Bangkok Post --- News & Archive

Guns In Thailand:

As some of you may know, the last few months have seen an upsurge in religious violence in Southern Thailand. It will not surprise you to discover that the leaders of this violence are Muslims decrying the impossibility of living under a non-Muslim state. The favored victims of these heroes of jihad, it will be equally unsurprising to learn, are teachers, elderly Buddhists (one of whom was beheaded recently), and the unarmed. Just for safety's sake, however, the assailants seem to prefer to speed by on motorcycles as they spray bullets or swing machetes at these teachers and old folks.

The Thai government has tried a number of things to placate them. They have promised a major economic initiative to enrich the south and improve standards of living. They tried to print a booklet of Koranic verses that spoke to peace and the need to obey lawful authority, but the Muslim leadership in Thailand threw a fit. Excerpting the Koran--which is said to be the actual word of God, merely recited by Mohammed--is almost as bad as translating it. In either case, you are taking the perfect word of God and altering it. The clerics argued that even printing excerpts of the Koran counted as "interpreting" Islam, and that the government (largely Buddhist) had no business doing it.

So they did not. Instead, they printed a pamphlet challenging a book that the Islamist leaders had written. They also asked southern Thai Muslim clerics to rule on whether or not the book urging jihad was proper. The clerics ruled that, while the book was not proper, the government's response was worse; and so they ordered the government's pamphlets destroyed.

The Thai government took even this in a stride, and is now working to have the clerics write a response of their own. In the meanwhile, the murders go on.

Teachers in Thailand, underwhelmed by their government's efforts on their behalf, are doing what all wise men do. They are arming themselves. This has caused some alarm among the journalistic elite of Thailand, which has begun printing editorials opposed to the notion. These trot out every old canard against the private possession of arms.

'A pistol is no use against a drive-by shooting.' (Well, but what about the fellows with machetes? And what if they miss? You could always return the fire.)

'Teachers are untrained in the use of arms, and so would be easy prey for militants who just wanted more arms.' (Not so easy prey as they are now. I expect we'll see shortly which the militants prefer--unarmed victims, or the chance of winning a pistol at the risk of their neck.)

"It is the task of the state to ensure ordinary people's safety. It should not be left to the individual to arm and defend himself." (Exactly wrong. The free citizen has both the right and the duty to protect the common peace. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise protected.)

'Pistols are an expensive luxury for Thai teachers, who must live on 10,000 baht a month.'

OK. That last one makes sense. Fortunately, help is on the way:

Gun shops in Bangkok are offering discounts to teachers in Thailand's troubled Muslim south where a spate of almost daily attacks show no signs of abating despite government promises to restore peace.

Schools have been common targets for arson and gun attacks, leading to teachers being given permission to apply for licences for firearms for self-defence.

Several Bangkok gunsmiths have appointed teachers as salespeople to lure potential customers to the capital with promises of discounts, said Pairat Vihakarat, who heads a teachers union with 20,000 members in five southern provinces. "A colleague of mine told me he would rather carry a gun than have 20 friends go about with him. Everyone can equally be killed here," Pairat said.

Hundreds of teachers and civil servants from the southern provinces have been lured by discount offers from gun shops in the capital.

Maybe we should start a "Guns for Thai Teachers" fund. The way to beat Islamist terrorism is through the resolute individual. Those who will not be bowed, who will not be terrorized, are the hope of civilization and the very road to Victory.

JDOJ

'Just Doing Our Job':

The 24th Marine Regiment issues some awards and commendations. Be sure to read about the corpsman, Cinelli, who proves again why Marines love these squids as well as if the corpsmen wore the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor themselves.

Amazon.com: Books: The Archaeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry

Oakeshott:

The Sage of Knoxville links today to The Archaeology of Weapons by Ewart Oakeshott. He says that he thinks it's the book that got him interested in Roman Legion arms and armor. Let me add a plug for the book too.

This book is a wonderful read, and highly informative on all forms of arms and armor from ancient Greece to the Later Middle Ages. The section on Viking arms is my personal favorite, because it explains the translation of names and runes engraved into the blades.

The great lesson it teaches, however, is one that is often missed, which is that arms and armor advance because of each other. People often get the notion that a certain kind of armor was used by knights or Roman soldiers 'because that is what they knew how to build.' What is missed is why they had learned to build that sort of armor, which is always that it was an innovation to answer the challenges posed by the weapons of the period. Weapons change, likewise, to address the advances in armor.

The book is also worth reading because Oakeshott has fine voice. No one who has worked his way through college, and especially graduate school, will be able to read his introduction without cheering wildly:

One other thing, about which I have been severely criticised by the highest authorities. My style is "chatty", full of anecdotes which are such anathema to the academic mind. I make no apology for this, even to them. I didn't write this in academic purity for scholars. I wrote it to be read, even enjoyed, by anyone who was interested in this fascinating subject. There are few footnotes (but many illustrations); there are spelling mistakes in the Bibliography, printer's errors in the text; but it has been read and enjoyed by two generations, and now it sets out again to interest and enthuse a third.

Now that's how a man ought to write, isn't it?

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

Saudi Oil Fields:

My good friend Sovay has been asked a question:

Someone asked me today: If al-Qaeda were to overthrow the Saudi government and take control of the country, we'd still have to buy oil from them, wouldn't we?

I don't know the answer to that question, but it's a frightening possibility. Not a likely possibility, but it's the type of scenario that makes you realize how important it is to end our total dependence on foreign oil.

I know the answer to this question. It is not, in fact, a possibility.

Al Qaeda has enjoyed some startling successes as a terrorist group--literally startling, as they have made it their mission to move beyond the low-level blackmail-style operations that have characterized Muslim terrorism for most of the last thirty years. It is important not to overestimate the enemy, however, just as it is important not to underestimate him. Al Qaeda has been able to do what it has been able to do because terrorist operations are very cheap. Bin Laden did not inherit his $130 million because his family cut him off. As we saw from reading this week's 9/11 report, al Qaeda has been funded largely from charities operating as fronts, or partial fronts. That cash flow has largely stopped due to a worldwide effort by police and intelligence organizations. While there are new sources of funding in play (narcotics, for example, and possibly direct-aid from a few particularly bold governments such as Iran), these funding measures must by their nature remain small-scale to remain hidden.

The result is that al Qaeda can't field even a functional guerrilla force. Guerrilla operations are much more expensive than terrorist ones, and require a much more highly developed command infrastructure. Both the funding and the infrastructure would be targets that could be disrupted, and would have to be protected, again in the face of worldwide intelligence and law-enforcement--but here also military--efforts.

The guerrilla opposition we've seen in Iraq has been slightly effective, but only in the propaganda war. They have won not one single victory against US or coalition forces. After a year of combat, our forces have suffered an extremely low combat loss rate. You can find the numbers here. For casualties and fatalities, the combined number of dead and non-RTD wounded for 3 June is 3,769. The number deployed has hovered at about 160,000 Americans, which would put losses at 2.3%. However, we have rotated entire divisions in and out--the 3rd ID replaced by the 4th ID, and so on. If you count the total number of Americans who have been deployed in Iraq (thus giving these vaunted guerrillas the chance to kill them), the figure is under one percent.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth we have heard from the media over combat loss rates below one percent is indicative of two things: first, that the media (like the majority of the population) understands nothing about military science; and second, that the opponents of the war feel that the removal of the Saddam threat was not worth one single American life. There are enough people who feel that way for the very modest successes of the guerrillas to appear greater than they are. In fact, they have performed relatively poorly. Although some individual units in the Marine AOR have been exceptions (probably Hezbollah, from what I've heard, and you should read The Belmont Club on this topic and the one here as well), even they have not been adequate to hold any ground that we haven't simply chosen to let them keep rather than risk the lives of the civilians among whom they were hiding. Nor has any force in Iraq been able to engage any US force for as long as 24 hours without being forced to withdraw, or being routed or destroyed.

To hold the Saudi oil fields, even a much better guerrilla force would not be adequate. You cannot occupy and control ground with guerrillas; you need conventional forces. Conventional forces are more expensive and more complicated to field by an order of magnitude--just as terrorist operations can be quite cheap, and require little organization compared to guerrilla operations, so arming and feeding infantry divisions is that much harder than running a battallion-strength band of irregulars who largely feed themselves. Again, that organizational structure would be a target of the sort we can hit, and the money would be on a scale impossible to hide. A government has to be bold to fund terrorists in secret these days; it would have to be suicidal to fund them openly in overthrowing a neighbor country and US ally.

