Charles Bird

Road to Kandahar

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by Charles

24-year old West Point grad Laura Walker wrote about her time with the "Triple Nickel" out of Fort Lewis, a group officially known as the 864th Combat Engineer Battalion, 555th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade.  Her task:  Working on an 80-mile road construction project involving the support of the United Nations, Indian contractors, and United States Army troop labor.

Fifteen hours is a tremendous barrier. It is the obstacle preventing one village from attaining the assistance of another and surviving a drought. It is the reason a trip to the hospital, or receiving an education, aren’t realistic options. Fifteen hours is what stands in the way of commerce between two provinces. It prevents communication between neighbors only 80 kilometers apart. Fifteen hours is the reason for isolation. Before Task Force Pacemaker began work, the drive between Kandahar and Tarin-Kowt took fifteen hours. Upon completion of the road it will take only three. The end of geographical isolation will be a new beginning for hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan.

Walker contended that this isn’t just a public works project because it strengthens Afghanistan on multiple levels.

Continued development is essential to peace building in Afghanistan. The road between Tarin-Kowt and Kandahar will provide developmental access to rural areas which never existed before. As 1LT Sullivan puts it, “This road is not just an engineering feat; it is a show of political force.” The five month reduction in project duration by Task Force Pacemaker becomes five months gained by the new government towards progress. The fifteen hours of travel cut down to three are hours gained by Afghan citizens towards opportunity. Every cut of the TK road is another blow to the primary weapons of the Taliban, isolation and hardship. When Pacemaker soldiers watch the ribbon cutting on September 15th, every soldier can exhale with relief, joy, and pride in a job well done.

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Able Danger in the New York Times

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by Charles

Now it’s been confirmed by the New York Times, and one of the unnamed sources is now named:

A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office to share the information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.

Possibly vital intelligence information was blocked by lawyers.  Why?  Because of The Wall, an interpretation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which prohibited the sharing of intelligence between foreign and domestic agencies.  Who put that policy in writing?  Jamie Gorelick, member of the 9/11 Commission, did so in 1995.  Even Gorelick acknowledged that the memo went well beyond the letter of the 1978 law.  Deborah Orin:

Equally troubling is that the 9/11 Commission, charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11, got White’s stunning memo and several related documents — and deep-sixed all of them.

The commission’s report skips lightly over the wall in three brief pages (out of 567). It makes no mention at all of White’s passionate and prescient warnings. Yet warnings that went ignored are just what the commission was supposed to examine.

So it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White’s memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick.

The commission members dismissed the work of Project Able Danger, even though the intelligence they gathered could have been critical to preventing 9/11.  Why?  On what planet could 9/11 Commission members plausibly state that the operation "did not turn out to be historically significant"?  More:

Colonel Shaffer said that he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving.

What the eff is going on?  Seems like there’s also a Wall between the 9/11 Commission and the members of Project Able Danger.  The 9/11 Commission missed this big time, either because they weren’t diligent enough or because the Pentagon failed to pass on the relevant information, or for some other reason.  This is a matter that begs further investigation.

[Update below the fold]

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Bill Kristol is Right

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by Charles

I’m not the biggest fan of Bill Kristol but you have to give him his due.  As it is right now, Bush can’t be fired for the poor job of rebuilding Iraq, but one of the chief architects can, especially when the messages from Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department conflict with the president’s.  Forgive me quoting at length, but Bill Kristol writes:

And Iraq is, as the president said Wednesday, "the latest battlefield in the war on terror." It is also the central battlefield in that war. And so, the president added, "I hear all the time, ‘Well, when are you bringing the troops home?’ And my answer to you: ‘As soon as possible, but not before the mission is complete.’" As the president said Thursday, "We will stay the course. We will complete the job in Iraq."

Or will we? The president seems determined to complete the job. Is his defense secretary? In addition to trying to abandon the term "war on terror," Rumsfeld and some of his subordinates have spent an awful lot of time in recent weeks talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq–and before the job is complete.

Until a few months ago, Bush administration officials refused to speculate on a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. They criticized those who did talk about withdrawing, arguing that such talk would encourage the terrorists, discourage our friends, and make it harder to win over waverers who wanted to be assured that we would be there to help. The administration’s line was simply that we were going to stay the course in Iraq, do what it takes, and win.

The president still tends to say this. But not Defense Department civilian officials, who have recently been willing to indicate a desire to get out, and sooner rather than later. After all, Rumsfeld has said, insurgencies allegedly take a decade or so to defeat. What’s more, our presence gives those darned Iraqi allies of ours excuses not to step up to the plate. So let’s get a government elected under the new Iraqi constitution, and accelerate our plans to get the troops home. As Rumsfeld said Thursday, "once Iraq is safely in the hands of the Iraqi people and a government that they elect under a new constitution that they are now fashioning, and which should be completed by August 15, our troops will be able to, as the capability of the Iraqi security forces evolve, pass over responsibility to them and then come home." The key "metric" is finding enough Iraqis to whom we can turn over the responsibility for fighting–not defeating the terrorists.

