Sneering "journalist"-with-chip-on-shoulder John Sutherland of London's Guardian slams me for my recent commentary on bulldozer shahida Rachel Corrie
Martyrisation demands retaliatory demonisation. Having been bulldozed to death, Rachel was duly blogged to death. The front-page news stories came out on March 17. By the next day, sites such as the aptly-named SharkBlog (hosted by Stefan Sharkansky) were in full mephitic flow. The Shark himself led the charge with a riff on "The Prime of Miss Rachel Corrie", casting her as Mary MacGregor, the idiot girl in Muriel Spark's novel. She had committed "suicide by bulldozer" as deliberately as her Palestinian buddies with their body bombs.(the entry he is referring to is here ) Sutherland closes
What have we come to? The speed with which this kind of devil's advocacy can now (thanks to the net) be mounted, its sheer unbridled violence and its moral irresponsibility are, to the thoughtful mind, more frightening than any of those WMDs for whose (dubious) existence Britons are, at this moment, laying down their lives. Stop the world: I want to log off.Yeah, my blog is more violent and frightening than Saddam's chemical weapons, all right. These Europeasers must either seriously not give a shit about all the truly horrible things that their hero in Baghdad does, or they must feel terribly impotent in the face of overwhelming success by the American British coalition, or both. Otherwise, why would a big newspaper like the Guardian lash out at a little ole' blogger like me???
Charles Johnson also has a nice response to John Sutherland.
UPDATE Bill Herbert traces some of Sutherland's arguments to discredit the criticism of Rachel Corrie to the "Vanguard News Network" (www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com, slogan: "No Jews, Just Right"). That would fit. I came across another self-described "American Nazi" who created a "Tribute to Rachel Corrie" ( http://www.geocities.com/jabpagec/posts/corrie.html )
After reading Mamoun Fandy's Washington Post column on the Arab media that I linked to yesterday, I was curious to see how the Arab media actually does report on the Iraq war. So I hunkered down with my Arabic-English Dictionary and slogged through the translation of an entire article from the Al-Jazeera website.
16:48 Mecca Time, March 30, 2003
Baghdad: Four Thousand Arabs to Carry Out Martyrdom Operations
An American soldier injured in Iraq upon arrival at a base in Germany yesterday
Iraqi Army spokesman General Hazem Ar-Rawi said that more than four thousand Arab volunteers from every single Arab country have arrived in Iraq to carry out "martyrdom" operations against the invasion forces in the days ahead.
Answering a question at a Baghdad news conference about the legitimacy of the regular army engaging in suicide operations, Ar-Rawi said: "It is our duty to drive out the invaders no matter what the price". And he said that an Iraqi officer named Ali Ja'afar Hamadi An-Nu'mani carried out a suicide operation on Saturday near the city of Najaf, which resulted in the deaths of eleven American soldiers, not the mere four that the Americans claimed.
Ar-Rawi stressed that in the eleven days since the beginning of the war, the invasion forces along the battle front lost their balance after the military operations ended in devastating failure to accomplish their planned objectives. And he indicated that one of the most marked signs of the loss of balance is the weak performance of the American and British soldiers and the fact that they abandoned the corpses of their dead on the battlefield.
The Iraqi spokesman mentioned Iraqi successes at arresting the advance of the invasion forces and maintaining a presence deep behind the invaders' lines. He explained that American and British losses numbered hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries along with the destruction of more than 130 tanks and armored vehicles in addition to the airplanes that were shot down.
Answering a question about the missile that fell on a Kuwait shopping mall yesterday, Ar-Rawi said "A missile was fired from the Faw [peninsula] at the invaders who defiled Kuwaiti soil". He added that firing the missile from the Faw was proof it was still in the hands of the Iraqi people.
The article is fascinating for several reasons. It reports the Iraqi general's fantastic claims ("hundreds of American and British deaths"; "eleven casualties" of the suicide bombing instead of four) as unchallenged fact. There is no mention of the number of Iraqi casualties. There is no indication that anybody questioned the general about the potential harm to Kuwaiti civilians from Iraqi missiles that land near shopping malls. And to add weight to the general's claims about inflicting great damage on American soldiers, there is the photograph of the injured GI on a stretcher.
Yes, this would support Fandy's dismissal of Al Jazeera's credibility, and his characterization that it is "political pornography"
Many thanks to the Ribbity Frog for proof-reading and correcting the above translation. The Frog is an Israeli with a strong command of the Arabic language who follows the Arabic press. Be sure to check out the Ribbity Frog blog for more translations of Arab media items which give a fascinating and important view of how the Arab world talks to itself.
Today's must read side-splitting humor, from Jim Treacher:
Garofalo To Be Lowered Into ShredderRead the whole thing.Bushington, DB -- In a televised address from somewhere inside one of his 57 palaces, President George W. Bush today issued a fatwa on actress/comedienne Janeane Garofalo, calling for "all noble American people to hunt down the godless dog Garofalo and bring her to me alive."
Today's must read serious analysis, on the Arab media's coverage of the Iraq war, by Arab journalist and Georgetown lecturer Mamoun Fandy, in today's Washington Post
Reporters and producers know what their viewers want to see: images of empowerment and resistance because of past defeats. They also want to see what Hussein's information minister, Muhammed Said al-Sahaf, calls teaching the Americans a lesson. "We are no less than the Vietnamese. Just make it costly in body bags and the Americans will run," said a general who comments regularly on al-Jazeera. Some Arab journalists say they have little choice but to go along. "The cost of speaking out now -- even to simply say that Saddam is partially responsible for what is taking place -- is very high. It could cost you your job and could even cause you physical harm," said one.Read the whole thing
Religion of Peace: An "Egyptian-American" man and his wife were detained Sunday in Cairo, Egypt after customs agents found two guns and 200 bullets in their luggage, airport officials said.
And speaking of the Religion of Peace, Michelle Malkin reminds us that Kuwait fragger Asan Akbar was not the first MSWA: Muslim Soldier With Attitude
War-related job losses: Hans Blix took early retirement from his job as chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq.
"I think we were given a bit too short time," Blix said. "A few more months would have been useful."Useful for Saddam to be sure, which is why we had to go in there. And that brings us to the next guy who lost his job: Musahim Saab al-Tikriti, Saddam's cousin and commander of Iraqi air defense, who has not done a very good job of defending Iraqi air space. Taking over this thankless job is Gen. Shahin Yasin Muhammad al-Tikriti, whose last name is suspiciously similar to that of his predecessor. No word yet whether Saddam's cousin Musahim was merely fired or also lined up against a wall and fired upon.
Meanwhile in the war on terrorism here in San Francisco, the illegal monthly bicycle riot known as "Critical Mass" tied up traffic yesterday in a show of solidarity with Saddam Hussein and the al-Tikriti family. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown claims that the cost to the City of policing the various pro-Saddam protests will rise to $5 million. Brown is asking the federal government to pay for this cost out of the Homeland Security budget. My opinion is that federal government should absolutely pay for this, but only on the condition that the City stop releasing these criminals back onto the streets and instead hand them over to federal authorities where they can be treated like the enemy combatants that they are and given one-way tickets to Guantanamo.
Ha'aretz reported yesterday that Baby Doc Assad said that he fears becoming the next target of the US-led coalition, adding "We will not wait until we become the next target", without being any more specific. Today Ha'aretz reports that
Syria is granting free passage across its border with Iraq to volunteers who wish to join the fight against the U.S. and British forces. Thus far, dozens of volunteers, primarily Palestinians from the refugee camps in Lebanon, have crossed over into Iraq through Syrian-controlled border posts.furthermoreThe passage of volunteers with Damascus's consent has given rise to the theory that the U.S.-fired missile that struck a Syrian bus traveling in Iraq was an intentional attack on a busload of such volunteers.
The Syrian mufti, Ahmed Kaftaru - a government official - recently called on Muslims worldwide to employ all means, including suicide operations, to defeat the American-British-Zionist aggression.
In today's press conference, still in progress as I write this, Donald Rumsfeld said that military equipment which can endanger the lives of coalition forces, including night vision goggles, is entering Iraq from Syria.
We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipmentsRumsfeld said.
UPDATE The AP has more on Rumsfeld's press briefing and his warning to Syria here:
There's no question but that to the extent that military supplies or equipment or people are moving across the borders between Iraq and Syria, it vastly complicates our situation," Rumsfeld said.Asked if the United States was threatening military action against Syria, Rumsfeld said: "I'm saying exactly what I'm saying. It was carefully phrased."
Every Monday and Thursday the San Francisco Chronicle menaces its readers with a reality distortion vortex called "Ruth Rosen". In yesterday's column, Rosen fabricates a government disinformation scandal:
GIVE THE Bush administration credit for the way it sold this war. The opportunistic manipulation of our fears undermined common sense. Nearly half the country believes that Iraqi terrorists commandeered the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 (Knight Ridder poll, January).There are several embedded assumptions here, among them:
1) Half the country believes that "Iraqi terrorists commandeered the planes..."
2) This is a false belief
3) Those who believe this do so because the Bush administration deliberately persuaded them to believe it.