Now factor in this: the large Saudi oil fields are largely in Shi'ite areas. Al Qaeda would find the very forces it has been relying upon for survival in Pakistan and Afghanistan turned against it. The same would largely be true even for one of the Shi'ite militant movements--their religion would be the same, but the tribal concerns that have bedeviled us would bedevil any Iranian Persian groups, or Lebanese fighters, operating in the heart of Arabia.

It is more possible that there could be an internal coup in Saudi Arabia, and that a group more hostile to the US than the current ones might take over general control. In order to survive, however, they would need to continue providing oil to the West, even if not to the United States: the stability of Arabia is built on regular payoffs to tribal leaders, and those payoffs will have to continue if the tribes aren't to be up in arms. The only source for the monies for those payoffs is the oil; therefore, the oil must be sold.

As the US gets only 19% of our oil from Saudi Arabia, it is likely that we could make up the difference elsewhere if we had to do so--for example, from purchases from the Iraqi oil fields, which contain the largest remaining oil reserves in the world. The French, who import most of their oil from Saudi Arabia (and most of the rest from Norway) would be more likely to be troubled by any artificial shortfalls, should the new government think itself stable enough to risk them.

Helmets

Helmets To Hardhats:

A fellow from H2H wrote me today to ask me if I'd link to his site. H2H is a federally-funded program to help former military men and women find promising jobs in construction. I've seen them mentioned in ads around D.C., and they got a good writeup in Defenselink, which is the DoD's own website.

I'm always willing to help out the troops in whatever small ways I can. If you're planning to get out--and I certainly encourage you to stay in--drop by and visit their site. You'll find the link down to the right, just below the Milblogs logo. It looks like this:

Just the Facts

Land of the Pure:

The Bush Administration just declared Pakistan (whose name translates into "land of the pure") as a Major Non-NATO Ally. You may be curious about what that means. Now you know.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. - Thomas Jefferson

Operation Shoe-Fly:

Once again demonstrating the fundamental decency of the US military, the 214th Aviation Regiment has undertaken an unofficial operation to help the children of Afghanistan. Dubbed Operation Shoe Fly, it's an attempt to provide shoes for the kids. Any of you who are parents, and quite a few of you are, might go through your closets to see what the kids have outgrown. You can also send new shoes.

Ship the shoes to:

Operation Shoe Fly
B Co, 214th Aviation Regiment
Bagram, Afghanistan
APO AE 09354-9998

We've got some good people out there.

ORACULATIONS

Alarm! Alarm!

I'm sure you probably heard that 'a group of diplomatic, military and intelligence officials' printed a petition in the LA Times that was opposed to the Bush policy in Iraq. No big deal, you probably thought--you can find twenty or thirty former military people who will sign anything. This is because the military is so huge, and draws fairly broadly from America, which is also huge. Add in the State department and the intelligence services (presumably to include the FBI), and you've got so many people it would just be a matter of making the phone calls.

Indeed, I didn't give it a second thought either. It was only while reading around today that I discovered that a blog called Oraculations had put together a list of biographies on the signers. Unsurprisingly, most have ties to leftist groups--that's how they knew there was a petiton to sign, right? But then there is one really alarming thing:

Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, the CIA Director under Carter (let's all remember that fiasco) who is pissed that Tenet was fired. This unbiased guy is a member John Kerry's Senior Military Advisory Group, now advising John Kerry.

Carter's CIA director is one of John Kerry's senior military advisors? I can't think of a single more damning thing that could be said.

INDOlink - US News - US Forces �Kill� 80 Militants In Afghanistan Operation

How I-War and War Relate:

Read over this article to see why a propaganda war is indispensible for guerrillas. The waters are muddy enough now that an independent news service doesn't know where to turn. Ultimately they just report everyone's numbers and let the reader guess which are true. They're so turned around they even put "kill" in scare quotes.

Jihad Unspun - A Clear View On The US War On "Terrorism"

Jihad Unspun: Vote for Kerry, Then Push Him Around

The weekend edition of Jihad Unspun contains a piece by anti-warrior Chalmers Johnson. It is not hard to see what the pro-Qaeda boys like about Johnson's argument. A victory for his faction would be the end of resistance to Islamist groups seeking to dominate the Muslim world.

[L]et me nonetheless end by noting that the political system may not be capable of saving the Republic. It is hard to imagine that any president of either party could stand up to the powerful vested interests surrounding the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies....

I believe that if the Republic is to be saved it will be as a result of an upsurge of direct democracy.... The first victory of this movement came on March 14 with the election of Spanish prime minister Jose Zapatero. If democracy means anything at all, it means that public opinion matters. Zapatero understood that 80% of the Spanish people opposed Bush's war in Iraq, and he immediately withdrew all Spanish forces. It's a great pity that Kerry criticized Zapatero for this. We need to duplicate the Spanish victory in Tony Blair's Britain, Silvio Berlusconi's Italy, Junichiro Koizumi's Japan, and in our own country.

Jihad Unspun would also like to see a repeat of the Spanish elections in America. Still, this appears to be a rather halfhearted endorsement. 'Vote for Kerry... but it probably won't be enough... we'll really need 'direct democracy,' by which I mean rule by protest-march rather than by Constitutional processes.' Oddly, given that he wants to prefer 'direct democracy' to these legal processes, Johnson argues that his movement is about the "Constitution and the need to restore its integrity as the supreme law of the land."

Still, apart from his sense that Kerry (unlike Bush) could be intimidated by protest into withdrawing from Iraq, Johnson has some praise for the man himself. Along the way he also explains his opinion of the volunteer military.

Kerry's stand as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War is one of the most honorable aspects of his background. It is a tragedy that we have become so militaristic he must disown the courageous stand he took thirty-five years ago in order to be elected. This reflects one of the major differences between our military during the Vietnam War and our military today. Then it was a citizens' army. Members of the armed forces were a democratic check on militarism because they were not volunteers. They were naturally concerned about the purposes of the war, how it would end, and whether their government and officers were lying to them. Today we have a professional military. People who serve in it are volunteers with a vested interest in advancing their careers through armed conflict.

This is a bit illogical. Although servicemen can vote, the military does not elect the president. Indeed, as we saw in Florida 2000, in a contested election the ballots of deployed servicemen are highly likely to be discarded due to the uncertainty of their arriving with all the requisite stamps. Lawyers representing a candidate who suspects that the military will not favor him can move to have those ballots discarded, and expect to succeed.

The reason Kerry has to disown his VVAW stance in order to be considered is because of a change in the populace as a whole. It is true that Kerry feels that he has to step away from the VVAW, and his earlier remarks that American forces should only be deployed under UN command and with blue helmets. That reflects not a change in our military, but in our society.

UPDATE: Apparently the jihadis aren't the only ones lukewarm about Kerry. As the Rottie points out, the speaker here is one of Kerry's campaign co-chairs.

AnAmericanSoldier

A Glass To the 4th Platoon "Bushmasters":

Drop by and see Drill Sgt. Rob over at "An American Solider." Graduation day is just past, and he's already got a retrospective on the cycle. It'll make any military man smile to read his reply to "PVT Krumme," and his tangent includes a story that had me telling my wife tales of fistfights past.

DM

Digital Marine:

Welcome to Digital Marine. DM is a new Milblogger, and his site is too good not to link. I've added it to the "Other Halls" section of the permanent links, down and right.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

Assault Weapons Ban:

Our own Doc Russia urges us on in the attempt to defend our rights. I have also contacted my representatives and Senators, and urge everyone to do the same. I wrote the following letter, which differs sharply from the 'form letters' I have seen suggested. Therefore, I offer it for your consideration.

Dear Sir,

I trust that you do not need to be educated on the right to keep and bear arms. In case you may be wavering, however, please note this constituent's opinion: Sen. Feinstein's recent attempt to renew the ban on so-called 'assault weapons' must fail.

I am a regular voter, and shall be watching you closely in this regard. I trust that I can rely upon you do perform your duty to uphold the Second Amendment, but not so much that I will fail to attend to the vote.

You will have heard from the NRA that a study mandated by Congress, a follow-up study, federal surveys, and police reports have shown that these guns are rarely used in crime.

The truth is that this is beside the point. In the current age, when America's enemies directly target her civilian population, the old ideal of the citizen-soldier must be reborn. No police organization, nor any 'homeland security' device or legislation can be everywhere. We, the free citizens of a free republic, can be.

