True Believers

Reader DL sends an excerpt from Paul Berman's recent Terror and Liberalism who "puts his liberal credentials on the line ... by critiquing the left while presenting a liberal rationale for the war on terror". Berman believes the Left should have arrived at a logical opposition to radical Islamism independently because:

... Islamism (is) a totalitarian reaction against Western liberalism in a class with Nazism and communism ... Berman delineates how all three movements descended from utopian visions (in the case of Islamism, the restoration of a pure seventh-century Islam) into irrational cults of death.

In a word the Left would logically be expected to oppose Osama Bin Laden because it represents everything Berman thinks the Left has fought against since it's inception. The question Berman tries to answer is why the precise opposite has happened. To get a handle on the problem he dissects the failure of the 1930s French Left to resolutely oppose Hitler. On pages 124-128 Berman says:

Blum and his supporters regarded Hitler and the Nazis with horror ... But mostly they remembered the First World War ... They grew thoughtful, therefore. They did not wish to reduce Germany in all its Teutonic complexity to black-and-white terms of good and evil. ... And, having analyzed the German scene in that manner, the anti-war Socialists concluded that Hitler and the Nazis, in railing against the great powers and the Treaty of Versailles, did make some legitimate arguments ... Why not look for ways to conciliate the outraged German people and, in that way, to conciliate the Nazis? ...

The anti-war Socialists of France did not think they were being cowardly or unprincipled in making those arguments. On the contrary, they ... regarded themselves as exceptionally brave and honest. They felt that courage and radicalism allowed them to peer beneath the surface of events and identify the deeper factors at work in international relations-the truest danger facing France. This danger, in their judgment, did not come from Hitler and the Nazis, not principally. The truest danger came from the warmongers and arms manufacturers of France itself ... who stood to benefit in material ways from a new war. ... But the political arguments rested on something deeper, too -- a philosophical belief; profound, large, and attractive ... that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable.

The belief underlying those anti-war arguments was, in short, an unyielding faith in universal rationality. ... And, stirred by that antique idea, the anti-war Socialists gazed across the Rhine and simply refused to believe ... in a political movement whose animating principles were paranoid conspiracy theories, blood-curdling hatreds, medieval superstitions, and the lure of murder. At Auschwitz the SS said, "Here there is no why."

That grimly hilarious punchline was not exclusive to Auschwitz. Piers Brendon recalls in Dark Valley, his history of the 1930s, that the most common scrawl left by doomed Old Bolsheviks at Lubyanka prison were the words "What For?" But more poignant yet was the refusal of some Party members, exiled to Magadan, the worst camp of the Gulag, to smuggle news to their comrades of their fate. One said,  'at least now they still have hope in Communism. If I let them know the truth then they will have nothing'. Even in Magadan the Left's deepest need was to believe. Having abolished the God of their forefathers and finding themselves prostrate before the false god they fashioned for themselves, as between extinction and despair they chose extinction. But back to Berman.

... among the anti-war Socialists, a number of people, having voted with Petain, took the logical next step and, on patriotic an idealistic grounds, accepted positions in his new government, at Vichy. Some of those Socialists went a little further, too, and began to see a virtue in Petain's program for a new France and a new Europe-a program for strength and virility, a Europe ruled by a single-party state instead of by the corrupt cliques of bourgeois democracy, a Europe cleansed of the impurities of Judaism and of the Jews themselves, a Europe of the anti-liberal imagination. And, in that very remarkable fashion, a number of the anti-war Socialists of France came full circle. They had begun as defenders of liberal values and human rights, and they evolved into defenders of bigotry, tyranny, superstition, and mass murder. They were democratic leftists who, through the miraculous workings of the slippery slope and a naïve faith in the rationalism of all things, ended as fascists. Long ago, you say? Not so long ago.

Shadow of the Past

Robert Mayer at Publius Pundit says argues that the key provision dividing ethnic groups over the Iraqi Constitution is federalism. Particularly contentious are the provisions which would preserve local militias at the expense of diminishing the national army.

There are two main issues regarding this. For one, the Iraqi government isn’t allowed to deploy the army to the region without express permission from the regional parliament ... the local militias affiliated with political parties in parliament that want to keep power by suppressing freedom and intimidating people. This happens to a large degree in the south, in places like Basra, where the religious Shiite and Iran-affiliated Badr militia has been known to harass people for doing things “unIslamic.”

The other problem is the distribution of resources, which is another reason why many people of different ethnic and sectarian backgrounds oppose the current federalism. ...  all undeveloped resources will remain the sole propriety of the regions ... concerns that the federal government won’t be able to stop the resource-rich north and south from seceding, leaving them high and dry.

Mayer doesn't say how these issues should be resolved or even whether they can be resolved. But he was convinced that US domestic political considerations required that the Iraqi Constitutional process be perceived as moving forward. He had hoped that Sunnis and Shi'ites could agree to defer the decision over federalism until a new election could be held to constitute an assembly undistorted by a Sunni boycott. It wouldn't solve the problem, but off the evil hour when the hard choices had to be made. He quotes a Guardian article showing this was precisely the 'compromise' urged on the disputants by President Bush. "Following Bush’s call, Shiite officials submitted compromise proposals to the Sunnis, agreeing to delay decisions on federalism and the status of members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party until a new parliament is elected in December."

But in the event, the Sunnis have rejected the compromise and turned their efforts to stopping the draft Constitution's ratification. According to the Boston Globe.

In recent days, Shi'ites and Kurds made what they said was a final compromise offer. It retained the principle of federalism and enshrined the Kurds' long-held autonomy in the north, but deferred decisions about how and when new federal states could be formed to the next legislature. It also removed the ban on the Ba'ath Party while prohibiting the party's ''Saddamist" branch and symbols. The Sunnis submitted additional demands Saturday, and negotiations ended. ...

''We will not stay on the sideline this time, and I think we can make the constitution fail in Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh, and Diyala," said Jabouri, referring to four provinces where Sunnis are believed to be a majority.

Ali al-Dabbagh, a Shi'ite member of the constitutional committee, expressed concern that violence could result if Sunni attempts to block the document fail. ...  If the Sunnis ''feel they are outside of Iraq and want to cause problems, that is up to them." Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat and an adviser to the Kurds, said that if the referendum fails, the Kurds may push for full independence from Iraq. ''If this constitution is rejected, the next negotiations are going to be about the partition of the country," he said.

Each behind his Mason-Dixon Line. Of course it can hardly stop there. With a Shi'ite state in southern Iraq and an independent Kurdistan, fueled by vast oil reserves, the wrecker ball may keep on rolling. Syria and Turkey, with their large Kurdish minorities would soon have to reckon with the new Kurdish state. Iran may try to dominate southern Iraq, but a new Shi'ite state could just as easily become a rival as a client.

The referendum over the Iraqi constitution is, ironically enough, a long-delayed partial plebescite on the Sykes-Picot agreement, which created Iraq out of the shards of the Ottoman Empire, (follow this link to see historical maps of the region before Iraq was created in 1916 by a secret treaty between French and British diplomats.) and the subsequent partitions of the Middle East among European powers, which eventually involved Italy, Greece, France and Soviet Russia, leaving boundaries which remained unstable even beyond Yalta.

(Speculation alert) In this context it would be a mistake, I think, to judge success or failure of the Iraq constitution by the standard of whether that document prescribes some end condition preferred by the current State Department. The real test must be whether the peoples of Iraq can construct a polity of their choosing and whether it is one that leads to a stable and prosperous region. The fact, as Robert Mayer points out, that the principle issue dividing the proposed Constitution's proponents is federalism suggests that national identities have survived the Ottomans, the European Mandate System and the Ba'ath more strongly than many would care to admit. Although those who would have preferred to see the status quo ante preserved under Saddam and those who would have liked to see a unitary multiethnic successor state emerge may be disappointed in a devolution, the United States, alone among the great powers that have entered the region, has approached the problem of Mesopotamia by asking the people what they want. It may not be what we want. But that is beside the point.

Time After Time

A number of readers have linked to Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.'s How To Win In Iraq in Foreign Affairs, in which he puts forward a number of metrics which he claims are not being used by current strategists. 

