I pause briefly to note Victory in Iraq Day, and suggest that Zombietime was a bit behind me in noting it, but I'm glad that more people are aware of the situation.

Congratulations to our troops.

Time to go back and annotate the reasons we went in there in the first place to see if they have been accomplished.

Quoting:

October 27, 2008: The war is over. Most of the noise these days is from politicians arguing, not bombs going off. There are still bombs, but now they tend to be assassination attempts, as some political parties play dirty (not unknown in this part of the world).

We're at the point where all we need is a security agreement with the government. Not bad. Much less inhumane than the other suggestions ("Make it flat glowing glass! Bomb the mosques!) that were thrown around before the war started, and with the advantage that there's no Saddam in the mix.

Verdict: Long, occasionally badly managed (maybe not as badly as WWII in its opening stages, but then we couldn't strand troops in Kenya), and with a lower probability that we will need to knock over the game board and say, "Start again."

Read the whole thing for the remaining issues for Iraq that may or may not involve our security umbrella.

But that's business as usual, right?

The operation of 20-20 hindsight is always illuminating. At least when bundled up and put in the fireplace, with a few matches.

The page omits the brilliant time-travel strategy in which Bush-Cheney corrupted the Clinton administration and suborned Congress, leading to a resolution supporting regime change in 1998. But then, this was written by people who had to focus themselves very narrowly on what they think was happening in Iraq, and even more narrowly on who made statements in the government.

And, for those of you that forgot why we attacked Iraq, this and this should remind you of the "facts on the ground", and this was the preamble (the facts on the ground, all paras beginning with "whereas"), to the resolution. Notice that reporters somehow can't focus on the fact that more was going on than WMD.

So, to sum up: it is evident that The Center For Public Integrity is a bunch of partisan hacks who like to pretend they aren't, and their word should be taken for things only if there is no other source for it and it is important enough to notice. Neither is true here.

In response to a challenge by that rare bird, the thoughtful anti-war left, Jeff has restated the reasons for being and staying in Iraq until the job is done. Of course, for those of us who remember the original argument, this is not new, but I suppose it bears restating for those who weren't reading widely in foreign affairs at the time we went in.

The most interesting criticism has emerged from Congress: evidently the military, currently in operations in Iraq, has failed to corral members of the new Iraq parliament and beat them into submission. Personally, I wouldn't think this was an allowable criticism, but there are those who have confused the Defense Department with the State Department, and they are in OUR government:

Anti-war Senate Democrats bluntly told Iraq commander General David Petraeus Tuesday his troop surge strategy was an abject failure in its prime objective -- forging an Iraqi political settlement.

This is the same group that "accidentally" gave Bush too much power and can't seem to come up with a budget on time, and they are worried about IRAQ's government not being up to snuff?

Casey At the Bat.... Redone by Pat Santy, referring to this article (free on the site, unlike all other articles in the "Diarist" section), that has been much refuted, despite some hilarious claims of "fact checking".

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

BEAUCHAMP AT THE BAT

The Outlook was quite brilliant for The New Republic rag:
The polls were in their favor, and the public will had sagged.
But when Bush didn't falter, as Petraeus led the surge,
A sickly silence fell upon those moonbats on the verge.

A straggling few got up and wailed deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only one more Abu Ghraib could be brought to light--
They'd put up even money, that we'd lose all will to fight.

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance that they could count on that.
Then from a thousand leftist throats there rose a lusty yell;
The New Republic had a piece that claim the war was hell!

There was ease in Beauchamp's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in his raw expose, and a smile on TNR's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he staunchly stood by his claims,
No leftist in the crowd could doubt they'd near-achieved their aims.

A million eyes were on him as he told his tragic story;
The defeatists all applauded as he defamed his Unit's glory.
And as commanders searched to see if Beauchamp's tales were true,
They nonetheless were heralded; and those with doubts were few.