We are, in fact, everywhere that the enemy wishes to strike. We alone can defend the republic in all the weak and lonely places. We, acting as citizens, can defend the republic without endangering civil liberties through intrusive police powers. We must be able to equip ourselves to perform this civic duty.

Citizens must be called to their ancient duties--the same duties that have pertained to the free man since the time of Alfred the Great, of Richard the Lionheart, of Robert the Bruce, and of Washington and Jackson. We have both the right and the duty to uphold the republic and the common peace. We must also have the tools.

CB

CB Terror:

One of the problems of policing is that you can't be everywhere. You have to make some decisions about priority. You can police the suburbs, but if all the crime is downtown that may not be the best use of your time. On the other hand, if you spend all your money downtown, you may find the criminals moving their operations to the suburbs.

The same is true when trying to figure out how to set up a national defense against chemical and biological terror. It may be--in fact, it is--the case that some of these chemical and biological weapons present a greater danger than others. Rather than building up your defenses against all known agents, it's a better idea to determine which ones are the largest threat, and optimize defenses against those before you worry about the smaller-scale threats.

How do you judge the relative danger? There are a few useful questions. Just how deadly are chemical and biological weapons? How hard are they to make? If a terrorist wanted to get his hands on some, would he need specialized tools, or are there "dual use" technologies that could do the job?

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has written a report on chemical and biological terrorist threats that seeks to answer exactly those questions. It's apt to be driving the debates in Congress for quite a while. Follow the link and read up--you'll be better informed, and better able to keep your politicians from playing games in favor of doing what really needs to be done.

Grim's Hall

Communist Propaganda, Again:

Readers of the Mudville Gazette will have seen this story on the joys of being a PRC POW:

"The Chinese army had always exercised 'revolutionary humanitarianism' towards war captives. Beat and curse were not allowed, nor a kick, because this were iron disciplines of an army. Chinese soldiers were forbidden from searching pockets of Americans, letting them keeping their cigarettes and other private items....

Our Volunteer cadres never beat or abused prisoners who made mistakes, but talked with them. If they really made serious mistakes, they would be placed in confinement, at most for one week.

Didn't know that the People's Republic of China was a paradise of human rights? You must have missed the article from a week or so ago, when we learned that the PRC is more respectful of religious rights than the US, too.

BLACKFIVE: The Cigar Marine and Don King

Ooh-Rah!

I always liked Don King. I never quite knew why--there was no obvious reason--but apparently my instincts were right on. That's a good story, B-5.

Intelligence dissemination system providing new capability

ISR:

JFCOM (Joint Forces Command) has proposed a new Real-time ISR system by 2008. ISR is an abbreviation for "Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance." It is part of C4ISR, which is itself a part of information operations generally. C4, in this case, is "Command, Control, Communications, Computers." When you add the two parts together, C4 & ISR, you get a mental model of how the military thinks about the information needs of the warfighter. (These things can be broken out in several ways; you'll people talk about C3I by itself, or C2I, or, as here, just ISR.)

The idea here is to develop a system, which warfighters can access, that will provide intelligence reports and SR data on a nearly to-the-minute basis. It doesn't take much imagination to see the benefit of having access to updated sat imagery, yesterday's reports from the DIA that may touch on your target, and maybe a scouting report from Marine Recon.

It seems to me that there are two critical challenges, one pratical and one technical. The practical challenge will be getting the intelligence aspects of this up to speed--intelligence products are analysis as much as information, and the analysis has to be done before the product is ready to be disseminated to the end-user. There will always be in any intelligence ops a competition between the desire to get these things out fast ("Hurry up with that report from al-Anbar province--we've got a series of ops there at 0200 Zulu!") versus getting things right ("Last week's reports were so rushed that we didn't notice two critical flaws, with the result that we lost men."). Putting things into a computer pipe increases the pressure for speed--think about how much less patient you are for news in the age of the Internet v. when you had to wait for tomorrow's morning paper ("Why aren't the results from the Belmont up yet? That race was over five minutes ago!"). Further, the analysis will have to be increasingly clear--they are talking about dissemination direct from DIA, not to a trained field intel officer, but to the tank-driver or platoon commander. Their needs will require clarity of analysis (in a hurry!). Keeping the balance will be that much more challenging under these twin pressures.

The technical challenge is security. Putting all this information on tap in one platform will mean that a security failure is devastating. Should an enemy (say, Chinese hackers) manage to access the system, we'll find ourselves in real trouble, real fast. Keeping on top of that will be the work of giants.

Khalid bin Al-Waleed: The Sword of Allah

Naked Dhiraar:

One of the things I've been reading lately are English translations of the old Muslim myths. Those of you who have been reading the Hall for a year or more will remember that we talked a lot about mythology during the invasion of Iraq. Mythology, out of which arise people's visions of who they are and what they ought to be, is probably more important than any political speechmaking. It is in the symbols of mythology where wars are really won, or really lost.

Here's a piece that I pass on largely without comment, except to say why it struck me as interesting. In the wake of certain recent events, we have heard a great deal about how being seen naked was an unmitigated humiliation for Arabs. Yet I find that one of the great heroes of early Islam was called Naked Dhiraar:

Because of the Roman archers, Dhiraar kept on his coat of mail and helmet, and in his hand carried a shield made of elephant hide, which had once belonged to a Roman. Having gone halfway to the Roman line, he stopped and raising his head, gave his personal battle cry:

I am the death of the Pale Ones;
I am the killer of the Romans;
I am a scourge sent upon you;
I am Dhiraar bin Al Azwar!

As a few of the Roman champions advanced to answer his challenge, Dhiraar quickly disrobed; and the Romans knew him at once as the Naked Champion. In the next few minutes, Dhiraar killed several Romans, including two generals, one of whom was the governor of Amman and the other the governor of Tiberius.

HMS Exeter

HMS Exeter:

We had a post recently about HMS Exeter, which is going to be engaging the PLA in exercises on the mainland. Still no word on how they're going to get the ship on shore--my own guess is that it'll be towed on rickshaws.

While searching for answers, I checked The Royal Navy's Offical Exeter Page. This part is the honest truth:

The ship was launched in 1979 by Lady Mulley and entered service in 1980. She is the 5th Ship to bear the name Exeter, her predecessor being famous for her role in the Battle of the River Plate and the sinking of the German "Pocket Battleship" the Graf Spee on 13 Dec 1939. The current Exeter saw service in the Falkland Island War in 1982.

Ship's Motto Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful)

Now how do you like that? Speaking of the Royal Navy, the Royal Marine Commandos have a flash game, if you want to see how they do their recruiting.

The Green Side

Another Letter from Dave:

Over at The Green Side, there's another letter from "Dave," whose previous letter home was featured here at Grim's Hall. The second one is at least as good as the first. If he could be asked, I imagine that Mr. Reagan wouldn't mind sharing the page with this Marine at all.

Here's an excerpt. For those of you who aren't associated in some fashion with the USMC, let me begin by noting that "aggressive"--unlike in civilian life, where it's normally employed as a synonym for "unemployable" or "unstable"--is considered a high compliment among Marines.

During one of the ordered pauses in the Falluja fight, we chopped a rifle company off the line with a very aggressive battalion commander. Basically he was told that we thought the muj were running lose in the area and that he should head up there and "develop the situation." I have gotten to know this guy pretty well here. He is a very good commander and a tough guy. In fact, I remember telling him that if he went past a certain point, he would be decisively engaged. We had estimated that if he got into a decisive engagement, he could be outnumbered by as much as 5:1. You can imagine what he did. He took his Marines right to that point.

Sure enough, the fight was on. It was a 360 degree engagement that lasted 8 hours. An 8 hour firefight is an eternity. To put it in perspective, this guy was in both OIF 1 battle for Baghdad as well as the Falluja fight. He states that the firefight up near this town was the toughest he has been in. We fired quite a bit of artillery and brought in a number of sorties of close air for them. By the time it was over, the estimates (now confirmed) are that they killed over a 100 muj. We could not understand why they kept coming but they did (more on that later). Throughout it all, very accurate mortar fire up to 120mm was falling inside the Marine position. Automatic weapons and RPGs were crisscrossing through the perimeter. The Marines just
laid their in the micro terrain and squeezed of well aimed shots.