As Newsweek reported last week: "Now the conditions for U.S. withdrawal no longer include a defeated insurgency, Pentagon sources say. The new administration mantra is that the insurgency can be beaten only politically, by the success of Iraq’s new government. Indeed, Washington is now less concerned about the insurgents than the unwillingness of Iraq’s politicians to make compromises for the sake of national unity. Pentagon planners want to send a spine-stiffening message: the Americans won’t be there forever."

Donald Rumsfeld appears to be caving in to defeatism, a trait that Secretaries of Defense should not have.  There is only one real measure for success in Iraq:  a free, peaceful, non-theocratic representative republic.  Delivery of this entity spells doom for the terrorists and the Sunni/Baathist paramilitary gangs.  If Rumsfeld is unwilling to achieve this goal, he should be gone, and in this I am in full agreement with Joe Biden.  More Kristol:

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Systematic Archeological Destruction

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by Charles In this proud country, historical artifacts and structures are being systematically destroyed.  The Independent: Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the … city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades. Filling the void where these … Read more

War Names

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by Charles

Words mean things, and the right word or phrase speaks volumes and sets the tone for communicating ideas.  Republican pollster Frank Luntz understands this, as does Berkeley professor George Lakoff in his Framing Wars.  If a phrase is turned just right, it has the advantage of being descriptive, true and all the while sounding good.  Conversely, bad phrasing can come off as obvious and desperate political spin, moving an idea or an issue backwards.  Also important is that the idea being framed happens to be a good and definitive one, otherwise it’s tantamount to lipstick on a pig, hence my general problem with Lakoff.  The final paragraph of Matt Bai’s piece:

What all these middling generalities suggest, perhaps, is that Democrats are still unwilling to put their more concrete convictions about the country into words, either because they don’t know what those convictions are or because they lack confidence in the notion that voters can be persuaded to embrace them. Either way, this is where the power of language meets its outer limit. The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place.

While the idea of fighting the War on Terror is right and necessary, the name itself has been lacking from the get-go.  It just doesn’t quite fit and it’s not quite enough.  A few days ago, the Weekly Standard remarked on a Bush administration trial balloon, where several Defense Department suits renamed the conflict from the Global War on Terror (GWOT)–or The War Against Terror (TWAT) or what have you–to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE).  Ugh.  Thankfully, Bush has vetoed the renamers:

President Bush publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we are at war."

I agree that we have to call this a war.  After all, our enemies call it such and al Qaeda has in fact declared war against us.  But we’re not at war with terror per se, but against militant radical Muslims who are not only fighting western countries but also moderate Muslims.  I’ve wondered about this terminology before and I think it’s fair to call it World War IV.  Because let’s face it, the Cold War really was World War III. 

Another fair phrasing of this conflict is the War Against Militant Islamists (WAMI), since it recognizes that we’re in a war and it identifies who we’re fighting against.  [Since they’re fighting us and fellow Muslims, it could even be considered a double WAMI 😉 ].  We’re not fighting all terrorists out there, so again the War on Terror is too broad and it implies that we’re fighting against a tactic.  Though they’re terrorists, we’re not at war against Columbian narcos or Tamil Tigers or the IRA.

A slight variation would be the War Against Militant Islamism, which recognizes that we’re battling the ideology that breeds Islamic terrorists.  This is somewhat akin to the nature of World War III, since we fought the spread of Soviet communism as well as hot wars such as Korea and Vietnam, and proxy fights and spy vs. spy skulduggery.  So must we fight the ideology of radical violent Islam (and moderate Muslims must take a stand here), as well as the physical battles and other fronts such as money, communications and propaganda.  Note also that the fight is not against Islamists or Islamism in general, but against the militant strains.  WAMI is a much better and more descriptive phrase than TWAT.

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The Failed States Index

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by Charles A joint project between Foreign Policy magazine and the Carnegie Endowment Fund for Peace put together the 2nd annual Failed States Index, ranking sixty countries in question, using twelve military, political and social indicators.  Surprising that there are sixty of them, although the top twenty (or bottom twenty as it were) are the … Read more

My Take on Talk Radio: Part III

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by Charles

[For a little background, check out Part I and Part II]

It’s been a while since I wrote the first two parts, mainly because I lost interest, both in writing this series and in listening to talk radio in general.  I still listen frequently but the blogosphere is so much more informative, interactive, stimulating and enlightening, that I’d rather blog.  Also, the commercials on talk radio are killing me.  Like accruing mercury or lead poisoning, they’ve built up in my system to toxic levels.  They play the same ones, over and over, all day long, day after day, week after week.  Ugh.  What’s more, I’m not interested in what they’re selling.  At all.  I don’t want to try hutia and gingko biloba or some other crackpot concoction, or listen to Larry King tout health products and grape juice (Larry King?!  Health?!  He’s had more heart attacks than wives!), or buy gold, or incorporate in Nevada, or consolidate my debt, or get a credit report, or try exercises to improve my eyesight.  [To all station managers, are you getting this?  You’re not attracting new listeners with this awful pablum.]  So anyway, I’m a little down on talk radio for now.

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Way Back in ’65, Moynihan was Right

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by Charles A long article by Kay S. Hymowitz, but a good one, responding in part to the Class Matters series in the New York Times.  She starts with a report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan back in the days when he was in the Johnson administration, and she guides us through a little history on … Read more

The New War Plan

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by Charles

U.S. News and World Report has a piece on the Pentagon’s updated strategy for combating the war against radical Islamist militants.  For one thing, it’s not just a war against al Qaeda anymore, but we knew that.

