Grim's Hall

Did Bush Do Enough?

OK. We all know that my position on the 9/11 hearings is that the attempt to assign political blame for 9/11 is more harmful than most of the good likely to come out of the hearings. I hope that the initial bi-partisan report will be taken seriously by all parties, and the attempt to find some American to blame--Bush, Ms. Rice, Freeh, Clarke, whoever--will end.

That said, I think the evidence we've seen clears the President of any wrongdoing. What he did wasn't enough to prevent 9/11, obviously. It was, however, everything we should ask of a President.

Imagine that you're the President, and that it's now 2001. You've got no background in law enforcement; you're interested in intelligence and understand how it works, thanks to your father, but you haven't been in intelligence yourself. You're informed that the biggest threat facing this country is from a group called al Qaeda, which has been the focus of counterterror efforts for some time.

"Well, what are we doing about them?" you ask.

You're informed that there are 70 full field investigations by the FBI into their activities inside the United States. There are also ongoing intelligence activities directed against them by various three-letter agencies, and coordinated by the NSC. The professionals are at work.

So, you decide to:

1) Retain Clinton's chosen head of the FBI, [Matter of public record]
2) Retain Clinton's chosen head of the CIA, [Likewise]
3) Retain Clinton's entire counterterrorism staff, [Rice's testimony]
4) Reverse Clinton's policy of never meeting with the CIA, instead meeting daily with CIA advisors, both in the White House and when abroad [R. Kessler's CIA-authorized book, The CIA at War]
5) Have your National Security Advisor meet almost daily with the head of the CIA, [Rice's testimony]
6) Direct regular questions at the NSC and CIA about al Qaeda, [Rice's testimony: "[T]he president received at these daily meetings more than 40 briefing items on al Qaeda, and 13 of those were in response to questions he or his top advisers posed."] and,
7) Order the head of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, to develop a comprehensive plan to destroy al Qaeda rather than 'fly swatting.' [Clarke]

It wasn't enough--we know that because the Towers fell. Still, given Bush's particular qualifications and personality, it was a good approach. Bush didn't try to micromanage the FBI or CIA, recognizing that he wasn't an expert. He didn't put the usual political patronage above national security--I am sure that there are a lot of Republicans who could have filled those jobs, but Bush chose continuity of expertise over patronage.

He said, in effect, "I want you to start figuring out how to take al Qaeda down rather than trying to restrain this or that plot. You're the experts, and since you've been on this for years, you know more about it than I do myself. This is important enough that I'm not going to replace you with friends or political allies. I'll trust you. Keep me informed."

It turns out that most of the failings were structural problems inside the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies. What really needed to be done, we know with hindsight, was not to trust the professionals, but to clean house. Clarke's book suggests that the professionals weren't that impressive:

In March 1995, a wacko Japanese religious cult, Aum Shinrikyo, released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12, injuring more than 1,000 and prompting Mr. Clarke--a Xanax commercial if ever there was one--to worry about Aum pulling the same stunt on the I.R.T. The F.B.I. told him to relax: They didn't have a file on Aum, ergo, they don't exist. Not convinced, Mr. Clarke had a chat with his new bureau liaison, John O'Neill.

"'How can you be so sure there are no Aum here, John, just because you don't have an FBI file on them? Did you look them up in the Manhattan phone book to see if they're there?'

'You serious?' O'Neill asked, not sure whether I was being funny. When I assured him that I meant it, he directed his deputy to leave the conference room and call FBI New York. A while later the FBI agent returned to the room and handed O'Neill a note.

"O'Neill glanced at it and said, 'Fuck. They're in the phone book, on East 48th Street at Fifth.'"

What ensues is not cause for comfort. First, the chemical-weapons geniuses at the Pentagon said they don't want to muddy their HazMat suits, which are in a locker four hours down I-95 anyway. So off trotted a helpful somebody from the U.S. Attorney's office posing as a city fire marshal to inspect the building. He reported that Aum was furiously loading up a rental van with boxes of God-knows-what--news that produced, at long last, an F.B.I. surveillance car. You can guess what happened: They lost the van in traffic.

In retrospect, we needed a top-down shakeup even before Bush came into office--the above happened in 1995. We didn't get it when Clinton was in office, and we didn't get it with Bush. Yet, as a new president with little experience in such matters, Bush was probably wise not to try it--he wouldn't have known just what to shake, and the destruction of the continuity of expertise could have allowed 9/11 to happen just as much as the bungling of the experts did.

I know there are things that the government should have done it didn't do. I agree that it's possible that 9/11 might have been prevented if things had been done right. I thank the commission for helping to highlight the errors and problems, which I hope we will repair for the future.

All that said, 9/11 was not Bush's fault. What he did wasn't enough, but it should have been. If the experts in their agencies and bureaus had been kept shipshape, Bush's approach would have been exactly the right one.

Power Line: World War II Memorial to Open

Memorial:

Most of you will have seen this at the Sage of Knoxville's site, but some of you--I know--don't go there. You should take a moment to look at the World War II Memorial. You should also read the comments relating it to the war in Iraq:

Look at the single column of stars closest to you. That single column of stars represents well over twice the number of American servicemen killed in Iraq in the past year.

That single column of stars represents the number of casualties we suffered roughly every six days -- week in, week out, for almost four years -- during WII. At the casualty rate we have suffered in Iraq over the past year, it would take well over 600 years to fill this wall with stars.

In your mind, line 62 of these walls up, end to end (that's somewhere close to a mile long). That's roughly the number of people who live in Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas. That's the number of people that are no longer ruled over by Saddam Hussein.

For the benefit of the esteemed Mr. Blix, that wall could also represent the estimated number of Iraqi citizens that Saddam Hussein put into mass graves in the past 10 or 15 years.

Anticipatory Retaliation:

A.R. has moved. You can now find the master of the silos at his address in an undisclosed location.

Afgha.com - Afghan city falls despite troop dispatch

News from Out East:

Uzbeks allied to General Abdul Dostum have taken one of Afghanistan's provincial captials, in defiance of the US-backed government in Kabul. The city, Faryab, fell to the Uzbek militia in spite of reinforcements from the central government.

Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe reports that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is still operating in Afghanistan, although the only dispatches mentioning it or its known members place it in Waziristan. The AP had an interview with a surrendered member, granted amnesty by the government of Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan is something to watch. We've been hearing a lot more out of them for a while now. Hizb ut Tahrir has been on a publicity campaign for months, and now there are signs of life among Uzbek radicals. Those of you who love Google News might start punching "Uzbek" or "Tahrir" in now and again, to see what comes across your screen.

Ammo Red

Ammo Situation Red:

All that below being proper and true, it's worth remembering that it doesn't look that way to the PBIs: even if she isn't in the infantry. If it's hard to see the big picture when you're running low on ammo and not getting the evac you've been yelling for all night, it's surely hard to see it when you're just a journalist with no training, no gun, and no sense of the military arts at all. Some of this bias-toward-fear is to be expected, and can only be educated out with time and experience.

Carry On:

Carrying On:

Blackfive has an article on American media bias against the military in Iraq. He saw, on his commute, this Chicago newspaper misrepresenting a grieving Marine for a shell-shocked one. The UK papers ran the same picture, but got it right:

A STUNNED Marine wiped a tear from his eye after hearing a pal in his platoon had been shot during fighting in Iraq yesterday.

But the American soldier bravely regained his composure and went to join the combat.

I agree with Blackfive that this represents a kind of bias, but I don't think it's a conscious one. It arises from a complete failure to understand the military, its culture or its science. I was listening to NPR last night, and the same theme carried across. The war in Iraq was "hopeless," according to one commenter who was given several minutes--I didn't hear who he was. He said, though, that it was 'just like 1968, and you get the call from the President, and he says the Tet offensive is on. What do you tell him? I don't know. We are without any hope of victory.'

The truth is that, from a military perspective, the Tet Offensive was a complete victory for US and South Vietnamese forces:

The Communist offensive was decisively repulsed. There was no general uprising in favor of the North. The South Vietnamese army did not buckle, though operating at 50% strength because of imprudent holiday leaves. The indigenous Viet Cong were destroyed, leaving the rest of the war to be conducted by troops recruited in the North.

This kind of fight is exactly what our forces are trained to do. This is the kind of fight we should be glad to have. There is nothing more we can ask of Iraq than that the enemies of stability should be out in the field, engaged in battle with us. They are now a clear military problem, one for which the officers in the field have studied and the men in the field have trained. They are engaged in a stand-up fight with us. They can't hope to prevail, and in fact are breaking: witness today's shift on the part of al-Sadr's forces to hostage taking. Having gotten them into the field, we shall clear the field. Iraq will enter its successor government with a whole lot fewer insurgents, and witnessed memories of the abject failure of insurgency against US forces.

To those who report without understanding, however, this looks like bad news. It's scary, like the Tet Offensive was scary; there are fires and angry men with guns who hate us. The news crawl startles them--US forces engaged in fourteen cities across Iraq! What they forget, or rather never knew, is that the US forces were designed for simultaneous engagement on up to three continents. The instability won't last. The wave will break, the Coalition will bind these insurgents in fourteen rings of steel, like the one cast already around Fallujah. In a few days those who have not been captured or killed will be hiding in fear. We will be flush with victory, and in possession of a great deal of new intelligence information on who is backing these groups--whether it is official government aid from regional powers, or factional aid from folks like al-Sadr's cousin, the leader of Hezbollah. Then we can tailor the next phase of action, to take the fight to those who hoped to bring the fight to us.