It has been reasonably well-established that none of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqis. How do we know this? It is not because King Fahd of Saudi Arabia purchased airtime to tell us that 15 of the hijackers were his subjects. It is because the ... Bush administration revealed the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators. Does Rosen have any evidence (or even media quotes) to suggest that the administration is also telling people that there were Iraqis among the hijackers? I don't think she does.
Second, the Knight Ridder poll [large PDF] doesn't exactly reveal a belief that "Iraqi terrorists commandeered the planes...". It simply asked the more muted question: "As far as you know, how many of the September 11th terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens?" [pp. 85-86] The possible answers were: "Most of them", "Some of them", "Just one", "None" and "Don't Know". The preferred answers are "None" and "Don't Know". Although the best available evidence says "none", I am open to the possibility that not all of the hijackers identities have been confirmed beyond challenge. It's also excusable, I think, for the average person to answer "One" or "Some". We keep hearing about the 15 Saudis, but where were the other four from? Egypt? Yemen, UAE? I doubt it's all that hard to induce the average geographically challenged American to go along and agree that there were one or two Omanis, Iraqis or Slovenians in the group if that's the country the interviewer is asking about.
In fact, just about half the respondents answered that "Most", "Some" or "One" of the hijackers were Iraqi citizens, while 17% said "None" and 33% said "Don't Know". Yes, the percentage of the public that is underinformed is disappointingly high. But back to Rosen's insinuation that the Bush administration is responsible for this knowledge gap. Not only does she not have a smoking gun that the administration has tried to lead us astray on this, but the demographic breakdown of the responses dismantles her position. Whether broken down by gender, race, income or party, the ( Men / Whites / High earners / Republicans ) were more likely to answer correctly than the ( Women / Non-whites / Low earners / Democrats ) respectively.
In other words, the anti-Bush demographics were all more likely to believe that Iraqis were involved in the 9/11 attacks than were the pro-Bush, folks. So even if Rosen manages to produce evidence of the alleged disinformation campaign that none of the rest of us have seen, I'd be especially interested to hear her explain how Bush's propaganda was more effective at convincing his detractors than it was at persuading his own base. Beyond that, why would it be that those who are the least inclined to believe in a direct Iraqi role in 9/11 are also more persuaded by the administration's actual arguments for regime change? ( I would argue that it's because they're consistently on the right side of the Clue Gap, but I'd be curious to hear Rosen's explanation too).
Rosen makes up some more stuff:
The war was also sold as a cakewalk. Now, we're surprised by fierce military resistance. What did we expect?What we expected was consistent with what the President told us on March 19 to expect:
America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality... A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.Again, look through the various administration statements over the last year and a half. I will buy a piece of cake for the first person (including Ruth Rosen) who brings to my attention any administration statement that suggests the war would be a piece of cake.
Today is my wedding anniversary. Irene asked me to mention that our wedding day was the happiest day of my life and that the last four years have been the happiest years of my life. She didn't have to ask, I would have mentioned that anyway, because they were. May we have at least another fifty happy years ahead of us.
Unavoidable Pun Watch Glenn Reynolds writes about the "oral argument" in the Texas sodomy case. Along those lines, I can't help but note that the State of Texas' opposition to natural human behavior is, well, go read this.
It's probably a good thing that there were no instant public opinion polls back in 1861 and no embedded CNN reporters covering the first week of the Civil War. If the spinmeisters of doom can portray our overwhelming successes in Iraq as "not going well", imagine what they might have done with the opening days of the war between the states, which included the Confederate victory at Fort Sumter and the secession of Virginia?
Al Jazeera Watch: The Al Jazeera website has moved to a new hosting provider and is currently offline.
UPDATE (5:23pm) The aforementioned "new hosting provider" was the result of a low-tech hack attack. The website is now back online and hosted in ... France! (The URL for the English language site still points to the Arabic site)
Baby Doc Assad fears becoming the next target of the US-led pro-sanity coalition. "We will not wait until we become the next target," he was quoted as saying. It is not clear, however, what he intends to do to avoid becoming the next target.
Iraq fired a missile (possibly a Scud) into Kuwait a few hours ago. Fortunately, the Kuwaitis have Andre Agassi to protect them.
Der Spiegel reports that a Saudi diplomat has been linked to Al Qaeda and suspected terrorists.
Mohammed J. Fakihi, an attache at the Saudi embassy in Berlin, had contacts with a group of Islamists who were arrested last Thursday on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. Fakihi met with the suspects through Berlin's al-Nur Mosque.
After the German Foreign Ministry confronted the Saudi Embassy with the results of the investigation, the Saudis flew Fakihi home to Riyadh. The report implies (but does not explicitly state) that the German officials were not able to interrogate Fahiki.
Investigators also discovered Fakihi's business card during an earlier search of the apartment of convicted 9/11 conspirator Mounir el Motassadeq. It was only after multiple attempts that the Saudi government responded to German inquiries about Fakihi.
Reuters also has the story. It doesn't mention Fakihi's name or Motassadeq connection. But it adds that the diplomat was called home before he could be expelled on suspicion of "violating weapons laws and falsifying documents".
A very Happy Birthday to my Aunt Lynne
A nail in the coffin of bilingual education?: Five years after voters approved English-only classrooms across California, the popular ballot measure seems to be working. The percentage of English-learning students who tested as proficient in English nearly tripled from 11% in 2001 to 32% in 2002. English-only learners score higher on the test than do bilingual students.
The San Francisco Chronicle seems to be paying its in-house "war blogger" to spin the news for Saddam.
All Jazeera, All the Time: My single biggest source of blog traffic today is people doing search engine queries for "Al Jazeera". (The search engines are pointing to a translation of a news story from the Al Jazeera web site I posted last year). The Al Jazeera web site itself is currently unreachable (by me, at least). Earlier this week it was suffering from what appeared to be traffic overload, amid reports speculating that it had been hacked and/or a victim of a "denial of service" attack. Pages were loading slowly, and often timing out, but it was definitely functioning. At this moment, however, the site is unreachable (for the techies in the audience -- Al Jazeera's DNS servers will not resolve the hostname www.aljazeera.net into an IP address). The earlier speculation was that the hacking attempts came from the US, so does this mean that the site is blocked to US traffic, or is it down altogether? Can any of my overseas readers tell me whether they can reach the Al Jazeera website?
UPDATE As of 9pm PST www.aljazeera.net is back online. The much vaunted English language website, english.aljazeera.net only points to the Arabic site.
Meanwhile in Iran The Mullahcrats are organizing an "anti-war" rally for Friday, in support of their old (friend? enemy? I give up) Saddam. The pro-democracy civil disobedience movement is boycotting the pro-tyranny "anti-war" rally.
Veteran Ha'aretz reporter Ze'ev Schiff, always worth reading, says "the Turks bear much of the responsibility for the gap that has developed between the timetable of the original battle plan and what has actually happened in the field."
Is God on Saddam's Side? The answer is: I hope not. But after reading the San Francisco Chronicle's extracts from Bay Area religious sermons: "Spiritual leaders struggle to address fear, uncertainty of times", it seems that many who claim to understand more about God than the rest of us aren't so sure. The message of most of these sermons is that it doesn't matter what Saddam does, God doesn't want America to possess or use weapons. Only one of the cited sermons made sense. I am saving it for the very end. First I am going to make you read all of the hideous examples of the perversion of religion in the service of moral equivalence.
Father Stephan Borlang, St. Vincent's Ferrer Catholic Church, Vallejo
Weapons, war, destruction are all a result of our lack of faith. We try to satisfy our spiritual thirst and hunger in ways that are contrary to God's will.Rev. Laird Stuart, Calvary Presbyterian Church, San Francisco
God's will for all nations was that they should choose a new way to live together, like lions and lambs.The Rev. G. Penny Nixon, Senior pastor, Metropolitan Community Church, San Francisco
As a queer, I am well acquainted with the notion of categorization. I am all too familiar with government lies and the potential cruelty of otherness. As a religious leader, I am sorrowfully aware of institutional secrecy and self-preservation at any cost. I suppose that is why I am so certain that no human is dispensable.I guess she/he is telling us that Saddam, Uday and Chemical Ali are also indispensable.
David Fitzgerald, steering committee member, San Francisco Atheists
Because despite the fundamental disagreements atheists have with religion, opposition to this unjust war could prove to be what unites believers and nonbelievers alike.Who says atheists can't also have a spiritual side or be a moral force?
Anwar, Imam/religious director, South Bay Islamic Association, San Jose
Oh Allah! Today as we supplicate to you, thousands and thousands of innocent people are being killed all over the world. Please save them, have Your mercy upon them, as You are the most merciful. Spare the lives of the innocent Iraqis, Palestinians, and all innocent people that are being tortured and killed over the world. They do not deserve it.Does Imam Anwar also pray for the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are oppressed at the hands of Muslim tyrants? In fact, he does not.