The terrorist threat against the United States is now defined as "Islamist extremism" –not just al Qaeda. The Pentagon document identifies the "primary enemy" as "extremist Sunni and Shia movements that exploit Islam for political ends" and that form part of a "global web of enemy networks." Recognizing that al Qaeda’s influence has spread, the United States is now targeting some two dozen groups–a significant change from the early focus on just al Qaeda and its leadership.

The new approach emphasizes "encouraging" and "enabling" foreign partners, especially in countries where the United States is not at war. Concluding that the conflict cannot be fought by military means alone–or by the United States acting alone–the new Pentagon plan outlines a multipronged strategy that targets eight pressure points and outlines six methods for attacking terrorist network.

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Hillary Changes Course. Will Enough Democrats Follow?

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by Charles

Shades of 1990.  Hillary Clinton, in accepting the role of "directing a new initiative to define a party agenda for the 2006 and 2008 elections" for the Democratic Leadership Council, has basically announced that her emphasis will be a Better Ideas Party instead of a No Party for the Democrats.  Will most Democrats go along or will fissures widen?  Hard to know.  Ron Brownstein:

The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton, once considered a champion of the party’s left, with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion.

This is smart politics on Hillary’s part since is perceived as solidly left of husband Bill.  Joining the DLC will allay concerns of moderate Democrats.  If she can develop an agenda and at the same time bury the hatchet a little with hardliners such as moveon.org and dKos, this can help maintain her prominence, and she can be a unifying force.  Hillary may move the DLC a bit (or more) to the left since the DLC is solidly pro-CAFTA and most Democrats (including Hillary) are against it.  Despite this, the DLC still wanted her on board.  Brownstein again:

While many liberal activists insist the party’s highest priority must be to block Bush’s initiatives, DLC officials universally argued that Democrats would not recover until they fill in their own agenda.

"I think the nation fully understands what we are against," Vilsack said in an interview. "I think it is incumbent now to show what we are for."

Sounds like Vilsack has been reading Barone, and Hillary might as well have been reading me.  The strategy worked for Bill fifteen years ago, and it could work today.

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Global Terrorist Hydra Hits Egypt

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by Charles

In the latest from CNN, three explosions–two suicide bombings and one planted device–hit the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh early Saturday morning.  So far, there are 83 murdered and 200 wounded in the coordinated terrorist attacks.  All three bombs went off around 1:15am.  Because of the heat, most people were up and about.  Andrew Cochran has a good compilation here.  Who did it?  The circumstantial evidence points to al Qaeda.  AP:

Several hours after the attacks, a group citing ties to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the explosion on an Islamic web site. The group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, al-Qaida, in Syria and Egypt, was one of two extremist groups that also claimed responsibility for October bombings at the Egyptian resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34. The group also claimed responsbility for a Cairo bombing in late April.

The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified.

But a top Egyptian official said there are some indications the latest bombings were linked to last fall’s Taba explosions.

The death toll is likely to rise.  Sharm el-Sheikh is a tourist destination, a "major player in Egypt’s vital tourism industry, drawing Europeans, Israelis and Arabs from oil-producing Gulf nations".  However, most who died were Egyptians and Muslims.  So far, at least eight foreigners were slain.  In another AP article:

A group calling itself the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Levant and Egypt said it carried out the multiple bombings as a "response against the global evil powers which are spilling the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestince and Chechnya".

So their answer is to spill the blood of fellow Muslims in a country that has no military presence in any of those four territories.  I guess Egypt is just not Muslim enough for al Qaeda’s taste.  One of the bombs went off in the Old Market, over two miles from the resorts, a place "where many Egyptians and others who work in the resorts live".   Captain Ed on Egypt’s involvement:

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London Terrorist Bombings 2.0

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by Charles London subways were hit again with terrorist bombings today, this time not as lethal as 7/7.  BBC: A number of Tube stations have been evacuated and lines closed after three blasts in what Met Police chief Sir Ian Blair says is a "serious incident". Sir Ian appealed to Londoners to stay where they … Read more

John Glover Roberts, Jr.

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by Charles He is Bush’s nominee to the US Supreme Court according to Reuters.  Confirmthem.com (a site sponsored by Redstate.org) has a section on Roberts with various links.  Via Bench Memos, Jonathan Adler has some thoughts: John Roberts was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit court of Appeals in the last few years, though he was … Read more

Tancredo: Retract, Apologize, Get This Behind Thee

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by Charles

Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) stepped in it last Friday and the best thing he should do is retract his statements and apologize.  No excuses and no non-apologetic apologies.  None of this "if anyone is offended by what I said, I’m sorry" business.  The content itself was offensive and it merits redress.  It doesn’t matter if the person hearing it was offended or not.  So far, he is digging the hole deeper by refusing to apologize.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just to be clear.  If the United States is hit with an atomic bomb by Islamic terrorists, the answer is not to respond by bombing the birthplace of Islam.  Such an act would constitute an act of war not just against militant radical Isamists but against Islam itself.  This is the worst kind of "suggestion" or "trial balloon" that a representative of the US government could toss out for "discussion", on a radio show or in any other public venue.  What was this guy thinking?