No hope? Despair is the worst thing, and encouraging it is no fit use of the talents of an educated man such as NPR prefers to consult. There is always hope, even in darkness: but there is never better reason to hope for victory than while the United States Marines are still deployed in the field. The Eagle, Globe, and Anchor is a very sign of hope, hope for victory, and for liberty.

Cogicophony: A Zoo of Thoughts: The Terrorist Threat

Terror Types:

KGC at Cogicophony has an interesting debate about types of terrorism. At issue is which forms require state support, and which do not, and how each can be fought. It follows this post, where the debate begins.

U.S. Forces Fire Missiles at Mosque in Fallujah (washingtonpost.com)

The Rules Have Changed:

Today's news shows that the Rules of Engagement have loosened under USMC authority. Marines destroyed a mosque in Fallujah using missiles, after taking fire from inside of it. During the war, we were forbidden to strike at mosques for any cause--the 101st Airborne was required not to return fire when assailants hid inside the Shrine of Ali.

This strike still required approval at the regimental level. The Shrine of Ali is probably still off limits, as it's not just any mosque. The gloves haven't come off, in other words--but we may have slipped a pair of brass knuckles on underneath them.

Pulling out the stops

Pulling Out the Stops:

Well, al-Sadr proves to be braver than I expected. When he withdrew to Najaf, it looked to me like he was responding to the elders by going to negotiate. It appears, instead, he's decided to adopt Muhammed's own strategy, which is to come to conqueor.

He's reported to have taken control of the Shrine of Ali, as well as several government buildings. It's a bold play: US forces have in the past been forbidden from striking the Shrine, and probably will continue to be forbidden to do so to avoid inflaming Shi'a sentiment. It therefore makes an excellent headquarters. Furthermore, to the Shi'ite Moqtada al-Sadr's revolt must look rather like the end of the Hijira and the conquest of Mecca.

The big question is the Ramadi attacks. Fox is reporting that the forces are "thought to be" loyal to al-Sadr. That seems unlikely on its face. Ramadi is upriver from Fallujah, toward the Syrian border. It's in the Sunni Triangle and, when in 1999 Moqtada's father was killed by assassins, it's the place Saddam shipped captured dissidents to be held and questioned pending execution. Shi'ites loyal to the al-Sadr family are in short supply there.

That's something to watch, then--if the reports prove true, it's a big problem because it means either that (a) al-Sadr has succeeded in unifying, to some degree, Sunni and Shi'ite opposition to the Coalition, or (b) that the Sunni opposition is willing to allow his fighters to move freely in their region for some other cause. The first is unlikely, as al-Sadr hasn't proven popular even among most Shi'ites. The second, though, is not entirely unlikely. The most likely "other" cause is this: that Iran and Syria have come to agreement on the need to derail a free Iraq. They could be using their proxy forces, both Shi'ite and Sunni, to attack the Coalition in concert. These attacks "to the rear" have been expected, to relieve the insurgents trapped in Fallujah, but the scope of them is surprising.

If the reports prove false, the possibility of an overaching alliance of our enemies in Iraq lessens somewhat. Nevertheless, the scale of the uprising, and the surprise with which it was achieved, are worth noting. A serious response is needed, to crush the enemy forces in the field. More, however, we need to try to capture what leaders and documents we can, to see if this is indicative of a foreign alliance. If it's that, we've got some other work to do--either convincing Syria and Iran that their interests require them getting out of Iraq, or making them do so.

Samizdata.net

Chemterror:

Samizdata reports that a chemical warfare attack has been averted, in London.

Sadr II

Al-Sadr Update:

Things are looking bad for Moqtada al-Sadr. Yesterday it proved that al-Sadr had been told to stand down by the Shi'ite elders in Iraq, including Grand Ayatollah Sistani. He refused in public, but appears to have abandoned his stronghold and decamped to the holy city of Najaf. Najaf is the seat of the Shi'a elders, and al-Sadr has little support among Shi'ites there. One may reasonably hope that the elders of the faith will bring him to heel, especially if they believe the accusations in the warrant issued by the Iraqi judge that he murdered one of their number.

Try to ignore the sense of fear that seems to be permeating the news today. Drudge is showing two-day old photos on his frontpage as of this writing, which would lead you to believe that there has been a lasting insurgency, whereas it seems to have collapsed--as the Belmot Club predicted, I might add--in about 48 hours. The situation is remarkably better than it was twelve hours ago.

Meanwhile, I have to say that this story is particularly foolish: "Line between militias, civilians blurred in Iraq." There is no line between civilians and militias. A militiaman is precisely a civilian with a rifle. This is true in the United States as well as in Iraq, so there's no excuse for getting it wrong. The United States Code says plainly, "The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard."

Tartan

Tartan Day:

Welcome to Tartan Day, 2004! The "tartan" is a kind of plaid, one that is symmetrical. It is most famously associated with the Scottish clans, thanks in large part to the British military, which adopted it as a regular uniform for the Scottish regiments. You can read a bit of the later history here. However, the wearing of woven plaids as mantles or cloaks dates at least the period when the Scot Gaels were still just Gaels on Eire isle. In the early period these mantles took the form of a square of cloth, called a "brat," which was worn thrown across the shoulders and secured with a brooch. The use of this kind of cloak seems to have migrated to what we now call Scotland during the kingdom of Dal Riada ("Riada's share"), and spread across Scotland sometime after Kenneth MacAlpin destroyed the last of the Pictish nobles in the 9th century, establishing Gaelic rule.

I mentioned the clans I belong to below, but what isn't as well known is that there are tartans which don't pertain to clans. Some of these are called "district" tartans, which can be worn by the natives of a place. The state of Georgia has one, in recognition of the importance of the Jacobites of the Clan McIntosh in defending the colony against the Spanish, particularly at the Battle of Bloody Marsh. There are also tartans called "corporate" tartans, which can be worn by any member of an organization. The United States Marine Corps has one, called the Leatherneck. There are also "universal" tartans, which can be worn by anyone, and "trade" tartans, which are--I gather--copyrighted designs of particular weavers.

Wearing the short, or "military," kilt is properly done according to uniform regulations. The great kilt, which in Gaelic is called the Breacan Feile, is not worn in a uniform way. It permits a great deal of artistry and individualism. You can find a guide to it at the Wild Highlander's site.

Celebrating the 1745 rising, Sir Walter Scott wrote this song, which was used in his novel Waverly to rouse the clans to battle:

There is mist on the mountain, and night on the vale,
But more dark is the sleep of the sons of the Gael.
A stranger commanded--it sunk on the land;
It has frozen each heart, and benumbed every hand!
The dirk and the target lie sordid with dust;
The bloodless claymore is but reddened with rust;
On the hill or the glen if a gun should appear,
It is only to war with the heath-cock or deer.

The deeds of our sires if our bards should rehearse,
Let a blush or a blow be the meed of their verse!
Be mute every string, and be hushed every tone,
That shall bid us remember the fame that is flown!

But the dark hours of night and of slumber are past;
The morn on our mountains is dawning at last;
Glenaladale's peaks are illumed with the rays,
And the streams of Glenfinnan leap bright in the blaze.

[The young and daring adventurer, Charles Edward, landed at Glenaladale, in Moidart, and displayed his standard in the valley of Glenfinnan, mustering around it the Mac-Donalds, the Camerons, and other less numerous clans, whom he had prevailed on to join him. There is a monument erected on the spot, with a Latin inscription by the late Dr. Gregory.]

O high-minded Moray!--the exiled--the dear!--
In the blush of the dawning the STANDARD uprear!
Wide, wide on the winds of the north let it fly,
Like the sun's latest flash when the tempest is nigh!

[The Marquis of Tullibardine's elder brother, who, long exiled, returned to Scotland with Charles Edward in 1745]

Ye sons of the strong, when that dawning shall break,
Need the harp of the aged remind you to wake?
That dawn never beamed on your forefathers' eye,
But it roused each high chieftain to vanquish or die.
O! sprung from the kings who in Islay kept state,
Proud chiefs of Clan Ranald, Glengarry, and Sleat!
Combine like three streams from one mountain of snow,
And resistless in union rush down on the foe!
True son of Sir Even, undaunted Lochiel,
Place thy targe on thy shoulder and burnish thy steel!

Rough Keppoch, give breath to thy bugle's bold swell,
Till far Coryarrick resound to the knell!
Stern son of Lord Kenneth, high chief of Kinntail,
Let the stag in thy standard bound wild in the gale!
May the race of Clan Gillean, the fearless and free,
Remember Glenlivat, Harlaw, and Dundee!

Let the clan of grey Fingon, whose offspring has given
Such heroes to earth, and such martyrs to heaven,
Unite with the race of renowned Rorri More,
To launch the long galley, and stretch to the oar.
How Mac-Shimei will joy when their chief shall display
The ewe-crested bonnet o'er tresses of grey!
How the race of wronged Alpine and murdered Glencoe
Shall shout for revenge when they pour on the foe!

Ye sons of brown Dermid, who slew the wild boar,
Resume the pure faith of the great Callum-More!
Mac-Neil of the Islands, and Moy of the Lake,
For honour, for freedom, for vengeance awake!

After the collapse of the Highland army at Culloden in 1746, the victorious Lowland Scots and their British allies banned the wearing of the kilt for a time. But it was resurrected in their service, when the Highlanders went forth wearing it to tame the world for them.

