up as The Man himself steps out of his limo to high-five Her Majesty?

The Darth Vader March from Star Wars (click on 'watch the report' to see for yourself). I kid you not.

Someone somewhere deserves a medal.

Che's kids become non-persons in Iran

Brian Micklethwait links to an interesting story of worlds colliding:

A glorious culture clash took place in Iran recently that made me laugh out loud. The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father's death and celebrate the growing solidarity between "the left and revolutionary Islam" at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America's "earth-devouring ambitions" were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a "truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union".

Che's daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. "My father never mentioned God," she said, to the consternation of the audience. "He never met God." During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. "By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence," the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.

The enemy of my enemy

I've never quite cottoned on to that old saying, but some people clearly have integrated the notion completely:

Via a DailyKos-reading reader comes this "diary" from one sallykohn, a self-identified Jewish lesbian with a "crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," a man, she acknowledges, that might very well have her killed were she Iranian, but who nevertheless "speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon... "

It's hard to choose which bits to excerpt, but here are some favorites:

I want to be very clear. There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can't help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding. [. . .]

Telling the players without a scorecard, Iranian Kurdish division

Michael Totten finds that things are often even more confusing than you believe:

Don't confuse the Komala Party with the Komala Party. Iraqi Kurdistan hosts two exiled leftist parties from Iranian Kurdistan, both with the same name, the same (red) flag, and the same founder. Both parties have armed camps and military wings. Both built their compounds on the same road outside the city of Suleimaniya. They're right next to each other, in fact. Stand in the right place, and you can see one from the other. The difference is that one is liberal and the other is communist.

I didn’t know there were two until I set up an appointment to meet Mohtadi, of the liberal Komala Party, and wound up inside the communist camp, unannounced. The communists were good sports about my mistake. They granted me interviews, introduced me to Secretary General Hassan Rahman Panah, and fed me lunch. They gave me the grand tour. They didn't tell me I was at the wrong compound. That news came from Modarresi, when he called to ask why I hadn't shown up.

On the surface, the two parties are more confusingly interchangeable than the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea in Monty Python's Life of Brian. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mohtadi says Life of Brian is one of his favorite movies.

The former Iraqi army

Christopher Hitchens makes an excellent point:

However, one thing has become even clearer in retrospect than it was at the time: It was absolutely correct to dissolve the pre-existing Iraqi armed forces and to begin again with local and national elements who have been trained by, or are willing to work alongside, the coalition itself or the still-vestigial Iraqi government.

The opposite view of this question has become so much accepted that even President Bush now imagines that it was his policy all along to keep the Iraqi army intact. (The interview in which he claims this is perhaps the most alarmingly dysfunctional moment of his entire presidency.)

If there was one thing about U.S. foreign policy that used to make one shudder, it was the habit of ruling by proxy through military regimes. Especially beloved by the CIA, this practice befouled us in Chile, Greece, Indonesia, and numerous other cases where we made ourselves complicit in the policies of a local uniformed elite. The case of Iraq, where the armed forces routinely acted as a phalanx of naked aggression against neighboring countries and as a spectacularly cruel internal police force, as well as a parasitic consumer of the national income, was the instance above all where it was right to break with this abysmal tradition.

[. . .]

Take a moment to imagine what would have been written in the liberal press had the old military class been preserved and utilized to "stabilize" Iraq. I can write the headlines for you: "Baathist War Criminal Gets Second Career as American Employee"; "Once-Wanted Man, Brigadier Kamal Now Shares Jokes With 82nd Airborne"; "Kurds and Shiites Say: What Regime Change?"; "From Basra to Kirkuk, America Brings Saddamism Without Saddam." And, if you like, I can add the names of the reporters who would have written the stories.

Once the decision had been taken to invade, getting rid of the Iraqi army had to be done . . . the situation would be much worse for Iraqi civilians if it had been preserved.

An excellent question

Perry de Havilland boils down the big question about Iraq (and Afghanistan):

In both the USA and UK, much of the debate about how to react to the military situation in Iraq really strikes me as really odd. If a person thinks the available facts indicate we are not doing well against the insurgents, surely the choices should be either:

1. Conclude the enemy will inevitably win and no military and political victory is feasible, therefore accept being defeated and get out completely as soon as possible
2. Conclude the enemy can be beaten, but not at an acceptable cost, so accept being defeated and get out completely as soon as possible
3. Conclude the enemy can be beaten and therefore reinforce to improve the military force levels (i.e. the 'Surge') in order to actually win

What does not make any sense to me is any talk of reducing force levels by a person who does not think we have either already won or already been irretrievably defeated . . . and the stated position of most politicos on both sides of the Atlantic is neither of those things.

It's only a quagmire if you choose to make it one. Sending enough forces to do the job (however you define "the job") is the only sensible way to operate. Sending insufficient forces just means that success must be defined down to fit what is possible with the forces you sent. Demanding that they accomplish more than is possible is just plain delusional.

Live (sorta) from Haifa

Jon, my virtual landlord, is on a business trip to Israel. I just got the following email from him:

Is 12:30 am here and there is something going on in the bay. There have been flares over the bay for the last 30 minutes or so; I can hear helicopters. There are loud bangs and clanging noises from the north east, but I've been hearing noises like that all week from the port — that could be a ship being loaded or unloaded. There's also a low rumbling that sounds a little odd — could be distant aircraft or something.

There does not seem to be anything happening in the town itself. The streets look normal.

Not sure if I should be freaked out or not.

Update: It's a maritime accident, not a terrorist attack: details here.