Rev. David Sammons, Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church
What those who hate us will be doing, is what we've done ourselves, in the way we've portrayed Saddam Hussein.Tanto Teah Strozer, San Francisco Zen Center
It helps, in this effort, to stay grounded in one's body and breath. And when we have the opportunity, we can help each other in little ways ... Stop, be aware, feel your feelings in your body, let the body process them before going onto whatever you are doing.And if only Saddam had learned Pilates, maybe he wouldn't be so cranky and obstreperous.
Finally, there is at least one religious leader in the Bay Area who still cares about the difference between right and wrong:
Yakov Kagan, Chabad of Contra Costa (Lubavitch), Walnut Creek
Judaism teaches us that one cannot be neutral when it comes to holy and unholy, good and evil. One must take a stand and define his position pro or con. It takes great vision and bravery to choose to eradicate the evil but there are those who recognize their mission to transform the world into a G- dly domain.Amen.We can Thank G-d for America and its leaders who are brave enough to stand up to evil in its source and commit themselves to destroying it. As G-d accompanied Moses on his mission to destroy the Evil leader of ancient Egypt so let us pray that G-d will accompany our troops and commander in chief toward facing down today's evil tyrants.
ROTFL (I) France determined to play big role in rebuilding Iraq
Gilles Munier, an executive board member of the French-Iraq Association for Economic Cooperation, said business leaders and government representatives were studying how to gain a foothold in postwar Iraq...Some French are concerned that a U.S.-led administration in Iraq will favor companies from the United States and other pro-war countries while penalizing companies from France and other war opponents.Go figure. And not that it should take any special talent to predict such a thing, but Shark Blog predicted several weeks ago that France would be knocking on our car door about now, dressed in a short skirt and not wearing any panties.
ROTFL (II) Saudis make peace proposal to United States, Iraq
ROTFL (III) Der Spiegel has a laughably biased article called "Warblogging: Completely Different War News". Curiously, Der Spiegel understands warblogging to be blogging against the war and exposing pro-war bias in U.S. media. The article skeptically mentions exactly two pro-war blogs (the fine Oxblog and L.T. Smash) and wonders whether and to what extent they are "fed with information" by the Defense Department. Seriously. The sidebar contains a list of links to war-related blogs. In addition to the two pro-war blogs previously mentioned, the list includes several anti-war blogs. Among them, alternet.org (lead story today: Robert Fisk on Washington’s ‘Quagmire’ in Iraq) and "Veiled for Allah", the official voice of all those burka-wearing European American converts to Islam that are filling our streets these days. Somehow, Der Spiegel didn't notice the more widely read and influential blogs that cover the war, such as Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs, The Command Post... Stop me now before I run out of room.
Palestinian Corruption Watch: Haaretz reports that international donors have frozen funding of leading Palestinian "human rights" group "The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment" after an independent audit raised suspicion of mismanagement of millions of dollars in grants, the European Union said Tuesday. From September 1997 through August 2002, the organization received about $10 million from donors (including the European Union). However, about $4 million of this sum was embezzled, used for other purposes, or cannot be accounted for, according to the audit. It would be interesting to find out how many people were killed with the money used for "other purposes". But let's hope this is a sign that the Europeaser Union is finally starting to take responsibility for their "humanitarian assistance" to the world's kleptocrats and terrorists.
I woke up this morning to Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace speaking with NPR's Bob Edwards about the war in Iraq [audio]. I put Mr. Cirincione's remarks in context, by quoting from his formidable body of prior statements, predictions and running commentary on other recent situations.
Today (March 25, 2003):
As most observers have noted this not what we expected. It was clear that Secretary Rumsfeld was hoping for a very early decapitation strike or surrender. That did not happen. Saddam seems entrenched in power, still controlling his forces.
November 9, 2001
Things aren't going well in the war [in Afghanistan](Kabul fell four days later)
Today
These guerilla tactics are also somewhat unexpected and taking a much higher toll than people thought...[The US military didn't count on] the irregulars and the staunch resistance and the tactics that Saddam seems to have adopted...I think there's no doubt in the end that the U.S. military will win, it's just the toll may be higher than any of us had been expecting, and the fighting, as the President now says, may be much longer than he led us to believe just a week agoIn fact, nothing I've read has indicated that the administration was expecting a cakewalk. The administration has long expected and planned for uncertainty and Cirincione has written as such:
Feb 23, 2003
[administration officials] harbor grave doubts. As one senior official told a New York Times reporter, "We still do not know how U.S. forces will be received. Will it be cheers, jeers or shots? And the fact is, we won't know until we get there."Today
Ordering the regular forces, not the Republican Guards, but the regular forces that were supposed to be surrendering en masse by now...Ordering them to take off their uniforms, adopt civilian clothes and carry out operations behind enemy lines. Our military is understandably upset about this, thinks it's not, you know, sort of fair, not the proper way to conduct a war. Unfortunately it seems to be very effective.It is not merely "not, you know, sort of fair" but also a serious war crime. Cirincione does not label it as such.
Today
There's a very high expectation that Saddam in fact does have a large stockpile of chemical or biological weapons. This might not be true. He might have very few of these weapons left. Nonetheless it does slow our progress. As troops come across suspicious rockets or vats or laboratories they're going to understandably stop, take a step back, put up a perimeter, call in the inspectors.Dec. 9, 2002
The unanimous Security Council resolution ordering Iraqi compliance with United Nations inspections--and the credible threat of war should Iraq not comply--make it very likely that Saddam will cooperate with UN inspections. The early inspections have gone well enough...If Saddam had complied with the various Security Council resolutions he would not have any illegal weapons, period.
Some more examples of Cirincione's sage predictions:
The U.S. administration has convinced most journalists and world leaders that it will soon attack Iraq ... Leaked plans detail a ferocious, short war to isolate, then topple Saddam Hussein. Arab leaders publicly oppose a war, but news reports indicate their quiet support. President George Bush seems ready to let loose the dogs of war at any moment.Feb. 23, 2003Which is precisely why he will not have to...
...there are several very plausible scenarios that could turn the war into a catastrophe. These include the use of chemical or biological weapons against US troops [ with weapons that Cirincione claims that either (a) Saddam doesn't have, or which we (b) shouldn't waste our time looking for]; an attack on Israel that prompts an Israeli counter-attack, possibly with a nuclear weapon...
... it is not likely that the United States will go to war anytime soon.
Even if the war itself goes well, and we can avoid the horrors of chemical weapons, house-to-house fighting and torched oil fields, the bombing campaign said to involve 3,000 bombs in the first two days alone will kill thousands. And this time every television station in the world wants to be live from Baghdad. CNN was alone in 1991; now there are dozens of CNNs. Each will broadcast live photos of dead Iraqis being pulled from the rubble.How did the prediction of "will kill thousands" in the first two days come to pass? The answer is here
So far, Iraqi television apparently has shown little footage of civilian casualties, probably an indication there has not been much, said Korb, an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. He said the Iraqis would repeatedly show footage of any large-scale civilian casualties if they couldCirincione gave us a whole bunch of other doomsday predictions in an op-ed which appeared in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle
Fatwas are already flowing from mainstream clerics urging all Muslims to resist the U.S. invasion. Governments may indeed fall, but it may be the rulers in Jordan that are threatened, not the dictatorship in SyriaIt sounds like a horrifying future to be sure, but given Cirincione's track record for predictions, I'm going to wait a few days before investing in a backyard bomb-shelter.But the war -- whatever the outcome -- will likely increase both amateur and organized terrorism. Much of the terrorism will be spontaneous outrage at the invasion and deaths, striking out at close by, identifiable American targets.
If the war goes well, world publics may fear emboldened, postwar U.S. intentions even more. The Bush doctrine seems likely to generate exactly the anti-U.S. coalitions that it was designed to discourage.
If the war destabilizes Pakistan, nuclear weapons, materials or scientists may flow to other nations or terrorist groups. North Korea, ignored during the crisis, may go overtly nuclear...
...It will destabilize the region, increase terrorism, decrease alliance unity and make the spread of deadly weapons more likely without measurably increasing our national security.
Brooke Schreier 1, Ruth Rosen 0
I just learned that my cousin Aaron Katersky, a reporter for Clear Channel radio, is embedded with the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. An archive of his reports may be found here. I have never met Aaron, but I admire his courage and will be thinking of him and following his coverage in the days ahead.
It appears that Russian technicians are helping Saddam's military jam US GPS signals. This is the same Russia that the San Francisco Chronicle has recently described as "our longtime partner" and a "longtime ally"
As Andrew Sullivan wrote
The pictures on al Jazeera are Danny Pearl revisited. Cowardly, evil, depraved: and the fact that al Jazeera is broadcasting them shows exactly how unhinged the enemy has become. Ditto the news of the American serviceman who attacked his fellow soldiers. Two sides of the same Islamist coin. If these barbarians actually believe this kind of behavior will weaken American resolve, they just don't know Americans. But it's a good indicator that this war isn't over yet. And the worse may yet be to come.I found a page on the Al Jazeera web site that has some gruesome screen shots of their broadcast of dead and captured American soldiers. The original page is here [Al Jazeera is frequently inaccessible these days]. I made a copy of the page with its photographs here. I am extremely uncomfortable with these images that disrespect the honor and/or memory of our troops. On the other hand, it's important for us to understand how the most popular television station in the Arab world chooses to report on the war and to depict American soldiers.