UPDATE: I see that most other bloggers participating in Tartan Day mention the Declaration of Arbroath. Grim's Hall mentions it from time to time, although as a living piece of the political arts rather than simple history. See here and here for two examples.

Op VR

Operation Valiant Resolve:

In addition to the fighting around Sadr City, Operation Valiant Resolve has begun in and around Fallujah. US Marines are taking mortar fire as they begin the evacuation of the city. Scroll down for some words on the situation for Spanish and Salvadoran troops, who are also engaged, although--unlike the American forces--not by choice.

The American engagements are necessary for the stability of the successor government, which takes power at the end of June. If al-Sadr is the murderer he's rumored to be, having him at the head of a private army on the outskirts of Baghdad is unhealthy. That there should be a militia in Sadr city is reasonable--it's a Shi'ite area in a heavily Sunni region of Iraq. As in the Edict of Nantes, the possession of arms guards them from similar oppression to that which they suffered during Saddam's regime. That a murderous gamesman should lead that militia, however, is intolerable.

Fallujah is an obvious weak point, and the actions of First Marine will be the key in handing over a stable province to the successor government. The Spanish troops, though, are a problem. As the Belmont Club correctly points out, the fact that everyone knows they are pulling out means that they are in danger of being routed. There is no alternative but to reinforce them with forces that are plainly not going to withdraw, and that means Iraqi forces.

Telegraph | News | 34 killed after Shia call to revolt

Al-Sadr Gets Scared:

Muqtader (also Moqtada) al-Sadr, always called a "firebrand" by whoever is writing about him, has inherited a lot of followers from his father's fame. He's a politician as much as a cleric--the fellow has worked every angle he's come across since the invasion began. There are also lingering rumors that the assassinations of a number of Shi'ite clerics in Iraq have been done at his orders, to solidify control of Iraq's Shia muslims under his voice.

Last week, the Coalition arrested one of his aides in connection to one of these killings, that of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who was stabbed to death inside the Tomb of Ali in Najaf. In response, al Sadr has called the Shia to revolt. Thirty-four are dead already.

My reading of this is that al Sadr is playing for his life. He's got a number of loyal followers, but a lot of other followers who are partisans of his father's, but who wouldn't approve of an assassination inside the Tomb of Ali. Al-Sadr can't afford to become associated with that in any sort of authoritative way. He needs the Coalition to release his man, and stand down from claims that might suggest al-Sadr was guilty by association. Not only might he lose a lot of his power base, but he might open himself up to revenge from the broader Shia community.

Al-Khoei isn't the only cleric al-Sadr is rumored to have had killed. At the time of the Najaf bombing over the summer, in which Baqir al-Hakim was killed, there were rumors that it was part of al-Sadr's attempt to take over. There were even rumors that the Coalition might arrest him.

Of course, there are rumors about everything in Iraq. Almost none of them prove to be true. There is a tipping point on these things, though, and al-Sadr knows it. This arrest is going to read like a confirmation in the minds of many Iraqis. Al-Sadr has to change the subject, and make the Coalition afraid to touch him or his people. His life depends on it, and he knows it. As a consequence, we see the risk of a real battle developing in this conflict between him and the Coalition. He'll pull out all the stops because, if he doesn't, this could be the endgame for him.

UPDATE: The morning proves that things are worse for al-Sadr than thought. An Iraqi judge has issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the murder of al-Khoei. Although the report says this was done months ago, it's only been made public today. Meanwhile, Ambassador Bremer, head of the CPA, has branded al-Sadr an "outlaw," and US gunships are over Sadr City. Enforcing that warrant will be one of the hardest pieces of postwar Iraq.

Mecenaries, Redux

Mercenaries II:

Those of you who slogged all the way through the comments on the "KOS" post, below, will have come across a polite exchange between myself and Mike M. Mike was writing to challenge the use of the term "mercenary" to describe the Blackwater men killed in Iraq. I explained why I thought the term might apply.

It turns out that the lads at Southern Appeal know something that I didn't know, which is that there's a legal definition of "mercenary" in the Geneva Conventions:

Article 47.-Mercenaries

1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.

2. A mercenary is any person who:

(a) Is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) Does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;

(c) Is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;

(d) Is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) Is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) Has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

Under this definition, as SA's Owen explains, the men killed in Fallujah were not mercenaries. I gladly conceed the point. My use of the term wasn't formal--as I said, I didn't even know there was a legal definition. I've quite a few military and former-military friends who toss it around cheerfully at me. Some of these folks I've known since childhood, and others I've met since 9/11. I adopted the term in that spirit: as a kind of nickname, like "Grunts" or "Squids" or "Devil Dogs." It has the same kind of swagger to it. It won't surprise you to learn that someone whose first adult act was to join the Marines might find that appealing. Being ignorant of the legal issues, I had no reason to think there was anything wrong with it.

Nevertheless, Mike M. turns out to be perfectly correct. As Owen points out, KOS and others use the term "mercenary" as "a pejorative, one employed by those who would like to denigrate the dead." I certainly am not among that crowd, as I hope is clear from what I wrote below. Grim's Hall will abandon the term henceforth, and I apologize to any--as Mike--I've offended by accident.

Absinthe & Cookies (a little bit bitter, a little bit sweet): Tartan Day

Tartan Day:

Tuesday is Tartan Day! Absinthe and Cookies is holding a celebration. I'm a member of the Clan Donnachaidh, which is "Duncan" in the English. I'm also in Alex Cameron's clan, if any of you get out to the Stone Mountain, or Grandfather games--or pretty much any other games around the South. Fine fellow, Alex. His is always the best ceilidh--by which I mean, of course, the very worst one.

Belmont Club

The Belmont Club

As has been pointed out to me in several emails and in the comments, the Belmont Club has quite a bit of speculation about the USMC response to Fallujah. It's just speculation, but the map exercise is a good one for those of you interested in military science. I've also heard a bit about unit movements from a couple of you, but I'm not going to publish any of that for the obvious reasons.

Go get 'em, lads. Semper Fidelis.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Broken US troops face bigger enemy at home

The Peril of Anecdotes:

Today the Guardian, whose journalists are so antiwar that they wrote a book entitled The War We Could Not Stop, has a piece on American soldiers. It is called "Broken US troops face bigger enemy at home." They list several examples of "broken" soldiers, but only one by name [UPDATE: Three, not one. I missed the two names toward the end of the piece on the first read-through. -G].

The drain on combat-ready soldiers--and the costs of carrying those damaged by this war--are becoming logistical nightmares for military planners. The Pentagon has already been forced to extraordinary measures. Last year, it locked up the service contracts of National Guard members and army reservists, preventing them from leaving the military when their time is up.

[Jason] Gunn's commanders seem adamant on keeping him. On Wednesday, Ms Gunn was forwarded a statement from her son. "It is my wish to be redeployed with my unit to finish my tour of duty with my unit here in Iraq," the statement said. "I feel that I am able to complete my mission here as well as any other duties assigned to me while on current deployment." It also said he had discontinued his prescription. Ms Gunn is convinced the statement was coerced.

Everyone who's been in the military knows that it occasionally does some stupid things. Military bureaucracy is the source of endless jokes, and a few pieces of great literature, including Heller's Catch 22, which was one of my father's favorite books when it was new and he was an Army sergeant. It's entirely possible--indeed, it's very nearly certain--that some serious errors are taking place.

Still, as the Mudville Gazette reports, retention rates in our all-volunteer army are not a problem:

Army divisions that fought the past 12 months in Iraq have met virtually every re-enlistment goal, a sign that the all-volunteer force remains strong under the stress of frequent deployments and hazardous duty.

The Pentagon has been closely monitoring the re-up rate for five Army divisions that fought in Iraq for about a year. Some officials feared the time away from home and the gritty duty would prompt a large soldier exodus. After all, the war on terrorism is unchartered territory. The 30-year-old volunteer Army has never been this busy in combat.

But numbers compiled this week for the first half of fiscal 2004 show that those five combat units met, or nearly met, all retention targets for enlisted soldiers--the privates, corporals and sergeants who total 416,000 of the Army's 490,000 active force.

This is the problem with journalism-by-anecdote. The Guardian gives the impression of an army under such catastrophic stress that it will soon break. But the number of "broken" troops can't be very large if retention is this good. I object to the term anyway. A slave or a prisoner can be broken, but these are not that. Indeed, because they have suffered what they have suffered, this year far fewer slaves and prisoners exist in the world.

My sympathy goes out to anyone who is at the wrong end of a bureaucratic blunder. I've been there. For Ms. Gunn, I have a suggestion: if she feels that there is a serious problem, and especially if she really believes her son is being forced to write false letters, she'll do better to write her Senator than the Guardian. That's what they're for, and they get results.

Epitaph

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries:

A poem, by Alfred Edward Housman:

THESE, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Follow'd their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandon'd, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

Overdue

Overdue:

Demonstrating that I am not the technological genius I wish I were, I have only just today figured out the mysteries of trackback. It'll be available from here, going forward. Meanwhile, as a second overdue update, I've linked The Mudville Gazette separately from the MilBlogs shield. It's worth reading on its own.

Daily Kos || Comments || Corpses on the Cover

The Daily KOS:

Sometimes in a society, such as the society of bloggers, someone says something that deserves condemnation in the strongest terms. But sometimes, it is so awful that there really aren't terms that will do. Once the moral threshold has dropped far enough, to enter into the fray would be demeaning for everyone involved. On those occasions, nothing will do except to let the words stand for themselves.