The Battalion Commander stayed that day until his guys broke the muj and he "owned the field" (his words). He then withdrew back to his original position. In the same town, we now have Marines living 24/7. They are conducting joint patrols with the Iraqi Police and the ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps). When they first arrived, the people were very standoffish and even hostile. Now we are getting more and more walk up intelligence (where the locals literally risk their lives in order to walk into our lines and tell us where the muj are). The reason for the turnaround is simple. We have pushed through the bow wave of intimidation and terror that dominated the town when the muj were there. The Marines did it through aggressive raiding and downright obstinate refusal to budge regardless of the costs. The people were watching the entire time and have made up their own minds where their best future lies. It has gotten to the point where the mujahadeen are now firing mortars indiscriminately into the town as it is the only effective means of maintaining any kind of influence over the people.

Facta Non Verba

Facta Non Verba:

Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan, American, former President, honorary Doctor of Philosophy, honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Of those titles, only the first two were of any real import, save that they showed the honor that men felt he deserved even in his own lifetime. I suspect that the honor in which he is held will only increase now that he is dead. It was not only the British, but the Swiss who saw nobility in him; the Swiss government registered arms in his name in 1984:

The arms are: Or, a bear rampant sable, armed and langued gules holding between its forepaws a mullet argent; on a chief of the second, standing on a ducal coronet of the first a falcon argent, armed and langued of the third, wings displayed and inverted. Crest: On a gentleman's helmet proper a demi-horse sable, unguled or, charged on the shoulder with an actor's mask of the last. Motto: "Facta non verba".

The motto translates, "Deeds not words." It was quite a list of deeds.

UPDATE: Some curiousity has arisen about the heraldry. I can't guess what it's meant to symbolize, except one part: the black bear on the field of gold. The Latin name of the black bear is "Ursus Americanus," that is, "The American bear."

UPDATE: From the day of the funeral procession:

No commentator I heard noticed that the Baroness Thatcher curtsied to the coffin--a gesture which protocol reserves at state funerals to the corpses of royalty. I am sure the Queen will not reprimand her.

Afgha.com - Famed Afghan gold to dazzle the world

Kelly's Heroes:

Now we know why we really went to Afghanistan... "Famed Afghan Gold To Dazzle The World":

The world could soon catch a glimpse of Afghanistan's fabled Bactrian gold, as preparations get under way to exhibit some of the 20,000 pieces that make up the country's most important ancient treasure trove.

Dates and locations have yet to be finalised, but the US, France, Germany, Japan and Greece are among the countries interested in hosting the 2000-year-old haul that has remained intact despite years of war and upheaval.

Hosting, yes... that's the word. It's all about the gold!

While other important archaeological sites are plundered or have been ruined by war, the Bactrian gold, discovered by a Soviet team near the northern town of Shiberghan just before the Red Army invasion of 1979, has had a number of narrow escapes, adding to its allure and mystery.

The Red Army found it, and it wasn't plundered? That is a narrow escape.

The favourites to host the collection first are the Americans and French, and Rahin hopes interest in the treasure will generate funds to build museums and combat looting.

Now what does this remind me of? Oh, yes...

BELLOQ: Dr. Jones, you choose the wrong friends. This time it will cost you.

Never can trust the French. Hand me my hat.

Bad Reporting

Bad Reporting of Naval News:

Today we have two examples of the worst in news service writing. The first is from the Associated Press:

A British Navy warship [The HMS Exeter] with 249 sailors aboard arrived in Hong Kong for a five-day routine port call on Friday, a consular official said.... The port call in Hong Kong is for ``rest and recreation'' but the vessel will participate in a series of training exercises with the People's Liberation Army on the mainland, Gould said.

How do you suppose they're going to get the ship onto the mainland?

The second example is from the Agence France-Presse:

A US navy carrier battlegroup is to launch a 'show of force' in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea off west Africa as part of an unprecedented global operation to demonstrate America's command of the high seas, a US diplomatic source told AFP on Friday.

Really? The diplomat said we were going to stage an exercise off "oil-rich" west Africa? The State Department's even worse than I thought.

BLACKFIVE

D-Day at 60:

Black Five has organized a MilBlogger's tribute to the D-Day operations. As we approach the 60th "birthday" of European freedom, it's worth taking the time to read through these retrospectives. The MilBlogs have mustered a lot of expertise and skill for this exercise, and the results are impressive.

Social Harmony

Social Harmony:

I was reading an article the other day, in the local newspaper, about an elderly Korean gentleman who has moved into town and opened a martial arts studio. He chastened the reporter who had come to interview him not to suggest that the martial arts were 'all about fighting.' "No!" he said. "The purpose is social harmony."

That is exactly right. The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous.

Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.

The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective). This is to ask: what is the difference between a street gang and the Marine Corps, or a thug and a policeman? In every case, we see that the good youths are guided and disciplined by old men. This is half the answer to the problem.

But do we not try to discipline and guide the others? If we catch them at their menace, don't we put them into prisons or programs where they are monitored, disciplined, and exposed to "rehabilitation"? The rates of recidivism are such that we can't say that these programs are successful at all, unless the person being "rehabilitated" wants and chooses to be. And this is the other half of the answer: the discipline and guidance must be voluntarily accepted. The Marine enlists; the criminal must likewise choose to accept what is offered.

The Eastern martial arts provide an experience very much like that of Boot Camp. The Master, like the Drill Instructor, is a disciplined man of great personal prowess. He is an exemplar. He asks nothing of you he can't, or won't, do himself--and there are very many things he can and will do that are beyond you, though you have all the help of youth and strength. It is on this ground that acceptance of discipline is won. It is the ground of admiration, and what wins the admiration of these young men is martial prowess.

Everyone who was once a young man will understand what I mean. Who could look forward, at the age of sixteen or eighteen, to a life of obedience, dressed in suits or uniforms, sitting or standing behind a desk? How were you to respect or care about the laws, or the wishes, of men who had accepted such a life? The difficulty is compounded in poor communities, where the jobs undertaken are often menial. How can you respect your father if your father is a servant? Would you not be accepting a place twice as low as his? Would you not rather take up the sword, and cut yourself a new place? Meekness in the old men of the community unmakes the social order: it encourages rebellion from the young.

The traditional martial arts tend to teach young men to undertake flashy and impressive, but not terribly effective, fighting techniques. Only as you grow older do the masters of the art teach you the real secrets--the subtle, quick, physically simple ways in which the human body can be destroyed. In this way, the old retain their power over the young--although they lack the speed and strength, they have in discipline in training more than enough to maintain the order. Social harmony is maintained in the dojo: the young revere the old, and seek to emulate them. Your father may be a servant, but he is still a warrior--and a more dangerous one than you. The father, being past that age in which biology makes us vicious, guides the son or neighbor to protect society rather than to rend it. It is not particularly different in the military.

If we would have a stable society, we must have dangerous old men. This means that, if you are yourself on your way to becoming an old man, you have a duty to society to begin your preparations. The martial arts are not the only road--my own grandfather did it through a simple combination of physical strength, personal discipline, and an accustomed habit of going armed about his business. There was never a more impressive figure--or, at least, there was never a boy more impressed than was I.

The martial virtues are exactly the ones needed. By a happy coincidence, having a society whose members adhere to and encourage those virtues makes us freer as well--we need fewer police, fewer courts, fewer prisons, fewer laws, and fewer lawyers. This is what Aristotle meant when he said that the virtues of the man are reflected in the society. Politics and ethics are naturally joined.

ProfessorBainbridge.com: Using Chesterton to Reply to Solum on the Martial Virtues

Virtue:

I normally don't link to things that The Sage of Knoxville links to first, simply because I assume most people will have seen it. However, Professor Bainbridge's post on civil and military virtue is one that everyone should take a moment to read. I'm not sure that the subject heading will entice everyone--few are interested in reading about, let alone practicing virtue--but the matter could not be more important:

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms.

There the good Professor relies upon Chesterton, who wrote just before the horrors of the first World War. He then turns to General Washington:

An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.

It is the introduction and diffusion of vice, and corruption of manners, into the mass of the people, that renders a standing army necessary. It is when public spirit is despised, and avarice, indolence, and effeminacy of manners predominate, and prevent the establishment of institutions which would elevate the minds of the youth in the paths of virtue and honor, that a standing army is formed and riveted for ever.