From TNR editors there came a muffled roar,
"How can you even doubt us?" they all cried, "We verified as before!"
"He's just a courageous soldier with great moral authority!"
And its likely they'd a-sainted him; but that was not to be.

"Fraud!" cried his comrades, and the echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Beauchamp and the leftist crowd was awed.
John Murtha's face grew stern and cold, and they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Beauchamp had found support in the weakest links again.

Now the sneer is gone from TNR, though the left's still filled with hate;
Their lofty goal of surrendering will surely have to wait.
Because right now the truth is out, and and they have to let it go,
Because too many people realize, and too many people know....

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Moonbat land- mighty Beauchamp has struck out.

UPDATE: Apparently, The New Republic Doesn't want to admit that, yet. They appear to be losing, as the MSM usually does when called on a factual matter.

Torture: to threaten someone with death, severe pain, or mutilation either unless they tell you something you want to hear, or to punish them, or both: to assert that control over their bodies is control over them.

Waterboarding is threatening someone with death. Not verbally. By action. It is different than pointing a gun at them and saying "stay right there or I'll shoot" -- which, I would suggest, allows choice.

To reduce someone to the level of animal self-preservation is to fail to respect their status as a human being, a bearer of God's image. I don't accept it from Islamofascists, and don't intend to accept it from us.

I would suggest that an interrogator has many more effective tools. Once you go the route of force, you're stuck in a cycle of renewing it: and there is an out you have little control over.

UPDATE: One of the most challenging responses is here, and highly recommended.

Here's how to think about it. And for those who want the current dope check out the usual suspects.

But now, a brief quote:

I understand the frustration, anger and exhaustion so many Americans feel about Iraq, the desire to throw up our hands and simply say, "Enough." And I am painfully aware of the enormous toll of this war in human life, and of the infuriating mistakes that have been made in the war's conduct.

But we must not make another terrible mistake now. Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake--assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.

In fact, halting the current security operation at midpoint, as virtually all of the congressional proposals seek to do, would have devastating consequences. It would put thousands of American troops already deployed in the heart of Baghdad in even greater danger--forced to choose between trying to hold their position without the required reinforcements or, more likely, abandoning them outright. A precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake, which terrorists, insurgents, militias and Iran would rush to fill--probably resulting in a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale as yet unseen in Iraq.

I know. You don't want to hear the policy prescriptions of a bunch of foreign policy bumblers who aren't very good at paying attention to reality.

But this time, we get the real goods. A report done by someone who cares, who tries to get the facts, and who goes to Iraq to get them.

I'm sure Peggy Noonan is appalled.

In this case, by encouraging America's enemies.

Suffice it to say that I'm not falling for it. -- my money can be better donated to politicians who can think.

Dinesh D'Sousa uncorks a few old myths still floating around out there.

Here's a sample:

In Iraq we’re getting into a religious war that’s lasted for centuries. This theory, espoused among others by John Murtha, holds that the Sunni and Shia are fighting in Iraq because these two groups have been fighting everywhere since the seventh century. So who wants to get into the middle of an ancient conflict that shows no signs of abating? This would seem to be an argument for America to get out of a religious quarrel that it has no way to settle, and that shows no sign of abating.

But the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is not a religious conflict. How do I know that? Because there are no substantial religious differences between the Shia and the Sunni. And these two groups have not been fighting for centuries. In fact, they haven’t been fighting at all. There are no wars that have been fought between the Shia and the Sunni in the past. Historian Bernard Lewis points out that our notion of Shia-Sunni conflict seems to be an ethnocentric projection of the Catholic-Protestant model onto the Muslim world. As late as the 1980s, Shia and Sunni fought shoulder-to-shoulder to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.


Not, of course, that exposing the myth will have much effect on those who hold it: they'll just assume that they shouldn't be reading the article. See "Problematize".

Someone forgot to tell Al-Qaida that Pelosi, Reid and Kennedy would protect them against any "surge" -- they seem to be fleeing from Baghdad in advance of the surge. Could it be that they have finally understood Kennedy's sincere advice to those in trouble? I've always found "sink or swim!" to be inspiring. I was on the swim team.