An anti-hagiography of Nehru

Paul Marks does his bit to balance the historical record on one of the key movers in the Partition of India, Jawaharlal Nehru:

With the 60th anniversary of the end of British rule in the sub continent, there is the normal talk of whether the vast numbers of rapes and murders during partition could have been prevented. The British will, perhaps quite rightly, get the blame for not delaying independence and for not using enough force to try and prevent the violence on partition.

However, it is almost forgotten that Nehru (the leader of the Congress party and first Prime Minister of India) was demanding that the British leave (every day we stayed was a day too many for Nehru), and even claimed that it was mainly where the British were that violence took place.

This was the exact opposite of the truth (and Nehru knew it) — as it was where British forces went in (sadly much too rarely) that the mass rapes and killings were prevented. Nehru had "form" in letting his "get the British out of India" obsession cloud his judgement.

Here's the Wikipedia entry (complete with the always-amusing "weasel words" warning). And the one on the Partition of India.

Combs asks the pertinent question

Over at Combs Spouts Off, he compares the coverage in the media of the current Lebanese conflict with the earlier Israeli attacks on Hizbullah positions:

The story goes on to describe the rocket fire, the heavy bombardment of the "camp" on Thursday, the number of soldiers killed, and various tactical and other matters. Reuters has a similar story with similar pictures.

Reading these and other recent reports has made me wonder about some things.

The Lebanese army is fighting jihadists holed up in civilian neighborhoods, just as the Israelis did last year, and the Lebanese artillery and tank attacks seem much less restrained and precise. Why is the coverage so different? The AP story quoted above is 18 paragraphs long, and it isn't until the 17th and 18th paragraphs that civilians are mentioned [. . .]

It's an illustration that all deaths are not equal in the eyes of the western media: it's far more newsworthy if the deaths are caused, directly or indirectly, by Israeli (or US/Western European) troops. Internecine fighting doesn't get the same focus on either civilian casualties or destruction of towns and villages. You could argue that this is caused by anti-American/anti-Israeli biases, but it could equally be reflective of the audiences in the west: as Stalin is reported to have said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." This is even more so when the many deaths are far away (by distance or by cultural vectors).

Bad news sells, as everyone in the media understands full well, but bad news close to home out-sells bad news from further away.

More on framing the war on terror

Yesterday's link to the Radley Balko article got a thoughtful response from Chris Taylor (pulled from the comments to that post):

Balko is in error, though — he makes the assumption that today's jihadis are motivated to seek political change via terror. This is only true in a very limited sense. If the United States were to void its collective security arrangements with the Arab world, Israel, and formerly-Muslim parts of Europe, I am sure there would be a temporary downtick in terror attempts within the United States.

Eventually, though, we would be right back at the status quo because the primary animating force is religious and not political. No amount of political change would ever bring about the adoption of sharia and the absorption of the United States into the ummah. Even in nominally radical-dominated Muslim lands there is plenty of disagreement about what are and are not legitimate interpretations of the Qur'an, sunnah and hadith. Those disputes can never be resolved by political means. The only way to truly insulate a society is to become one of Islamic radicals, and even then we would be fighting with other radicals, whose interpretations our sect would find heretical. It simply does not end.

I responded in a flippant manner in that comment thread, but I thought Chris made some good points and that they should see the light of day (I know not everyone follows the comment threads). The instinct in the western media seems to be to attribute every terrorist act to the issues of the day in the west, not to the actual causes the terrorists themselves say are the reasons for their attacks. This bombing, despite the claims of the group that made the attack, is "really" because the Senate failed to pass that bill. Or this beheading is "really" caused by the US government failing to sign the Kyoto treaty.

Related thoughts from Steve Chapman:

By framing the fight as a global war, we have helped Osama bin Laden and hurt ourselves. Had we treated him and his confederates as the moral equivalent of international drug lords or sex traffickers, the organization might not have the romantic image it has acquired. By exaggerating the potential impact, we also magnified the disruptive effect of any plots, which is just what the terrorists seek.

We do further harm to ourselves by accepting government actions we would never tolerate except in the context of war.

The cack-handed "security" measures western governments have implemented in response to terror threats have done far more to further terrorist goals than the actual murders, bombings, and general mayhem actually committed by terrorist organizations. This should come as no surprise: in any period of stress, it is the deepest urge of any government to attempt to take greater control of anything within their grasp. It's one of the few things governments do well. (Grabbing control, that is, not actually exercising that control in an intelligent manner.)

Not the most convincing anti-Taliban vehicle

The British Army is introducing a new vehicle for travelling through Helmand province in Afghanistan (notable for a lack of paved roads): the Mad Maxmobile:

Photo from the Daily Mail article

Some rather good lines from the Fark.com thread:

Isotope ok, so I see I'm not the only one concerned that the vehicle will survive better than the crew...

Prank Call of Cthulhu The vehicle is missing something....hmmmm...what could it be? Oh, I know. It needs the Lord Humungous (The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!) driving it. That'd be sweet!

Cormee I'd like to see the design brief.
'Design a vehicle - suitable for hunting Basset Hounds.'

A Shambling Mound Armored?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

reverend_alex Wow, you can almost feel the fevered patriotic drool dripping from the author's lips as he pops a Daily Mail boner over a new *BRITISH MADE* vehicle for exterminating those filthy towelheads. Anyone else notice the barely-restrained glee with which this guy spells out exactly how awesome and powerful the almighty British Army is? Maybe because they're usually sent out into the desert with just some sunscreen and a cap gun. Not that that thing looks any more likely to protect them than Piz Buin factor 15.

Good luck to our boys and all, but the Americans called us 'The Borrowers' during Gulf War I for a reason.