Without a clear strategy in Iraq, moreover, there is no good way to gauge progress. Senior political and military leaders have thus repeatedly made overly optimistic or even contradictory declarations. ... To date, U.S. forces in Iraq have largely concentrated their efforts on hunting down and killing insurgents. ... Instead, U.S. and Iraqi forces should adopt an "oil-spot strategy" in Iraq, which is essentially the opposite approach. Rather than focusing on killing insurgents, they should concentrate on providing security and opportunity to the Iraqi people, thereby denying insurgents the popular support they need. Since the U.S. and Iraqi armies cannot guarantee security to all of Iraq simultaneously, they should start by focusing on certain key areas and then, over time, broadening the effort -- hence the image of an expanding oil spot. Such a strategy would have a good chance of success. But it would require a protracted commitment of U.S. resources, a willingness to risk more casualties in the short term, and an enduring U.S. presence in Iraq, albeit at far lower force levels than are engaged at present.

David Brooks takes up the Krepinevich theme in the New York Times and suggests that policymakers at least consider the possibility that he may have some points to offer. 

Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your heavy-handed raids.

Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement.

Krepinevich cites Lieutenant General Sir Gerald Templer's successful counterinsurgency campaign in the Malayan Emergency of how to conduct an "oil spot" strategy. There are many valuable lessons to be found in the Malayan Emergency, but also a few things differences with Iraq which deserve highlighting. Some of the most important are the following:

First, the British strategy took a long time to get things right: the Emergency ran a dozen years from 1948 to 1960. This despite the fact that the British enjoyed certain implicit advantages that Americans lack, which enabled them to shorten the duration. The British as the former colonial power of Malaya had literally tens of thousands of Britons who knew the language and culture of the country and had a pre-existing intelligence network. In contrast, Iraq was dominated by a Baathist regime for decades. It is they who have the pre-existing intelligence network.

Second, the enemy in Malaya were a relatively small, visible ethnic Chinese minority without a cross-border sanctuary in a supportive state. The tension between the ethnic Chinese and the Muslim Malays were such that it contributed to the formation of the Republic of Singapore  in 1963. In Iraq, the Sunni triangle, without the borders can be conceived as an extension of Syria abutting upon Shi'ite and Kurdish areas. The insurgency is occurring primarily within the Shi'ite area, where they are the majority.

Third, the international context of the Malayan emergency was the Cold War. There was widespread support, especially in the early 1950s for a confrontation with Communism, especially following the Berlin crisis and the invasion of South Korea. Europe, facing a Soviet enemy at its doorstep rose more readily to the challenge than today. Today it is psychologically confident in its security, never mind that this security is not of its own making and maintenance.

One campaign which more nearly paralleled the Malayan insurgency was the Huk insurgency in the Philippines. Although the enemy was ethnically indistinguishable from the population (which should have made them harder to fight), the US had the same familiarity with local culture than the British had, notwithstanding the fact that it had been in American possession for much less than than Malaya had been under the Brits. The US and Philippine governments beat the Huks handily, a task the Japanese Imperial Army had never been able to achieve during the Pacific War. The Japanese were operating in about the same time frame and US is in Iraq and with the same handicaps as to culture.

But the central problem, of course, is that America has lost the battle for time in the Global War on Terror. It has implicitly conceded, both to its domestic and international constituencies, the unacceptability of prolonging the process for more a few more years. In short, it has taken Krepinevich's scenario, if ever it were valid, off the table. To be fair, part of the blame must lie with the Bush administration itself, which implied that the process of defeating the enemy was shorter than it was. But if George Bush did not manage public expectations, his opponents certainly did. By repeatedly raising the specter of Vietnam, they implicitly engendered the counterassertion that all post-Vietnam American overseas commitments had to be casualty-free and of short duration. For example in the drafting of the Iraqi constitution, delays of a few days are described by newspapers as major setbacks. I wonder what Templer would have thought of that.

Mosul 2005

In case you haven't already, read Michael Yon's description of a car chase through Mosul's streets, continued on foot through its mazes, concluding in a wild shootout in a dusty alley. Yon has action photos of close quarters combat, which if they didn't exist, would render any account of the actual sang froid of both American troops and the enemy open to disbelief. See for yourself. Men shot firing back on the way down. An enemy fighter who'll pull your helmet down over your eyes, with four rounds already in him, like some lethal member of the Three Stooges. A Command Sergeant Major straight out of central casting engaging the enemy so closely that he went hand-to-hand; wins -- and then comes out dragging his quarry still wearing his Oakleys -- mad that someone had left toothmarks on his wristwatch. It brought to mind Osama Bin Laden's taunting assessment of his American enemy.

But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where -- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order -- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.

American troops seem to be OK, so what part of it did Osama get wrong? Maybe he kept reading the papers, because without people like Michael Yon it would all have gone down the Memory Hole.

Update

One part Yon saved from the memory hole was the fact that the man who shot LTC Kurilla, Khalid Jasim Nohe, as pointed out by Desert Rat in comments, had earlier been caught only to be released.

The Cancer Ward

Donald Sensing writing in Winds of Change, compares Islamic terrorism to a virus. 

We need to understand how the terrorists operate and sustain themselves. Al Qaeda is not like any enemy we have ever faced and therefore our national responses will be unlike any we have ever given. While Al Qaeda is obviously capable of great violence, it may be likened to a virus that has already infected the world's systems of commerce, travel, finances, politics and communications.

Extending the metaphor of the world as a body afflicted by a virus, consider its circulatory system: world trade. The Singapore Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies describes why ports like Singapore and choke points like the Straits of Malacca have become targets for terrorism.

Containerization has made it possible for the carriers to shift from a port-to-port focus to a door-to-door focus. This process has also benefited from 'intermodalism', or the interchangeability of the various modes of transporting the container by road, sea or rail. Intermodalism has made it possible for goods to move from the point of production, without being opened, until they reach the point of sale or final destination.

No more perfect way to transport bombs, propaganda and weapons to any point on earth can surpass the unmindful creations of the kuffar.  In consequence, the Singaporean Navy has invested in sophisticated port scanning devices, radiological detectors and even created Accompanying Sea Security Teams, armed naval personnel who "ride shotgun" on merchant vessels transiting the Straits of Malacca. Not just transportation hubs, but centers of finance and mass media have also proved irresistible draws for Jihadis. Consider Londonistan.

Londonistan is a pejorative sobriquet referring to the British capital of London, used by French counter-terrorism agents since the late 1990s, owing to the number of exiled Islamist groups that established political headquarters in the city, and from where they sought to overthrow governments they considered oppressive or heretical, as well as planning terror attacks on other European countries.

Britain's attractions for Islamist dissidents included its tradition of granting asylum to victims of political repression and commitment to freedom of speech. London itself had a reputation as the centre of the Arab press corp, with leading newspapers such as Al Hayat and Al Quds al Arabi published in the city. Relatively unimpeded by the British authorities, the British capital became the international headquarters for such Islamic groups as Takfir-wal-Hijra, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia headed by the controversial Sa'ad Al-Faqih, Bahrain Freedom Movement and Algerian Armed Islamic Group.

The interesting thing about these examples is that they stand conventional wisdom completely on its head. London in the 1990s was the complete antithesis of Iraq. The Straits of Malacca was nothing but a sea corridor, with Muslim-majority countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, on both sides. Yet both London and the transportation arteries of the Malay barrier were or subsequently became terror targets purely because of their value to the malignancy. The process is similar to angiogenesis in cancer, where a tumor takes over control of the body's ability to produce blood vessels for the sole purpose of nourishing itself. One way doctors spot tumors is by finding unusual concentrations of blood vessels feeding the growing malignancy. Sensing's comparison of Islamic terrorism to a virus, if correct, makes a nonsense of claims that that Islamic militants are infiltrating the West in retaliation for Iraq or even the supposed provocations of Israel. The infiltration is occuring for entirely independent reasons: to provide nutrients for the malignancy or to turn ordinary systems to their purposes.