The text above the photographs says
Al-Jazeera showed pictures of the bodies of American soldiers who were killed during the battle that took place between American and Iraqi forces in the city of An-Nasiriya in south west Iraq. It also showed pictures of American soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Iraqi forces at the same battle. For a long time today [March 23], the American Defense Dept. denied that any soldiers were killed or taken prisoner until it backed off and announced that fewer than ten soldiers were missing in southern IraqThis graphic at the top of the page:
refers to the editorial section of the website where the page appears. The text says: "Al-Watan al-Arabi" -- "The Arab World". Indeed.
Michael Moore won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Bowling for Columbine. In his acceptance speech, Moore said
We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasonsMoore's pre-occupation with fiction might help explain why Bowling for Columbine was the first work of fiction to win a Best Documentary Oscar.
In light of Moore's award, however, the Academy voted to reclassify 1939 Best Picture nominee "The Wizard of Oz" as a documentary so it could be awarded the Best Documentary Oscar retroactively. Academy president Frank Pierson said:
Most people think of The Wizard of Oz as a child's fantasy, but in fact, it was a courageous and true story of a Rainbow coalition consisting of a young animal rights activist (Dorothy), an African-American (the Lion), a disabled prosthesis wearer (Tinman), a gay man (the Scarecrow), and a lesbian (the Good Witch of the North). The movie documents how this coalition fought for social justice and prevailed over the capitalist white man Wizard and his right-wing religious ally the Wicked Witch of the West.
Same poll, different spin: The latest CBSNews/New York Times Poll is out. CBS reports that Americans "approve of the U.S. taking military action against Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power" by a margin of 76% to 20%. The New York Times reports that "Support for Bush Surges at Home, but Split Remains" I'll get to the "split" in a moment. But first, they write that Americans "approved of Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq" 70% to 27%. These were in fact two distinct questions from the same survey. But it's kind of funny that the Times chose to lead with the more partisan question with the predictably less impressive numbers than the one that CBS chose.
And the "split"? The "split" is that "While 93 percent of Republicans said they approved of Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq, just 50 percent of Democrats did." Where do the independents stand? The NYT doesn't tell us. Since there are undoubtedly some undecided responders, it's clear that more Democrats support "Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq", let alone the basic concept of military action against Iraq, than oppose either. Yet the Times chose to spin this in the most partisan way possible.
Meanwhile, over on the other coast in Baghdad by the Bay, the San Francisco Chronicle demonstrates yet again that it may as well be the pro-bono P.R. agency if not for the Tikrit Mafia, then at least for the Pelosi wing of the Democratic party.
THE U.S.-LED war on Iraq has been accompanied by assaults on free speech in the homeland.Which assaults might those be? Is the FBI torturing Ruth Rosen again?
The attempt to label anyone who disagrees with the war as "unpatriotic" is predictable, but no less disturbing.Never mind the hyperbole about labeling "anyone who disagrees" as "unpatriotic". We're not really talking about assault, we're talking about criticism. Which is simply another form of, uh, free speech.
Americans who support the war should be respectful of those who speak against it with deeply held convictions.i.e. please don't be mean to us, because we hold our idiotic delusions as sincerely as, say, Hitler, bin Laden and the Tokyo subway nerve gas people held theirs.
Opponents of war, for their part, should recognize the foolishness of trying to use vandalism and intimidation to protest the use of military force.Note that opponents of war are not called upon to be respectful of those who support the war. It's just not a good strategy to use violence against 76% of the population.
Once the fighting began, however, the diplomatic option vanished. We support the troops and their mission.Yeah, with all the conviction and sincerity that Nancy Pelosi does:
"I disagree with the policy that took us to this war. I dispute some of the arguments used in favor of this resolution, and I am disappointed in some of the provisions in this resolution..."Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at 07:55 AM
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave an interview to Der Spiegel on Friday where he criticizes American disregard for the UN, calls for stronger institutions for peaceful conflict resolution, and inadvertently argues why the United States should feel more relieved than worried about German pacifism.
I cannot and do not wish to imagine that we are at the beginning of a series of wars of disarmament ... We must not be left with only the alternatives of permitting terrible dangers to exist, or being drawn into a war of disarmament ... American power is a decisive factor for world peace and stability, but the world order cannot function when the definitive criterion for the application of force is when it is in the national interest of the most powerful country ... The same rules must apply for large, medium and small nations.Meaning, I guess, that the opinions of Guinea and Liechtenstein should be as important as those of the United States. Fischer doesn't see any present alternative to the UN and the Security Council, and rejects the US role as "world policeman". He declines to say, however, who should be the world policeman or to whom such a policeman would be accountable.
Fischer complained that in the question of Iraq
there was no real trans-Atlantic dialogue.He places the blame not only the United States, but also on the Europeans who didn't involve themselves in the discussion early enough.
The European Union needs to draw the consequences from this, create stronger institutions and appoint a stronger European Foreign MinisterThe prospect of an empowered Chris Patten sounds frightening at first, then again there's not much of an historical precedent for a pacifist superpower.
It all comes together in the final paragraph:
The position that conflicts should be resolved peacefully has nothing to do with cowardice or sentimentality. America, after all, has suffered far fewer catastrophic wars than Europe has. The Americans have never had a Verdun on their continent. The USA has never had anything comparable to Auschwitz or Stalingrad.Interesting that Fischer should mention Verdun, Auschwitz and Stalingrad, all of which were started by, uh, his own country. If the only alternative to the old aggressive Germany is a wholly pacifist Germany, then I'll take the latter, thank you. Fischer isn't likely to get a world where the Saddam Husseins of the place are chided into complying with the Queensberry rules of international law. But at least the Americans and others who are in a position to confront tyranny and defend freedom should feel comfortable to do what needs to be done while putting Franco-German pacifist-aggression in its proper perspective.
CNN TV is reporting (not yet online) that a single U.S. soldier is suspected in the grenade attack on U.S. troops in Kuwait that left 13 wounded. It was an astonishing moment watching Aaron Brown receive this news on the air from the Financial Times' Charles Clover. Brown was incredulous and wore a pregnant expression, straining not to ask the obvious question: Was the soldier a member of the Religion of Peace?
UPDATE The answer is yes, the soldier is a member of the Religion of Peace. In a later CNN TV report (not online) the TIME magazine reporter embedded with the 101st Airborne said that the suspect (who confessed) had an "Arabic sounding last name" and apparently did it for political/religious motivations. CNN did not report the fact that the traitor was a Black Muslim
PeakTalk reports on the latest spotting of our old friend, Gretta [Regretta?] Duisenberg.
San Francisco Trifecta this story pushes all the right buttons in San Francisco, if nowhere else
About 500 lesbians used the occasion of their first public pride march Friday to protest the war in Iraq as opposition politicians blocked the U.S. Consulate in Acapulco and dozens of anti-war demonstrators camped out in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.Yeah, a story about lesbian Mexican Saddam supporters may be a non-sequitur, but it's also the essence of San Francisco.
Click here for the Cartoon of the Week. Erin O'Connor provides the context.
An astonishing tale of racial sensitivity and poltical correctness run amok
Spoiled brats: San Francisco Saddam supporters who were arrested for antisocial behavior are complaining about the lack of comforts in jail
Betrayed by the spelling. Another indication that the San Francisco "peace" movement is being directed by this guy:
Robert Berdahl is Chancellor of the University of California - Berkeley. He is also Professor of History in a department which is ranked as the #3 History Dept. in the United States.
Chancellor Berdahl, in his role as an historian, wrote the following op-ed, which appeared in Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle.
Questioning the Motives for WarThe reader will find in the op-ed plenty of lessons in the abuse of history, but none of them emanate from the Bush administration.
Iraq and the lessons of historyThe historical references made by the Bush administration in support of a war with Iraq offer some lessons in the use and abuse of history.
Members of the administration have made repeated references to the appeasement by England and France prior to 1939, ignoring the fact that appeasement involved allowing Hitler to occupy Austria, the Sudetenland and then the rest of Czechoslovakia. The lesson of the 1930s is the importance of collective action to resist aggression, a lesson employed by America and its allies during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. There is no historical analog from the 1930s, however, that would call for an invasion of Iraq in the absence of any act of aggression by Iraq.
The analogy between the UN Security Council's failure to enforce its own resolutions against Iraq with the League of Nations' failures of the 1930s is spot on. It was the failure of the League in 1935 and 1936 to confront Italy's invasion of Abyssinia and Hitler's rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles that encouraged Hitler to go on to occupy the Rhineland, for starters. Like Hitler in 1935, Saddam has armed himself in violation of his treaty obligations. And the UN today has less of an excuse for inaction than the League had in the 1930s. The 1935 Hitler merely announced his intentions to expand his Reich. Saddam already has a substantial track record of aggression, including the invasions of Iran and Kuwait, and the horrendous abuse of Iraqi civilians. To deal with him as if none of this happened and under the assumption that he will not engage in future aggression would be the height of foolishness.