Today, the Daily KOS wrote on the four American contractors killed in Fallujah. They include a former Navy SEAL and father of two, a veteran of the 82nd airborne, and a winner of the Bronze Star for Valor:

That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

UPDATE: KOS has apparently deleted the original post, and even had the Google cache of it purged. He has replaced it with something that pretends to be an apology. The show of shame I will take for what it's worth. Having the grace to be ashamed raises him enough in my eyes that he will now get a response.

His apology takes this form: Of course, he didn't mean it when he said "screw them" and that he felt nothing. He was merely sad to see their deaths elevated in press coverage over the deaths of servicemen:

But the mercenary is a whole different deal. They willingly enter a war zone, and do so because of the paycheck. They're not there for humanitarian reasons (I doubt they'd donate half their paycheck to the Red Cross or whatever). They're there because the money is DAMN good. They answer to no one except their CEO. They are dangerous, hence international efforts (however fruitless they may be) to ban their use.

Readers of Grim's Hall know that I am a military contractor, which Kos calls "mercenaries." I volunteered this year for a deployment to Iraq and a six-month contract in Kabul, the latter of which may yet come through. Over at Del Simmons' Free Speech, I answered some of the questions KOS raises about the motives of "mercenaries":

All the identified are former members of the US military. So what are they doing in Iraq?

I can answer, as I volunteered for such a deployment earlier this year--although my employer preferred to keep me working at another GWOT project in the USA. I volunteered recently for a deployment to Kabul, about which I've not yet heard.

I would be surprised to learn that these men differed very much in motives. Like them, I joined the military--the USMC--right out of high school, largely for patriotic reasons, though also out of a youth's desire for adventure. My service ended in 1994. On 9/11, I abandoned the career I'd embarked upon and started looking for ways to return to service.

The military has strict caps on how many people it can have, though, at every grade. The USMC, being the smallest, has the least room--and the wave of volunteers that came with 9/11 meant that recruitment was, and remains, topped out. There was simply no room.

There are also age limits, and in the years since 9/11, I've run afoul of them. Even if room opened up now, I couldn't return because I'm too old.

But our service is still needed. I went looking for other ways to serve, since the military was closed to me. I found it in this so-called "mercenary service," which allows me to work hand in hand with the US military. I've worked on projects for every branch of the service, and most of the global commands.

Estimates on just how many contractors work in the GWOT run wild, and no one is really sure. It seems likely to be at least one contractor to every five servicemen, but it may be as high as one to one.

Many bring skills that they've gotten later in life, which broadens the range of talent and knowledge beyond what the military itself has to offer. Deployments are not always much less gentle than the military's own, although they are softened a bit by being purely volunteer--you can leave, if you really want to. Few do.

This is what US "mercenaries" are like. They exist at all because the Congress and DOD bureaucracy aren't realistic about the force levels needed, and cling to outmoded concepts like age limits. As with anything else in a free society, where there is a demand that isn't being met, a service appears to meet it. I would rather be in uniform; but since I cannot be, I'll do this instead.

In defense of my compatriots, I should say that all my colleagues I'm aware of do donate heavily to charity, not only in money but in blood. I mean this literally--I organize the tri-monthly visits to the Red Cross donation center around here, and speaking for myself, I can honestly say that, since 9/11, I've donated blood every time I've been permitted. One young lady in my group began taking iron pills last summer so that she could maintain the iron levels in her blood the Red Cross demands--a real trick for many young women. Her case illustrates another aspect of the service: Most people in these various defense contractor, "Private Military Company" firms are former military, but there are also many who aren't, people who admire the military but who aren't made to be soldiers. They still want to do their part, and they do. Some of them have skills that are rare in the military, too--I know a lot of Arabists like that, including quite a few non-US citizens who want to be a part of what America is doing, but whose nations aren't in the Coalition--Syrians, Egyptians, and Sudanese. They can't serve in their own nation's armies, but they can still help make a stand against terrorism. A lot of them have more at stake than KOS, coming from where they do.

Obviously I can't tell you just what I've done, but I can tell you that I feel it makes an impact. Do I get a better deal than the serviceman does? I'd trade places with him if I could. I'd rather have the honor his service gains him than any coin. A man leaves his fame behind him when he goes. What will my son be told about me by KOS and his like, if I die in Kabul or abroad? 'He was a mercenary. What did he care for the humanitarian reasons? He was just in it for the money.'

I'd do it for nothing, if I could keep my family afloat. I'll bet you every one of those lads they hanged from the bridges felt the same. Maybe there are some people out there for whom this war could be just about money, or all about oil, but I sure don't know any of them.

Absinthe & Cookies (a little bit bitter, a little bit sweet): The Mad Piper

The Mad Piper:

From Absinthe & Cookies is an astonishing story that I'm stunned I've never heard before:

Bill Millin, 81, found fame as the soldier who piped Lord Lovat's 1 Commando Brigade ashore during the landings at Sword Beach in Normandy on 6 June, 1944.... Mr Millin was labelled the "Mad Piper" by German troops who were captured defending the Normandy beaches. Lord Lovat told him to ignore army orders banning the playing of bagpipes in battle for fear that the pipers would be picked off by the enemy. Wearing his kilt, he marched up and down Sword Beach playing Highland Laddie as German bullets rained down around him.

I've seen almost all of The Longest Day, but only in snatches and bits. Apparently I managed to miss one of the best parts.

It reminds me that it's been almost a year ago that The Black Watch took Basra. Grim's Hall celebrated the use of the bagpipes at that time:

This battle also saw, for the first time in the war, the British army using its most feared and awesome weapon.

As he began to play, the sound of Scotland the Brave drifted across the bridge towards the city, competing with the clatter of rotor blades as four Cobra helicopters raced in to join the attack.

Hat tip: Blackfive.

Daniel

Daniel, USMC:

Friend and commenter Daniel, a former member of the USMC, has begun a new livejournal. I've linked to it under "other halls," below and right. He and I share a number of interests, so if you enjoy Grim's Hall, you will likely find his hall pleasant to visit. Welcome to the game.

Not all of his writings are on politics--some are on Asatru. Older readers of Grim's Hall may recall me going a round or two with the Raving Atheist over a religion called Forn Sidr. Asatru and Forn Sidr are, depending on who you ask, either the same religion or variants of the same tradition. The technical differences probably don't concern most people here--I am aware of having Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Pagan readers, as well as Asatruar (known simply as capital-H "Heathens"), plus some Atheists who are quite welcome in spite of my hostility to the concept. "Be nice to your neighbor, hell on his ideas," as per the rules post below. In any event, if you find yourself wondering what "Theodish" thought is, I'm sure Daniel will be only too happy to explain.

Senator Zell Miller - Printer Friendly Document

"A House Divided"

Here follow excerpted remarks by The Honorable Zell Miller on the floor of the Senate. The full remarks are in the link.

After watching the harsh acrimony generated by the September 11 Commission--which, let me say at the outset, is made up of good and able members--I've come to seriously question this panel's usefulness.

I believe it will ultimately play a role in doing great harm to this country, for its unintended consequences, I fear, will be to energize our enemies and demoralize our troops.

After being drowned in a tidal wave of all who didn't do enough before 9/11, I have come to believe that the Commission should issue a report that says: "No one did enough in the past. No one did near enough." Then thank everyone for serving, send them home and let's get on with the job of protecting this country in the future.

Tragically, these hearings have proved to be a very divisive diversion for this country. Tragically, they have devoured valuable time, looking backwards when we should be looking forward....

I realize that many well-meaning Americans see the hearings as "democracy in action." Years ago, when I was teaching political science, I probably would have had my class watching it live on television and using that very phrase with them.

There are also the not-so-well-meaning political operatives who see these hearings as an opportunity to "score cheap points."

Then, there are the Media Meddlers who see this as "great theater" that can be played out on the evening news and on endless talk shows for a week or more....

We should not be doing anything to encourage our enemies in this battle between good and evil. Yet, these hearings, in my opinion, are doing just that.

We are playing with fire. We're playing directly into the hands of our enemy by allowing these hearings to become the great divider they have become....

Long ago, Sir Walter Scott observed that revenge is "the sweetest morsel that ever was cooked in hell...." These hearings, coming on the heels of the election the terrorists influenced in Spain, bolster and energize our evil enemies as they have not been energized since 9/11.

Chances are very good that these evil enemies of America will attempt to influence our 2004 election in a similar dramatic way as they did Spain's. And to think that could never be in this country is to stick your head in the sand. That is why the sooner we stop this endless bickering over the past and join together to prepare for the future, the better off this country will be. There are some things--whether this city believes it or not--that are just more important than political campaigns.

The recent past is so ripe for political second-guessing "gotcha" and Monday morning quarter-backing. And it is so tempting in an election year. We should not allow ourselves to indulge that temptation. We should put our country first. Every administration from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush bears some of the blame. Dick Clarke bears a big heap of it because it was he who was in the catbird's seat to do something about it for more than a decade. Tragically, it was the decade in which we did the least.

We did nothing after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and injuring more than 1,000 Americans. We did nothing in 1996 when sixteen U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers. When our embassies were attacked in 1998, killing 263 people, our only response was to fire a few missiles on an empty tent.

Is it any wonder? Is it any wonder that after that decade of weak-willed responses to that murderous terror, our enemies thought we would never fight back?...