This conservative is not alone in harshly criticizing Tancredo’s words.  Add Hugh Hewitt, Ed Morrissey, McQ, Donald Sensing, Clayton Cramer, Patterico, Michelle Malkin and a host of others.

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More on the Information Wars

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by Charles

Last week, the Englishman in New York outlined three "gratuitous admissions" in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist attacks:

  1. I have been on two anti-war/anti-Bush marches in New York (2003/2004)
  2. I believed that the September 11 attacks on America were the ghosts of US foreign policy coming back to haunt it.
  3. On September 11, 2001, and on July 8, 2005, (and on all the bombings in between) I acted as though it had nothing to do with me.

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Juan Cole and His Bad Week

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by Charles

The reason I seldom read Gloom Juan Cole and his weblog Malformed Informed Comment is because he subscribes to the Immutable Laws of Gilliard, described below the fold.  His problem, though a smart and knowledgeable fellow, is that he’s so blindered and shackled to his ideology that he’s prone to whopping mistakes and misjudgments.  His downtalking the Iraqi election last January was one example, and his entries this past week are the latest outbreak.

So obvious and glaring were his recent errors that even a dKos diarist took Cole to task.  Martin Kramer busted Cole on both his wrong interpretation of history and his duplicitousness, both here and in a follow-up here.  It’s one thing for a semi-anonymous sweatpant-wearing blogger to be so blatantly wrong and pettyminded, but it’s another thing altogether for a prominent professor of Middle East studies and Chairman of the Middle East Studies Association to be so.  Dare I say that Cole was being McCarthyesque by getting personal and calling for oppo research against Kramer?

Tony Badran of Across the Bay starts here and follows up here, here, here, here and here.  Ouch.  All in all, a bad week for the academic.

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The Nature of This Beast Part II

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by Charles

Continuing the journey from Part I, a piece by Philip Ball titled Is Terrorism the Next Format for War? points to research which claims that "terrorist patterns of attack might be the natural endpoint for all modern armed conflicts."

Ongoing wars in Iraq and Colombia, which had quite different causes and began as very different kinds of conflict, are developing a characteristic signature of long-term terrorist activity, say economist Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway, University of London, and his co-workers.

They have found that the death statistics in both of these conflicts are converging on a particular mathematical pattern. This pattern is shared by fatality counts from terrorist attacks in countries that are not major industrialized nations.

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Cancer in Britain’s Muslim Village

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by Charles

Last Friday, Tom Friedman outlined the challenges awaiting western countries, and more so their resident Muslim populations:

So this is a critical moment. We must do all we can to limit the civilizational fallout from this bombing. But this is not going to be easy. Why? Because unlike after 9/11, there is no obvious, easy target to retaliate against for bombings like those in London. There are no obvious terrorist headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan that we can hit with cruise missiles. The Al Qaeda threat has metastasized and become franchised. It is no longer vertical, something that we can punch in the face. It is now horizontal, flat and widely distributed, operating through the Internet and tiny cells.

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists – if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings – or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way – by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough.

The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day – to this day – no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

Emphases mine.  The United Kingdom is afflicted with this Islamist cancer, and the transit terrorist bombings are but the latest manifestation.  Last year, I wrote about reports which asserted that ancestral Britons have a case of Islamophobia, but it’s also apparent that large numbers of Muslims have a case of Anglophobia.  In a joint poll of 500 Muslims by the Guardian and ICM:

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The Nature of This Beast Part I

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by Charles

Von and Norm Geras formed an effective tag team in outlining the nature of our enemy and the barbaric lengths they will go, and it got me to thinking about the nature of this beast, i.e., the war.  In the Times of London, Paul Wilkinson–Chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University–gave a fair description of what we’re up against:

It astonishes me that there are still so many commentators who seem oblivious to the key facts about the al-Qaeda network. They do not realise that it is not simply like any other terrorist group: it is in a league of its own for ruthlessness and cruelty. Some have even tried to write the obituary of the al-Qaeda network, but it has adapted and morphed since 2001.

The al-Qaeda network is the only terrorist organisation which has both the motivation and the capability to carry out coordinated mass casualty attacks of this kind. This is a major difference between the al-Qaeda network and traditional terrorist groups. The latter, as Brian Jenkins so aptly put it, wanted “a lot of people watching rather than a lot of people dead”.

Al-Qaeda has the most widely dispersed network in the history of modern terrorism. It still has global reach, with a presence in an estimated 65 countries. Its decentralised network makes it particularly hard to suppress: it is a true hydra.

Moreover, unlike more traditional groups, it is actively pursuing materials and expertise to make unconventional weapons, such as chemical devices and radioactive isotopes to create radiological dispersal devices. They were experimenting with chemical weapons in their bases in Afghanistan under the shelter of the Taleban regime, and several al-Qaeda plots to use dirty bombs have been thwarted.

(Pig lard update below the fold)

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Diary of a Sick Mind

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by Charles

Joseph Edward Duncan III, the previously convicted sex offender who was arrested for kidnapping two young children (and murdering one of them) and suspected of bludgeoning to death their mother, older brother and mother’s boyfriend, had a weblog according to this report by Associated Press.

Convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III spent months on the Internet documenting his internal struggle over right vs. wrong. Then, four days before two Idaho children he is accused of kidnapping disappeared, he wrote: "The demons have taken over."

It was one of the last entries in Duncan’s Weblog before the 42-year-old North Dakota man was arrested and charged this week with two kidnapping counts. Authorities believe he took 9-year-old Dylan Groene and 8-year-old Shasta Groene from their Idaho home shortly before their 13-year-old brother, mother and her boyfriend were bludgeoned to death May 16. Police say Duncan also is a suspect in the killings.

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Terrorist Bombings in London

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by Charles [Multiple updates below.] Today it is London.  BBC: At least two people have been killed and scores injured after three blasts on the Underground network and another on a double-decker bus in London. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was "reasonably clear" there had been a series of terrorist attacks. He said … Read more

Overlooked in Bush’s Iraq Speech

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by Charles

Most of the conversations arising from Bush’s speech on Iraq last week dealt with his usage of 9/11, how we’re doing, whether or not we’re losing, troop withdrawal timetables, manpower, sticktuitiveness and so forth.  What received little press or attention were some of his new initiatives.  The following should have been bigger news:

To further prepare Iraqi forces to fight the enemy on their own, we are taking three new steps:

First, we are partnering coalition units with Iraqi units. These coalition-Iraqi teams are conducting operations together in the field. These combined operations are giving Iraqis a chance to experience how the most professional armed forces in the world operate in combat.

Second, we are embedding coalition "transition teams" inside Iraqi units. These teams are made up of coalition officers and noncommissioned officers who live, work and fight together with their Iraqi comrades. Under U.S. command, they are providing battlefield advice and assistance to Iraqi forces during combat operations. Between battles, they are assisting the Iraqis with important skills such as urban combat and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance techniques.

Third, we are working with the Iraqi Ministries of Interior and Defense to improve their capabilities to coordinate anti-terrorist operations. We are helping them develop command and control structures. We are also providing them with civilian and military leadership training, so Iraq’s new leaders can more effectively manage their forces in the fight against terror.

This was something I recommended over a year ago (the first two steps, at least).  I hate to bring up Vietnam when discussing Iraq because I really don’t want to get into a big comparison debate, but the above tactics reflect some of the lessons learned from that lost war.  Commanders in Vietnam adopted a plan similar to the one outlined above but they failed to follow through, foregoing one of many strategies that actually produced beneficial results.  From America in Vietnam by Guenter Lewy:

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Still Getting to No You

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by Charles

About six weeks ago I wrote about the apparent Democratic policy of being the "No Party" instead of the "Better Ideas Party".  Well, the results are in.  The strategy is failing.  The Christian Science Monitor wrote the following about a poll conducted by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg:

Some 43 percent of voters said they had warm feelings about the Republican Party, while only 38 percent had positive feelings about Democrats. "Republicans weakened in this poll … but it shows Democrats weakening more," Greenberg said. He attributes the decline to voters’ perceptions that Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view.

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Iraq and the Occasional Communicator

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by Charles

As anyone could probably guess, I voted for Bush in the last two elections and I generally agree with many, if not most, administration policies.  There are also some actions and policies I do not support, encapsulated best in this piece last August.  One of the biggest ongoing irritants for me is that, while Reagan was the Great Communicator, Bush is the Occasional Communicator and it’s hurting our progress in Iraq. Here’s the problem:

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Eat the Whales

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The photo came from a Tokyo market.  The Sunday Telegraph: Japan has introduced an education program into primary and secondary schools to teach students to eat whale meat. Almost 60,000 whale meals were served at 280 schools during the program’s first three months in the Wakayama province, south-west Japan. The program has proved so successful, … Read more

New Iranian President Declared

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The Iranian theocracy staged an election yesterday and declared that the new president will be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fundamentalist hardliner and onetime mayor of Tehran.

Several brief observations are made, followed by a more detailed discussion.  First, the election on June 17th and the run-off yesterday cannot be considered legitimate.  Why?  Because the regime has refused access to international elections observers, the press has no freedom and dissidents favoring freedom and real democracy have reported widespread fraud.  Election results and voter turnout are unverifiable.  Second, the election results don’t matter anyway.  The country is run by Ayatollah Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a group of hardline Islamic clerics.  All other positions of authority are subject.  Third, the message sent to the world by the ascension of Ahmadinejad, a former basiji (read religious goon squad member), is a troublesome one.  The mullahs want to crack down.  The creeping social, political and economic liberalization that took place over the past several years will stop and likely reverse.  Development of atomic bombs will continue, as will funding of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

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Living, Breathing, Redefining, Collectivizing

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by Charles

First off, I’m not lawyer but I work in the eminent domain field, and the Kelo v. New London case was a big one.  The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that local governments may force property owners to sell out and make way for private economic development when officials decide it would benefit the public, even if the property is not blighted and the new project’s success is not guaranteed.

The 5 to 4 ruling provided the strong affirmation that state and local governments had sought for their increasing use of eminent domain for urban revitalization, especially in the Northeast, where many city centers have decayed and the suburban land supply is dwindling.

Opponents, including property-rights activists and advocates for elderly and low-income urban residents, argued that forcibly shifting land from one private owner to another, even with fair compensation, violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the taking of property by government except for "public use."

But Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, cited cases in which the court has interpreted "public use" to include not only such traditional projects as bridges or highways but also slum clearance and land redistribution. He concluded that a "public purpose" such as creating jobs in a depressed city can also satisfy the Fifth Amendment.

By redefining and broadening the term "public use", interchanging the phrase with "public purpose", the Supreme Court in effect snatched a chunk of property rights from private owners and handed them to cities and other local governments.  This ruling can’t help but favor governments and corporations and developers, all at the expense of the little guy, loosening by another few notches yet again the constraints on governmental power.  Even with a good economy in the Puget Sound area, I know of too many cities strapped for cash.  This case will likely open the door to mischief.  McQ:

In essence the court found for collectivism and government and against individuals and their property rights. It found the needs of the group outweighed the rights of the individual to the point that the collective, through the monopoly force of government, could take the private property of an individual almost at their whim.

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Zimbabwe Falling

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by Charles

BBC has some disturbing before and after pictures of Robert Mugabe’s Operation Drive Out Trash (the Swahili Shona word is Murambatsvina).

[Before and after images show shanty town clearance in a suburb of Harare.]

Update IV:  Despite the overwhelming case that president Robert Mugabe is precipitating a humanitarian meltdown in Zimbabwe (noted also here), the African Union turned its back. The BBC:

An AU spokesman told the BBC that it had many more serious problems to consider than Zimbabwe.

The UN says that 275,000 people have been made homeless. At least three children have been crushed to death.

[…]

"If the government that they elected say they are restoring order by their actions, I don’t think it would be proper for us to go interfering in their internal legislation," AU spokesman Desmond Orjiako told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

His comments were backed up by South Africa, Zimbabwe’s giant neighbour, which some see as the key to solving Zimbabwe’s problems.

Presidential spokesman Bheki Khumalo said he was "irritated" by calls from UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to do more to end the "horrors" in Zimbabwe.

"South Africa refuses to accept the notion that because suddenly we’re going to a G8 summit, we must be reminded that we must look good and appease the G8 leaders," he said.

"We will do things because we believe they are correct and right."

If the African Union cannot see the goodness and rightness of standing up to democide, then this group lacks any semblance of moral authority or legitimacy. They are now part of the problem, not the solution.

(Other updates below the fold)

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Condi Rising

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by Charles

I’ve always been a fan of Condoleeza Rice.  Part of it has to do with her background and part has to do with her smarts, temperament, grace and charisma.  She reminds me a little of Margaret Thatcher, but better looking (sexist alert).  Another item in the plus column is her performance as Secretary of State.  Just in the last week, she has on multiple occasions lived up to the standards of the second inaugural address.  Let’s recap.

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Bedfellowing with Nancy

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by Charles

In all the years of reading, watching and listening to Nancy Pelosi, I can safely say that we see eye-to-eye on just about nothing.  But after we reading this piece yesterday, the streak has ended.

The White House on Tuesday rejected the proposed creation of an independent commission to investigate abuses of detainees held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Pentagon has launched 10 major investigations into allegations of abuse, and that system was working well.

[…]

Democrats on Capitol Hill have increasingly called for an independent commission to look into detainee abuses. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said a commission is crucial to answering questions about the atmosphere that permitted abuses, troop training and the length of detentions at Guantanamo.

"These questions are important because the safety of our country depends on our reputation and how we are viewed, especially in the Muslim world," she said.

It is commendable that ten investigations are underway, but the problem is that they are a patchwork, conducted by various departments and having varying lines of authority.  As I wrote here, taking nothing away from the conduct and integrity of those performing the investigations, the US military is investigating the US military and it gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. Reporting to an independent bipartisan commission removes that appearance and gives the world greater assurance that the issue is being addressed.  Putting the disparate investigations under one umbrella (and perhaps adding a few more to fill in the holes) is an effective way clarify the hierarchy.  Instead of ten separate reports, they can be folded into one.  Once the commission has absorbed the investigations, analyzed the situation and made recommendations, the detainee issue is settled and we can move on. 

The 9/11 Commission performed a similar function.  Despite political maneuvering, grandstanding (Slippery Dick, for example) and other ins and outs, the 9/11 Commission Report was a positive and constructive contribution.  If put together right, a Detainee Commission could accomplish similar results.

(also at Redstate.org)

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Pissed Off Kristof

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by Charles And who can blame him?  Pakistan has a problem with women’s rights, among other things, embodied by the travails of Mukhtaran Bibi.  Kristof: When Pakistan’s prime minister visits next month, President Bush will presumably use the occasion to repeat his praise for President Pervez Musharraf as a bold leader "dedicated in the protection … Read more

Images Evoked

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by Charles The paragraph made famous by Dick Durbin:  "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad … Read more

The “Reform” Sunni Spinoffs

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One of The Onion’s funnier pieces was written fifteen days after September 11th, titled US Vows to Defeat Whoever We’re at War With:

"America’s enemy, be it Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, a multinational coalition of terrorist organizations, any of a rogue’s gallery of violent Islamic fringe groups, or an entirely different, non-Islamic aggressor we’ve never even heard of… be warned," Bush said during an 11-minute speech from the Oval Office. "The United States is preparing to strike, directly and decisively, against you, whoever you are, just as soon as we have a rough idea of your identity and a reasonably decent estimate as to where your base is located."