The lesson for me is that, yes, "collective action" is essential for resisting aggression, but only when implemented through a collective of the willing and not through an ineffectual league of unwilling nations.
A historical reference not mentioned by the Bush administration that we might wish to consider now is 1914. After terrorists assassinated the Archduke of Austria and his wife, Austria demanded the right to punish anti-Austrian terrorists in Serbia. Although Serbia acceded to most of the demands, Austria declared war anyway, thereby drawing all of Europe into World War I.It's hard to see the relevance of World War I Europe to the current war. The assassination of the Archduke may have been the proximate act of violence prior to the outbreak of all out war, but the longstanding rivalry between France and Germany was building toward war for decades. [Go back and reread the first part of the Guns of August] How does the analogy of the great power machinations of 1914 map onto today's world? Berdahl doesn't say.
A war that was to be quick and easy lasted four years, claimed 9 million lives, and defined the fault-lines of European conflict for the rest of the century.The first few days of World War I saw Germans plundering the Belgian countryside and committing atrocities against civilians. The first few days of the liberation of Iraq show Iraqi civilians embracing the American liberators. And the fault lines of World War I were not the fault lines for the rest of the century. The fault lines of European conflict during World War I were (basically) drawn between France, England and Russia on one side and Germany, Austria and Turkey on the other. After World War II the fault lines were Western Europe and Turkey vs. Russia
The repercussions of an American invasion of Iraq are liable to be worldwide and last for many years.Of course there will be repercussions. That's the whole point.
Another historical fact absent from the administration's history lesson is the fact that the CIA helped Saddam Hussein's Baath Party seize the government in 1963, after which Saddam Hussein joined in perpetrating the bloodbath that followed. Also ignored is the manner in which Saddam Hussein was supported and armed by the United States during the 1980s.To the extent that the United States had anything more to do with helping Saddam than did, say, France, Germany and Russia, it's our responsibility to fix whatever problem we might have mistakenly exacerbated. That's what we're doing. Why aren't those other countries that helped Saddam doing anything to fix the mess they helped create?
Members of the administration have repeatedly quoted Santayana's famous admonition, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The question is, what is relevant history and how do we learn from it?Yes, all civilizations eventually collapse, including dictatorships. And "In the long run," as Keynes said, "we're all dead". Any dictatorship that deserves to collapse, deserves to collapse quickly and it will collapse more quickly with outside pressure.We learn not by seeking events that seem to parallel those in our own time, but by examining the long sweep of history, by studying how oppressive regimes, in fact, ultimately change without the necessity of war to overthrow them. Dictatorships, when contained, eventually collapse.
This certainly is a lesson of the history of the 20th century. We did not go to war to prevent Stalin or Mao, also dictators responsible for the deaths of millions of their own people, from developing weapons of mass destruction. We contained them. The Soviet Union ultimately imploded and China today is a major trading partner of the United States.Containment was more apropos during the Cold War for a couple of reasons that do not apply to Iraq and the rest of the Arab world: first, the USSR and China were too large and powerful to confront directly. We probably should have prevented both countries from obtaining nuclear weapons had we been able to. But we didn't do it in time. Second, both countries had the good sense not to blow up US embassies or to fly airplanes into US office buildings. The various Arab and Islamic psychopathologies show less willingness to restrain themselves from attacking us than the USSR did. The opportunity to prevent the long-term threats from growing out of control is now, before they acquire the means to deter us from effective self-defense.
History teaches that international affairs are complex and rarely yield to black-and-white divisions of good and evil.If the Soviet Union, the Third Reich and Ba'athist Iraq are not as close as human beings get to perpetrating evil, then what is?
And we learn that justice is ultimately served by adherence to the rule of law and not by states that arbitrarily grant themselves the right to stand above or outside of the established practices of international law.If only there were a deus ex machina to enforce "international law". But there never has been and there never will be. And the lesson, again, from the failure of the League of Nations in the 1930s, and the failure of the UN to deter, say, the Soviet Union and Arab aggression during the Cold War is that "international law" is hardly a deterrent to those who need to be deterred.
The extension of democracy in the world has not come from the barrel of a gun, but from the extension of the rule of law.Now forgive me, Professor, because I was a simple math major in college, not a history major. So I'm not current on all the fundamental principles of modern historical scholarship, such as "the long sweep of history". And it might be that sophisticated historians no longer bother with petty details such as names, dates and causal relationships. But here's a question that I've been pondering lately on the subject of gun barrels vs. the "extension of the rule of law". You might be able to help me answer it:
Did the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787 lead to the military defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 and the subsequent withdrawal of British forces from the Thirteen Colonies, or was it the other way around?
In the 20th century, we have learned that the determination of people to control their own destiny is ultimately stronger than the empires that have dominated them.Absolutely, and oppressed people (like Iraqis) appreciate outside help (like ours) to overthrow those who dominate them.
Jonathan Schell has splendidly summarized this lesson in the March issue of Harper's magazine: "If force remained the essence of power and the final arbiter in politics, then the British today would rule India, the United States would preside over South Vietnam, the apartheid regime would survive in South Africa, the Communist Party would rule over the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union would rule over Eastern Europe. That none of these things is the case testifies to the capacity of cooperative power to defeat superior force."Splendid indeed, but wrong. I'm not quite sure what Schell means by "cooperative power", but force alone is not a sufficient condition to retain power. The willingness to apply force is also required. And what characterizes the situations in the quote above is not so much the presence of force, but the loss of the willingness to apply force. Since Saddam appears to retain the willingness to apply force [or at least he did a few days ago], countervailing force is required to defeat him.
The lesson of history is that we cannot make ourselves safe or secure by reliance on military superiority alone, as the Bush Doctrine presumes, but by aligning ourselves with the hopes of people everywhere for peace, economic justice, the rule of law and freedom from oppression.Yes, but contrary to what the Chancellor implies, that is precisely what we are doing.
In Cairo, thousands of protesters took to the streets on Thursday to protest the liberation of Iraq. There were also violent protests in Yemen
Meanwhile, among those Arabs who have actually tasted the privilege of life under Saddam: Der Spiegel cites a Kuwaiti public opinion poll that says 89.6% of Kuwaitis support the war to depose Saddam. Today's New York Times reports that in Iraq itself:
In Safwan, just across the border with Kuwait in southern Iraq, civilians greeted the First Marine Division with cheers today as they entered the town.Go figure.
Who says the revolution will not be televised? I've been watching the 24 hr. non-stop coverage of the liberation of Iraq on CNN. Fortunately, so far, it has turned out to be one of the least dramatic wars of my lifetime. There seems to be more violent resistance to Saddam's ouster in downtown San Francisco than in Iraq itself. May the war continue to be both boring and short.
Think Different The man who didn't invent the Internet joins the board of the computer company that didn't invent the mouse and the graphical user interface.
That'll teach 'em Thanks to Bill Herbert for sending the link to this MPEG file [4.5MB] of some Tomahawk missiles launching from the USS Bunker Hill.
Joseph Leitmann updates: "10 minutes ago, about 40 cops in full riot gear/combat mood assembled outside the office on the street to go and confront all those idiots (Saddam lovers) who have made downtown a horrible place today."
and Who says this "civil disobedience" doesn't threaten public safety? I just called the San Francisco Police Department (please, no giggling) to report a neighborhood crime issue. The weary officer who answered the phone grumbled back: "Sir, what do you have, cause we're really busy."
"I tried to appease you and this is the thanks I get?" Traces of the poison ricin have been found inside a locker at a railway station in Paris, according to the French interior ministry.
Perceptions Gap The current online poll at the Arabic language Al-Jazeera asks: "Do you believe that America will use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in its war against Iraq?" 78.8% answered YES.
"It's insane downtown" e-mails Joseph Leitmann from his office in San Francisco's financial district. "Thought you would want to know all those idiots are blocking every major intersection down here..." The San Francisco Chronicle has more
Welcome to The Command Post, a new war blog. Organized by Michele and Alan with a cast of contributors.
Cracks in the Berlin-Baghdad Axis? Germany has expelled a number of Iraqi "diplomats" for non-specific "activities inconsistent with diplomatic status"
| Al Barger doubts that Saddam's live speech last night was really a live Saddam. I also suspected it was a body double. Those coke bottle glasses betrayed him. The man who read the speech looked less like a ruthless dictator than an Ernie Kovacs character. Percy Dovetonsils in uniform. |  |  |
What time is it? It's 5pm PST (8pm EST) March 19, 2003 (4am Baghdad Time March 20) and it's time to you know what
Today's San Francisco Chronicle carried a report about Washington's Evergreen State College, home of Rachel "Kill me with your bulldozer and make a martyr, please" Corrie. The report, by Jim Lynch of the Newhouse News Service, does not seem to be available online. Some extracts:
Headline: Evergreen College Cultivates Activists
Subhead: Student died in Gaza practicing lessons learned in classroom
Corrie was one of the most ardent student activists at the Evergreen State College, which, unlike most public universities, unabashedly encourages students not to wait until they graduate to get aggressively involved in local, national and even international causes.The "aggressive involvement" tends to involve the use of physical intimidation and other illegal activities. In other words, the school is essentially a terrorist training camp, paid for by the taxpayers of Washington state.