Take a moment for a thought experiment...

We need to start all over again to think about the war, and we mustn't be afraid. After all, we do this with our computers all the time. When a program begins to fail - and they always do because even the simplest program is comprised of complex files that over time become damaged or corrupted -- and when re-booting once or twice doesn't do the trick, we've learned that the only thing to do is to un-install and re-install the program to get a fresh, clean start.


So, let's conduct what scientists would call a "thought experiment." In your mind's eye, go to Control Panel, click on "Add/Remove Programs," scroll down to "The War" and double-click. A box will pop on-screen asking if you really want to un-install. Click "Yes" and you will hear the hard drive chunking and see its green light flashing while the program is removed. Now, let's "re-install" the program in our minds by thinking through, from the beginning, what this war is about:


And, as we do so, we discover our choices. Sometimes, when we look harder, we even discover that we have better information sources than we thought.

I've gotten enough emails on my comments that Iraq was a good idea from those who don't think so. Sadly, your skills at arguing for a conclusion, as opposed to assuming it, have continued to fall short. Some of you have responded that I'm attempting to excuse Iraq as a good idea not executed properly. While I have many problems with the execution, Iraq has been a success compared to other wars (WWII comes to mind). And for those who want to believe that execution disproves the worth of the idea, I remind you of your own words, not too many years ago, about the worth of the ideas of Marx. 'Nuff said.

What do "neocons" think the current situation is, and how is that different from what other people see?

Here's a good summary.

We really are in a global war. Its dimensions are hard to conceptualize since our enemies, while aided and abetted by sympathetic Middle Eastern dictatorships, claim no national affinity. Indeed, the terrorists deliberately mask the role of their patrons. The latter, given understandable fears of the overwhelming conventional power of the United States military, deny culpability.

It's all about being graceful, I suppose.

It's a good thing that familial clumsiness excuses me, then. And here is another approach to gracefulness.

It's always interesting to note who praises things before they come out. The Iraq Study Group was assembled from the ranks of those foreign policy experts who had proved notably bad at foreign policy, and who, therefore, were not among those originally called on to advise on Iraq.

Whether or not this is a good strategy depends on whether or not they are "fresh eyes" -- and we have reason to believe they are not. So, for those eagerly anticipating the report: forget about using it to persuade us as if it had weight. We decline to award it any.

UPDATE:Well, it lived down to its billing. All I can say is, "It's a good thing government panels can still employ James Baker and Lee Hamilton. They would starve otherwise, and we don't need more homeless people wandering the streets." Other comments here.

Final update:A serious response to an unserious report. The key response? "Yes, what a lovely report. Particularly like the binding." Even the Washington Post knows it's garbage.

THE IRAQ Study Group's recommendations for shifting U.S. military tactics in the war are specific, focused and aimed at incremental improvement over the next few months; they are also close to what the Pentagon and Iraqi government already were hoping to achieve. By contrast, the group's diplomatic strategy is sweeping -- and untethered to reality. The Bush administration could and should adopt some version of the military plan, though it would be right to ignore the unrealistic timetable attached to it. But to embrace the group's proposed "New Diplomatic Offensive" would be to suppose a Middle East very different from what's on the ground.

FINAL UPDATE Someone put together a real Iraq Study Group in response.

Time Magazine has decided that they want an apology, an "Oops, I'm So Sorry" from "neocons" like me for advocating, and insisting on, the war in Iraq.

An apology?

How about this?