The Star can still surprise

I'm quite taken aback by this editorial in the Toronto Star:

These events emphasize the importance of a continued combat role for Canada and its NATO allies in the Afghan war. They also emphasize the reality that without the continued effort to take the war to the Taliban, aid and reconstruction will be impossibly dangerous. Indeed, they would become pointless because abandoning the war means handing Afghanistan back to a Taliban dictatorship.

Maintaining Canada's will to fight that war, however, is certain to grow more difficult as casualties mount. Already, 56 Canadian soldiers have died in the war and the Taliban's campaign is becoming more violent as it grows more desperate. As casualties rise, political and public pressure to disengage from Afghanistan is likely to increase in Canada.

There are indications that the terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan are experiencing difficulty in finding recruits among Afghans themselves and have been replenishing their ranks with Chechens, Uzbeks and Arabs. That may be an extension of the war, but it is not one that should discourage Canada. It is more importantly a sign that war against terror there is working, that Canadian combat troops are slowly succeeding in making Afghanistan safer so aid workers such as Mr. Frastacky can eventually do their jobs without fear.

Wow. Just wow.

I find it amazing (and heartening) that the Star, who have generally been against the Afghan mission all along, would be able to print this editorial (but note that it originally appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press, and is reprinted in the Star). Between this editorial and the mayor of Toronto's climb-down over the yellow ribbon issue, it's already been a very unusual week.

RETRACTION: It wasn't the French Navy . . .

Yesterday, I linked to a story which claimed that a French naval vessel had allowed a Danish merchant ship to be taken by pirates. The ship was indeed taken by pirates, but the French navy had nothing to do with the situation:

Hold the presses and belay my last! Don't blame France (sorry buds), but this is a all USA show. Despite the multiple source reporting earlier - word now is that it was a US warship, USS Carter Hall (LSD-50) [Wikipedia entry here . . .]

We are enabling pirates. The nation that fought the Barbary Wars has a 10 SEP 01 attitude towards pirates. Because the do not "regularly kill" their hostages (often you will hear "do not kill" — which is true of Western Hostages) we will allow them to have a fair run at any ship they can reach? What? Is that really it? Is that were the US Navy and the International Community stands? The Somalia gov'munt cannot police their waters — I will say that again — cannot. We will not. Therefore you have de-facto pirate territory that they are using as a safe base to hold hostages for ransom. What happens when you do that? ECON101 tells you the value of all ships to pirates is greater — and the risk premium is minimal.

We are appeasing the pirates. Yes, I know the "we can do non-compliant boardings — someone might be killed" argument. OK then, never deploy a SWAT team against kidnappers until they kill someone. Next time someone takes a hostage, give them a helicopter and let them escape to Mexico. Just make sure they get their money as well.

My apologies for the slur on the honour of the French Navy.

When bureaucrats put to sea

CDR Salamander has a distressing report from Somalia:

The Danish merchant "DANICA WHITE" was seized by pirates off of Somalia.

A small Danish-owned and, we understand, Danish-crewed general cargo vessel, has been captured by pirates in the latest series of ships and fishing vessels being boarded and taken over, with their crews held to ransom, off the Somalia coast.

What's worse . . . the piracy took place almost under the nose of a French warship:

A French warship reportedly looked on as the event unfolded, and refused to enter Somali waters as the mv DANICA WHITE was taken into the region.

Piracy is bad enough, but piracy enabled by illogical and inhumane standing orders? The French navy is looking particularly bad in this episode, but it's the crew of the Danica White who'll suffer the most.

H/T to The Armorer for the link.

Update, 8 June: See the following post for a clarification and a retraction . . . it wasn't a French ship which allowed the pirates to escape into Somalian waters.

QotD: Womb Envy

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I'm sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they're also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they've also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, "If all we do is hunt and gather, let's make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let's make childbirth kinda weak and shameful." It's a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it's entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women's behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It's safe to say that I've snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I've looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I've shorted out. I don't pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I'm not for a second going down the "women are saints" route — that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart?

Joss Whedon, "Let's Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death", Whedonesque, 2007-05-20

US troops may have been exposed to nerve gas

A scary report in The Register about some 100,000 American troops who may have been exposed to low levels of Sarin nerve gas after the 1991 Gulf War:

It is believed that US soldiers occupying an Iraqi munitions depot at Khamisiyah mistakenly blew up a stockpile of gas rockets in March 1991, believing them to be ordinary explosive munitions. Nobody noticed any ill effects at the time.

It was only two months later, when Iraqi chemical weapons facilities were inspected by the UN as part of the ceasefire agreement, that the US began to realise that nerve gases might have been released into the atmosphere. [. . .]

It's perhaps also worth noting that declassified CIA reports suggest that some or all the sarin rounds blown up at Khamisiyah were of binary construction, meaning that they contained not sarin but two precursor chemicals which would be mixed to form sarin when the weapons were fired. Blowing up kit like this wouldn't release large amounts of nerve agent into the atmosphere; just precursors.

If the rockets weren't binaries, there would be an excellent chance of their sarin payload having decomposed to uselessness. This was a major problem for the pre-1991 Iraqi chemical weapons industry.