Some will say, "We owe it to the families" to get more information about what happened in the past and I can understand that. But no amount of finger-pointing will bring our victims back. So, now we owe it to future families and all of America now in jeopardy not to encourage more terrorists, resulting in even more grieving families, perhaps many more over the ones of 9/11....

[This country is dividing into] the ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill him them before they kill us. And, in case you haven't figured it out, I proudly belong to the latter.

This is a time like no other in the history of this country, and this country is being crippled with petty partisan politics of the worst possible kind. In time of war, it is not just unpatriotic; it is stupid, and it is criminal. So, I pray that all this time, all this energy, all this talk and all this attention could be focused on the future instead of the past. I pray we would stop pointing fingers, assigning blame and wringing our hands about what happened on that day David McCullogh has called "the worst day in our history" more than two years ago.

And instead, pour all of our energy into how we can kill these terrorists before they kill us--again.

For make no mistake about it. They watch these hearings. They are scheming and smiling about the distraction and the divisiveness they see in America. And while they may not know who said it years ago in America, they know instinctively that a house divided cannot stand.

There is one other group that we should remember is listening to all of this - our troops. I was in Iraq in January and one day when I was meeting with the 1st Armored Division, a unit with a proud history known as Old Ironsides, we were discussing troop morale, and the Commanding General said it was top notch. And I turned to the Division's Sergeant Major, the top enlisted man in the division, a big, burly, 6-foot-3, 240 pound African American and I said, "That's good, but how do you sustain that kind of morale?"

Without hesitation he narrowed his eyes, and he looked at me and said "The morale will stay high just as long as these troops know the people back home support us."

Just as long as the people back home support us. What kind of message are these hearings and the outrageously political speeches on the floor of the Senate yesterday sending to those marvelous young Americans in the uniform of our country?

I say Unite America! Before it is too late! Put aside these petty partisan differences when it comes to the protection of our people. Argue and argue and argue and debate and debate and debate over all the other things--jobs and education and the deficit and the environment--but please, please do not use the lives of Americans and the security of this country as a cheap-shot political talking point.

Yahoo! News Search results for Fallujah

Fallujah Delenda Est:

What is the right thing to do with a town whose citizens kill my brothers in the mercenary service, and then dance below their hanged bodies? I submit that the most merciful and correct thing, the thing most likely to bring peace and stability to Iraq, is to surround the city and, after allowing twelve hours for refugees to depart, to bring artillery to bear until the whole place is dust.

Having grown up in the path of Sherman's march, I have a cold admiration of it. It was really what ended a war that had cost hundreds of thousands of lives. We should end this one, while it is in our power to do so.

John Derbyshire's March Diary on National Review Online

Derbyshire:

As he often does, today John Derbyshire closes his column with a brainteaser:

Augustus De Morgan, the 19th-century English mathematician (whose name, as Martin Gardner pointed out, is an anagram of "O Gus, tug a mean surd!"), noticed that he was x years old in the year x2. Which year was he born in?

The answer appears to be 1806. If he was born in 1806, he would be 43 in 1849, which is the square of 43.

I'm pleased to have gotten this much of it correct, considering how little use I've ever had for mathematics. Beyond a deep and moving study of probability theory, gambling being the only use I've ever had for math, I admit to a remarkable ignorance on the topic.

spectator.co.uk

Aidan Hartley:

A too-rare treat, Aidan Hartley has a piece in this week's London Spectator. He's writing on sacrifices, accidental and intentional, such as are made in pursuit of a great goal:

While suffering nicotine cold turkey, I tried to hunt down some fag butts in the rubbish bin, only to find the farm workers had beaten me to it. I also discovered a bottle of cooking sherry in the kitchen cupboard last night. Not even I will sink that low.

And the reason I'm undergoing these little trials is to feed my one big indulgence. At last we have secured our own small patch of Laikipia's wilderness. It's cost everything we have and a lot more besides.

If you're looking for a good book, let me suggest Hartley's The Zanzibar Chest. It's the finest book I've read on Africa in a very long time. It's an extraordinary look into Africa, from the colonialism of his father's day to the blood of Rwanda. It's also just a fine read, well written and enthralling.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

Nailing it Down:

As one of you pointed out to me in email, Doc Russia nails it. I spend a lot of time talking in reasoned tones to people, trying hard to be fair to both sides of arguments, when I often wonder why we're arguing at all. I think he's got why:

I will never forget the feeling of the cold air inside the hull of the aircraft flowing out past my feet, as the hot and humid air of Cuba swarmed into my face. It was January, and the warmth of the air was alien itself. I stepped out of that craft, and onto a different planet. It was the beginnning of a dark Odyssey, 357 days which would change me, my life, and the way I looked at the world forever.

Over the course of the following year, I was exposed to an alternate reality. Day after day, I stood watch on the fenceline, and peered into it. I stood at the edge of a communist regime, and I saw what it produced. It was real. It was reality. In this reality, the evil in man had triumphed. Years before I was born, a corrupt idea was propogated, descended on this isle, and took root. It deceived the willingly gullible, and the naive. It propelled the vicious to power. It has condemned those under it's authority. So much suffereing, so many lives consumed.

I lived for a time in the People's Republic of China, and I had the same experience as Doc except from the inside. I saw what it was like for decent people, who were trying to get along, laugh, and do right by their families. It was brutal in a way I've never managed to put into words, and all people could tell me was how much better things were than they'd been ten years since. I met North Koreans there, who could only show me how happy they were to enjoy this lesser, easier tyranny.

Aristotle wrote that you can't even discuss ethics with people who lack certain basic experiences. Like us, the Greeks learned by standing on the wall--or, in the phalanx, by being the wall for a while. That's what we still ask some young men to volunteer to do. It's what we volunteered to do, not understanding what it is we were agreeing to become.

Tomorrow, in the nations capitol, many "men of importance" will put on expensive suits over expensive shoes, and straighten their very fashionable ties. They will accuse, insinuate, and feign moral repulsion. They will elocute and posture before cameras and a national audience about what who knew, what who said, and what they think it means.

Tomorrow, west of Baghdad, young men in patterns designed by computers will not accuse or insinuate. They will not feign moral repulsion, and there will be no cameras around to record them. They will not elocute or posture.

They will tie their boots on tight, check their weapons, and carry on.

I sometimes wonder if you even can explain it. I carry on trying, because it's so important that people understand. There is a sense in so many Americans that the Republic is eternal and unbreakable. There is a sense that the world is safe, if we could just control a few criminals, the way that an American state or city can be safe, if you just police it a bit better. They see the darkness but not the depths. It's like peering into the night sky, which is so deep that it looks flat; and you can't feel just how far you could fall into it and not find another garden.

Go listen to the Doc. He says it better.

InstaPundit.Com

Oof!:

Via The Sage of Knoxville, we have this from David Frum:

This administration came into office to discover that al Qaeda had been allowed to grow into a full-blown menace. It lost six precious weeks to the Florida recount--and then weeks after Inauguration Day to the go-slow confirmation procedures of a 50-50 Senate. As late as the summer of 2001, pitifully few of Bush's own people had taken their jobs at State, Defense, and the NSC. Then it was hit by 9/11. And now, now the same people who allowed al Qaeda to grow up, who delayed the staffing of the administration, who did nothing when it was their turn to act, who said nothing when they could have spoken in advance of the attack--these same people accuse George Bush of doing too little? There's a long answer to give folks like that--and also a short one. And the short one is: How dare you?

That looks wholly fair to me, including the wrath. I have said that I find Clarke's charges to be credible, even if the man is not: they match a lot of what we see in other sources. This reply is equally honest, and damning.

AnAmericanSoldier

Fitness Tips:

A few days back I linked to An American Soldier. The blog is down for the next few days, but even so, you might go read through some of the back entries for fitness tips.

The entry on pushups is a good one. I normally do 150 pushups a day as part of the USMC "Daily 16." Drill Sergeant Rob suggests doing pyramids as a change. If you take the time to add 5+6+7+8...20, and then step down 20+19+18...5, you get 400 pushups. Yet, since you're never doing more than 20 at a time, it's managable. I've tried it the last three sessions. The first time, I was barely pushing out the last "six" and "five," but by today, I combined the 9-5s on the way down (for a total of 35 pushups) to speed up the drill. I can feel a difference in a short time.

Plus, it's kind of cool to do that many pushups. It's been years since I have done hundreds of pushups a day; makes me feel like a kid again.

For that cause, I'm adding the Sarge to the blogroll down and right. Keep up the good work.

The Liberal Conspiracy - Satire, Informed Commentary and 9-11 Research

Uzbek Bombings:

Sovay has been following the reports on today's Uzbek suicide bombers. She thinks the fault may lie with the brutality of the dictator:

By supporting a repressive dictator, while claiming to champion freedom and democracy, the U.S. proves once again to the Muslim world that its rhetoric is empty, which deals a blow to our credibility. Karimov's repression has also fueled the radicalization of Muslims in the country....

The attacks that have so far killed 19 people may be aimed more at a repressive government than at an ally of the United States. It'll also be interesting to see who exactly was behind these bombings: a reconstituted Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb-ut-Tahrir or another group.

I'll go out on a limb here and wager that it wasn't Hizb-ut-Tahrir. For one thing, HuT relies upon a stance that avoids militism in order to maintain its havens in the West, such as London, from whence it publishes Khilafah magazine bi-monthly. It's linked to terrorist groups from Uzbekistan to Algeria, and is a terrorist-supporting organization, but it provides moral rather than physical support. In this way they are able to provide legally untouchable propaganda outfits and act as funnels for recruitment without risking being shut down or deported. I'd be at least mildly surprised to discover that they had suddenly abandoned this strategy at this late date. As they themselves said in reference to charges by the gov't of Uzbekistan:

The world knows that Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political party based on Islam and advocates change through intellectual and political activity. It has never used violence since its establishment in Jerusalem in 1953, despite the severe torture, oppression and murder that its members have faced by the corrupt rulers of the Muslim countries.