Is that not precisely where we are? Do we not see each year bringing more public odium upon the Boy Scouts? What do you suppose would be said about an organization that was today 'established to elevate the minds of the youth in the ways of honor and virtue' except for cries that it was 'Hitler Youth' redux? Does not each year bring more demands that "effeminancy of manners" be set aside as an outdated concept, while the practice of such manners by men be accepted? Is not public spirit degraded by people who say that the poor soldiers in Iraq joined the military only because of their poverty and the hope of college money? By people who say they are slaves?

Aristotle taught that the ethics of a man should be precisely mirrored in the politics of the state--that, if you can develop the right kind of man, the state will follow. Aristotle begins his treatment of right ethics with the virtue of bravery. His overview sounds familiar after Washington:

[W]isdom is goodness of the rational part, gentleness and courage of the passionate, of the appetitive sobriety of mind and self-control, and of the spirit as a whole righteousness, liberality and, great-spiritedness.

There is a further treatment of each of those concepts here, for the interested. See also the writings of other men, less famous but many as brave as any Ancient Greek, at the Mudville Gazette.

How to restore the martial virtues in the public generally? It is a difficult undertaking--indeed, it is plagued by several 'chicken and egg' problems, as most of the public steps you could take to encourage them require the acceptance of the virtues that you're hoping to encourage. How would you get a state legislature to vote to institute courses in military science at the high school level? (There is another question as to whether that would work--Plato's Laches begins with the question of whether practice-fighting in armor encourages bravery in the young. That bravery in fighting should be encouraged was never in question for them.) How to approve any such program? You'd need a strong bloc of voters to speak to their legislators.

Where to get them? Through argument--and yet I was approached just the other day on the streets of D.C. by a fellow from something called the Center for Nonviolence, who was canvassing in the opposite direction. He was rather dismayed, even shocked, by my assertion that nonviolence in and of itself was not something to be encouraged. Nonviolence is not a virtue. Nonviolence is a state--usually a pleasant one, but demonstrably inferior to, and to be set aside in favor of, the state of justice. Violence can be a very good thing. Yet this "Stop the Violence" movement has won so many converts that I hear children echoing the slogan the way they might say "Go Team!"--as a blandly acceptable premise that should win approval from all quarters.

We would have a lot less of the sort of violence people wish to stop if we encouraged more people to be prepared to fight bravely for the common peace. This I'll treat separately in another post.

Marine Corps News> 1st FSSG parachute pros bypass Iraqi highway hazards to air drop supplies

Parachute Pros:

JHD sends the following with this comment: "Talking about pissing the rags off! he-he! Grunts can stay out longer and the rags can't track them. Next thing you know a Strike Team hits them and they have no clue where they came from!" He's talking about the 1st FSSG, "Force Service Support Group," Air Delivery Platoon. They run a KC-130, which is a fairly big monster, but they claim they can drop to you without giving you away:

The KC-130 cargo plane, loaded with 22,000 pounds of food and bottled water, took off in total darkness, with its running lights extinguished and the pilots and crew donning night-vision goggles for the hour-long flight.

"We come in low and fast. We give the enemy very little opportunity to acquire us," said co-pilot Lt. Col. Jeffrey V. Young, 42, a reservist from Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 234, based in Fort Worth, Texas, which was one of the two squadrons supporting the mission.

The plane slowed as it approached the drop zone. Then, as the pilot pulled the aircraft up hard and increased power, the loadmasters in the cargo hold opened the back door.

"They release their gate and everything just slides out," said the pilot, Capt. Matthew W. Crocker[.]

Now that sounds like a fun ride.

US human rights hypocrisy attacked

Communist Propaganda:

Regular readers know that I lived in the People's Republic of China for a while back before 9/11. The Chinese are a rising power who intend to dominate the entire East and Southeast Asian region. Part of their strategy is an ongoing "information warfare" assault on the United States, particularly an attempt to degrade the US' standing to bring China to heel on human rights.

Here's a good example, from Xinhua: Chinese Religious Leaders Condemn US Religious Freedom Report.

The report, claiming the commission "remains especially concerned about the human rights situation in China", said that a total of 11 countries, including China, have engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing and egregious abuses of freedom of religion.

Zhang Jiyu, vice president of the China Taoism Association, said that the United States, in the name of religion, has been wielding evil assaults at China's religious policies and freedom situation simply by paying attention to hearsay materials and evidences.

"The U.S., in the pretext of human rights, is grossly meddling in China's internal affairs on issues such as Hong Kong and Falun Gong cult issues," Zhang said.

Is it still hearsay when we heard you say it yourself?

DefenseLINK News: Leaders Named for Interim Iraqi Government

Heh:

From the DOD today, we have this story on newly appointed leaders of the Iraqi government:

The interim government that will run Iraq after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty took shape today, as U.N. officials in Baghdad announced the members of the government's presidential council and recommended the composition of a new cabinet to the country's prime minister-designate.

Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, announced that Ghazi al-Yawar will be Iraq's president, and that Ibrahim Jaafari and Rowsch Shaways will serve as deputy presidents.

Brahimi also announced today that on May 31 he forwarded his recommendations for the composition of the new Iraqi cabinet to Prime Minister-designate Ayad Allawi. News reports indicated names of other new cabinet members and that the existing governing council had dissolved itself....

Brahimi's statement said consultations in forming the interim Iraqi government have been going on without interruption for the last four weeks. "These consultations have involved the (Iraqi) Governing Council, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and a very large number of representatives of the Iraqi public, including political parties, professional associations, trade unions, tribal and religious leaders, academics and intellectuals, women's and youth organizations, and others," the statement said.

As has been widely noted, the UN envoy was involved in exactly none of these decisions. Indeed, the US State Department was roundly ignored by the Iraqi Governing Council as well. The IGC took charge and, by unanimous internal consent, delivered a fait accompli about which State and the UN have to pretend to be happy.

It's always tempting to assume that a defeat for the UN is a victory for civilization, and in fact this appears to be the case. For more than a year the IGC has squabbled, quarreled, bickered and (especially the efforts of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, which caused the abandonment of a already-active plan to transfer power to a government chosen by local 'town hall' sessions) shot the process in the back. Suddenly, however, the IGC has stepped up and become exactly what it was supposed to be all along. It became a functional government, which has just dissolved itself to make way for its replacement.

What caused this? My personal suspicion is that it was the raid on Chalabi's INC. The official record of charges against him was that he was an Iranian agent, as proven by the fact that he had demonstrable ties to Iran and occasionally passed information their way. Every member of the IGC, considering this, realized that they themselves had at least as strong a connection to Iran as Chalabi--many of them, in fact, had been living in Iran this last little while.

We have, therefore, a new Iraqi government that is genuinely sovereign. It is free in the only way you can really be free--by driving off those who would control you. This is precisely what the government and the UN has claimed to desire all along.

Is it a good thing? Probably. It certainly limits the likelihood of civil war, as this new government has the unanimous support of the outgoing IGC, which includes some powerful figures who lend to the new government some measure of their credibility. We are informed that these new appointees have little support among the Iraqi people; but the CPA has less, and the UN even less than that. "Support us, or the foreign devils will return" is an appeal that is widely understood wherever you may travel. It is probably as good a start as could be hoped--certainly imperfect, but so is the world.

Sgt Hook: Lost?

Hook:

I'll refer you to Sgt Hook for a review of the situation in Afghanistan. Many of you who frequent the Milblogs ring will have seen this linked from the Mudville Gazette. In it Sgt. Hook takes on Robert Novak, and gives an impressive account of the 25th Infantry Division ("Tropic Lightning").

Wasp Switches to M-16 Rifle for Better Security

Not on the Same Page:

Today the Pacific Fleet's news service is reporting that the USS Wasp will be adopting a new battle rifle for her watchmen. We've all been eagerly awaiting the XM8: will the Navy get to field-test the weapons?

Well, no. Actually, the Wasp is finally catching up to the Army, by choosing the weapon that became the standard Army battle rifle in 1969.

After 15 years of use, USS Wasp's (LHD 1) ordnance division VG is finally saying goodbye to the ship's traditional rifle, the M-14, and hello to a more compact, quick-action rifle, the M-16.

The sudden[!] transition is expected to improve external shipboard security by allowing watch standers to intercept potential enemies with a faster and lighter weapon.

One wonders what they were using 15 years ago. "Muskets ready!"

Hall By Candle

Grim's Hall: Candles At Noon

Click here for the Memorial Day candle picture.

Semper Fidelis, De Oppresso Liber

Scotsman.com News - Scotland - War veterans' anger at BBC's D-Day snub

June 6, 1944: The Scots

The Memorial Day edition of The Scotsman contains this piece of news:

ANGRY D-Day war veterans last night branded BBC Scotland "fools" for not producing a single programme to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landings.