"We overestimated the threat posed by a lunatic dictator who hated the US and Israel, and who paid rewards to the families of Palestinian terrorists. In an age when two of the world's tallest buildings can be brought down with the tools used by stockboys at KMart, we should have demanded more concrete evidence of exotic weapons of mass destruction. We deeply regret freeing the Iraqi people from a murderous gang of thugs masquerading as a representative republic. We're sorry that the Iraqi people have discovered thousands of graves of their relatives murdered by Saddam, and appalled that we have upset our relations with strongmen and thugs across the Middle East by having three major elections in Iraq, allowing the Iraqis the chance to form their own government, and planning turning over security to them by March, 2008. We did not take into account their willingness to blow each other up, and their stubborn determination to kill themselves while blowing up women and children, which had never occurred before after any war we had encountered: and the growing eagerness of their fellow citizens to tell us about these attacks in advance surely hurts them grievously.

What an awful outcome. We are SO sorry."

Yeah, Right.

Profound kowtow to Scott Ott for the wholesale theft of language from his brilliant site. Read his site more often, will you?

OK, not much of a surprise to those who did the research. Still, it's nice to have the New York Times on board.

The Captain has details.

1. Saddam still had all of the relevant documentation to restart his nuclear program, so the UNSCOM and UNMOVIC teams obviously did not "destroy all vestiges" of Iraq's nuclear program. After all, the documentation is what the Times proclaimed as a dangerous breach that would allow Iran to build a bomb.

2. If the FMSO documents on the website are dangerous to publish because they might assist Iran in designing a nuclear weapon, then obviously they were dangerous sitting in Saddam's files. Missing that particular point seems willfully dense at best.

3. Saddam had unexpurgated copies of the IAEA report in his files -- the ones that the UN inspectors are so unhappy about being hosted at the FMSO site. I wonder how that happened?

4. Since the rest of the FMSO documents came from the same locations as the ones that the NYT proclaims as authentic and dangerous, that means that the rest of these documents are authentic as well. That's the primary point of this post -- because when one looks through the documents, it becomes clear that Saddam had many connections to terrorism, and had active WMD programs right through 2002.

The Defense Department has evidently gotten tired of answering the same old silly assumptions about the war in Iraq. They collect five assumptions or assertions they are tired of, and give a brief answer as an appetizer to a more detailed explanation to follow. What they do not know is that most newspaper reporters who write the articles can't read very well, and so won't bother to keep up with what they have presented, opting simply to repeat the "myths" as uncontested facts.

MYTH 1: Secretary Rumsfeld ignored military advice to increase troop levels in Iraq.
FACTS: The opposite is true.

MYTH 2: The Defense Department has pursued a “stay the course” strategy that does not allow for adjustments in strategy.
FACTS: The suggestion of a static and unyielding approach to Iraq fails to take into account continuous adjustments in strategy that have been made on the battlefield.

MYTH 3: The administration has been distracted from waging an effective war in Afghanistan by Iraq.
FACTS: Today there are more Coalition forces in Afghanistan than at any time since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.

MYTH 4: Violence in Iraq may have “cost more than 600,000 Iraqis their lives.”
FACTS: The study this figure is drawn from has been widely disputed.

MYTH 5: U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was “fired,” “removed,” or “cashiered” after suggesting the need for more troops.
FACTS: This is demonstrably false.

Once again, as they did in 2004, the Lancet has rushed out a pre-"US election" study to wildly exaggerate the extent of Iraqi deaths attributable to the war, and, once again, they have utterly failed to note separately those Iraqis killed in battle, in terrorist attack, and on the other side. I note that the United Nations previously attempted to correct the prior study, to deafening silence. This one, which claims a significantly higher number with a pathetically large confidence interval (like the first one), is a waste of paper. Links to further critiques here.

My favorite:

Nice study. Did they also conclude that 9/11 was a hoax, 3 Jews died in the holocaust, and Democrats would win the November elections?

UPDATE: also check out this rebuttal, quite well done:

According to the article, 80% of the deaths identified in the survey were confirmed by the presence of a death certificate. That's a good thing. That helps A) to make sure that some deaths aren't counted multiple times as being misremembered members of multiple households, B) to establish time of death, and C) to help determine cause of death, among other things.