German tanks, Dutch tanks, Canadian tanks

To my surprise, this news just got reported over at The Torch:

Here's what I've heard from sources within the defence community, what I was waiting for the official announcement to confirm:

• The 20 Leopard 2A6M's we'll be acquiring from the Germans aren't a lease, they're a loan. That is to say, while we're going to have to give them back in the condition we got them, and while there may be some incremental costs to their transport, operation, et cetera, we're not paying the Germans for the use of their tanks. A big, hearty thank-you needs to go out to Germany for this gesture of friendship and allied solidarity. We're going to try to get them into theatre this summer, for the worst of the heat, but meeting those timings will be tight.
• We're going to be buying a total of 100 used Leos from the Netherlands, for delivery sometime this fall. These tanks have apparently been properly stored and maintained to keep them in top shape. Of those 100 tanks, 40 will be 2A4's for two training squadrons in Canada (one in Gagetown, one in Wainwright), 40 will be two squadrons of 2A6's that after some Canadianization and upgrades (especially to the armour) will be deployable anywhere we need them, and 20 will be specialist tanks (bridge-layers, ARV's, dozers, etc).

For the troops in Afghanistan (and potential future deployments), this is excellent news.

QotD: History repeats

The curious thing is the lion that didn't roar. Tony Blair has views on everything and is usually happy to expound on them at length — if you'd just arrived from Planet Zongo and were plunked down at a joint Blair/Bush press conference on Iraq or Afghanistan or most of the rest of the world, you'd be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the Prime Minister's doing 90 per cent of the heavy lifting and the President's just there for emergency back-up. Yet, on an act of war and/or piracy perpetrated directly against British forces, Mister Chatty is mum. [. . .]

Even odder has been the acquiescence of the press. If pictures had been unearthed of some over-zealous Guantanamo guards doing to our plucky young West Midlands jihadi what the Iranian government did on TV to those Royal Marines, two thirds of Fleet Street (including many of my Spectator and Telegraph colleagues) would be frothing non-stop.

Instead, they seem to have accepted the British spin that there's been no breach of the Geneva Conventions because the Marines and sailors weren't official prisoners of war, just freelance kidnap victims you can have what sport you wish with.

Why didn't Bush think of that one?

Mark Steyn, "Ayatollah So", Daily Telegraph, 2004-06-07

Pessimistic report on Britain's military

Nick Packwood rounds up all the depressing news from Britain, confirming that things are getting worse on several fronts:

I can only hope the anemic reaction of the British public to the last five years is because the British public does not understand the scope of the problem.* This LA Times (?) opinion piece explained the problem to the American public over a month ago. It has been born out by events.

The linked LA Times editorial has nice things to say about both British and Canadian military personnel, but correctly points out that both governments have been trying to do too much with too little:

Royal Navy, which is at its smallest size since the 1500s. Now, British newspapers report, of the remaining 44 warships, at least 13 and possibly as many as 19 will be mothballed. If these cuts go through, Britain's fleet will be about the same size as those of Indonesia and Turkey and smaller than that of its age-old rival, France.

Britain is hardly alone in its unilateral disarmament. A similar trend can be discerned among virtually all of the major U.S. allies, aside from Japan. Canada is a particularly poignant case in point. At the end of World War II, Canada had more than a million men under arms and operated the world's third-biggest navy (behind the U.S. and Britain), with more than 400 ships. Today, it has all of 62,000 personnel on active duty, and its navy has just 19 warships and 23 support vessels, making it one-fourth the size of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Of course, numbers aren't the entire story. Both Britain and Canada have top-notch soldiers, allowing them to punch above their weight class in military affairs. But there is only so much that a handful of super-soldiers can accomplish if their numbers are grossly inadequate. Quality can't entirely make up for lack of quantity.

In Canada's case, decades of neglect cannot be made up quickly: equipment takes time to order, build, and deploy, but it takes even longer to rebuild the units themselves. Soldiers do not wander in off civvie street today and become militarily effective tomorrow; it takes years to re-create effective battalions. Canada's military may not have years . . . the current minority government has no guarantee that it will see out the next session of parliament, never mind win a majority in a subsequent election (and it will take years of uninterrupted efforts to get the Canadian Forces back into shape).

QotD: Afghanistan

Afghanistan, for example, is officially a NATO mission to which most NATO members are contributing. But they're not contributing troops, not if by troops you mean fellows with guns who are prepared to fire them at the other side. The Continentals mostly have very circumscribed rules of engagement, which prevent them from participating in combat operations, or going out in the snow, or even after dark. So they're confined to "securing" a handful of selected sites — i.e., they're glorified night watchmen in fancier livery. When it comes to hunting down and killing the enemy, it's pretty much down to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (which isn't even in NATO). So much for multiculturalism. That quartet's about as unicultural as you can get, not to say, given that three of them share the same head of state, uniregal.

Mark Steyn, "Harmed Forces: In the homefront battle between militant pacifists in the East and passive militants in the West, Canada is the big loser", Western Standard, 2007-03-26

That's going to leave a mark

By way of SDA comes this devastating exchange in the Commons, reported in Macleans:

If you're going to mock a veteran, you might as well do it with the language of war. But O'Connor shrugged off these remarks and stuck to his script. Even when Dion demanded his resignation, he seemed thoroughly unmoved. Perhaps he's seen worse than the likes of Her Majesty's Official Opposition.

Inevitably, Dion repeated his demand. And with that, he pushed the Prime Minister to the precipice of his increasingly infamous temper.

"I can understand the passion that the Leader of the Opposition and members of his party feel for Taliban prisoners," Harper shot back, the House falling silent. "I just wish occasionally they would show the same passion for Canadian soldiers."

Well then.

As Conservative members stood long and cheered, the Liberal front bench was frantic. Party whip Karen Redman tried desperately to quiet her backbench. Defence critic Denis Coderre jabbed his finger in the air, egging Dion to seek retribution. The leader looked positively besmirched. One minute you're making headlines with the demand that a high-profile minister resign, the next you're being branded a Taliban-sympathizer. Somewhere, Jack Layton empathized.