Scottish troops played a key role in events of June 6, 1944, including the taking of Pegasus Bridge by Royal Marines under the command of Lord Lovat.

Veterans of "the longest day" said they were stunned that the broadcaster had not followed the rest of the BBC which is broadcasting five hours of prime time drama and 16 hours of documentary and live coverage of events on the Normandy coast....

A spokeswoman for BBC Scotland confirmed there would be no commemorative Scottish D-Day programmes: "There's nothing coming from up here in Scotland."

BBC Scotland may forget, but we have not. Let us start by taking a look at Lord Lovat's commandos.

One thing you probably don't know about Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade is that D-Day wasn't their first amphibious assault. They did so well at Sword Beach in part because they'd been involved in a disaster. Operation Jubilee was "intended to determine the practicalities of seizing an enemy-held port by direct assault, as well as forcing the Germans to divert troops to the defence of Occupied Europe. The assault force comprised 4,961 Canadians from 4th and 6th Canadian Brigades, 1,057 British Army and Royal Marine Commandos, and 50 US Rangers." The Allies threw six thousand of their finest into 'the Grim Gap of Death' just to see if it would work. The notion was to land the commandos first, to silence the big coastal guns at Dieppe in advance of the Canadians' landing. Pretty much the only part of this assault that went as planned was Lord Lovat's end, where his Commandos quickly took the batteries to which they'd been assigned. Cameron Highlanders assigned to support him advanced two miles inland to prevent the German positions being reinforced.

Nothing else went close to plan, and the Canadian forces suffered 68% losses in the assault. The retreat to sea accomplished, the survivors brought back lessons for D-Day: the need for artificial harbors, to avoid the necessity of capturing one of the so-well defended natural ports.

When D-Day finally came some two years later, Lord Lovat and his men were returned to the fray. Elements of the 1st Special Service Brigade (under the command of Free French fighter Cpt. Phillipe Kieffer) landed at Sword Beach with the 22nd Dragoon Guards, who wore green berets to the landing because "helmets were not manly." The 22nd had been raised from a combination of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoons ("Quis Separabit?" or "Who shall separate [Ireland from the UK]?") and the Royal Inniskilling Dragoons ("Vestigia nulla retrorsum!" or "No Steps Backwards!"). They advanced to the bagpipes.

The Scots were, on this occasion, filling the role the poor Canadians had held in Jubilee. Rather than being tasked with commando raids to silence the batteries, they were themselves the assault force. Fortunately, the team assigned their old role did the job just as well as they had done in 1942. A team of paratroopers rushed the German positions just before the landing, managing to do--in the face of superior German defenders--what 4,000 pounds of bombs had failed to do: silence the guns. The paras were killed, and two of the guns repaired; but their work gave the Scots breathing space.

Lord Lovat's remaining forces landed at Ouistreham, clearing the town and taking the Pegasus bridge. This you will have seen in "The Longest Day," which also featured the living piper from the invasion itself.

Worth noting in the history is the Kieffer prayer, a bold devotional offered on the morn of the assault:

Lord, I shall be very busy today. I may forget about You, but do not Thou forget about me.

In this they recalled the fighters of the Bannockburn, which the Archdeacon of Aberdeen remembered in his writings of 1330:

The Scottismen commonally
Kneelt all doun, to God to pray,
And a short prayer, there made they,
To God to help them in that ficht.
And when the English king had sicht
Of them kneeland, he said in hy:
'Yon folk kneel to ask mercy.'
Sir Ingram said: 'Ye say sooth now,
They ask mercy, but not of you.'

Quotes enough. But if you would have more, I refer you to a Scot patriot-poet, who wrote "The Piper of D-Day."

White House Commission on Remembrance

Memorial Day:

Did you know that there was a White House Commission on Remembrance, tasked with (among other things) keeping Memorial Day alive? It is the only active Presidential Commission to be established by Congress, which demanded it by force of law just toward the end of the Clinton Administration. It establishes the "National Moment of Silence," on the apparent theory that a whole day of rememberance is too much to ask. The commission explains:

In May 1996, the idea of the Moment was born when children touring Washington, DC, were asked what Memorial Day meant. They responded, "That's the day the pools open!"

On December 28, 2000, by Public Law 106-579, the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance was established. The Moment has the personal support of the President of the United States.

The moment begins at 3 PM local time, wherever you happen to be.

Marine Moms and Dads has proposed in addition a candle ceremony, to be held at 8 PM Iraq time. This means lighting a candle in the morning here (Pacific -- 9am Mountain -- 10am Central -- 11am Eastern -- 12pm), but the purpose is ceremonial. It is intended to honor the Fallen, and the living who soldier on.

SITE

On Which Topic:

The post directly below brings up a matter of some importance. We've all heard the warnings of a terrorist strike inside the US this summer. If you have a citizen's duty to the common peace, you ought to be aware of what the risks are.

The SITE Institute has published a translated target-selection manual (PDF Warning). It's worth looking over.

Southern Gentleman, Marine, Germanic Tribalist -- A Different Point of View

"Both the Right and the Duty":

Bjorn Patsson has a note from Houston, TX:

Wielding baseball bats and sticks, a crowd in northwest Houston on
Sunday chased down a man suspected of preying on neighborhood children in recent weeks.

"We know him. The whole neighborhood knows him," said Carlos Gonzalez.

Residents told police the 44-year-old man tried to lure children into his van last week while it was parked at a nearby elementary school. They also accused him of hugging a 12-year-old boy on Saturday while he was wearing women's clothing....

The residents cornered the man in a fenced-in yard near Granite and Bolin until police arrived.

The homeowner called police and pleaded with the crowd to not harm
the man. Gonzalez said the man dropped a bundle on the ground that contained a girl's shirt wrapped around several pictures of small children.

Officers arrested the man when they discovered the van he was driving had been stolen. They found several pairs of socks, a boy's T-shirt and a pair of girl's underwear inside the vehicle.

Though arrested for car theft, detectives were attempting to determine if he had been under investigation on child molestation or related charges.

Outstanding. But what to make of the police's rather bureaucratic response?

While nobody was hurt during Sunday's pursuit, officers said residents shouldn't take the law into their own hands.

"You need to call law enforcement and let us handle that," said
Houston police officer S.A. Burk.

Actually, "the law" says specifically that citizens may arrest suspected felons and hold them for peace officers. This is called a "citizen's arrest," and it has roots as deep as the Anglo-Saxon legal system that predates the Norman Conquest. Far from 'taking the law into your own hands,' this is merely doing your duty as a citizen:

Historically, in Anglo Saxon law in medieval England citizen's arrests were an important part of community law enforcement. Sheriffs encouraged and relied upon active participation by able bodied persons in the towns and villages of their jurisdiction. From this legacy originated the concept of the posse comitatus which is a part of the United States legal tradition as well as the English. In medieval England, the right of private persons to make arrests was virtually identical to the right of a sheriff and constable to do so. (See Inbau and Thompson, Criminal Procedure, The Foundation Press, Mineola, NY 1974.

A strong argument can be made that the right to make a citizen's arrest is a constitutionally protected right under the Ninth Amendment as its impact includes the individual's natural right to self preservation and the defense of the others. Indeed, the laws of citizens arrest appear to be predicated upon the effectiveness of the Second Amendment. Simply put, without firepower, people are less likely going to be able to make a citizen's arrest. A random sampling of the various states as well as the District of Columbia indicates that a citizen's arrest is valid when a public offense was committed in the presence of the arresting private citizen or when the arresting private citizen has a reasonable belief that the suspect has committed a felony, whether or not in the presence of the arresting citizen.

In the most crime ridden spot in the country, our nation's capitol, District of Columbia Law 23- 582(b) reads as follows:

(b) A private person may arrest another -

(1) who he has probable cause to believe is committing in his presence -

(A) a felony, or

(B) an offense enumerated in section 23-581 (a)(2); or

(2) in aid of a law enforcement officer or special policeman, or other person authorized by law to make an arrest.

(c) Any person making an arrest pursuant to this section shall deliver the person arrested to a law enforcement officer without unreasonable delay. (July 29, 1970, 84 Stat. 630, Pub. L. 91-358, Title II, ss. 210(a); 1973 Ed., ss. 23-582; Apr. 30, 1988, D.C. Law 7-104, ss. 7(e), 35 DCR 147.)