Added Bush: "That is, assuming you have a base.

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Foreign policy foot holding

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by Charles If the words of the Second Inaugural Address are to be taken seriously–in particular that freedom is a universal human right–then it behooves the Bush administration to challenge our friends as well as our adversaries.  In his own words: We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral … Read more

Torture via Starvation by Mugabe

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by Charles

Joe Katzman wrote a lengthy and good piece on Zimbabwe a few days ago.  The dire situation in this once free country was the final tumbler for him, cementing his view that the right to keep and bear arms is a universal human right "on par with freedom of speech and religion".  Welcome to the club, Joe, glad you finally came around.  But what grabbed me more is the fact that, over the past twenty five years, President Robert Mugabe has run this formerly prosperous country down to dust, from Africa’s bread basket to basket case.  The Telegraph:

President Robert Mugabe’s onslaught against Zimbabwe’s cities has escalated to claim new targets, with white-owned factories and family homes being demolished in a campaign that has left 200,000 people homeless.

Across the country, Mr Mugabe is destroying large areas of heaving townships and prosperous industrial areas alike.

The aim of this brutal campaign is, says the official media, to depopulate urban areas and force people back to the "rural home".

Shades of Pol Pot and his killing fields.  All that’s lacking are "reeducation" camps.  Today’s New York Times has a similar report.  Mugabe isn’t just sentencing 200,000 of his political opposition to slow death by starvation, he is purposefully gutting his own economy in the process.

Chris Viljoen and his wife, Elsie, were still inside their five-bedroom house when a bulldozer began reducing it to rubble. The white couple live in the industrial zone of the capital, Harare.

Next door was a 70-acre site filled with 24 factories and workshops. Bulldozers spent last week razing this area, destroying all but nine businesses that employed about 1,000 people in a country suffering mass unemployment and economic crisis.

…

Across Zimbabwe, the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have lost their homes, with the poorest townships bearing the brunt of Mr Mugabe’s onslaught. "The vast majority are homeless in the streets," said Miloon Kothari, the UN’s housing representative. He added that "mass evictions" were creating a "new kind of apartheid where the rich and the poor are being segregated".

Virtually all the areas singled out for demolition voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the last elections. The MDC says that Mr Mugabe ordered the destruction as a deliberate reprisal. But the regime is also seeking to depopulate the cities, driving people into the countryside where the MDC is virtually non-existent and the ruling Zanu-PF Party dominates.

The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged "urbanites" to go "back to the rural home, to reconnect with one’s roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme".

Betsy Newmark:

What Mugabe is doing now in Zimbabwe is reminiscent of Stalin’s actions to induce famine in the Ukraine. Zimbabwe was once one of the more prosperous African countries and now it is in an economic shambles solely due to Mugabe’s treatment of his own people. Now, he is driving people out of the cities and destroying their lone source of earning a living. They are being pushed towards the countryside which is experiencing a drought now. Sadly, we will probably learn in the coming months how these people have starved to death. That is one way for Mugabe to get rid of his opposition.

In effect, Mugabe is sending political opponents to government-owned farms, presumably to be paid at government-set rates, assuming they are employed once they get there in first place.  Southern share croppers had it better.  In addition to driving its citizens off the land they legally own, Mugabe is systematically starving those who don’t toe his line.  Another from the Telegraph:

People are being starved in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe’s deliberate and systematic ploy of using food shortages to cling to power.

Millions of people are going hungry not, as Mr Mugabe’s government claims, because of poor rains but as a direct result of its policy of denying food to opposition supporters and enriching its loyalists.

Last night, the deadline passed for the mass eviction of 2,900 of Zimbabwe’s white commercial farmers, for decades the mainstay of the agricultural sector. Mr Mugabe ordered them to abandon their homes, land and livelihoods by midnight.

An investigation by The Telegraph found that control of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), Zimbabwe’s state-owned monopoly supplier of commercial maize, was passed this year to one of Mr Mugabe’s most loyal henchmen, Air Marshal Perence Shiri, an alleged war criminal.

With Zimbabwe’s economy in chaos, Shiri’s mission was to spend a £17 million loan provided by Libya buying just enough maize to stave off food riots, which would then be supplied through the GMB.

The organisation, which is meant to supply maize at subsidised prices to all Zimbabweans, has instead been selling maize only to supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party. Backers of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change went hungry.

Worse still was the country’s Food For Work programme. Thousands of opposition supporters would provide 15 days’ labour only to be told at the end there was no GMB food for them.

The GMB is so corrupt and politicised that aid groups shipping food into Zimbabwe are being forced to set up their own expensive parallel storage and distribution facilities, rather than using those of the GMB – the traditional way of bringing food aid into Zimbabwe.

There is also evidence that the Zimbabwean government is deliberately blocking the work of these international aid groups and keeping the flow of aid down to a trickle.

That trickle is enough to stave off threats of public unrest, but not enough to provide food for all of the country.

"What we are seeing is nothing but humanitarian torture," an aid worker said. "It takes three months to die of starvation and this is a torture every bit as bad as beating someone with barbed wire or hanging them from handcuffs.