Very disturbing development

Wired News has a report on a very troubling case:

As they carried out the killing of an Iraqi civilian, seven Marines and a Navy medic used their understanding of the military's airborne surveillance technology to spoof their own systems, military hearing testimony charges.

"These are people who every day deal with such things and understand how the images are gathered, as much as understand other tactical and weapons issues," says defense attorney David Brahms, who represents a Marine who's pleaded guilty to conspiracy and kidnapping in the case. "They are warriors and this is what warriors do."

Ahem. ". . . this is what warriors do". Well, no. This is what many anti-military types believe warriors do. These guys are not exemplars of "warriors". They're parties to conspiracy and murder. That is not what soldiers do. The distinction may be a bit subtle for those raised on anti-war protests and anti-military propaganda, however.

The case is remarkable for the fact that the killers nearly got away with their alleged crime right under the eye of the military's sophisticated surveillance systems. According to testimony, at least three times the warriors took deliberate, and apparently effective, measures to trick the unmanned aerial vehicles — UAVs in military parlance — that watch the ground with heat-sensitive imaging by night, and high-resolution video by day.

Technology can — and will — be abused for illegal purposes. The technology itself merely does the job . . . the morality of the action is determined by the human operators. Even the highest of high-tech devices is still subject to deliberate attempts to counteract or twist the evidence the tools can provide. This is merely the first time this has come to public attention . . . it's almost certainly not the first time it has happened.

Canadians in Afghanistan, via The Economist

A positive — one might even say warm-fuzzy — post on the Canadian contribution to the fight against the Taliban, from The Economist:

The deployment in Afghanistan is a much bigger deal for Canada than it is for the Americans or the Brits. The Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, but for most of the past 50 years they turned themselves into the ultimate "soft" power, deploying their soldiers mainly for peacekeeping.

In Kandahar they have gone back to being a fighting force, and have lost more than 40 lives in the process.

If the Brits have been having a hard time in Helmand, it is the Canadians in Kandahar province who fought the decisive battle of Nato's war so far, leading a brigade-sized assault on Taliban positions in the Panjwayi valley last autumn.

The Canadians are the first contingent to bring main battle tanks to Afghanistan. The French-speaking men of the Vandoos regiment in Panjwayi look even bigger and meaner than the Royal Marines in Kajaki.

The operation is hugely controversial at home. A Canadian Senate report this month said: "Anyone expecting to see the emergence in Afghanistan within the next several decades of a recognisable modern democracy capable of delivering justice and amenities to its people is dreaming in Technicolor."

Yet among the soldiers there is a sense of relief at getting rid of the blue helmets and white paint from their armoured vehicles. There is even some macho mocking of the Dutch in the neighbouring province of Uruzgan: "Wooden shoes, wouldn't shoot," they quip.

Playing with maps

Jon sent me a link to Imperial History: a graphic illustration of how the middle east has been part of so many different empires. At this scale, it has to be pretty superficial, but as a general guide to who owned what and when, it's pretty good.

Praise for Canadian military equipment

While it's rare for Canadian troops abroad to attract much in the way of media attention — even from Canadian media outlets — here is an article discussing how well the Canadian troops are doing, equipment-wise, compared to British troops:

On the other hand, yesterday, we read reports of yet another Royal Marine being killed (the 42nd British servicemen to die in Afghanistan) and one injured, but this time in what amounts to a conventional attack. The casualties arose when UK troops mounted an offensive on a Taliban-held valley, attacking the village of Garmser. Despite being elite troops, however, backed by airstrikes and artillery fire during the 10-hour battle, they were forced to withdraw after the Taliban launched a ferocious counter-attack with heavy weapons and tried to outflank the British troops.

Here, though, the Canadians — who have scored so well by using RG-31 blast protected vehicles for their patrols — are again ahead of the game. Having been fully committed to offensive operations throughout the summer, they have learnt from their experiences and introduced Leopard tanks into the equation. On the other hand, the British — with theoretically a more experienced, elite cadre of troops — are committing what is in fact light infantry to a conventional attack, without armoured support. They are perhaps forgetting that the tank, in its original inception, was an infantry support weapon.

What emerges from this is that, effectively, we need two armies — one capable of fighting an entirely conventional war and the other specifically equipped to fight insurgents in a mainly urban environment.

H/T to Johnathan Pearce at Samizdata.

Non-trivial, indeed

Damian "Babbling" Brooks asked me to call attention to this post at The Torch:

Why don't ordinary Canadians know much about this intensely valuable and important work? Well, partly because the government has done a lacklustre job telling the public about it, as the MND recently admitted. Luckily, they're now working to correct that course of action.

But you can't put it all on the government, either. Here's a stat that might surprise you as well: since January 16th of this year, 175 journalists from 37 different media outlets have embedded with the CF in Afghanistan. How many stories have you seen about the KPRT — other than from the BBC? Now, how many ramp ceremonies have you seen?

Mourning the deaths of our soldiers is important, let there be no doubt. But even a couple of folks within the media think that the balance of coverage has swung too far in that particular direction.

Please do read the whole post.

Casualty rates

Jon sent me a link to this article at TCS Daily, discussing the long term casuaty rates the American military has sustained in various conflicts:

In the full sweep of U.S history, from the commencement of the Revolution on Lexington Green in April 1775, until the sunny morning of September 11, 2001, our average daily sacrifice [during major wars] has been between 14 and 15 military fatalities (1,217,000 fatalities/83,461 days = 14.6/day). Since 9/11, the average daily sacrifice has been 1.7 per day (3200/1900=1.68).