In Tennessee, it has been held that a private citizen has the right to arrest when a felony has been committed and he has reasonable cause to believe that the person arrested committed it. Reasonable grounds will justify the arrest, whether the facts turn out to be sufficient or not. (See Wilson v. State, 79 Tenn. 310 (1833).

Contrast this to Massachusetts law, which while permitting a private person to arrest for a felony, permits those acquitted of the felony charge to sue the arresting person for false arrest or false imprisonment. (See Commonwealth v. Harris, 11 Mass. App. 165 (1981))

Kentucky law holds that a person witnessing a felony must take affirmative steps to prevent it, if possible. [The Official Code of Georgia, Annotated, says the same thing: this is "both the right and the duty" of the citizen--Grim] (See Gill v. Commonwealth, 235 KY 351 (1930.)

Indeed, Kentucky citizens are permitted to kill fleeing felons while making a citizen's arrest (Kentucky Criminal Code ss. 37; S 43, §44.) [Aside: Georgia's law permits citizens to use the same degree of force as peace officers in making arrests. Neither are permitted, however, to shoot fleeing suspects in the back.--Grim]

Utah law permits citizen's arrest, but explicitly prohibits deadly force. (See Chapter 76-2-403.)

Making citizen's arrest maliciously or without reasonable basis in belief could lead to civil or criminal penalties. It would obviously be a violation of a suspect's civil rights to use excessive force, to torture, to hold in unsafe or cruel conditions or to invent a reason to arrest for the ulterior motive of settling a private score.

Civil lawsuits against department stores, police departments, and even cult deprogrammers for false imprisonment are legend. Anybody who makes a citizens arrest should not use more force than is necessary, should not delay in turning the suspect over to the proper authorities, and should never mete out any punishment ... unless willing to face the consequences.

As the ability of the powers that be to hold society together and preserve law and order diminishes, citizen's arrests will undoubtedly be more common as a way to help communities cope with the wrongdoers in out midst.

Attempting to protect and defend the common peace is both the right and the duty of a citizen. The important thing is to make certain that you are aware of the specifics of your own state's laws on the subject, and to act in accord with them.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

Intimidation:

Doc Russia has a piece today on US Marines as The Terminator. Apparently a 155mm shell used against the Marines produced no casualties, and didn't even seriously interrupt the patrol:

Now, I don't know about you, but I think that that has got to be seriously intimidating. Think about it; Abdul and Ahmed find themselves a 155mm arty shell, and bury it in a street with a remote detonator. They wait for a long time for the Americans to show up. Eventually, sure enough, here comes a squad of Marines down the road. Here is their chance. It's their chance to shake the Americans up that much more. They know that Americans don't have a stomach for war (or so CNN would let them think). So....BAM!

Shell goes off. Marines react instantly, and set up a perimeter, ready to cut loose like the wrath of God. Nothing. Abdul and Ahmed have already fled like the cowards they are, and are surely patting themselves on the back for the damage they have done.

The next day, Abdul and Ahmed are sitting around their coffees smug in their cowardly attack, when what do they see; Marines. AGAIN. and as they draw closer, Ahmed and Abdul get that ugly sinking feeling in their guts when they realize that these Marines are the same ones from yesterday- bloody fatigues and all.

Somewhere inside Abdul and Ahmed start screaming because nothing human could have survived that IED,
.......and they are afraid that nothing human did.

Pone tuas armas!

Belmont Club

Wedding Party:

Belmont Club has a letter from a friend:

These people are members of a clan well known in Anbar province. They are supposedly "shepherds" but they are really more like livestock owners. The herds are large and the business is profitable. After the spring rains end, and they just did, these people and other clans like them follow the herds through the desert. They pick that time because the grazing is better. Along the way they have small houses in oases which serve as something between camps and residences.

They are also into smuggling. Mainly they smuggle livestock into Syria where the prices are better. Do they bring back guns and people? Probably. And it can’t be ruled out they may have been hired to slip some Syrians into the country. Whole families join this migration. And they do get married.

This afternoon a very popular Baghdad wedding singer was buried -- his family and the survivors say he was entertaining at the wedding. The reason so many women and children died is that as is tradition, the women and children sleep together, the men apart often in tents watching the stock.

Some of the people there had traveled from Ramadi for the wedding just as people travel to attend weddings anywhere. There's a romance in Arab culture about the desert. Some Americans get married by lakes or in mountains. The reason they returned to Ramadi, 250 miles away, is because that's the clan's base. And having been out there, there's very little between Ramadi and the Syrian-Jordanian border except a mosque-rest stop and Rutba. The US had Rutba sealed off.

They weren’t seeking medical attention. They brought the victims home to bury them in their version of [our family] cemetery. Ramadi is the "home" of all members of the Bou Fahad clan, which is the one of all the victims. There were at least a dozen children killed. One was decapitated. One little girl about [my granddaughter]'s age had holes all over her legs...and in her chest. One boy was missing half his face. Quite a place, Iraq.

If the wedding party victims are lying, they may be failing to mention that XXX-number of Syrian fighters were camped 100 meters down the road, or that they had rented the place to fighters two days before or something like that. My experience in these things has been that people wouldn’t be faking the deaths of their wives and children.

The accounts remain confusing after several days. Both sides are asserting their stories without relenting on any point, and both sides have presented visual evidence in their favor. It seems odd to give smugglers in al-Anbar an equal expectation of truth-telling with US General officers; on the other hand, the smugglers were there, the Generals weren't, and the visual evidence isn't decisive.

It is starting to look like the truth falls somewhere close to what this letter-writer describes: a desert camp, used by smugglers and livestock-traders, was also housing foreign fighters moving through to join the Iraqi insurgency. The attack appears to have been a carefully considered raid rather than a simple airstrike, which is suggestive that the site had been watched for a while beforehand by someone like the Special Forces, CIA SOG, or Marine Recon. Given the confident statements by US command elements, they probably filed equally confident reports requesting the raid, which targeted "two of twenty five structures in the village of Mukhradeeb by the Syrian border... [with] a combination of aerial ordnance, infantry assault and finally demolition charges."

If that is correct, what was not understood was the degree to which the camp was being used by desert clans, and not just insurgents. It is in some ways unsurprising that surveillence would not reveal that. We know that the tribal cultures in particular go out of their way to make women invisible and cloistered, which would drastically cut down on the ability of our spotters to get a sense of families being in the compound. What you could plausibly see from a hide site would be lots of men moving around; you should be able to ID the types of heavy weapons, if they were exposed to view at any point.

If they had that, plus some local intel that suggested this camp was being used to insert foreign fighters, that would be enough to justify the raid on military grounds. If the cultural predisposition to keeping the women hidden and indoors caused the recon team not to be aware that there were lots of women and children in camp, that's a tragedy but not an atrocity--a tragedy in which the tribesmen carry most of the blame, for having chosen to take money to smuggle in foreign fighters and weapons.

The US military is at fault only for not being able to see through walls, as they certainly would not have attacked a building full of women and kids if they had realized what was in it. We know the raid was discriminate because it attacked only the two structures in the camp. At last, there's little to do--assuming this overview is roughly correct--except to pay the diaya for the dead, and warn the tribes sternly against aiding our enemies. The only certain way to avoid such tragedies, in a culture that hides its women and girls, is not to allow your camp to be used by the enemy.

Photos from Syrian border

Syrian Border Photos:

Multinational Corps Iraq has released this series of photos of material captured in the attack on the Syrian border. It includes a number of weapons, including .30 caliber machineguns and RPGs; passports from the Sudan and elsewhere; what appear to be drugs and needles; and cash.

Letter:

A Letter:

A letter home from a US Marine. Thanks to JHD, as usual.

Dad -

You probably heard that Mike was wounded this week.  We take rockets and mortars from time to time and he got caught outside when a rocket came in.  He was lucky as he only got hit with some shrapnel in the back of the head.  Grateful that it was only a flesh wound.  He was medivaced to a surgical unit.  I got word that he was going to be medevaced to the surgical unit on my camp and went by that evening looking for him only to find out he went to a different treatment facility. They put some staples in his head and he hopped a helo to return to his camp and was back at work that night.   He is a tough guy.  In fact, I actually saw him yesterday as I had to go to his position for some business.  It is always a quietly thankful moment when you see a guy who has been wounded or who you think was wounded and he turns out to be ok.  Mike was actually embarrassed about the whole thing and shrugged off any mention of it as he feels like he is not "doing enough" right now. 