So many Evergreen students participated in the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle that the Olympia campus was almost abandoned. Last year, 17 students and a teacher were expelled from Mexico after some of them carried machetes during a May Day protest with angry farmers. Earlier this month, 25 students cornered Evergreen's president in his office to demand that he publicly denounce a U.S. military invasion of Iraq.To the president's credit, he did not accede to all of the extortionists' demands
Evergreen clearly attracts activist students, and the college suffers from the image that enveloped it after its student body picked convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal to give a commencement address in 1999It's not immediately obvious what public purpose justifies the $60 million in (mostly) state and (some) federal grants [pdf] this terrorism "college" receives this year. On the other hand, maybe it's not a bad idea to concentrate all of these misfits and lunatics in one place. Especially if they are so easily persuaded to throw themselves against the heavy machinery of foreign armies.
Ze'ev Schiff says that Colin Powell made a big mistake back in 1991
the Iraqi army was in a terrible state. Some of the Republican Guard divisions were trapped in Basra, between the rivers. It was easy to corral them in the pocket and then bomb them from the air. There was no need for a sweeping invasion of Iraq or for reaching Baghdad. A powerful air attack would have been enough, and two or three days of a massive air assault on Iraqi forces would have led to a genuine victory, since the Republican Guards were always Saddam's main power base. But Gen. Powell rejected that opportunity. Now those divisions comprise the main force that Saddam Hussein has concentrated near Baghdad to conduct the major battle against the Americans. Fate ironically is punishing Powell for his mistake - what he didn't want to do in 1991 he'll have to agree to do now, at a much higher price.
After Baghdad and Pyongyang, the single most serious threat to our national security is in Redmond
An identified security vulnerability in Microsoft® Windows® 2000 could allow an attacker to take control of your computer.
Debra Saunders, the resident Woman of Clue on the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial page, interviews U.S. Ambassador to France Howard Leach.
by signaling that it would not authorize force, "All France did, in my opinion, is make military action more likely.""The United Nations will decide". Teehee. Chiraq is hoist, as they say, on his own petard.Why is France doing this?
"The French have a history of protecting Iraq. Why, I don't know."
...
When this is over, will France have a part in reconstructing Iraq?
That, Leach said, the United Nations will decide. He added, "Would France like a role? Yes. Will they have a role? I don't know."
Commentary from my father, Hebrew University political scientist Ira Sharkansky
I sat by this machine this morning touching up some writing about the prophet Jeremiah while Varda was in the next room putting plastic sheeting on the windows. If you don't get the point, open up the Hebrw Bible and start reading. Jeremiah describes a setting when Judea was caught between Babylon and Egypt. The king and his court wanted to continue paying tribute to Egypt, while the prophet bet on Babylon. "Bet" isn't the right word. In characteristic fashion, the prophet screamed his message at the crowds and the elites. Babylon was further away, but more powerful and more insistent on running things in the neighborhood.
I expect that the US will be a more reliable ally. In Jeremiah's day, Egypt funked out and Babylon did its thing. The next chapter is in the Book of Lamentations.
Today is also Purim in Jerusalem. Twelve years ago the war ended on this day. I usually go to a synagogue only under duress, but not then. It was delightful reading the Book of Esther while the Iraqi Haman licked his wounds. This time the tension may remain until Passover. Perhaps the Iraqi Haman won't have a tongue to lick with when it's all over.
Tamar brought a costume to her army post this morning. Preparations for war shouldn't stop a Purim party. The cadets of Mattan's unit considered donning generals' insignia as a holiday gesture, but decided against it in order to avoid the possibility of military prison. It's never certain whether a sergeant will laugh or apply the rules.
We've heard the nonsense from Babylon: that the Israelis, Americans, and British are preparing to invade. Crowds in Europe and North America are echoing the same slogans urged on by ranking politicians and media personalities.
The Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations are suggestive, but misleading as to what is going on here and now. Present-day Babylon can commit suicide, and perhaps throw a bit of poison around the neighborhood as a final gesture. If attacked, today's Judea can destroy Babylon. But it will defer to the pride of the Americans and let them do the job. Israel will also seek to maintain its reputation for moderation and keep its heavy weapons in their bunkers. Among other problems, it wouldn't do to radiate American troops on their way to Bagdad. Our modesty won't keep the crazies of the west from blaming us for what happens to Iraq, but we can only guard our own sanity, not theirs.
It's been raining, and when I look to the east I see a rainbow over the Judean desert. Maybe there is peace at the end. When is the end?
I just realized this morning how many similarities exist between Baghdad (Iraq) and San Francisco (nickname: Baghdad by the Bay).
For example, you would not want to send your children to public school in either San Francisco or Baghdad. The Iraq Daily newspaper publishes incoherent editorials demonizing George W Bush as a warmonger while lionizing France, Russia, and China for their efforts to keep Saddam in power. The same can be said about the San Francisco Chronicle.
On any given day you can find thugs parading through the streets of both San Francisco and Baghdad expressing hatred of the United States and support for Islamic fascism. And anti-semitic riots occur not only in Baghdad but also in San Francisco.
The leaders of the two cities have a number of shocking similarities. For starters, both are snappy dressers with a fetish for silly hats:
 |  |
| San Francisco Mayor Wille Brown | Iraqi President Saddam Hussein |
Saddam Hussein distributes jobs and kickbacks to his clansmen from the "Tikrit mafia". Willie Brown takes care of his own homeboys. On the other side of the balance sheet, Saddam executes disloyal subordinates. Willie Brown uses admittedly more subtle means to destroy those who cross him.
Most intriguing is that both Saddam and Willie are facing term limits. Willie's term as mayor ends in January 2004. His recent attempts to find a new job have not been successful. Saddam's term ends on March 19, 2003 at 5pm San Francisco time. His future job prospects do not look promising. And therein lies the opportunity and the perfect solution to the various crises in Iraq and San Francisco: Let Saddam and Willie trade places! Willie Brown would be appointed military governor of Iraq, while Saddam would run for mayor of San Francisco. After all, only a country at least the size of Iraq could contain Willie's ego. Saddam, on the other hand, is a sure vote getter as the most popular man in San Francisco; witness the hundreds of thousands of people who fill the streets every weekend to demonstrate on his behalf.
Imagine some of benefits that would accrue to Iraq under Willie and to Baghdad (by the Bay) under Saddam. Take the respective police forces, for example. Willie could apply his San Francisco police management style to make the Iraqi secret police a little less zealous. On the other hand, Saddam could teach the SFPD a thing or two about foiling an investigation.
... felicitations and a hearty Mazal Tov are due to two friends of mine:
to Peter Wayner on the recent birth of his son, who is also called Peter Wayner!
and to Adam Finkelstein for being awarded tenure at Princeton! And while you're at Adam's website, be sure to follow the link to the hilarious spoof menu from Caffe Lardo -- Seattle's Least Visited Coffee House
Several more countries have joined the "unilateral" alliance to liberate Iraq, including Japan, Australia and Poland
UPDATE Colin Powell said today that 30 nations have publicly expressed that they would be part of the coalition, with 15 others indicating private support. The 30 nations are:
Afghanistan
Albania
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Czech Republic
Denmark
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Hungary
Italy
Japan
South Korea
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Slovakia
Spain
Turkey
United Kingdom
Uzbekistan
UPDATE 2 the Telegraph reminds us that when you add in the various countries that agreed to overflight rights and troop bases, the list also includes:
Bahrain
Jordan
Kuwait
Oman
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Now how's that for Arab brotherhood!
Never before has "going it alone" felt so unlonely.
I've been reading the various press accounts of Hamas soldier Rachel Corrie's weekend suicide by bulldozer. The following links are courtesy of the bravely anonymous "Hesiod" ( Charlotte Observer, Seattle Post Intelligencer, The Olympian, and International Solidarity Movement which organized her suicide vacation); There is also this report from NPR, and one from the San Francisco Chronicle
Most of these reports describe Corrie as a "peace activist" and/or a non-violent "organizer", and not, say, as someone who tried to use her body as a weapon to prevent an anti-terrorist military operation.
What would cause an otherwise promising young woman to flush her own life down the toilet on behalf of psychotic terrorists in a foreign country? As far as I can tell she was a victim. A victim of parents who failed to teach her the difference between right and wrong:
"We were very proud of her," said [her father] Craig Corrie. "We're very proud of her courage and what she stood for."Rachel was also the victim of her parents deluded sense of false security that the US government exists in order to protect overprivileged college children from their own decisions to join terrorist organizations"I've raised my children to be independent and to make their choices," said Cindy Corrie as she held a photo of Rachel in front of her. "And I know that I couldn't tell her not to go."