If the comparison  to of Islamic terrorism to disease had any validity, one would expect to see a growing use of the world's own "healthy" systems for the pathogenic purposes. And we do: for example, what would normally be regarded as a mode of transportation, such as a widebodied airplane, Islamic terrorism sees as a bomb. Things will be observed in continuous inversion: pharmaceutical industries being developed in order to create a chemical and biological warfare capacity; countries without any civilian nuclear power industry embarked on frantic centrifuge manufacturing programs; a horde of students studying engineering, chemistry and computer science in the West who have no intention whatsoever of building a bridge, developing a detergent or writing an entertainment game. There would be a large demand for handheld ratios, not for talking but for use as bomb triggers; video cameras to record beheadings etc. Consequently, in reverse of expectations, the more material one provides to the disease -- Islamic terrorism by analogy -- the less ameliorative its effects. Welfare benefits would be received, not with gratitude but to fund militancy; council housing used to host bomb factories; UN relief grants used to pay for Hamas banners that say "Gaza Today. The West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow". A story from the Guardian, for example, describes how insurgents in Haditha have put this principle into practice.

In Haditha hospital staff and teachers are allowed to collect government salaries in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, but other civil servants have had to quit. Last year the US trumpeted its rehabilitation of a nearby power plant: "The incredible progress at Haditha is just one example of the huge strides made by the US Army Corps of Engineers." Now insurgents earn praise from residents for allegedly pressuring managers to supply electricity almost 24 hours a day, a luxury denied the rest of Iraq. ... DVDs of the beheadings on the bridge are distributed free in the souk. Children seem to prefer them to cartoons. "They should not watch such things," said one grandfather, but parents appeared not to object. One DVD features a young, blond muscular man who had been disembowelled. He was said to have been a member of a six-strong US sniper team ambushed on Aug. 1. Residents said he had been paraded in town before being executed. The US military denied that, saying six bodies were recovered and that all appeared to have died in combat. Shortly after the ambush three landmines killed 14 Marines in a convoy which ventured from their base outside the town.

Donald Sensing quoted some advice in his Winds of Change post, "standard counterterrorism responses, such as improving intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation, are indispensable but insufficient. Likewise, military force is sometimes required, but it cannot be the primary response." Why? Because like viral infections and cancer, Islamic terrorism is fundamentally a condition of malignant information. One of the most far-reaching benefits to Al Qaedaism of its alliance with the Left is how easily it allowed it to move astride the media, the academe and the liberal religious establishment. The information disease infiltrating the information stream of its victim. Not only does this feed Islamic militancy, in a process analogous to angiogenesis, it also puts its core code, which contains the instructions to reproduce and destroy, beyond the reach of counter-information under the banner of political correctness. Truly the perfect storm.

IEDs

Two DOD briefings discussed the subject of IEDs in Iraq which provide food for thought. The first comes off a briefing given by Secretary Rumsfeld on August 23.

Q Mr. Secretary, the U.S. casualties from IEDs [improvised explosive device] over the last four months have been -- have been at their highest levels that we've seen since the invasion. I'm wondering what you attribute that to. Do you think it's going -- we're going to see it continuing? And I mean, do you attribute it to Iran, to this increasing sophistication of IEDs? What's your --

SEC. RUMSFELD: You're talking about Iraq.

Q I'm sorry; yes.

SEC. RUMSFELD: The -- I mean, the number of incidents, you know where that is, that level. And it's been going up, as it has in every other instance prior to an event like the constitution or an election in Afghanistan and so forth. We've tended to expect that. The number of provinces that it's occurring in Iraq are relatively few, three or four or five, not 18; relatively modest numbers in the remainder. The -- as you point out, the lethality, however, is up. Interestingly, however, of the number of incidents, the overwhelming majority are not effective at all; there are no casualties. I'm going to say like 80 percent of them --

ADM. GIAMBASTIANI: Is it about -- about 75 (percent)?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, 75 percent of them there are no casualties. So how -- I don't know quite how to characterize that except that they're hitting maybe one out of four where they're able to accomplish what they'd like. On those, the lethality has been greater, which is the point of your question. I don't know quite what I would attribute it to other than the fact that they obviously are becoming more sophisticated in developing in large measure explosive devices which have greater lethality.

The second comes off a briefing given by Maj. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, commander, Multinational Force Northwest and Task Force Freedom on August 19.

Q General, Sandra Erwin with National Defense. Can you tell us what kind of IED -- what is the level of IED attacks that you see in your area? We heard from General LaFontaine last week that the attacks have doubled. Can you give us a sense of what kinds of threats do you see now in your area from the IEDs?

GEN. RODRIGUEZ: I think the question is about IEDs. And we have, of course, had a tremendous effort ongoing to combat the IEDs, which are the most prevalent weapon that has been used against us. Over the last three months, they have decreased in both number and effectiveness by about 20 percent. This has been a combination of several things. One, of course, is the tactics, techniques and procedures that we're using as we conduct our operations. The disruption in the senior leadership that we've been able to have on the leadership of the insurgency, they've been a little bit less complex because of the pressure that we've been able to keep on them. And also, we continue to get a large number of tips from the Iraqi people to help us discover them and get the word when they're putting them in, as well as the impact of several large caches that were seized throughout the last three months. So we continue to use all available technology, tactics, techniques and procedures to decrease the impact and effect of IEDs on our forces.

Q A follow-up on that. Some of the other officials we talk to say the IED sophistication has been increasing; but you're saying the opposite; you're saying that they're going down in numbers and sophistication?

GEN. RODRIGUEZ: Yes. Right now in this area they are going down in number as well as in sophistication. For example, there have not been as many buried and camouflaged, covered or concealed as had been in the past. And I think I explained why we thought that was.

Q Thank you.

The list for August shows the cause of 74 deaths sustained by US forces in Iraq (as of today) distributed as follows:

Cause	Number
IED	33
VBIED (car bomb)	7
IED and Small Arms combined	6
Small Arms	16
Other explosion	2
Rocket	1
Non combat related	9

The number of casualties in 2005 have been higher than totals for the same months in 2004, largely as a consequence of a much higher level of enemy effort: "it's been going up" -- Rumsfeld; "attacks have doubled" -- attributed to Gen. La Fontaine. The level of enemy effort has been variable in the past and reached local peaks in March 2004 and January 2005. The current uptick has been attributed by Secretary Rumsfeld to the Iraqi constitutional discussions and the forthcoming referendum. However, an alternative explanation is to attribute the upswing to a general increase in enemy strength. Which of the two it is will emerge in due course.

Comment		2004	2005
Iraqi elections 2005	Jan	47	107
	Feb	19	58
	Mar	52	36
Height of Sunni/Shiite uprising in 2004	Apr	135	52
	May	80	79
	Jun	42	77
	Jul	54	54
	Aug	66	68*
			*unfinished month
		495	531

 

However that may turn out, it seems fairly clear that the enemy effort is not homogenous as to quality. Seventy five percent of IED attacks produce no casualties. This is an interesting "cliff" function which suggests that only a proportion of enemy techniques are truly effective. Enemy capability also seems to vary by locality. Multinational Force Northwest (aka Task force Freedom) operates in "the most northern region of Iraq, which includes the city of Mosul" has seen a decrease "in both number and effectiveness by about 20 percent" in IEDs, so presumably the enemy has been experiencing setbacks there. The real increase in attacks must be in the other command areas, i.e. Baghdad, North-Central and West.

The Last of the Missing Recon Team

Froggy Ruminations has a postmortem of the mission in which a SEAL team ran into superior numbers near Asadabad, Afghanistan. A helicopter carrying a quick reaction force was subsequently lost in an attempt to extract them. Froggy Ruminations believes it was fundamentally due to bad luck that the team was discovered.(Hat tip Peg for discovering a mistake in the earlier version of this post).

I have received an unofficial “debrief” account of what happened on the SR mission and the subsequent actions of the QRF that went in to save them. I am not going to go into that here in an open forum, but I do want to address the broader issues of the operation. ... My understanding of how they were compromised amounts to basically a freak occurrence.

As to the issue of whether the commander of the quick reaction force misjudged the dangers of attempting a rescue, he argues that although the SEAL commander knew the odds, he nevertheless did everything possible to extract his men and led the mission himself.