From the Revolutionary War until the American entry into World War I, the average daily rate was about 11 per day (578,000/52,231=11.07). From World War I through the break up of the Soviet Union, the rate was over 16 per day (636,000/38,811=16.39). Or in our long running confrontation with Soviet communism following World War II until the collapse of the Soviet empire, the rate was over between 6 and 7 per day (112,400/16,892=6.65).

As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya's nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?

It's particularly gruesome to discuss any such thing as an "acceptable" casualty rate, but that is, as Philip O'Connor's article titles it, "The Human Calculus of National Security". Even in peacetime, there are military casualties, although they rarely are considered "newsworthy". Serving in the armed forces — of any nation — increases your chance of injury or death, whether in peacetime or wartime. Pretending that this isn't so does not make it true.

Believing what you want to believe

Jon sent along a link to this item posted by Tim Blair, where the clear unwillingness to believe ordinary chronological order is made manifestly clear.

If you believe that something is true, regardless of the facts, then nothing will persuade you otherwise . . .

James Dunnigan on the Arab world

James Dunnigan sets the record straight on the relationship between the Islamic world and the rest of it:

The war on terror is all about defending innocent people from Islamic terrorists. Or is it? In much of the Islamic world, the war on terror is seen as a smokescreen for all-out war on Islam by infidels (non-Moslems.) How did that happen? It's all got to do with paranoia, lies and incompetence in the Moslem, and particularly, the Arab, world.

Let's start with the basics. Like economics and being able to feed yourself. The Moslem world contains some of the most economically backward and inept nations on the planet. Despite all the oil wealth, economic growth in the Arab world is at the bottom of the list (just above sub-Saharan Africa, which has much less oil.) This is no accident. Islam has, over the centuries, evolved into a religion that discourages education, critical thinking and technical progress. Islam also has large sects, like the Wahabi in Saudi Arabia, that are violently intolerant of other religions (no other religion can have a house of worship in Saudi Arabia, for example), and openly preaches hatred, intolerance, and the use of violence, against infidels. Moslems tend to downplay all this, and blame their lack of performance on the machinations of infidels.

Islamic media tends towards the sensationalistic, paranoid and dogmatic. It's taken as a given, for example, that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a Jewish plot (even though al Qaeda has proudly admitted to it) and that the West is bent on destroying Islamic culture? What's to destroy? The Islamic world doesn't produce any new medicines, agricultural concepts or technology that benefits all of humanity. Even educated Arabs admit that something is wrong here. But these critics are in a minority, and are persecuted for such clear thinking if they become too vocal about it.

H/T to The Armorer.

QotD: Palestine

Palestine is the new Cuba, a political cause whose invocation has the effect of instantaneously anesthetizing the upper brain functions of those who believe in it.

Terry Teachout, "Bulldozed by Naiveté: Terror advocate dies in accident. Atrocious drama ensues.", OpinionJournal.com, 2006-10-23

QotD: The "Anglosphere"

I note these leaders are all "Anglo-Saxons," and that the Continental European politicians who tried to be like them (Aznar in Spain, Berlusconi in Italy) were thrown out of office for their efforts. For some reason, when it comes to understanding certain hard facts about how the world works, "English as a first language" really seems to help.

Yet for all the best efforts of our Anglosphere and its sometime allies, our overall western response to the challenge of an aggressively violent totalitarianism remains profoundly timid. Our national debate should not be about what to do in Afghanistan, but what to do in Iran. About how China is poised to exploit our difficulties. Instead of bringing troops home, we should be thinking about how to double, quadruple, or octuple our military, for the grim scenes ahead. And what social programs to sacrifice to pay for all that.

We should be surveying the contemporary landscape like eagles, not ostriches.

David Warren, "Many Faraway Quarrels", Western Standard, 2006-10-09

QotD: Modesty

[Modesty is a really odd word]. The way burkha lovers use it, it's supposed to convey the chaste, humble message that the female form mustn't draw attention to itself. But the garment chosen to attain that goal is hardly modest in the sense of inconspicuous. In fact, in any Western setting, a burkha is likely to be the most conspicuous sartorial choice of all. A woman in a burkha is exactly as in-your-face (and as out of place) as a bikini-clad Paris Hilton on a commuter train, and just as impossible to visually ignore as a leather fetishist wearing a huge studded codpiece to a dinner party.

You could say that the codpiece is a really "modest" clothing choice, too. Hey, it completely covers the guy's package, doesn't it? And yet, it also makes an aggressive, confrontational statement that, to me, is pretty much the opposite of modest.

Rogier van Bakel, "On Muslims and Modesty", Nobody's Business, 2006-10-01

Two more solitudes?

Jon sent a link to this article on the differences between the Arab and Western worlds:

In Eastern Europe and the South Balkans, whenever I have gone to live in a place which I had formed opinions about, the actual experience of living there has always radically changed those opinions, sometimes into a completely contradictory ones. Most often, my academic research led me to form a beautifully coherent model which experience turned into a semi-coherent collection of observations and tentative conclusions.

In the case of the Kingdom, I went there with a certain sympathy for Arab grievances, a belief that America had earned a lot of hostility from "blowback" from our ham-handed interventionist foreign policy and support for Israel etc.

I came back with the gloomy opinion that over the long run we are going to have to hammer these people hard to get them to quit messing with Western Civilization.

QotD: What the Pope said

The content is really unimportant. You can be sure none of the lunatics torching churches or burning the pope in effigy have any idea what he actually said. People who are more interested in this stuff than I am can debate whether Islam actually added anything to religion that wasn't already in Judaism and/or Christianity — beyond teetotaling, which is undoubtedly evil and inhuman.