Rachel Corrie sent her parents e-mail updates that hinted at the danger she faced, causing them to worry that the U.S. government was not doing enough to protect American citizens.Finally, the impressionable young Rachel Corrie was the victim of her (state-funded) social-activist anti-university, where Corrie was sent off to her death by her revolutionary professors, as was Mary McGregor in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
"I talked to her a couple of times when she was planning her trip," [Middle East Studies professor Therese] Saliba said. "She was a leader on campus and in the peace movement. She was a bright student and a clear-thinking person."Maybe, Anne, you could teach the future Rachel Corries of the world that there are better ways to work for peace than to burn the American flag and defend the "rights" of Hamas to murder innocent people.Evergreen professor Anne Fischel, who taught political economics to Corrie, said she was struggling to accept that a woman so devoted to peace had died such a violent, senseless death.
UPDATE (Mar 19) I have more on Evergreen State "College"
There is a chance that diplomacy and negotiations will resolve the crisis, after all.
A former Iraqi general who defected to Denmark has disappeared. Is he taking part in a covert operation to help topple Saddam? Or has he been kidnapped and murdered by Saddam's agents?
Turkey will soon reconsider a resolution to permit the US military to use Turkish bases to open a northern front against Iraq. A Der Spiegel report implies that this may be merely a formality. New Premier Erdogan, backed by the Turkish military, is believed to have already cut a secret deal with Washington. US supply ships have been unloading at the port of Iskenderun for several days now with long caravans of troops and equipment making their way toward bases near the Iraqi front. The English language Turkish Press website has part of the story.
"One need not be a scholar of international law to know that war at this time and in this place is unwelcome, unwise and simply wrong." -- Martin Sheen, L.A. Times, March 17, 2003
"I am an American now, and I have been educated to respect the right to free expression by any citizen, a right no member of my family enjoyed when we lived in Iraq. I know from personal experience that the Hollywood actors who decry action against Hussein are really opposing the liberation of the Iraqi people. I wish they would praise the American troops in the field or just stay silent.
There is only one measure of comfort to be found in their statements: When Iraq is finally liberated, these actors will learn that they have never spoken for the people of Iraq." -- Iraqi-born American and member of Women For a Free Iraq Esra Naama, L.A. Times, March 17, 2003
Womyn's hystery professor , San Francisco Chronicle columnist and accidental comedienne Ruth Rosen says that the war in Iraq is all about oil, "explaining" that
George W. Bush, a Texas oil man whose inner circle has become reckless with dreams of American power, has now made the removal of Hussein the goal of our new pre-emptive war policy.Rosen apparently feels that American foreign policy must never be shaped by American strategic concerns, and should instead by shaped by Iraqi and Chiraqi strategic concerns.This is why many people now feel that American strategic concerns are too influential in shaping our foreign policy.
Our nation, add critics, would not be bribing and threatening other countries and preparing to violate international law if Iraq's major export were almonds.If all we wanted out of this was oil, we would have an easier time of it by invading Canada, which long ago neutered its military and where (according to Michael Moore) the people don't even lock their doors. If Iraq's major export were almonds, it wouldn't be able to afford Chiraq's weapons in the first place, and none of this would have been necessary.
WOMYN'S HYSTERY UPDATE Do a google search for the phrase "womyn's hystery". You will find links to the Shark Blog entries that skewer Ruth Rosen. You will also find a link to Rosen's faculty home page at UC-Davis!
Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle compares the positions of local Democratic Congressmen Tom Lantos and Nancy Pelosi regarding the Iraq crisis. House Democrat leader Pelosi says
I do not believe that going to war now is the best way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destructionOn the other hand she doesn't actually tell us what is the best way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, so I assume that it entails, for example, keeping Saddam in power.
Lantos, on the other hand, says
The only rational question to ask is whether you prefer to confront (Hussein) before he obtains nuclear weapons, or after?and
"Fifty-one million people died in World War II," said Lantos, who survived [the war] with the help of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. "Had Hitler been stopped in 1937, these men, women and children would have lived a lifetime in peace."You can add Pelosi to the list of those who make war more likely.Ironically, Lantos believes the protests and opposition by nations like France, Russia and Germany have increased the chances of war by giving Hussein the mistaken impression that the world supports him.
"I am convinced that the peace position is a position of strength -- that vacillation and weakness . . . only encourages totalitarian regimes to be more aggressive," Lantos said.
She argues that Hussein, while evil, does not pose an imminent threat, and that the United States -- and much of the world -- will be in greater jeopardy if Bush orders an attack.Pelosi doesn't explain why she thinks we would lower the risk to our security by encouraging Saddam to accumulate enough serious weapons to really hurt somebody. But if the Pelosi Democrats ever regain control of US foreign policy, I think it's safe to say that the only people who will not be in greater jeopardy are the world's brutal tyrants who Pelosi is pouring out of her dress to appease.
American Hamas soldier Rachel Corrie opted to martyr herself today while bravely fighting for the cause of Islamic tyranny and terrorism.
Saddam Hussein denies having any weapons of mass destruction, while also implying that if attacked, he will hit back with weapons of mass destruction.
Delegates at a California Ba'ath Party convention booed loudly when North Carolina Senator John Edwards said he supported the use of force in a showdown with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. They briefly shouted down Edwards with cries of "No war! No war!". On the other hand, the delegates gave Tawana Brawley conman Al Sharpton a standing ovation for his impassioned plea to keep Saddam in power.
The front page headline of today's San Francisco Chronicle read Thousands protest liberation as hope for Saddam fades (Well okay, that's not exactly what it said. But I think my version is more accurate than the actual headline)
Here are just a few pictures from the weekend's peace (for Saddam) rallies.
The intellectual leader of the San Francisco Saddam Fan Club, above; and his celebrity spokesman, below
Meanwhile, some of our friends in Japan have an innovative re-interpretation of 20th century history
The San Francisco Chronicle suddenly departs from Mrs. Robert Scheer's pro-Saddam editorial policy with an actual front page report from Baghdad.
one [Iraqi at a Baghdad mosque] pulled aside a reporter. "Don't believe anything anyone says here, because we all know that your translator is a government spy," he said. "We'll only say good things about Saddam to you. But 90 percent of us want Saddam to go. We'll cheer the Americans if they come and get rid of him."Go figure.Looking nervously around him, he continued: "We want all these regime people to be killed."
Meanwhile, today's Chronicle has another story with the headline Germans across political spectrum tongue-lash America; Anti-war fever feeds distaste toward U.S.. As the careful reader will notice, the only "political spectrum" the story refers to is: political figures from the unpopular leftist governing coalition, a feminist, and a theologian who blames the United States for starting the Iran-Iraq war. It is true that a majority of Germans oppose the war, but this story scrupulously ignores the fact that the German political spectrum includes the opposition center-right Christian Democrats (who are troucing the governing coalition in regional elections and in national public opinion polls) and whose leaders support Bush and the war and are distancing themselves from Chiraq. To its credit, the article also contains quotes from Iraqi exiles in Germany who don't think much of the "leave Saddam alone" crowd:
When Family Minister Renate Schmidt, a Social Democrat from Bavaria, enthusiastically praised the Berlin marchers on another talk show for "standing up against a terrible, totally unjustifiable war," she was challenged by journalist Namo Azis.Go figure."All these demonstrations are not in the interest of the Iraqi people, who for years have been terrorized, raped, brutalized," he said.
Looking at the flustered Schmidt, Azis added, "The German government is very short-sighted, and it's not surprising that Chancellor Schroeder and Foreign Minister (Joschka) Fischer have been cheered for their anti-war stance by Iraq's government-controlled press."
While the German government is still firm in its public opposition to the war against Iraq, it is also quietly preparing for a post-Saddam peacekeeping role, Der Spiegel reports. Which kind of suggests that (a) Schroeder has incomplete confidence in Chiraq's plan to keep Saddam in power, and (b) the anti-Bushies who keep whining about not having the support of the international community to rebuild Iraq really are as clueless as you always knew they were.
Gil Shterzer has an update on the e-mail from a Danish Jew I posted last week. Gil confirms the e-mailer's story that Muslims in Denmark are publicly inciting the murder of Jews, with only scant consequences from the authorities.
Bill Herbert finds that cartoonist Ted Rall has sunk to a new low. Which is quite an accomplishment given the depths to which Rall has already sunk.
Self-described Useful Fool John Moore says: The UN is worse than useless. The headquarters building is symbolic of the whole enterprise. Furthermore, it sitting on valuable real estate in the United States, is full of people whose diplomatic immunity allows them to commit crimes, and is a base for espionage. Moore is operating a contest on his blog: "WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH U.N. HEADQUARTERS?"
I agree that the UN is currently worse than useless, and mainly because some people ascribe too much importance to it. I still think we should keep it around, but only as a talking shop, and without the expectation that it can actually accomplish anything. The best part about keeping the UN Headquarters in the US is that it is a base for espionage -- a base for the US to spy more easily on everybody else.
Al Barger is improving on "Eat an Animal for PETA Day" by an order of magnitude. We will hold Al accountable to tell us which ten species he consumes.
As for me, I already did my part for the "Eat an Animal for PETA Day" by having a big-ass salami sandwich for lunch.
Dozens of Saddam supporters were arrested Friday in what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "nonviolent civil disobedience actions" that knotted up morning rush-hour traffic in the Financial District. I would not use the term "non-violent" to describe those who use physical force to unlawfully detain people from going about their daily business.