Chances are good that the TF Commander had some kind of UAV surveillance in the area, and he therefore knew essentially how grave the SR team’s situation really was. Since LCDR Kristensen was on the bird that crashed, it is clear that the SEAL leadership element at the TF had no qualms about going in to get the SR team. Since the Nightstalkers flew the mission, it is clear that their leadership element was willing to take the risk of a daytime insertion in order to rescue their SEAL brothers. And since the QRF did in fact launch, it is clear that the TF Commander decided in his experience that he had to make the attempt to get his men out of there. The fact that people died as a result of those decisions does not make them incorrect. Soldiers and Sailors die in war, that’s just the way it is.

The Dark Frontier

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's press conference enroute to Paraguay is interesting for a number of reasons -- the first being Paraguay itself. The Power and Interest News summarizes the region's strategic importance to the US. South America is wracked by a confluence of resurgent Marxism, fueled by Venezuela and Cuba; failing states and coca. Of particular interest is the Tri-Border area, centered on the town of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay on the border of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The Associated Press described it as "a key South American point for Islamic terrorist fund raising to the tune of $100 million a year." The Tri-border area is sometimes described as the Muslim Triangle and is alleged to be one end of a conveyor belt leading to the US southern border.

So great is the supposed US interest in the Tri-Border area that the Vermont Guardian hinted at the planned establishment of an American military base in the vicinity, an allegation that Paraguay later denied. The Vermont Guardian echoed the characterization of Tri-Border area a possible springboard for Islamic terrorism.

The triple border between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil has been long been rumored to be an “Islamic terrorist training ground.” According to New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, the area is “one of the most lawless places in the world … also the center of Middle Eastern terrorism in South America.” In 2002, Goldberg reported that Hamas and al-Qaeda are associated with the terrorists in this region.

But Vermont Guardian journalist Benjamin Dangl noted that some sources felt that the perception of Al Qaeda in South America were the fevered imaginings of an agent of Zionism, just as was the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

As the U.S. was gearing up for a war in Iraq, Goldberg also wrote an article linking al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that was used by the Bush administration to further their argument for war. Muckraking writer Alexander Cockburn found various inaccuracies in the article, and also noted that “Goldberg once served in Israel’s armed forces, which may or may not be a guide to his political agenda.”

Whatever the truth to these rumors, Rumsfeld's press conference produced another gem on the arming of the Iraqi insurgency by Iran. After the media asked precisely one question about the Tri-Border area ("Q: Will you be talking about the tri-border issue in Paraguay? A: I think the cooperation that the countries in the tri-border area have demonstrated has been a useful and constructive thing. It's been good. ...") they skipped straight to the subject of the Middle East.

Media: There have been reports about Iran specifically facilitating -- I mean you've addressed them a little bit. But over the weekend there was an even more detailed report in Time Magazine about Iran’s Revolutionary Guards setting up a specific unit in Iraq to carry out car bombings against Coalition forces. Are you aware of those kinds of reports? Do you think Iran's involvement is getting more intensive as the process of writing the constitution goes along?

Rumsfeld: I've not seen that report. I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding Iranian weapons inside of the country. They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there. And we know that Iran has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq, and we know the system of government they have with a handful of clerics running the place and telling everyone want to do is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of a constitution that's currently being drafted in Iraq. And an Iraq that is democratic and representative will stand in stark contrast to Iran.

So one ought not to be surprised that they're engaged in the kind of activities that they're engaged in. They're making a mistake, in my view. I think they're going to have to live with their neighbors like any country does over time.

Media: -- Iranian weapons on more than one occasion?

Rumsfeld: I've got another [inaudible] secure videoconference --

Media: These discoveries in the past couple of months -- What do you think it indicates?

Rumsfeld: What I just said.

Some Belmont Club readers have repeatedly written to ask why Secretary Rumsfeld would be at pains to downplay Iranian intervention in Iraq -- both before and after Operation Iraqi Freedom -- when these revelations would serve to strengthen the linkage between terrorism and it's state sponsors, a connection whose existence has been repeatedly denied. (Speculation alert) One possible reason for turning a public blind eye to Iranian belligerence is that any administration which very strongly emphasized it would logically be compelled to do something about it, a step which the Bush administration may be unprepared to take or believes cannot be sustained by domestic political consensus.

One interesting historical parallel to the refusal to acknowledge Iranian aggression was the ignorance feigned by Britain, France and Russia to Italy's torpedoing of neutral merchant shipping en route to Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War.  Both Germany and Italy operated U-Boats against shipping and one Italian submarine even sank a Republican warship, the submarine C3. Despite the fact that no major power would acknowledge belligerent acts by Italy and Germany against neutral shipping, the "international community" of the 1930s went on to negotiate the Treaty of Nyon proscribing acts of "piracy" without naming the pirates. The text of that treaty (which you can read by following the link) says:

Whereas arising out of the Spanish conflict attacks have been repeatedly committed in the Mediterranean by submarines against merchant ships not belonging to either of the conflicting Spanish parties; and

Whereas these attacks are violations of the rules of international law referred to in Part IV of the Treaty of London of 22 April 1930, with regard to the sinking of merchant ships and constitute acts contrary to the most elementary dictates of humanity, which should be justly treated as acts of piracy ... the British and French fleets will operate up to the entrance to the Dardanelles, in those areas where there is reason to apprehend danger to shipping in accordance with the division of the area agreed upon between the two Governments.

In order to prevent matters from being brought a to a head, Britain and France simply pretended they didn't know who was sinking neutral shipping and instructed their naval forces to conduct a secret war at sea against an enemy they would not acknowledge until two years later. Nor were they alone in this charade. The US Naval Institute has an interesting article describing FDR's undeclared naval war on Germany in 1940.

On the day of the 29 December 1940 "fireside chat," the world waited in anticipation of what the President of the United States would say about national security. Unknown to the public was that months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy was secretly hunting German and Italian warships in the North Atlantic.

Divided Western public opinion on the subject of Islamic terrorism has prevented the issues from being faced definitively. Neither the liberals nor the conservatives -- like the isolationists and interventionists of the 1930s -- have been able to establish a consensus for their point of view. Policy is consequently being made in fits and starts in the tug-o'-war between the sides, essentially awaiting events before taking a categorical direction. Whether that direction will be a genuine "peace for our time" or a new Pearl Harbor is unknown. Until history resolves the dilemma the twilight struggle will continue all over the world, from the Tri-Border area to the Iranian frontier.

Domine Quo Vadis?

Here's the full text of Pope Benedict XVI's speech to Muslims on the subject of combating terrorism in the world today. Benedict's verbatim speech should be read because it is almost certain to be misinterpreted and distorted in the coming days to suit competing political agendas. (Speculation alert) Benedict, in giving this speech on his first trip back to his homeland as Pope, may be deliberately reprising John Paul's first visit to his homeland Poland in 1979. On that occasion, as Peggy Noonan writes, John Paul asked the one question which any Communist regime is unwilling to answer or even discuss. But it hung in the air in despite of the commissars, and set the agenda for the coming decade. Eastern Europe was never the same again. And the issue, of course, was whether man had an inherent transcendence and a right to be free.

Is it possible to dismiss Christ and everything which he brought into the annals of the human being? Of course it is possible. The human being is free. The human being can say to God, "No." The human being can say to Christ, "No." But the critical question is: Should he? And in the name of what "should" he?  ... You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death. ... Never lose your trust, do not be defeated .... Never lose your spiritual freedom.

The erudite Benedict is certainly aware of the parallel. He asks in turn, 'can we survive, except as brothers?' Whether he has found the fulcrum of history, as John Paul did, remains to be seen. But like his predecessor he has put the unmentionable on the table and must now, as John Paul did, accept the danger that comes to all who do business with serious memes. Although the Pope's speech was delivered to Muslims, his real audience is inevitably going to be the West in general and Christians in particular. Realistically, Benedict's message will reach ordinary Muslims only at third hand in a heavily distorted way; it can hardly be expected to sway them. But the signal it sends to the West, at least to those who look up to him as a moral and religious leader, is that here is something we cannot look away from. Ambiguous though it may be, his message has run the PC blockade.