But here's my question: If there's a death certificate, doesn't that make it an officially recorded death? That is (I'm assuming and asking), if the head of household has a copy of the death certificate, wasn't another one filed at the appropriate administrative office, by whoever made out the certificate? If this is the case, why doesn't it end up on the official Iraqi government death toll tally?


OK, I can think of several reasons why that might not happen. But the record should still be available locally. So wouldn't it have been/be a good check on the survey to contact the local administrative office, look at the death certificates there, and see whether the actual numbers at the administrative office come within the expected 20% of the projected numbers from the survey of 40 households?


I'll grant that that might not be possible on a larger scale, or in every situation, but there's something troubling about a survey that claims to have discovered hundreds of thousands of unreported deaths, by looking past official channels, yet that also claims that 80% of those deaths that it discovered have official death certificates (so clearly were not unreported.) Again, I understand that in some individual circumstances, administrative corruption or confusion might not make this possible, but you'd think it would make sense to double-check this where possible.



The Iraq Body count also has some cogent comments.

LATEST UPDATE:A reminder that even professional pollsters are shocked by the shoddy work The conclusion, ladies and gentlemen? Take the Lancet with a grain of salt, run your own chi-square test to see if it's even worth pursuing, and always check the sampling technique.

Really? Where did they get it?

As it turns out, there is an answer to that question. Athens. And Athens got it from Cleisthenes, who set up some critical reforms. For those engaged in nation building, you might want to take a look at how he did it. Check out Tom Holland's Persian Fire, where the difference between Darius's Persia and Athens are clearly laid out. Cleisthenes set out some key reforms:

1. Equality before the law (isonomy) was the chief political virtue, and representatives of each of the demes were selected by lot for service.

2. All citizens enjoyed freedom of speech.

3. Government policy requires open debate in the assembly.

4. New laws may not be passed except by vote.

5. Families were to be destroyed as the basis for political association: membership in a deme was the basis of being selected.

Let's look at that last. Athens had problems with families which feuded with each other. Cleisthenes key insight was that Attica was separated into these families, and the influential ones had too many members in too many places. So he created 150 districts to elect members of the assembly, and required EVERYONE in each district to take the district name as their last name, effectively cutting off the connection between political representation and clan membership. This reform is the one that is desperately needed in places like Iraq, where family and tribe are primary influences.

Hat tip to Roger Sandall for an illuminating article, whose site Culture Cult has amply repaid the time to read it, and whose thought has greatly influenced me (and who has thought about Tom Stoppard in a way that allowed me to appreciate Stoppard again).

Frank Warner has an interesting question:

Yesterday, we found out that American support for U.S. participation in the Iraq war is rising.

One poll last week (Sept. 12-13) found that 51 percent of Americans back “the U.S. war in Iraq.” That’s the first majority for the war since October 2003. A slightly newer (Sept. 15-17) poll showed that, for the first time since last December, less than a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war was a mistake.

In other words, our role in the Iraq war is increasingly popular. Tired phrase. I recalled yesterday that, over the last year or two, news story after news story has referred to the “increasingly unpopular Iraq war.” I asked if now we could expect an endless string of news stories with the phrase “increasingly popular Iraq war.”

But hold it. Were there really all these stories referring to the “increasingly unpopular Iraq war”? Were they only nightmares? Well, no. I checked, and there are tons of stories with that discouraging phrase.



What does that mean?

Well, for those like myself who thought we had to go to war from the beginning, it's nice to have others catch up. And for those who thought newspapers employed fact-checkers, further proof that it's just a bunch of guys telling stories.

The Secretary of Defense gave a couple of speeches recently, in the process of which he asked four, very interesting, questions.

In speaking to our veterans, I suggested several questions to guide us during this struggle against violent extremists:



• With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that vicious extremists can somehow be appeased?

• Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

• Can we truly afford to pretend that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems rather than fundamentally different threats requiring fundamentally different approaches?

• Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world's troubles?

These are the central questions of our time, and, as in all periods of conflict, we have no choice but to face them honestly.