More to the point, there's no indication in their literature that they've been building up toward such a major shift. You can read their documents online in a number of countries; Google will take you to most of them, but don't miss 1924, which isn't as obviously an outlet of theirs. If the Party of Liberation was going to turn that sharply, I'd have expected some statements that would be used as justification for the policy shift. I haven't seen anything like that.

UPDATE: The Argus has a post on topic. Hat tip: The Agonist, who has some analysis of his own.

UPDATE: Turns out Doc Russia has family ties to Uzbekistan. He thinks the President-is-a-tyrant line doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The Texas Mercury

Rules Repost:

Just because I haven't done it in a while, allow me to repost the rules for the comments section. I take these in whole body from The Texas Mercury's editorial policy:

As we see it, modern society has all the important ideas of life exactly backwards: we are completely against the belief in sensitivity and tolerance in politics and raffish disregard in private life. The Texas Mercury is founded on the opposite principles- our idea is of tolerance and polite sensitivity in private life and ruthless truth in politics. Be nice to your neighbor. Be hell to his ideas.

Carry on.

Politics

Politics:

I've begun a "Politics 2004" links section, which will be around until the election. For now it has just two links--the link to the Honorable Zell Miller's website, and the link to "Democrats for Bush," an organization for "moderate/conservative Democrats" who endorse the President's reelection. This is the weblog of a Southern Democrat, which puts me in that group somewhere.

As we move along toward the election, I may endorse other candidates. So far, I haven't.

USSOCOM in Sahara

SOCOM in the Sahara:

This is a particularly interesting piece about the efforts of US Special Forces in West Africa. The Reuters bias is present as usual--the piece is entitled "Nomads fear U.S. forces draw bandits to Sahara," and focuses on that topic, mentioning only in passing that the "bandits" are actually an Algerian terrorist group that has designs to topple the governments in Algeria and Mauritania. Nevertheless, it makes a good read:

Lying in the sand, their AK-47s trained on some scrap metal and cardboard cut-outs, the Malian platoon held their fire as three donkeys stumbled into the kill zone.

"There are burros in my line of vision," an American voice crackled over the radio. "We don't want to kill nobody's livestock."

The elite U.S. Special Forces who have been teaching Timbuktu's 512th Motorised Infantry Company to destroy enemy camps like to be thought of as "warrior diplomats", culturally sensitive and a cut above the rest of the military.

In the inhospitable terrain of the Sahara Desert, bouncing across the dunes in a Land Rover chasing stubborn donkeys out of danger is the least they can do for the local economy.

This is one of the more interesting fronts in the GWOT, and one about which you hear little.

Stryker

Stryker:

Reports are coming in that a Stryker unit has been hit by guerrillas in Mosul:

Insurgents have fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. military vehicle in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, setting it on fire, witnesses have said.

More blasts shook the wheeled Stryker armoured vehicle, apparently as its ammunition exploded. There was no immediate word on casualties in the attack in the west of the city.

A passer-by, Mahmoud Ibrahim, 40, said he had seen three attackers in a car fire an RPG at the Stryker as it went down a side street in a western district of Mosul on Sunday. Another RPG was fired at the U.S. vehicle moments later.

"I saw the Stryker burning," he said. "I saw nobody getting out of the vehicle."

Why was the Stryker a good idea again? RPGs roll off the heavies, and thanks to the USSR, there are enough RPGs hanging around that we'll probably never fight anywhere we don't encounter them. If this report is true, and you can take a Stryker out with nothing better than this, it sounds like a pretty sorry fighting vehicle. The idea is to bring mobility and firepower to the enemy, not to get our people killed by putting them in a great big, lightly armored target.

UPDATE: The official US military report on this says it was just a fuel can that caught fire, causing the Stryker to burn. The crew escaped. That's a much more managable problem than an RPG penetrating to the ammuntion.

UPDATE: Eric, in the comments, points to Strykernews, which--thanks to Todd--is run by civilians associated with the Stryker Brigade by friendship or family ties.

From AFP:

Iraqi Booksellers:

This is an AFP report that--as I don't see it available in English on the web right now--I'm going to post in whole body:

Baghdadis turn to political, religious books once banned under Saddam

BAGHDAD, March 28 (AFP) - Iraqis are buying political and religious
books and snapping up satellite dishes once banned under the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, to quench a thirst for information they were once denied.

On the famed Mutanabi Street book market of Baghdad, shopkeepers and
vendors who work right off the pavement shrug off any concern about the
sky-rocketing sales of satellite dishes since the end of the US-led war
to oust Saddam a year ago.

'People are buying more books since the end of the war,' said Mohammed
al-Yawi, who owns Al-Naktha, one of the oldest bookshops in Baghdad.

'Foreign languages are top sellers, particularly English manuals, and
religious and political books are in much demand because they were
banned by Saddam,' said Yawi, who serves clients from across Baghdad.

Ayssar al-Kobaissi specialises in the sale of legal books.

He said business has been brisk since the US-led coalition brought down
Saddam's regime and that book sales are often influenced by what the
Iraqis see on television thanks to the satellite dishes they now own.

'The day after religious programmes are shown on television, clients
come in here to buy books' he said.

Iraqis, he said, are spurred into buying books for both political and
economic reasons.

'The price of books is down because there are no sales taxes,' he said,
about import tariffs that have been suspended since the fall of the
regime.

'People also can buy whatever their hearts desire. There are no police
controls,' he said.

Religious books, once a forbidden fruit, are also back on the shelves.

Copies of the Koran, Islam's holy book, particularly bilingual
Arabic-English editions, sell like hot cakes on Mutanabi Street,
particularly for US troops occupying Baghdad who shop there with their
interpreters.

At the Shahbandar cafe, a favourite haunt of bookworms, academics and
artists, Amir al-Mosuli believes firmly that Iraq's older generation
will never stop reading.

'We are addicted to books,' said Mosuli, who translates English
literature classics into Arabic.

'Yes, people do watch television more than before because they now have
access to all the (once banned) channels but that does not keep them
from reading,' he said.

Mosuli believes that many Iraqis have turned to religious books 'to seek
solace from the crisis facing our society'.

'People can come to this coffee shop to get away from their families,
read and forget the situation,' he said.

Many Iraqis seek their escape in periodicals that are piled up high on
dusty plastic sheets dottin the sidewalk on Mutanabi Street: faded
copies of French fashion magazines, bodybuilding publications from the
United States and even an old edition of the German weekly Der Spiegel
with a picture of the late actress Marlene Dietrich on the cover.

One sidewalk vendor offers pre-war schoolbooks rife with pictures of the
ousted dictator side by side with Saddam-free school manuals that were
printed after the end of the war last April.

Partisans of political parties outlawed under Saddam also have their say
now on Mutanabi Street, where communist literature is among that on
offer.

There is literally something for everyone, from a discourse on military
strategy by an ex-Soviet army officer to books on wanted terrorist
mastermind Osama bin Laden, the memoirs of a former Saddam advisor,
biographies of Iran's late spiritual guide Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
and the latest manuals on information technology.

It's hard to think of a more hopeful sign than this.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

Doc Russia:

Doc's going to get a big head, but I'm going to cite him twice in one night. Off at Bloodletting, he has determined that the 9/11 hearings are a waste of time:

The key to our struggle for survival, and the survival of civilization lies ahead of us, beyond the dark horizon, in the boots of the United States Marines, and not behind us in the rubble of two towers, or the Congressional chambers discussing it.

My own disinterest in the hearings is rooted in this instinct. The question now is finding and destroying the enemy. Every moment spent trying to assign blame for 9/11 is a moment not spent doing that. Praise God, as we used to say, and pass the ammunition.

European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

That Spring Offensive Is Real:

Now we know that the rumored Spring Offensive is for real:

Following the lead elements of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which arrived last week, 2,200 more troops are heading into the region from their Navy expeditionary strike group in the Persian Gulf to help fight against al-Qaida and other anti-coalition forces, according to military officials.

That's the 22nd MEU (SOC) to you, thanks aye. If you don't know what a "Mew-sock" is, here's what I wrote about it back during "major combat operations":

Marine Corps MEU (SOC): MEU stands for "Marine Expeditionary Unit," and (SOC) stands for "Special Operations Capable." The MEU is one of several MAGTFs (Marine Corps Air/Ground Task Forces). A MAGTF is a grouping of no set size, consisting of a group of Marine Corps infantry, possibly with attached armor or other mechanized assets, linked to a group of Marine Corps Air. The largest of these MAGTFs is the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), which is at least a reinforced division of Marines coupled with a full wing of Marine Air. The MEU is smaller than the MEF. SOC means that the entire MEU, every last member down to the cooks and postal workers, are trained in special operations procedures, and tested according to standards even more rigorous than USMC standard--which is, it ought to be remarked, a standard already far higher than the Army's. An MEU (SOC) is really an army that can be deployed anywhere, at any time, instantly: and, having arrived wherever it wants to be, is possessed of sufficient firepower to hold off whatever forces may be directed against it until such time as it can be relieved. They aren't commandos, and they aren't intended for sabotage missions. They are, themselves, a second front, to be opened anywhere the President wants them.