Some commentators may view Benedict's remarks as inflammatory, akin to mentioning the old feud in a room of Hatfields and McCoys. It may have the opposite effect. Perceptive Muslim leaders will understand that the West is awakening, and that the time to speak clearly is nigh.

Text	Comments
Dear Muslim Friends! It gives me great joy to be able to be with you and to offer you my heartfelt greetings. I have come here to meet young people from every part of Europe and the world. Young people are the future of humanity and the hope of the nations. My beloved predecessor, Pope John Paul II, once said to the young Muslims assembled in the stadium at Casablanca (Morocco): “The young can build a better future if they first put their faith in God and if they pledge themselves to build this new world in accordance with God’s plan, with wisdom and trust” (Insegnamenti , VIII/2, 1985, p. 500). It is in this spirit that I turn to you, dear Muslim friends, to share my hopes with you and to let you know of my concerns at these particularly difficult times in our history.	This is the "pastoral" passage, emphasizing the brotherhood between people of all religions.
I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism. Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction, and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair. Those who instigate and plan these attacks evidently wish to poison our relations, making use of all means, including religion, to oppose every attempt to build a peaceful, fair and serene life together. Terrorism of any kind is a perverse and cruel decision which shows contempt for the sacred right to life and undermines the very foundations of all civil society. If together we can succeed in eliminating from hearts any trace of rancour, in resisting every form of intolerance and in opposing every manifestation of violence, we will turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress towards world peace. The task is difficult but not impossible. The believer knows that, despite his weakness, he can count on the spiritual power of prayer. Dear friends, I am profoundly convinced that we must not yield to the negative pressures in our midst, but must affirm the values of mutual respect, solidarity and peace. The life of every human being is sacred, both for Christians and for Muslims. There is plenty of scope for us to act together in the service of fundamental moral values. The dignity of the person and the defence of the rights which that dignity confers must represent the goal of every social endeavour and of every effort to bring it to fruition. This message is conveyed to us unmistakably by the quiet but clear voice of conscience. It is a message which must be heeded and communicated to others: should it ever cease to find an echo in peoples’ hearts, the world would be exposed to the darkness of a new barbarism. Only through recognition of the centrality of the person can a common basis for understanding be found, one which enables us to move beyond cultural conflicts and which neutralizes the disruptive power of ideologies.	Here the Pope depicts terrorism -- the 'new barbarism' -- as a common threat and suggests that collective action against it is possible. "We can succeed in eliminating" ...  "There is plenty of scope for us to act together in the service of fundamental moral values."
During my meeting last April with the delegates of Churches and Christian communities and with representatives of the various religious traditions, I affirmed that “the Church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions, in order to seek the true good of every person and of society as a whole” (L’Osservatore Romano, 25 April 2005, p. 4). Past experience teaches us that relations between Christians and Muslims have not always been marked by mutual respect and understanding. How many pages of history record battles and even wars that have been waged, with both sides invoking the name of God, as if fighting and killing the enemy could be pleasing to him. The recollection of these sad events should fill us with shame, for we know only too well what atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. The lessons of the past must help us to avoid repeating the same mistakes. We must seek paths of reconciliation and learn to live with respect for each other’s identity. The defence of religious freedom, in this sense, is a permanent imperative and respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization.	We get a rare glimpse into how the Catholic religious bureaucracy works -- through councils, delegations, meetings, etc. That is the operational way in which the Pope manages his message. This paragraph is also an mea culpa for actions of violence the Catholic Church has performed in the past, but interestingly and explosively, it contains the e tu -- "with both sides invoking the name of God". Benedict says, 'we have sinned, but so have you'. Although Benedict is doing nothing more than state an historical fact, this paragraph crosses an invisible line that no head of a major Christian Church has crossed before. It is the mildest of je accuses, tempered by an admission of equal historical guilt. But it is indicative of how charged today's atmosphere is that merely to utter these words is so difficult.
In this regard, it is always right to recall what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council said about relations with Muslims. “The Church looks upon Muslims with respect. They worship the one God living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humanity and to whose decrees, even the hidden ones, they seek to submit themselves whole-heartedly, just as Abraham, to whom the Islamic faith readily relates itself, submitted to God . . . Although considerable dissensions and enmities between Christians and Muslims may have arisen in the course of the centuries, the Council urges all parties that, forgetting past things, they train themselves towards sincere mutual understanding and together maintain and promote social justice and moral values as well as peace and freedom for all people” (Declaration Nostra Aetate, No. 3).	The Pope proposes that religious enmity between Christian and Muslim become a thing of the past in classic ecclesiastical language. Note in passing the immense historical memories of both Islam and the Catholic Church. When Benedict speaks of the "new barbarism" he is making reference to Attila and Hulagu Khan, not speaking figuratively.
You, my esteemed friends, represent some Muslim communities from this country where I was born, where I studied and where I lived for a good part of my life. That is why I wanted to meet you. You guide Muslim believers and train them in the Islamic faith. Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation. As Christians and Muslims, we must face together the many challenges of our time. There is no room for apathy and disengagement, and even less for partiality and sectarianism. We must not yield to fear or pessimism. Rather, we must cultivate optimism and hope. Interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an optional extra. It is in fact a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends. Young people from many parts of the world are here in Cologne as living witnesses of solidarity, brotherhood and love. They are the first fruits of a new dawn for humanity. I pray with all my heart, dear Muslim friends, that the merciful and compassionate God may protect you, bless you and enlighten you always. May the God of peace lift up our hearts, nourish our hope and guide our steps on the paths of the world.	Therefore, the Pope seems to say to the Muslims in the room, survival is in our hands and that means yours too. "You guide Muslim believers and train them in the Islamic faith. Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation."

Memory Lane 2

One of the forgotten things about Hitler's rise to power was that up until about 1938, many of his foreign policy demands were just. The Treaty of Versailles, imposed by the Allies after the Great War deprived Germany of "about 13.5% of her territory, 13% of her economic productivity and about 7 million of her inhabitants". So when in 1935 the Saar voted to return to Germany, after being a French coalmine for 15 years, many Britons were sympathetic.  German troops marching into the Rhineland in 1936 were greeted by deliriously happy crowds in Essen, Frankfurt and Cologne. When Germany asserted her right to full sovereignty and re-armed, as was the due of every nation, not simply the Germans but many in the world gave three cheers. Auden in his famous poem September 1, 1939 felt it necessary to apologize for Versailles even as the Panzers were rolling across Poland.

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

The return of Gaza to the Arabs, replete with UN funded banners proclaiming "Gaza Today. The West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow" underlines the historical parallel. Looking back on the 1930s, at the last moment when Second World War could have been averted, the problem never consisted of whether to return the Rhineland to Germany; but in whether the Rhineland should have been handed to Hitler. The issue of letting Germany rearm without restriction, at one level simply ceding her sovereign due was indistinguishable from giving the Nazis the key to Europe. It was a subtle difference which only a few statesmen, like Winston Churchill, appreciated.  The Popular Front, a coalition of Leftist parties in French power up to the eve of the war, never grasped the distinction.

One wing of the party under it's leader Leon Blum saw early on that the new German Chancellor whose thugs had been smashing windows and brawling in the street for years was a potential threat and argued that France had to get ready to do something about him, the other wing argued against viewing Hitler in black and white terms. They had a more nuanced view of Herr Hitler. The latter faction were so eager to avoid another war that they ended up sabotaging France's ability to fight. It won't surprise those familiar with French history that a number of the anti-war Socialists ended up in the collaborationist Vichy Regime under German occupation. Or that Leon Blum ended up in Dachau.

Leon Blum was a Jew. But he was also heir to the Left's legacy of the search for root causes; it's attachment to pacifism at all costs, even when in Blum's case, it meant abandoning Spanish Communists to Hitler in the Civil War. The British and French policy of the 1930s is appeasement only in hindsight. Back then it was a roadmap to peace -- "peace in our time". Nor was it the case that Hitler compelled concessions from the reluctant statesmen of the West; on the contrary, they fell all over themselves to expiate their own guilt: the guilt of Versailles, the embarrassment of colonial empires. One historian notes:

Premier Blum’s appeasement has sometimes been overlooked by earlier historians. Thomas does not make this mistake, criticizing Blum for offering Hitler’s Economic Minister, Hjalmar Schacht, concessions in the African colonies taken from Germany at Versailles in 1919. The optimistic Blum still professed to believe, as late as January 1937, that Hitler would sign a disarmament agreement with Britain and France ... Yet Thomas also believes that Blum had no choice but to humor the British on the Non-Intervention policy toward Spain. Blum, according to the author, became an appeaser to avoid Chamberlain’s greater appeasement. Blum experimented with peaceful suggestions to prevent Chamberlain from making a bilateral deal with Hitler behind Paris’s back.