I would point out that the fourth has been of real interest as I read some of the commentary which exhibits a displacement reaction: instead of worrying about those who want to kill us, people focus on Bush, insisting that he is the reason that people want to kill us, and on Israel, ditto. It means that they don't want to pay attention to the frequent utterances of those who want to kill us, which dismissal reflects poorly on the critic's ability to accept them as human beings.

I'd invite you to read the whole speech, as well as this one and this one by President Bush. For those needing a historial refresher, check this out.

UPDATE: Added links to frequent utterances: Hezbollah's next round. Added link to those who, the program of the jihad. Added link to displacement: Noam Chomsky.

Further Update: The Iraqi perspective:

For the most part, our queries were politely and somewhat laconically dismissed. Iraq is not in a civil war, Mahdi said, and doesn't need more U.S. troops. It has a constitution and elected government, and thus there is no need for an international conference. As for constitutional reform, the Shiite and Kurd parties that wrote the charter last year are waiting for proposals from Sunni dissidents. Mahdi added: "So far we have heard nothing."

So what is the solution? "Time -- that is it," Mahdi replied. "A nation like Iraq needs time. The elections for a permanent government happened eight months ago. We have been in office a few weeks. The people who we have in office have never governed. These people come from oppression and a bad political system. We can't import ministers to Iraq. There will be many mistakes. The Americans made many mistakes, and Iraqis had to support that."

"Our options as Iraqis are that we don't have an exit strategy or any withdrawal timetable," Mahdi said, somewhat bitterly. "We simply go on. . . . It is a process, and brick by brick we are working on it."

Sounds worthwhile to me.

Further update: A good discussion of the virtues of appeasement and its applicability appears on Townhall, citing the noted appeasers Charles V and Abraham Lincoln.

Every now and again, someone asks me why Iraq? What are we doing there?

I have to pause. I spent months arguing that we should go into Iraq, was dismayed that the UN got involved at all, and was pleased that we finally got there, and, as anyone who talked to me in those months knows, didn't give a fig for "weapons of mass distruction" and other silly reasons used to call for the support of the gullible and easily spooked.

I'm glad it's working out, more or less on schedule. Bush gets to take credit for the kind of stubbornness that is uniquely American: get an order for a job, and fill it, without caring about "polls" and other statistical errors people will use to argue you shouldn't. Tigerhawk updated the reasoning I and others used at the time to reflect current reality. We weren't too far off. Pretty good for a bunch of hicks who thought the rest of the world was "uncivilized". Now, of course, we should be insisting on logical thinking from those who opposed Iraq in the beginning, and those who came to oppose it later. Not that we have much chance of getting it from them.

But I'm proud of what I did. It was worth the time on the phone, in email, on blogs, and in person, to argue. And it's only gettting better, year by year. And, unlike Sulzberger, I do not apologize for it: I know why we are there, what we are doing, and what we have to accomplish. Finally,, an inspirational quote from the Boomer Bible:

From Yanks 76:10-15

10 The only problem was, the Krauts had sunk a ship that had Yanks on it, 11which meant that the Yanks would "Remember the Lusitania" 12 forever 13 and would find a way to get even 14 no matter how much it cost 15 because that's the American Way"

UPDATE: In answer to the New York Sun, I'm still here, right where I've always been, despite calls to have me eradicated.

Further Update: Yes, people died. But going 7000 miles into the heart of an ancient caliphate, taking out a mass murderer in three weeks, and then doing the transition, from interim authority through three elections, and creating an Iraqi army and police force that is slowly but progressively getting primary responsibility for counterterrorism in the provinces: this is quite an accomplishment. Was it without error? No. Should anyone expect it to be? Evidently they can. They ought to know better.

FLASH UPDATE: For those of you who have wanted a slightly less bellicose version of "why we are at war", I'd suggest that Tony Blair will have it for you. From a Jacksonian standpoint, if they don't adapt with this invasion, they will adapt with the next.

Final Notes: As to how successful our intervention has been check this out.