Emphasis mine.  Joe Katzman:

Um, ever studied what dying of starvation actually involves, dude? It’s just a little bit worse than hanging from handcuffs – and there’s nothing humanitarian about it.

What do the various humanitarian groups have to say?

  • Freedom House:  Zimbabwe garners sixes (with seven being least free) in civil liberties and political rights.  Their report confirms that democracy there is a joke, on par with Iran’s "democracy".
  • Index of Economic Freedom:  Ranked 151st in economic freedom.  Only Libya, Burma and North Korea have economies that are less free.  Even communist Cuba ranks better than Mugabeland.
  • Reporters Without Borders:  Ranked 155th in press freedom, tied with Syria.  Its 2005 annual report on the nation once known as Rhodesia quite simply states:  "Freedom of the press simply does not exist in Zimbabwe. Everything is under government control, from the licensing of the media and journalists down to the content of articles. Television and radio are a state monopoly. Police and the judiciary ensure that dissenters live in terror or endure the constant battering of a relentless harassment."
  • Amnesty International:  "The government continued its campaign of repression aimed at eliminating political opposition and silencing dissent."  There is not one category that Zimbabwe is not egregiously violating.  How does AI rank Zimbabwe relative to the 148 other countries it covers?  Oh yeah, it doesn’t.
  • Human Rights Watch:  "The human rights situation in Zimbabwe continues to be of grave concern."  Four articles written on Zimbabwe this year, with more interest focused on their sham March election than the democide that Mugabe is currently overseeing.
  • Transparency International:  Ranked 114th in corruption out of 146 countries, tied with Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Congo and Ethiopia.

Austin Bay has a piece here, and he hearkens back to an observation he made in 2002 that rings just as true today:

Here’s the lede:

He’s an ethnic cleanser, a “former Marxist” and a cynical thief whose greed and mismanagement has destroyed a once productive economy.

His scheme to retain power involves the dictator’s usual routines: stoking ethnic strife, inciting economic envy, silencing the press, physically intimidating his domestic opposition.

Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic? No, Slobo’s been nabbed and is on trial in the Hague. This time the scoundrel is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. The local context is a March 2002 national election in Zimbabwe, where once again Mugabe’s election platform includes the murder of his democratic opponents in the black-led Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mugabe is never held accountable for his oppression and destruction.

The difference between Mugabe and Miloslevic is that Mugabe is engaging in political cleansing, not ethnic cleansing.  What exactly is the food situation under Mugabe’s fascist regime?  Horrible.  The Washington Post:

Zimbabwe, facing fears of widespread famine, has welcomed the resumption of international food donations that could feed up to 4 million people, U.N. officials reported Wednesday. President Robert Mugabe had curtailed such aid last year, saying the country could feed itself.

The problem is that Mugabe will use these food donations as a weapon, strengthening his political allies and starving his opposition.  Chester asks the relevant question:  Is Zimbabwe the Kitty Genovese of the international community?  Unless we do not spotlight what’s going on there, the answer is yes.

So what are we to do?  When South African president Thabo Mbeki met with President Bush, Mbeki offered nothing but platitudes and Bush was little better.  Mbeki couldn’t even admit that a genocide was occurring in Sudan.  Tony Blair is pushing for more aid to Africa from the US, but whatever portion gets to Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s opponents will still starve and unless there are important strings attached, it will be a counterproductive effort [Ed. sentence revised].  Here are my thoughts:

  • Provide moral support for an "African solution" as Mbeki suggested but expect that there will no beneficial results.  Mbeki hasn’t lifted a finger against Mugabe, and the South African’s "African Renaissance" has the heft of those puffy rice crackers.
  • Give food, money and arms to the opposition party, the MDC, as Perry de Havilland suggests.  They deserve the right to defend themselves and seek freedom, and they could take comfort in these words:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

  • I don’t know if the UN has sanctioned Zimbabwe, but it they haven’t, they should.  If they have, then sanction them more.  By the way, Zimbabwe is a current member of the UN Human Rights Commission.  When will Kofi Annan kick this country off?  [See Update below]
  • Provide aid directly to those that Mugabe is purposely starving, using military forces if necessary to secure distribution.
  • Start a blogging storm.  Nothing will get done and nothing will change until we clamor for it.  Let’s get going.

Update:  I stand corrected on the portion struck out above.  To amend the sentence:  When will Kofi Annan take steps toward kicking this country off?  Does Annan have the direct authority to remove Zimbabwe?  No.  Members are voted in by other continent-sharing countries.  Getting a spot on the HR commission has proven an effective way to shield the offending countries from official UN criticism.  Saudi Arabia and Cuba have done well at that.  A leader would call a country on such cynical ploys and make proposals, not wait for a commission’s word.  Has Annan proposed scrapping the existing HR commission in favor of a new, reformulated one?  Yes, and to his credit if it happens.  Has Annan lobbied the existing HR commission to remove those countries engaging in genocide and democide?  To my knowledge, no.  The primary issue with Kofi Annan is his abysmal failure of leadership, which will likely be the topic of a separate post.  Finally, taking the UN and its top leader to task does not mean that individual nations bear no responsibility.  The United States should lead the way on sanctioning Zimbabwe.

(cross posted at Redstate.org)

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