The return of Gaza to the Arabs is at one level simple justice -- not to mention a shrewd tactical move by the Israelis. One wishes it were not also a cession of territory to Hamas and Fatah, which unfortunately it is. And yet, as Churchill understood, the question of who one is dealing with is not altogether irrelevant. Pacifists of 1930s who watched Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will, which "opens with Hitler's plane flying through the clouds ... descending like a new messiah to the waiting throngs of people gathered to meet him" may have felt a moment of unease at dealing with this man -- but only for a moment. But this generation is also unable to see the Nuremberg rallies of its day. Ronald Jones, in his monograph for the Army War College entitled Terrorist Beheadings: Cultural and Strategic Implications warns an agnostic age that we ignore the ritual and ceremony of the enemy only at our peril. It is a window on his soul and a gauntlet in our face.

Taking hostages and ritually beheading them has recently emerged as a popular terrorist tactic for radical groups. ... The terrorists’ actions also have tremendous cultural and symbolic significance for their audience. Killing hostages is not new, but the growing trend of the graphic murder of noncombatants impels us to study this tactic.

And the message in those rituals, in the many incidents like the one in which shows Nick Berg, a "26-year-old Philadelphia businessman in an orange jumpsuit, with his hands tied behind his back" being beheaded under the caption "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Shown Slaughtering an American" is not reassuring. In our search for root causes, we have blinded ourselves to the most basic of all: the content of the human heart.

Memory Lane

When  Hitler's troops reoccupied the Rhineland in violation of its treaty obligations to restore German dignity, stormtroopers parading before the Reichschancellery sang "for today we own Germany and tomorrow the entire world". The echo of that refrain reverberates in the United Nations. The Jerusalem Post has this Associated Press story:

The United Nations is embroiled in a dispute with American Jewish organizations over the funding of Palestinian banners in Gaza, and US Ambassador John Bolton on Wednesday protested the "unacceptable" payments.

The dispute centers on the UN Development Program's payment for materials produced by the Palestinian Authority for Israel's disengagement from Gaza which include banners saying: "Gaza Today. The West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow."

The irony is exact. The French Left remained passive in what Churchill called the last moment in which Second World War could have been prevented. Instead it allowed that Hitler had a legitimate grievance and met him with renunciations of militarism and expressions of understanding. For what, they asked, could be more German than the Rhineland? One could have rhetorically asked whether a Nazi Rhineland was the same thing. But then:

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Essential and Invisible to the Eye

Michael Tucker (of Gunners Palace) has started blogging again and will be heading back to Iraq in a fortnight. He recently attended a Directors Guild of America discussion on how Iraq should be depicted in fiction such as in JAG or ER and was struck by the absurdity of the subject.

At risk of sounding like a TV critic, I can say that it was odd sitting in an airconditioned theatre watching fictional representations of a subject that is so close to me--knowing that in two weeks I'd be back in Baghdad. At the same time, I realized that in this war, like in any other, fiction will play an important role is shaping perceptions of the conflict. Will we get it right? Only time will tell.

Except that it isn't absurd. For most people, the depiction of war is all they will ever know of it. Fiction will be their reality. Because it is so important, one of the issues Hollywood is wrestling with is how to portray Iraq without discussing it. Tucker quotes a Hollywood Reporter  story "about a WGA moderated event in LA entitled 'Televison Goes to War' hosted by Michael Kinsley".

Panel moderator Michael Kinsley, editorial and opinion editor at the Los Angeles Times, suggested that the lack of explicit discussion of the politics of the war in Iraq among the main characters in "Over There" was in and of itself an anti-war statement given the show's gritty portrayal of the chaos and carnage enveloping those grunts. But Bochco and Gerolmo disagreed.

"It seems to me that if we make an overt political statement in 'Over There' about the war ... then immediately the debate becomes not only about policy, but it becomes about our politics, Chris' and mine, as opposed to a discussion or a provocation about the human consequences of war," Bochco said. "The moment we become overtly political, half the audience dismisses us and doesn't pay attention to us because they disagree with our politics. And the other half discuss us ... in the context of our political leanings. And that's just not what my goal is with this show."

Grit and chaos without a neat storyline may be an indictment of war, but Kinsley's logical error is to assume anti-war necessarily means anti-American. Sometimes the bad guy is the enemy and sometimes reality just sucks. Tucker relates a message he got from a friend in-theater in a private email. "Today there were two car bombs explosions in one bus station. I mean who could be there except poor people who can't afford to travel by taxis, buses drivers, or tea sellers. You know what I mean? It just really made me hopeless. I feel that this war made me grow old." The power of documentary coverage -- of journalism in its truest sense -- is that it makes you grow old by narrating events without a script. And maybe that's why Michael Tucker is headed for Iraq: because he wants to see how it will turn out without knowing the ending in advance.

Michael Yon's widely covered interview on radio (hat tip: Greyhawk) repeatedly revolved around the proposition that on-the-ground 'citizen journalists' were necessary to provide a balance to standard press coverage. If Kinsley believed in the necessity to convey reality through fiction, Yon believed in the necessity of keeping fiction from being passed off as reality. Greyhawk flags an incident will illustrates the debate -- the struggle over perception.

From the NY Times, August 15 2005:

Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year.

"Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?"

"Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't tell us!"

Ms. Goudreau's newspaper, like most dailies in America, relies largely on The Associated Press for its coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally forwarded the e-mail message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of The A.P., asking if there was a way to check these assertions and to put them into context. Like many other journalists, Mr. Silverman had also received a copy of the message.

Ms. Goudreau's query prompted an unusual discussion last month in New York at a regular meeting of editors whose newspapers are members of The Associated Press. Some editors expressed concern that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.

"The bottom-line question was, people wanted to know if we're making progress in Iraq," Ms. Goudreau said, and the A.P. articles were not helping to answer that question.

The interesting thing is that the battle for perception would never have occurred without the emergence of a competing meme. For the first time in the history of the mass media, some of the coverage is about the coverage.

The Belt of Orion

When Richard Rogers wrote Beneath the Southern Cross for the sound track of the 1950s documentary Victory at Sea he must have known its music would evoke more than combat in the South Pacific. It would bring the palm-fringed islands themselves to life, changing as the day wore into a landscape of surf-pounded beaches under a starry sky. This magical piece became a hit single under the alias, "No Other Love", under false colors probably because nobody wanted to remember its true provenance: a momentary vision of beauty in the Pacific war.

TE Lawrence often achieved the same effect in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It is the story of a campaign to evict the Ottomans from Arabia by guerilla warfare and mayhem. Yet Lawrence manages to invest the scenes with a degree of timeless beauty; a beauty not wholly due to his great literary skill. In one passage he attempted to convey the impact of the desert on the Arab mind.

The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. A first knowledge of their sense of the purity of rarefaction was given me in early years, when we had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, ‘This is jessamine, this violet, this rose’.

But at last Dahoum drew me: ‘Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all’, and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. ‘This,’ they told me, ‘is the best: it has no taste.’ My Arabs were turning their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no share or part.

We can be thankful to milblogs for helping preserve the impressions of an American helicopter pilot operating over Iraq. He understood that the war itself was a thin veneer over the currents of life; and that however much the headlines denied it, both enemy and friend lived beneath the same sky. Hurl describes a night mission over Iraq.

The last three nights here in central Iraq have been beautiful. The sky has been much less dusty than it usually is. The stars are brilliant. Orion pops up around 4am - Taurus a couple of hours before that. Mars is very clear after midnight. Normally the visibility is pretty poor - usually less than 3 miles. Sometimes less than 1 mile. Flying in these conditions can be quite challenging - especially at night.