The deployment of a MEU (SOC) is always an event to mark on your calendar. Change follows.

Sharp Knife

Link Day:

Since this seems to be link day, let me point you to Sharp Knife. This goes with the "Ten Years On" post, below. This is what I look for in a President, before and above absolutely everything else: courage, and the imagination to see a freer world and the road there.

UPDATE: I see that I am belatedly noticing Mark Steyn's column on topic.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

Ooh-Rah!

Bloodletting is the site for to-the-minute analysis on USMC ops in Fallujah. Our occasional commentor, JarHeadDad, is there to provide on-site views from the "Grunt," as he proudly puts it. I don't have anything Doc Russia hasn't got, so for now at least, I'll leave it to him.

The U.S. and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994: Information, Intelligence and the U.S. Response

Ten Years On:

The Rwanda genocide took place ten years ago. George Washington University has released a new study, which includes access to newly declassified documents and previously unavailable insights. The study can be read here.

Its conclusions are mixed. The analysts were greatly impressed by the intelligence resources available to the Clinton Administration.

[C]onsiderable U.S. resources-diplomatic, intelligence and military-and sizable bureaucracies of the U.S. government-were trained on Rwanda. This system collected and analyzed information and sent it up to decision-makers so that all options could be properly considered and 'on the table'..... Despite Rwanda's low ranking in importance to U.S. interests, Clinton Administration officials had tremendous capacity to be informed--and were informed--about the slaughter there; as noted author Samantha Power writes "any failure to fully appreciate the genocide stemmed from political, moral, and imaginative weaknesses, not informational ones."

From the conclusion:

In sum, the routine-let alone crisis-performance of diplomats, intelligence officers and systems, and military and defense personnel yielded enough information for policy recommendations and decisions. That the Clinton Administration decided against intervention at any level was not for lack of knowledge of what was happening in Rwanda.

Why, then, did they choose not to act? Was it because they were "internationalists," and other countries had no interest in or will for intervention? The report does suggest this is part of the answer:

While some countries argued early for action, few actually ever brought any means to bear-the "lack of resources and political commitment" was "a failure by the United Nations system as a whole" as the Independent Inquiry on the UN noted. The U.S. did not encourage a UN response because it saw two potential outcomes: the authorization of a new UN force and a new mandate without the means to implement either; and worse, the very real possibility of the U.S. having to bail out a failed UN mission. For the recently-burned Clinton Administration, this looked like Somalia redux.

Finally, though, the blame falls on:

[T]he structure and personalities of U.S. decision-making during that late spring of 1994 when hundreds of thousands were killed as the U.S. and other nations stood by.

There are lessons here for the future. Intelligence is only part of the answer to any problem: "political, moral, and imaginative weakness" can undo even the best our Intelligence service careerists can provide. The Rwandan genocide is almost a mirror image of the Iraq invasion: the intelligence was spot on, and correctly interpreted and analyzed by the Administration. However, due to a lack of moral and political courage, as well as an inability to understand and use military force, the US (non)response allowed hundreds of thousands to die.

In Iraq, the intelligence was murky; the parts of the intelligence that were strongest were ignored by the Administration in favor of the parts that fit their own picture best; but their moral and political courage, and ability both to imagine a better future and the military means to bring it about, these things were unmatched in recent history. As a consequence, Rwanda ended in the worst genocide of recent decades; Iraq, though it is too soon to say it has ended, has emerged from war with the first chance at liberty and human freedom it has known.

There are those among you--Deuddersun, I recall, asked the question directly--who wonder how I can support George W. Bush in spite of his many mistakes and flaws. This is why.

KeepMedia | Esquire:Hired Guns

Life in the Mercenary Service:

Thanks to Doc Russia, I read this article from Esquire, entitled "Hired Guns."

The pay was good--up to almost $155,000 a year, most of it tax free, plus full expenses--but Iraq is a dangerous place to live. So dangerous that DynCorp also had to hire security contractors, many of them veterans of elite special-operations units in the U. S. military, to keep the cops from getting killed once they got there....

A moment later, we made our pit stop for guns. I was busy scribbling in my notebook when one of Kelly McCann's men, a former marine sniper named Shane Schmidt, walked over with an AK-47. Do you know how this works? he asked. I nodded. The week before, Kelly had shown me the basics on his firing range. (Designed by the Soviets to be effective in the hands of teenaged peasants, the Kalashnikov is not a complicated weapon.) Schmidt handed the gun to me. "Take care of it," he said. "If we get hit, don't panic. Collect your thoughts and shoot back."

He stepped back a foot and narrowed his eyes, sizing me up to see if I was the sort of person who might start pulling the trigger indiscriminately once trouble started. "Select your fire. You've got sixty rounds of Iraqi-made ammunition. That's it. Make each one count." I said I would, then racked a cartridge into the chamber, pushed the selector to safe, and got in the car.

It's not all guns and glory. Lots of contractors are back Stateside, where the taxes are outrageous and the guns are frequently banned by various levels of government. Still, there's work to be had if you've got the right skills. In addition to DynCorp, MPRI is a good opportunity if you're looking for this kind of work. There are some British outfits, too, including Sandline.

Tactical Information Operations

Tactical Information Operations:

Captain Daniel Morgan writes for Army Times on "lessons learned" in Iraq. He writes on everything, top to bottom, but the part that interests me most is how IO (Information Operations) play out at the company level.

Information operations are simple at the company level. IO has two purposes. First, you must distribute information to the people. Uninformed citizens in a country we just subjugated in war have the potential to demonstrate and possibly riot. You must inform them of your goals and actions. Second, IO involves not only passing out information, it requires the collection of information. The development of an informed populace and involvement of community leaders by a commander leads to information about hostile threats and benevolent projects.

The first step in CMO/IO [Civil-Military Operations / Information Operations] is to identify in priority areas to be funded for CMO. Simultaneously, commanders need situational understanding of the mindset of the sector. There are many TTPs that help in accomplishing this assessment. First, commanders need to determine who can help them. I broke my focal groups into business, education, political, and religious. Since we were the first forces into Mosul, Iraq, my soldiers and I had to get out into the streets and meet people. We developed a "list of influence" and began developing relationships.

On 13 September 2003, one of my platoons was ambushed, wounding three of my soldiers. The platoon was ambushed in a congested urban area with narrow alleys. After linking up with the platoon and conducting an aerial medical evacuation, a member of an Iraqi political party called me and said he saw the ambush and knew the attackers. The attackers were not home, but these men watched the houses of the attackers for 48 hours. They called me at 0200 to inform me they were home. The brigade commander gave us approval to conduct a cordon and search. We infiltrated the neighborhood, linked up with our "informants," and grabbed the attacker. This ambush cost the leg of one of my soldiers and through relationships we caught the culprit.

Leaders must understand the environment prior to committing blindly to some CMO plan. I had no true understanding of the mindset of the citizens in my sector. In addition, there were no performance measures of effectiveness to determine any success we were having in our efforts. Consequently, I developed a survey of attitudes and needs in Arabic that was common across all my sub-sectors. My soldiers hated this at first, but in the end we saw where we needed to be and what we needed to do. This situational understanding is vital to CMO/IO.

I imagine most bloggers think of IO as being propaganda and disinformation, played at the wide strategic level. It's that too, of course, but it is integrated into US military competency all the way to the ground.

Hat tip: Chapomatic.

Grim's Hall

Send the Texas Rangers!

The Sage of Knoxville has a post up excoriating MSNBC for a fairly pathetic mistake:

BUSH CAN'T GET A BREAK: Now he's being blamed for not invading Afghanistan in 1998! Here's the relevant passage from MSNBC:

The report revealed that in a previously undisclosed secret diplomatic mission, Saudi Arabia won a commitment from the Taliban to expel bin Laden in 1998. But a clash between the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Saudi officials scuttled the arrangement, and Bush did not follow up.

Damn him -- governing Texas while Rome burned! Why didn't he send the Texas Rangers to finish off Bin Laden? ("One mullah, one Ranger!")

This seems like a good time to point out that I've been arguing for using The Texas Rangers in Afghanistan for quite a while. I think they're an excellent model for the challenges faced in that particular part of the world (see also this piece). Those articles were from August, but in the months since, the challenges haven't changed.

ParaPundit on Clarke

On Clarke:

ParaPundit has a good post up examining the Clarke claims. My own sense is that they're probably mostly fair. Certainly the impulse to stovepipe--that is, to hear only those parts of the intel picture that support the world view you brought to the table--is one of the biggest challenges in intelligence work. It takes years to get good at this, and an administration lasts only a short four, or eight on the outside. On this topic, I wrote elsewhere:

[T]he administration has several known intel sources, all of which are large corporate bodies of professional men who are devoted to improving their product.

Intel failures are nothing new (see Soviet Union, Unexpected Collapse of the), and in fact, they're part of the game. Still, when you've got several structures in competition (CIA/DIA, for example), with internal procedures to try and filter and improve information, you've got something a bit better than what Ijaz is drawing upon. It's still going to have some glowing failures, intel being intel.

I hope that the civilians in the Bush administration have been learning from their mistakes, of which there have been some several. I'm not sure the situation can be improved by introducing a new crowd of people with a similar ideological bent, who will have to relearn all those lessons about stovepiping... the very ones Clarke is complaining about. But of course, one never knows--it could be that Bush administrators don't learn, or that Kerry could put together a team that would be too wise to make those mistakes.