Tim Cavanaugh, "Rope-a-Pope: Ben Seize takes the blows, does it his way", Hit and Run, 2006-09-16

Hearing what you want to hear

The pope is in hot water, through quoting Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos in a speech, which is being deliberately mis-interpreted:

Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul.

The emperor's words were, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

"The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application," he added in the concluding part of his speech.

"Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today."

Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference have all weighed in with their own versions of what the Pope said, and how insulted they are: "The derogatory remarks of the Pope about the philosophy of jihad and Prophet Mohammed have injured sentiments across the Muslim world and pose the danger of spreading acrimony among the religions."

Update: Do check the comments on this post, if you don't normally do so. Alan and the Flea have been carrying on an extended conversation there . . .

QotD: Islamofascism

The only surprise about the edition of Hitler's Mein Kampf that has become a best seller in Middle Eastern bookstores is its emboldened title translated as "Jihadi" — as in "My Jihad" — confirming in ironic fashion the "moderate" Islamic claim that "jihad" just means "struggle," as in an "inner struggle" — as in a Kampf perhaps.

Victor Davis Hanson, "The Waiting Game: Do we really need further convincing of the threat we face?", National Review, 2006-09-01

The Iraq situation is . . .

. . . looking up. No it's all going to hell. No, wait it's improving.

Links all contributed by Jon, who wonders whether these are "just transparent attempts to turn around the 'we're losing' meme? Or are they more opaque than that?"

QotD: Islamist Recruits

Let's face facts: Islamism's appeal, is largely to the sort of type of person who would have been tempted to cheer on the blackshirts in the 1920's. It combines authoritarianism, militarism, anti-socialism and anti-liberalism with a special squeamishness about human sexuality.

Western Leftists who ally with Islamism because they think the phenomenon represents the interests of the masses are fooling themselves. If it represents anything it's the prejudices of the bazaari and clerical class in organised form and we've already seen that in Europe.

It wasn't nice then either, but at least in those days the left automatically knew they were against it.

Marcus, "Lumpenbourgeois Losers", Harry's Place, 2006-08-12

QotD: 50,000 Canadians in Lebanon

How did "50,000 Canadians" come to be in Lebanon? Is it one of our major trading partners? Has Bombardier opened up a Ski-Doo plant there? Is Beirut where the Quebec Nordiques wound up? 50,000 Canucks out of a total Lebanese population of 3.8 million works out to about 1.3 per cent of the population. Hezbollah claims 400,000 supporters in Lebanon after 20 years of diligent recruiting and investment by Iran, but Canada has managed to amass an eighth of that figure with nary a thought. Despite significantly smaller populations than our G7 colleagues, we have more citizens in Lebanon than the Americans, British and Germans.

Combined.

France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and the Western country with which it maintains the closest ties, yet even the French can muster only 30,000 citizens in the country. Formerly known as "the Paris of the Middle East," these days Beirut would appear to be the Saskatoon of the Middle East. Another decade or two and Lebanon will boast more Canadians than most of the Maritimes. If Canadians were represented within the global population as generously as they are among the Lebanese, there would be over 81 million Canadian citizens living outside Canada.

Mark Steyn, "50,000 problematic Canadians", Macleans.ca, 2006-08-01

A case of mistaken identity

I guess it's been so long since a Canadian prime minister said anything like this that the mistake is quite understandable:

Arab papers are carrying Saudi Arabia's condemnation of Hezbollah. That hasn't stopped the UN and EU capitals from denouncing Israel. Go figure. But Australian Canadian* PM Stephen Harper isn't having any of it:

Harper, who is in London for a two-day visit, called Israel's response to the kidnapping of three soldiers "measured" and "simply self-defence".

[. . .]

* Well, he sounded like an Australian!

Hat tip to Jon for the URL.

Death toll rises to 147 in Mumbai bomb attacks

The wave of attacks in India earlier today has claimed 147 lives, with over 400 injured — and those numbers are still not complete. In what I have to say is the most stupid use of "scare quotes", Associated Press had this:

India's major cities were put on high alert. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called an emergency Cabinet meeting and said that "terrorists" were behind the attacks.

What the hell else can you call an attack on civilians, calculated to cause high casualties except a terrorist attack?

Chaos engulfed the crowded rail network in India's financial capital following the blasts that ripped apart densely packed carriages on trains that police said had either pulled into stations or were traveling between them. Doors and windows were blown off the train cars, and witnesses said body parts were strewn on the ground.

After meeting with his Cabinet, Maharashtra state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said Tuesday night that the death toll was 147, with another 439 wounded, the Press Trust of India reported.

JTF 2 awarded Presidential Citation

A link from Castle Argghhh! alerted me to the news that the JTF 2, Canada's special forces/counter-terrorism unit, has been awarded a Presidential Citation for work in Afghanistan:

The Canadian Forces unit (CF) Joint Task Force Two (JTF 2) was presented with the United States Presidential Unit Citation from the United States Ambassador to Canada in a ceremony today. JTF 2 received the citation for its outstanding contribution to the multi-national Special Operations Forces task force in Afghanistan in 2002.

"This presentation of the United States Presidential Unit Citation serves to recognize the outstanding work and contribution of all members of JTF 2," said Minister of National Defence, Gordon O'Connor. "This unit continues to play a pivotal role in the safety and security of Canadians at home and abroad through its efforts in the campaign against terrorism."

"JTF 2 has proven to be a significant enhancement to our combat forces in the campaign against terrorism," said Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier. "This recognition, one of few publicly recognized events we've had due to the unit's counter-terrorism role, serves to highlight the significant impact that JTF 2 continues to have on behalf of all Canadians and our allies."