By FAA standards, anything under 3 miles is technically considered IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) as opposed to VFR (Visual Flight Rules) and require Instrument flight plans to be filed. But this is Iraq, not Kansas. Flight plans would be useless anyway since there is no Air Traffic Control system. Depending on the mission, we routinely find ourselves flying in low visibility - i.e. IFR conditions.

2 nights ago I flew into Baghdad at about 3:30am. It was a very clear night and I could see for dozens of miles in all directions. It looked like it could be anywhere in America - lights were on EVERYWHERE. Whatever electricity problems there were in the past, they certainly seem to be fixed now.

There are also numerous gas flares from various refineries in operation. One huge refinery right in Baghdad would put any Gulf coast refinery to shame. I know Iraqi oil production is almost where it was prior to the war - currently 2.5 million barrels a day. It appears that their refinery capability is rapidly improving as well. In spite of countless terror attacks on the Iraqi infrastructure, the builders seem to be prevailing.

Situated on the Tigris River, Baghdad is a beautiful city at night. The slums don't look as slummy. Palm trees grow like weeds. There are no skyscrapers, but there are numerous high-rise buildings in the downtown area, many with very interesting architecture. There are several very nice multi-story hotels where the incestuous media hang out by the pools, sipping cocktails and plagiarizing one another. They wait like vultures for news of the next suicide attack so they can smear the blood and shove the latest body count in our face. I wouldn't be surprised if they have betting pools on when, where, and how many will die....

This past night at 3:30 am all was quiet. There wasn't a single car on any road. Nobody shooting or blowing anybody up. The city was completely lit up and so.... peaceful. I know it will be short-lived, but I can't help but hope that it will someday be as peaceful as this one night most of the time.

One Day at a Time

Chris Muir of Day by Day asks that readers click on this link: Cancer Ablation, to increase visibility for a procedure which provides a way of operating on tumors which can't be reached any other way. It's a specific application of a generic method which uses cryogenics, radiowaves and even chemicals to deliver tumor-killing agents to hard to reach places.

Law vs. War

Two items of interest from reader DL. The first from AP news:

WASHINGTON (AP) - An Army intelligence officer says his unit was blocked in 2000 and 2001 from giving the FBI information about a U.S.-based terrorist cell that included Mohamed Atta, the future leader of the Sept. 11 attacks. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said the small intelligence unit, called "Able Danger," had identified Atta and three of the other future Sept. 11 hijackers as al-Qaida members by mid-2000. He said military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI. The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks left the Able Danger claims out of its official report.

The second is from the New York Times.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - 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. ...

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001. He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.

Belmont Club readers may also wish to read the US Army War College's recent monograph, Law versus War, whose subject is described as follows:

The authors address one of the fundamental assumptions underlying the conduct of the War on Terrorism - the nature of our enemy, whether perpetrators of terrorist activities are criminals or soldiers (combatants). Although the United States recognizes that terrorist acts are certainly illegal, it has chosen to treat perpetrators as combatants; but much of the world, including many of our traditional allies, have opted for a purely legalistic approach. Disagreement about assumptions is not the only basis for divergent policies for confronting terrorism, but certainly explains much of our inability to agree on strategies to overcome what we recognize as a serious common and persistent international problem. Their insights into how our respective cultures and histories influence our definitions, assumptions, and subsequent policy decisions can assist us to respect and learn from competing strategies. They correctly surmise that our current international struggle is too important for us to ignore assumptions underlying our own and competing ideas.

Update

I wonder whether I should have included this quote attributed to former President Clinton in the New York Magazine, but only directly available by secondary citation.

"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early." "I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.”

Despite his failure to launch such an attack, Clinton said he saw the danger posed by bin Laden much more clearly than did President Bush. "I always thought that bin Laden was a bigger threat than the Bush administration did," he told New York magazine.

What's striking is the use of the word "officially", which suggests President Clinton may have 'known' Osama Bin Laden was a danger with intellectual certainty without being able to assert it officially. That in turn suggests that Osama Bin Laden was implicitly or even subconsciously provided with the protection of due process by a President who felt he would have to defend any action he took against OBL. Those who followed the Army War College monograph will have seen the distaste of legal scholars for applying the concept of war to counterterrorism because it implies action on a "switch that is either on or off." The legal ideal is "violence on a dimmer switch." (page 7) Clinton it would seem, at least subconsciously preferred the dimmer switch.

Dollars and Cents

The paper, US Defense Strategy After Saddam authored by Dr. Michael O'Hanlon of the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute examines how the War on Terror will affect US military expenditures in the coming years. (Hat tip: MIG) O'Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at Brookings, makes a number of surprising points in his analysis. The first is that military expenditures will be lower, as a percentage of GNP, than at any time in the past. On page 8 of his paper, O'Hanlon gives the following figures from the Office of Management  and Budget.

Decade	Percent of GNP
1960s	10.7
1970s	5.9
1980s	5.8
1990s	4.1
2000-2009 (projected)	3.4

However, the size of the military budget in absolute terms will continue to be huge because the American economy itself is so gigantic. O'Hanlon puts it this way:

America’s defense budget is staggeringly high. Depending on how one estimates the spending of countries such as China and  Russia, U.S. defense spending almost equals that of the rest of the world combined. In 2002, prior to additional U.S. budget increases as well as the added costs of the war in Iraq, American defense spending equaled that of all the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia, China, and Japan, combined. That said, judging whether U.S. defense spending is high or low depends on the measure. Compared with other countries, it is obviously enormous ... Relative to the size of the American economy, by contrast, it remains modest by modern historical standards at about 4 percent of GDP (half of typical Cold War levels, though nearly twice the current average of most of its major allies). Compared with Cold War norms, it is high in inflation-adjusted or constant dollars, though not astronomically so.

Although Defense is spending more dollars, it has not greatly expanded  in numbers of personnel. "Still, one might ask why an active duty military of the same size as the Clinton administration’s has grown in cost by more $100 billion a year during the Bush presidency". The answer is surprising. Examining the 2005 budget request O'Hanlon found that "even adding up all these pieces, less than 20 percent of the $100 billion real-dollar growth in the annual Pentagon budget is due to the direct effects of the war on terror." Twenty seven percent of the requested increases were for higher salaries for military personnel, reflecting the need to retain personnel who might be lost to the service. Much of the rest was required to "to restore funding for hardware to historic norms after a 'procurement holiday' in the 1990s". Most of the pressure comes from "the main combat systems of the military services, which are generally wearing out. Living off the fruits of the Reagan military buildup, the Clinton administration spent an average of $50 billion a year on equipment, only about 15 percent of the defense budget in contrast to a historical norm of about 25 percent. This 'procurement holiday' must end, and is ending."

However, spending more money on the same number of troops was not enough. The War on Terror required adding men to the ground forces and more money had to be found to support them. The uncertain duration and progress of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the possibility of action elsewhere meant that unanticipated expenses might occur. The Congressional Budget Office believed it possible that a 17% real increase in the Defense budget might be necessary to fight the War on Terror, threatening to push the military share of GNP back to its 1990s levels.

Expectations are for continued annual increases of about $20 billion a year -- roughly twice what is needed to compensate for the effects of inflation (or to put it differently, real budgets are expected to keep rising at about $10 billion a year). By 2009, the annual national security budget would total about $500 billion, in rough numbers -- about $450 billion when expressed in 2005 dollars. Indeed, given the administration’s plans, that is a conservative estimate of what its future defense program would cost the country (not even including any added costs from future military operations or the ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan). The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, to fully fund the Pentagon’s current plans, average annual costs from 2010 through 2020 would exceed $480 billion (in 2005 dollars) and perhaps as much as $530 billion.

Dollars and cents provide part of the framework in which to examine strategic options. It's all very well to say "there are not enough troops in Iraq" or "we must teach Syria a lesson" or "we must continue to deter North Korea". But in the final analysis, the means to these proposed ends must be provided or the goals themselves adjusted to the resources at hand.

Memento

The Congressional Research Service (available via Gallery Watch) summarizes the progress of negotiations to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons (from Iran’s Nuclear Program: Recent Developments Order Number RS21592).