Human nature being what it is, I doubt either proposition is entirely true. Still, this kind of stovepiping will happen given the amateur nature of our leadership (a four- or even eight- year administration is just really getting good at things by the time it has to vacate office); as a consequence, the best we can do is try to pick people who will tend to stovepipe in the least harmful ways.

For myself, I'd rather have a president at this juncture whose instinct is to go for the throat when it isn't warranted, than one whose instinct is to hang back until a threat is proven beyond a doubt. Others may prefer the one who will insist on proof, and indeed, they may even be right. When the topic is terrorism, I suppose I am distracted by visions of what form that proof might take.

All that said, we as free citizens who love the Republic must be honest and admit that there have been some stiff intel failures. Clarke's claims may be a bit overblown, but they are probably accurate at base: some stovepiping probably did go on with Bush and his close advisors. We can hope they've learned, but like all nature, human nature: Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. That is, "You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she always comes back in." The only defense--and it is an especially poor one--is to try to make sure the people who are doing the stovepiping are bringing the right instincts to the table.

AnAmericanSoldier

An American Soldier:

Welcome to new Milblog An American Soldier. It's apparently run by a US Army Drill Sergeant, which was my own father's profession once. It's an interesting site, although I am a bit shocked to learn that the Army has adopted Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as its close-combat form, and I wonder at the assertion that the Marines 'are not really a self-sustaining force'; but we'll let it go for now in brotherly friendship. If you do drop by, check out the short history of the Seventh Cavalry, which includes the following bit of poetics:

Let Bacchus' sons be not dismayed
But join with me, each jovial blade
Come, drink and sing and lend your aid
To help me with the chorus:

Chorus
Instead of spa, we'll drink brown ale
And pay the reckoning on the nail;
No man for debt shall go to jail
From Garryowen in glory.

We'll beat the bailiffs out of fun,
We'll make the mayor and sheriffs run
We are the boys no man dares dun
If he regards a whole skin.

It'd be fun to know just how many of the great songs of America were originally bawdy drinking ballads to which we just set new words.

The Corner on National Review Online

Killing the Enemy v. Not Stirring Them Up:

Over at The Corner, Brit expatriates John Derbyshire (now a naturalized US citizen) and Andrew Stuttaford are having this conversation. I'm firmly in the "kill the enemy" camp. I realize that harsh acts of war do stir up the enemy and improve their recruitment--at least at first. Yet, as a son of the South, I also know that it's only Sherman's March that defeats. You have to keep up the pressure until the enemy does the worst he can do, and still breaks. That is the only road to victory.

Honorable persons in the other camp believe that victory is not necessary, and that peace can be had through negotiation. Well enough, if in fact it's true. For Israel facing Hamas--or for the West, facing Islamism--I'm not sure that it can be. The evidence points strongly in the other direction.

FreeSpeech.com

Sudanese Pharms:

Over at FreeSpeech there are several debates going on about Clarke and his credibility. One topic that keeps coming up is the destruction of the Sudanese Pharmecutical plant by cruise missile strike. After a few comments from the resident Canadian antiwarrior, I noted this:

This is, of course, why it's important to have a President or, at least, a SECDEF who understands the military's capabilities as they relate to intel issues. If they were sure this factory was producing chemical weapons for terrorists, the thing to do was to deploy a MEU(SOC) to take control of it, and have DIA sift through the records and equipment for intel and evidence. Then, if it's a real terrorist source, you get all kinds of useful information--and if it's an asprin factory, you still have an asprin factory.

Of course, there's a chance some Marines could be killed using this approach, unlike with the cruise missiles. But, on the other hand, there's much less chance of noncombatants being killed (as well as lowering the likelihood of people dying from absent medications), and protecting the lives of noncombatants is one of the moral duties when using military force. Marines are professionals, and they understand that duty.

Unfortunately, the politicians decided they'd rather kill some faceless Sudanese than risk front page headlines about dead American fighting men. Our intel on this topic is poorer as a result, and the anti-American legions have a talking point too.

I should reiterate that it isn't just understanding, but moral courage that is needed here. We've got the best fighting men in the world, and like everyone who is really good at something, they love what they do. They're willing to take risks to be sure it gets done right, and so the innocent don't suffer--the big lesson of the Iraq war was just what huge lengths our fighters go to in order to avoid harming the noncombatants. This is a confluence of the practical and the moral--but unhappily, no one with the courage or understanding to seize the moment was at the tiller.

Samizdata.net

Socialists & Terror:

Sovay points to the Spanish Socialist government's statements on terrorism, which is to be their "absolute priority," although Zapatero maintains that "We can't win against terrorism or rout it through wars, (which) are never an efficient way of eliminating or combatting groups of fanatics, radicals and criminals." Sovay notes approvingly that this approach "may not be as macho as the methods the Bush administration prefers[.]"

Meanwhile, Antoine Clarke at Samizdata reminds us of the methods used by the last Spanish Socialist government:

GAL was the name assumed by a anti-ETA terror group in the 1980s that entered France and murdered ETA members and supporters. I no longer have the details but there was a spate of terrorist attacks on Basques living in the Bordeaux area, as well as closer to the Spanish border.

Following the arrest of several GAL members it transpired that they were all either members of law-enforcement agencies and the armed forces, or recently had been. It later emerged that the money to finance GAL came from the Ministry of the Interior and was signed off ultimately by the Minister. Whilst the Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez himself was never proven by documentary evidence to have sanctioned the GAL death squad, let me just say that if he ever wins a libel action on the issue, I will be amazed.

Two things are worth noting, firstly that both the French and Spanish governments were under Socialist control at the time, second that Spanish public opinion was firmly on the side of the death squads[.]

Mr. Clark finishes, "There is a strand of Western Socialist thought that takes the secular State seriously. I seriously doubt if there will be any safe-haven for Islamist terrorists in Spain for the forseeable future." If this is what Zapatero has in mind, I think this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

IMRA - Monday, March 22, 2004 Background: Marginal Cost Of Post-Yassin Attacks Zero?

Economics:

I have considered this proposal, which I saw on Allah's blog, for a little while now. Considered coldly as an economic question, I can't see anything wrong with the logic.

There is every expectation that the killing today of Ahmed Yassin, head of
the Hamas terrorist organization, may lead for the various terrorist
organizations to make a maximum effort to carry out a "reprisal" attack or attacks.

With the killing of Yassin, Israel's decision makers find themselves in the curious situation that the marginal cost of killing more terrorist leaders in the coming days, at least in terms of terrorist response, is zero - and probably negative as the killing of additional terrorist leaders could disrupt terror operations.

Considered as a question of military science--the same. Unless the actions against terror groups bring actual state actors into the fray, escalation is not now possible. Which state actors would involve themselves in this fight? Syria? Lebanon? Both border Iraq, where the 101st Airborne and 1st Marines are currently stationed. Declaring yourself outright in support of Hamas against Israel might get you on the wrong side of the Bush doctrine--which is to say (and indeed, I find myself a bit shocked to say it) that the Middle East may, as a result of the Bush doctrine and the war in Iraq, enjoy more stability now than it has had in decades. The probability of an actual nation-state war against Israel is lower than it has been in our lifetimes, regardless of who you are reading this.

Egypt? I don't think they can afford it--they are now the second largest receipient of American foreign aid, but their military situation is weaker than it's been recently, and there will be no allies in this invasion. Iran is distracted by internal revolt, and too distant. It's not the time for the Gotterdammerung.

Terrorism has been a proxy weapon for these states for quite some time. The next few weeks will be a test of that weapon. Israel has committed itself, and there is no reason in economics or probability that it shouldn't carry through to the knife. There might be a reason in religion, but not in the Jewish religion as I understand it.

The word for the third food, "Karsi," leeks or cabbage, sounds like the word "kares," "to cut off/destroy." We therefore say a Yehi Ratzon that asks "may... our enemies be destroyed."

The word for the fourth food, "Silka" or beets, sounds like the "siluk," meaning "removal." We therefore say a Yehi Ratzon that requests "may our adversaries be removed."

The word for the fifth and final food "Tamri" or dates, sounds like the word "sheyitamu," "that they be consumed." Hence, we sat a Yehi Ratzon that implores "may... our enemies be consumed."

No peace is coming out of all this, though. That much seems certain. We have seen much of the promises of revenge from Hamas and others, and they echo the promises we have seen from each of these terror groups when they suffer some setback. But their enemies in Israel can promise too:

2 God is jealous, and the LORD avenges; The LORD avenges and is furious. The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies;
3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. The LORD has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, And dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, And the flower of Lebanon wilts.
5 The mountains quake before Him, The hills melt, And the earth heaves at His presence, Yes, the world and all who dwell in it.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are going to see increased violence in the weeks ahead. There is now nothing to restrain either the terrorists or the Israelis--in the last case, not even the chance that state actors might involve themselves. Irony abounds, for stability among nation-states has made this war between Israel and non-state armies the more likely. Gotterdammerung may not be here, but these few poor mortals look ready to cast themselves into a tragedy no less wrenching. I see no alternative but to hope, or to pray, that good comes from it at last: to mourn for the doomed, and to hope for the valiant. If more good than that can be done, I can't imagine what.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club has its own thoughts, entitled "Survival Strategies in a Barroom Brawl."

Mudville Gazette

Mudville:

Welcome back to the Mudville Gazette. New server, Greyhawk says. I say the Weekly Standard broke him. Nice writeup, by the way.