More on the Haditha massacre

Jon sent along a link to this Hot Air round-up of information on the investigation into the murders in Haditha:

The Times says three or four Marines are suspected of carrying out the killings with several more facing charges of having covered it up or done nothing while the shooting was going on.

The rest of today's coverage follows two tracks. One is devoted to showing how tough the Marines have had it in Haditha. This AP story paints it as the equal of any snakepit in Iraq; Zarqawi is rumored to have lived there, and voter turnout for last year's constitutional referendum was estimated at 150 out of a city of 90,000. So hard is it, in fact, that Knight-Ridder's Iraq correspondent reported last August — three months before the alleged massacre — that some of the Marine officers stationed there worried that their men might crack. Editor & Publisher reprinted the article today.

Investigating alleged atrocities — or hiding actual ones

Perry de Havilland looks at the contrasting ways the USMC and the London police deal with allegations of gross injustice:

The alleged atrocity carried out by a fire-team of US Marines in Iraq is ghastly news and whilst I hope, like so many other allegations against Allied soldiers in the Middle East, it turns there is much less to this than meets the eye, the reports do seem to be indicating that this time there really was a monstrous massacre of innocents.

However the fact this horrendous incident has not been swept under the table shows that the US military does have structures that work as intended. Whilst it is appalling such a thing could have happened, it would be even worse if it had happened and the people responsible got away with it.

In that respect at least, one cannot but compare the accountability of the USMC with what happened when British police shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes, a innocent Brazilian man, and what we got was a stream of barefaced lies and complete fabrications and still no one has been brought to book (which should not just be the people responsible for the killing, but everyone involved with what has clearly been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice).

It is a noted characteristic — of both bureaucracies in general and totalitarian regimes in particular — to automatically move to hide evidence of both natural and man-made disasters. That the USMC is (at least on the surface) moving to uncover the facts of the alleged atrocity is a very good thing: if a terrible crime like this has been committed, the swift investigation will minimize the chance of another atrocity.

The reactions of the London authorities to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes reflects the habits of Soviet or Chinese Communist officials: deny, deflect, lie, or whatever else might seem necessary to keep the story from being told.

Iran expresses anger to Canadian ambassador

The original National Post story about Iran imposing colour badges on religious minorities has escalated:

Canada's ambassador to Iran was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in apparent diplomatic fallout from remarks by Prime Minister Stephen Harper after a Canadian newspaper report suggested religious minorities in Iran would be forced to wear badges.

A Foreign Affairs Department spokesman confirmed an Iranian television report that Ambassador Gordon Venner was summoned on Wednesday.

The spokesman refused to say what was discussed at the meeting. However, it came days after Harper criticized Iran over a National Post report that quoted Iranian exiles as saying Iran's conservative parliament was debating a draft law that would force Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims in the country to wear special patches of coloured cloth to distinguish them from Muslims.

Iranian officials have denied that any such provision existed.

Earlier posts on this subject are here and here.

Follow-up on Iranian religious policies

According to this extensive round-up at Unqualified Offerings, the scare story about Iran requiring religious minorities to wear distinctive badges or clothing (posted here) is false:

The National Post's Chris Wattie follows up his own paper's earlier report with even more denials. Excerpt:

Meir Javdanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran and the Middle East who was born and raised in Tehran, said yesterday that he was unable to find any evidence that such a law had been passed. "None of my sources in Iran have heard of this," he said. "I don't know where this comes from."

Amir Taheri's original article is three pages long. That's a lot of detail, albeit, as one rereads the article, poorly sourced detail. There are no quotes from the law in translation, and the lone Iranian poobah quoted speaks largely of the dress requirements for Muslims. What I'm saying is, it's very hard to believe Taheri's article constitutes an innocent mistake. The smart bets are either that his story is correct, or that he lied. If you prefer, he was either right, or he wrote in reckless disregard of the truth.

Hat tip to Hit and Run.

Iran and religious minorities

UPI quotes a report in the National Post as the source for this report on Iran's proposed law concerning religous minorities:

Iran's parliament passed a new law this week that would force the country's Jews, Christians and other religious minorities to wear color-coded ID badges.

Iranian expatriates confirmed reports the Iranian parliament, or majlis, has approved a law that would require non-Muslims to adhere to a dress code which mandates they wear "standard Islamic garments," according to Canada's National Post.

The roughly 25,000 Jews living in the Islamic Republic would have to attach a yellow strip of cloth to their clothing, Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would wear blue ones.

Normally, the invocation of the word "Nazi" is covered by Godwin's Law: the conversation is over. In this case, the use of the term is fully justified.

Hat tip to Hit and Run, where at least one commenter thinks the news item is a hoax. I rather hope he's right.

A possible answer . . .

. . . to the question of why we have troops in Afghanistan:

"Then he turned to me and said, 'Please excuse their staring. They are just very surprised that you are a woman working with all of these men. I have told them that you climbed over the mountain with us with your heavy bag and that you had no problems. They think that you must be very strong. I explained to them that you are just like the men, and that you can do everything that they can do the same as them.' "

Goddard added: "It was perhaps the greatest statement of equality that I have ever heard — and it was given by a Pakistani-raised, Afghan male in the middle of an Afghan village that is only accessible by a five km walk up a mountain. It just goes to show that anything is possible and that stereotypes are often completely wrong."

Captain Nichola Goddard, 1st Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, was killed in action earlier this week, the first Canadian woman to die in combat:

Although Canadian women lost their lives in action in both the First and Second World Wars, Goddard was the first to do so in a combat role.

"I believe it's safe to say she was the first woman in a combat-arms military occupation (such as artillery, infantry, or