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of Iran’s nuclear program since 2003 have revealed significant undeclared activities with potential application for nuclear weapons, including uranium enrichment facilities and plutonium separation efforts. Ever on the brink of being declared in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors access only when pressed. Iran agreed to suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities in exchange for promises of assistance from Germany, France, and the UK (EU-3). Negotiations with the EU-3 are ongoing, although on August 1, 2005, Iran told the IAEA of its plans to resume uranium conversion, regardless of what the EU-3 offer.

The Guardian recently said that Iran had 25 times more uranium refining capacity than it has admitted to the UN, according to an Iranian who runs Strategic Policy Consulting, a Washington-based think tank. Alireza Jafarzadeh, an exiled Iranian dissident who in 2002 helped to uncover almost two decades of covert Iranian nuclear activity, said the centrifuges - rotating machines used in separation processes - were ready to be installed at Iran's nuclear facility in Natanz. ... The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is holding an emergency meeting on Iran later today, did not comment on the centrifuge allegations. ...

"These 4,000 centrifuge machines have not been declared to the IAEA, and the regime has kept the production of these machines hidden from the inspectors while the negotiations with the EU have been going on over the past 21 months," Mr Jafarzadeh told the Associated Press.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an organization which monitors and translates open news sources published in Arabic and other regional languages provided this transcript of an "interview withIranian chief negotiator on nuclear affairs, and member of the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security Hosein Musavian, which aired on Iranian Channel 2 on August 4, 2005".

Musavian: Those (in Iran) who criticize us and claim that we should have only worked with the IAEA do not know that at that stage -- that is, in August 2003 -- we needed another year to complete the Esfahan (UCF) project, so it could be operational. ... The regime adopted a twofold policy here: It worked intensively with the IAEA, and it also conducted negotiations on international and political levels. The IAEA gave us a 50-day extension to suspend the enrichment and all related activities. But thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed (the UCF) in Esfahan.

Esfahan's (UCF) was completed during that year. Even in Natanz, we needed six to twelve months to complete the work on the centrifuges. Within that year, the Natanz project reached a stage where the small number of centrifuges required for the preliminary stage, could operate. In Esfahan, we have reached UF4 and UF6 production stages. ...

Thanks to our dealings with Europe, even when we got a 50-day ultimatum, we managed to continue the work for two years. This way we completed (the UCF) in Esfahan. This way we carried out the work to complete Natanz, and on top of that, we even gained benefits. For 10 years, America prevented Iran from joining the WTO. This obstacle was removed, and Iran began talks in order to join the WTO. In the past, the world did not accept Iran as a member of the group of countries with a nuclear fuel cycle. In these two years, and thanks to the Paris Agreement, we entered the international game of the nuclear fuel cycle, and Iran was recognized as one of the countries with a nuclear fuel cycle. An Iranian delegate even participated in the relevant talks. We gained other benefits during these two years as well.

None of these revelations matter because virtually no Western politician can ever use force again to prevent a regime, even one openly dedicated to terrorism, from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The subject is verboten because the Left has declared it so. Unless something radically changes, it is only logical to prepare for the consequences of this head-in-the-sand policy, a possible catastrophe beside which September 11 will diminish into insignificance. Perhaps this event is already inevitable and those future victims beyond saving. But even so, it is important to begin the work of opening our eyes now, so that we might avoid the blindness which took the world of the 1930s and the 1990s over a cliff. Some mental disease in Western culture has allowed it to stand idly by while evil grew to monstrous proportions around and within it; an infirmity dignified with the name of pacifism. Perhaps it has already killed some of us reading this post; and the least we can do, if our final moments come, is to realize why we died.

The Arsenal of Democracy

You may want to read Daniel Bergner's colorful New York Times account of private security contractors in Iraq: The Other Army. (Hat tip: DL) The account is vivid and packed with incident. The author repeatedly refers to the private security contractors as "gunmen", but he is clearly ambivalent about them, repelled by their roughness yet attracted by their ingenuity and enterprise. Describing a meeting with a Triple Canopy company "gunman", Bergner writes:

He had jowls and loose swells of flesh beneath his T-shirt. ''Don't let the package fool you,'' the ex-Delta colonel who introduced us had told me. ''He's a commando from way back.'' After a career in Special Forces, the man said, he hadn't seemed able to survive in the civilian world. Work in construction fell apart. He drank heavily. He took a job as a cashier in a convenience store -- ''till I found out I had to smile at the customers.'' He laughed ruefully at his inability to adapt. ...

And back in the Chicago suburb where I visited the company in May, in its new, sprawling offices (which Triple Canopy would soon be exchanging for a similar setup outside Washington, in order to be closer to its main source of income, the U.S. government), I heard Matt Mann talk exuberantly about ''creating a national asset.'' It would have been easy to be exuberant merely because of the profits he was taking in; it would have been easy to be downright giddy.

But his enthusiasm seemed to come, as well, from other things. He spoke about the waste of Special Operations stars, ''men whose intelligence is equal to the best attorneys, the best doctors,'' men who had survived the harshest training, who had learned to operate on their own in alien cultures, who ''don't know how to fail.'' Their talents, he said, were going unrecognized and unused when they left the military and entered civilian society.

Although Bergner likes to believe the "gunmen" are in it solely for the money he is too intelligent not to see that Mann is telling at least a partial truth: that the hardest thing for a compulsive warrior in civilian life isn't getting a job, but forgetting his sense of specialness. Part of that specialness comes from living in a world of exotic experiences, dealing in things a cashier at a convenience store would strain to understand.

A few months later, (Hendrick) was riding in a convoy, in the back seat of a pickup's cab, escorting an Army Corps of Engineers team to a spot out in the desert, where they would blow up captured munitions. Across the desolate terrain, according to Hendrick and a colleague who was present that day, a white S.U.V. appeared from behind a berm. It was on Hendrick's side, 200 yards away. Hendrick wore a black helmet, tinted goggles and a black shirt, with a kaffiyeh wrapped around his neck and taupe-colored shooting gloves. He leaned out his window clutching a belt-fed light machine gun. The distance kept closing. ''He's coming in! He's coming at us!'' he heard someone on his team call out. He thought, Idiot farmer. He had the best angle; he fired warning shots. He could see the driver dressed all in white. The distance shrank to less than 30 yards. He aimed into the wheels. ''Idiot farmer turned to No, this isn't happening in a fraction of a second,'' he said. All was instinct. He riddled the driver's door and shot into the driver's window. The S.U.V. jerked to the side -- it exploded, ''went from white to a ball of bright orange,'' so close that the blast demolished a vehicle in the convoy, though the men inside weren't hurt. The S.U.V. all but vaporized. It had been packed with explosives -- a suicide bomber. The largest trace left was a scrap of tire. A bit of the bomber's scalp clung to one of the vehicles in the convoy.

Bergner worries about Iraq precisely because it is minting men like Hendrick: "with so many newly created private soldiers unemployed when the market of Iraq finally crashes, aren't some of them likely to accept such jobs -- the work of mercenaries in the chaotic territories of the earth? ... We may know less and less how to feel about a state that is no longer defended by men and women we can perceive as pure",  an ironic characterization, if ever there was one, to apply in a theater where unemployed Iraqi thugs are paid thousands of dollars by Wahabi moneymen for every American soldier they kill. The bright side is that "the United Nations will soon hire the companies to guard refugee camps in war zones" instead of the assortment of Zambians and Bangladeshis the press can always portray as pure.

An interesting companion piece to this might be entitled The Other Military-Industrial Complex. A DOD briefing on the newest technologies being deployed to Iraq include items like the MARCBOT made by the Exponent Corporation, the TACMAV folding UAV of ARA and Z-Medica's Quickclot. Numerous items are being supplied by businesses no one would have heard of. Because of the nature of the war a large number of small companies are supplying critical equipment instead of the traditional aerospace contractors. Analysts have long known that the market (e.g. AQ Khan) responds to terrorist demand. It would have been surprising if the market had remained indifferent to the multi-billion dollar US war effort. Bergner's article suggests that official deployments are simply the tip of the iceberg. The US is more deeply mobilized than is evident, its politicians more tentative than its entrepreneurs.