Where else but San Francisco would you find people who are so full of blind hatred of the United States that they would serve as unpaid shills for Jacques Chiraq and his oil and weapons franchise with Saddam Hussein? KQED radio, the local NPR affiliate, was reporting (not online) that another group of Saddam supporters has started "French Frydays", where they patronize French cafe Cafe de la Presse every Friday to drink French wine and eat French cheeses.
UPDATE The San Francisco Chronicle has the story of the San Francisco Chiraquistas here
"A toast!" Lenoir said. "To the French people, for pushing their government to support peace. Vive la France!"I have no doubt that Lenoir would have said the exact same thing back in 1938.
On a saner note, KQED was also reporting that several dozen Iraqi immigrants were demonstrating in front of the Federal Building to support the war against Saddam. "The Iraqi people can't do this by themselves" one of them said on the air, "they need America's help".
I hope to be there when the pro-American Iraqi immigrants stop by to visit with the pro-Saddam demonstrators...
Der Spiegel 's Markus Deggerich has some very interesting reports from Baghdad these days. I translated the following report on Saddam's Baath Party, titled "The Dictator's Pool of Cadres". I add some comments of my own at the bottom
The Arab Social Renewal Party "Ba'ath" originally promoted Arab unity. Its founders stood for the freedoms of speech, assembly, belief and scholarship. But then came Saddam Hussein and turned the party into an instrument of power to control his own people.
Baghdad-- In the Baghdad slum called "Saddam City", there are only two places with any color: the market place with the fruit that most people can at best walk past with longing glances, and the freshly painted local Baath Party headquarters. Saddam's Baath Party: omnipresent as its secret agents that have inflitrated the society down to the last village. The modest prosperity that Saddam once bestowed upon his people was bought through the abandonment of freedom.
In every neighborhood the Party installs its administrators and inspectors. The "Mukhtar" serves as a kind of precinct captain. He is appointed by the Party. Necessary qualifications: He must have a good reputation in the neighborhood and at least a mid level education and be without a criminal record. Sama Heram is one such Mukthar, who sits in his garage and holds court. What is his role? "To regulate life", he explains tersely.
The citizens are monitored round the clock.
Whether one needs a school admission, to start a new job or to get a driver's license, everybody must first visit the Mukhtar to obtain proof of identity and address and for the incident to be recorded in a book. The Mukhtar also plays the role of small claims judge; and anybody in bad sniff with him can have a tough time in the neighborhood, for he is the safety net.
At the moment, the Mukhtars are busy preparing their neighborhoods for the war. They dig wells and clean their guns. They will have an important role to play when its time to impose a curfew on the city.
Baath, Iraq's nationalist and socialist ruling party, had big plans at first. The name translates as "rebirth" -- as in a renaissance of pan-Arab socialism. The Party's 1947 charter promises a political paradise on earth. "The Arabs form a single nation. It is their natural right to live in a single state and to freely develop their potential." The "Arab Fatherland" should be a "political and economic unit". The regime is founded on the sovereignty of the people. The freedoms of speech, assembly, belief and scholarship are sanctified.
That was the dream of the Party of Arab Socialist Revival that two Syrians brought to life early in the last century. The Orthodox Christian Michel Aflaq (1900-1989) and the Sunni Muslim Salah ad-Din al-Bitar (1912-1980) were taken with the ideas of European nationalism and wanted to revive the Arab nation. In practice, however, it led to a dearth of freedom and a lot of death.
Saddam Hussein used the nationalist and socialist Baath Party for his rise to power and then turned it into to an omnipresent instrument of power to control his people. In the party museum, which, in contrast to other architectural monstrosities of the personality cult, is surprising small, the party commemorates its revolutionary days. In front of the door is a 1954 VW Beetle that was once used for distributing pamphlets to the masses.
Rule by family clans
Baath, which actually wanted to organize itself as a pan-Arab movement, fell under the rule of family clans in Iraq and of officers in Syria. Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay as well as their cousins and relatives have ruled Iraq with a firm hand. Next to the party headquarters there is still a statue of founder Michel Aflaq, who was powerless to resist the perversion of his idea.
Nothing is left of the promised "sovereignty of the people". Even [former East German dictator] Erich Honecker would have been envious of the few "elections" that take place in Iraq. In 1995 Saddam put out ballot boxes. That was the year his power was challenged by the defection of his son-in-law and cousin Hussein Kamal. Saddam was reconfirmed with 99% of the vote. He promised amnesty to his cousin, who was naive enough to return and be murdered.
High election returns have the disadvantage that they are hard to improve upon. Now that Saddam fears unrest in light of the American invasion, his subordinates had to confirm his leadership with 100% of the vote in October 2002.
Saddam simultanously holds the offices of State President, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces. While his regime originally legitimized itself with revolutionary ideology and reverted to traditional Islamic or "anti-Zionist" parterns for legitimacy, in the 1990s the Iraqi leadership tried to legitimize itself more and more with formal democratic and constitutional means.
From a party to a pool of cadres
The politically powerless Iraqi National Assembly is comprised of 250 delegates, including 165 Ba'ath deputies. But Hussein is no longer interested in the Party and its ideology. In his personality cult it serves him only as a pool of cadres and a structure for discipline.
Nevertheless there is a wide range of attitudes among the people toward their leader. Before the dictator got it in his head to use the force of arms to persuade other countries of his abilities, Hussein had won over many people in Iraq for having one of the best education and health care systems and nutrition programs in the Arab world. The fact that all of that barely functions anymore, Hussein deftly blames on the UN sanctions, for creating intolerable conditions.
But certainly not for the elite. With oil smuggling, about one percent of the people keep living like kings. On the streets of Baghdad one sees the latest models from the auto factories of Stuttgart [VW/Audi, Mercedes] and Munich [BMW], while the common taxi drivers, for want of spare parts, hold their creaking jalopies together with sticky tape and prayers.
Iraq was once the intellectual center of the Orient. In the 1970s the country had the most people with academic degrees. In Baghdad the first center for political consultancy was founded. "Today it is very difficult to even get any books that are less than 30 years old", says Doctor Adi, who teaches at Baghdad University. The embargo has led to an intellectual genocide. His students, who once would have been the leadership elite of the future, are hungry for any sort of information. Any foreigner who wanders onto the campus would be warmly besieged and questioned, if only for the latest world soccer scores.
It is hard to get ahead in Iraq without a Party membership card. Many simply sign the application forms out of convenience, fewer out of conviction. The masses of members now fear that they'll have a tough time after a war. They casually ask foreigners whether the Americans will kill them all. After they hear about German de-Nazification or state pensions for former East German Stasi workers, they breathe a little easier.
An American attack would be seen as unfair
Many are simply tired. For twenty years they have faced the threat of the quick death of war, or the creeping death of the sanctions. Although they know the brutality with which Saddam holds on to power, they feel that an American attack would be an unjust war of colonization. After the months-long war of words, they simply hope that it will be over quickly.
Others portray a calm that is at odds with reality. Director Ahmad Saadoun plans to repaint and expand the Baath Museum. Too many interesting items of party history lie underappreciated around the country and are begging to be shown to the public, he says almost nostalgically. Iraq has also changed since the Kuwait war, and has become more relaxed and open, he says with hope in his voice.
It may be that after a war the history of the Baath in Iraq is finished and a completely different set of memories would be on display. Not everybody counts on it. For in Iraq, there have been too many wounded and too many people have simply disappeared. "Constitutional state" and "human rights" are foreign words for too many Iraqis. The prisons and torture chambers are notorious. Amnesty International estimates that since the Baath regime came to power in 1968, around three million people have been executed. Up to five million, or 15% of the population have fled from Saddam's bloodhounds into exile. Saddam's grandeur and welfare state are built on oil and blood.
I wasn't able to verify the claim of "three million executed" on Amnesty International's site. Amnesty has a whole page of links to documents on Iraq but I haven't yet come across such a concise box score. But whatever the actual headcount, the number of lives destroyed by Saddam and the Baath is overwhelming.
Which leads me to wonder about all the dire predictions about urban warfare and other doomsday scenarios of Iraqis fighting with gusto to uphold the Baathist nightmare. You have to ask yourself (yes, especially you in the "peace" movement): "If I were an Iraqi living under such perverse conditions, and I had the opportunity to choose, would I prefer to (a) risk my life to save Saddam's regime, or (b) do what I could to hasten his demise?"
If I were certain that Saddam would emerge from the war with his machinery of fear, oppression and death still intact [the outcome that Chiraq and the appeaseniks seem to prefer], I might be cowed into going along with the crowd. But if it looked like Saddam and his cadres had an excellent chance of being eliminated [which seems like a safe bet when the Allies do the right thing], would I go out of my way to obstruct that outcome? I don't think that I would.
And to assume that the average Iraqi would think and act differently would be to assume that they are incapable of the same yearnings for a normal decent life that all the other peoples of falling tyrants throughout history have demonstrated. And why is it that so many in the self-described "peace" movement seem to believe that Iraqis are that much less human than the rest of us?