We only were able to talk for a short time and I swear that within a few minutes I had forgotten about the whole thing until we shook hands when I had to go.  He turned to leave and I saw the zipper of staples on the back of his head.  He was going back to work.

You would be very proud of the Marines as they have been able to switch gears from intense offensive operations back to what we call "stability operations."  Stability operations simply translates to getting out into the countryside and teaching Iraqi Police and soldiers how to do their jobs.  More importantly, our priority is just making contact with them and trying to instill a sense of confidence and pride in what they are doing.  As I have shared with you over the past 15 months or so, it is hard to imagine trying to establish a police force or "national guard" (the equivalent of what we are working with) out of a population that has never even seen such entities as we understand them.  If you said National Guard in Missouri, most people would think "the guys who show up when there is a flood, blizzard or tornado to help people."  Or maybe after 9/11, that guy at the drug store who left for Iraq for a year as part of an engineer unit. 

Here, they simply have no paradigm of what such a force is.  We have to sit down and go over the most basic principles of protecting the people by being there to help when there is a crisis on one hand and getting out on night ambush to keep the muj out of the village on the other.  As a whole they did disintegrate or worse during the April fighting.  I have heard a lot of false exaggeration about the fact that the Iraqi Army would not stand and fight with the Marines in Falluja or the Army in Baghdad.  Nonsense. 

I could tell you stories of individual heroics of Iraqi soldiers.  One specific example is of an Iraqi SgtMaj who came into our lines during the first days of fighting in Falluja.  He made his way through the mujahadeen and risked being killed by us to tell us that he was concerned about the ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) armory in town.  He knew it was only a matter of time until the muj went for the armory to take the weapons.  Honestly, I would have thought that they had already done it as the police stations and every other good piece of ground seemed to be occupied by the muj by that time.  In short, he wanted to let us know that he was going back into the town to get the weapons.  The Marines asked him if he wanted us to help.  No.  He only wanted us to take the weapons from him when he came back through.  This guy took a couple young Iraqi soldiers with a truck and drove back through our lines into the hornets nest of Falluja.  He went to the armory, emptied the weapons and ammo stored there and brought it back out through the fighting to us.  We expected him to want to stay with us or to move on to Baghdad or some other safe area.  He refused and stated that he was going back into the city as that was where his duty was.  Not a coward by even the most cynical standard.

We had a group that showed up shortly thereafter.  You have probably heard about them as they came out of Baghdad and on the way were ambushed a couple of times.  By the time they made it here only 200 of 700 were in their ranks.  I know that the public story is that they folded after a couple of days of fighting and disintegrated.  They actually made it through three days of fighting.  Not just taking a few rounds, they held through accurate machine gun fire, mortars and multiple assaults.  They also moved forward and occupied positions on the Marines' flanks.  After three days, we pulled them out.  The Marines will tell you that they did a hell of a job. 

The Marine Corps has been around for 230 years.  We have many battles and history under our belts that instills in the Marines a profound sense of duty and tradition.  Further, the culture has made peer pressure into a positive art form.  Words like "selflessness" are not only used but are taught to every recruit.  Show me another place in our society where a 20 year old guy worries more about letting his buddy down than his own well-being.  This is true across the board.  There are probably a few other places left that instill this but not too many where it holds together when the rubber meets the road.

The Iraqis had none of this going into Falluja.  In fact they had and continue to have just the opposite.  They live in a world of terror.  For decades, Sadaam played one neighbor against another, one tribe against another, one sect of Islam against another and one race against another.  Therefore there is never a sense of safety to the Iraqis even within their own tribes.  Here if you join the police or the army, you are eventually approached by the terrorists and threatened.  If they think you are a leader, they tell you that they will kill you and your family.  The orders are simple, look the other way when you are on duty and leave when the terrorist show up.  If you don't they will kill you and probably your family.

Imagine that young guy who joins the ICDC or police.  He may be somewhat of an idealist when he gets out of our initial training but when he shows up to his unit, the muj have already infiltrated it and immediately make it clear that there is no hope of survival if he does not do exactly what they say.  For good measure and effect, they regularly assassinate Iraqi policemen and soldiers just to make it clear that they will kill them on a whim.  The guys that were in place prior to April lived in that world.  We are working against it still.  Without the tradition and culture of the Marine Corps and constantly thinking that their very presence next to us may get their families killed, I am amazed they made it for an hour much less than three days.  We decided to pull them because this place needs young patriots.  It does not need us to put them into a position where they will be ground down in intense combat or maybe to be killed when it is over.  Hopefully they can be a nucleus for tomorrow's leaders.  Time will tell.

We are back at it with the police and ICDC.  With us are retired police officers from the US and other civilians who are trying to contribute.  Police forces back in California are sending us equipment and expertise on training.  The lesson that we have learned for this iteration is for us to focus first and foremost on our true strength and that is the character and decency of our Marines.  Force of personality and personal example are more important to us right now leading up to the ineivitable violence this summer than the right radio for the Iraqis.  For what it is worth, I think that is the right approach.  If we demonstrate the best aspects of the Marines who they see every day, we are giving the young Iraqi men something that can never be taken from them.  They are seeing the best part of a free people.  Hopefully the lights will go on.

The enemy is confused right now.  He goes to bed convinced he is going to win because he watches the Al Jazeera and then the US media and believes that we are a weak willed people who can be terrorized and who have a penchant for self-loathing.  Then, he wakes up and he comes across a coalition check point and he sees a young Soldier or Marine who stands there like a rock and exudes strength and conviction.  The same terrorist who was in the mosque the night before in a frenzy is now subjugated by the presence of a guy who does not match up with what he has been told and sees on TV.  It must be confusing as all get out.  Every day, he will continue to see in three dimensions the best that our society has to offer and their is no amount of sound bites that will trump that in the end.

In another email, I will share with you what I think is going to happen this summer.  It will be a tough pull.  However, we are prepared.  We get reports of impending muj attacks on Marine positions and I am amazed at the universal response - "Good, that means we don't have to try to find them tonight."  There is plenty of fight left in the guys.  On a lighter note, the Iraqi people are coming back more and more to approach the Marines.  When they are in private, they regularly tell us that we cannot leave and that they "need" us to stay.  Of course they cannot say that publicly for reasons above.

I will close with something that was on my mind this morning when I punished myself by watching CBS news.  I saw the anchor come on and just before he spoke, I told my rack mate "Lets see what the opening line is going to be...."  Sure enough before he said anything else, he said "It just keeps getting worse and worse...."  Yes, he was talking about Iraq.  Honest to God we laughed at him.  I'm not kidding.  It is getting to the point where the Marines are getting past their anger at the talking heads and are laughing.  To really get a rise out of them, requires a retired military officer who betrays his oath and stokes the fear mongering.

Do you remember when I came back last fall and people would ask about WMD and I would say that I did not care if we ever found any?  The day we found the mass grave is vivid to me still.  We found it up near the Iranian boarder.  Very quickly people came from miles and miles away.  We stood and watched the family members digging up bones and clutching remains as they sat in the dirt, rocked back and forth and cried.  They were adamant that we should come over and look as they dug them up.  Every single body had its hands and feet wired together with ROMEX.  Each skull had a bullet hole in it except for a few that were smashed with a club or rifle butt.  There were clearly men but also women and children.  The grave never made the news as there were no media with us and it was small by Iraq standards.  One detail that I found particularly outrageous was that the assassins left the identifications on the bodies as if they were so arrogant that it never occured that someday, someone would dig up the bodies and hold them accountable.  I will never forget it.

That memory is vivid and relevant to me today as I feel like I was blessed to have been there and see it personally.  To the people that cry that we should leave Iraq because we came here for the wrong reasons I would say "I don't care."  Honestly, if I found out tomorrow that everyone in government knowingly lied and brought us here because Iraq grows the best sunflower seeds in the world it would not matter to me.  We liberated a people from a regime that will go down in history as one of the most brutal ever.  That would be enough.

However, we are now in a life and death struggle with an enemy who wants nothing more for us to leave so that they can bring their own brand of terror to the same people.  Our biggest failings have been that, as a coalition, we have not been able to overcome our own-ham handed actions and horrible mistakes/crimes and simply convince the Iraqi people that we do in fact want to leave them a free and prosperous country where there is hope.  The most successful way to do that is to continue to go out and show them every day and not to cut and run.  And you know what?  It is working.  People are coming to us and talking to us even in the face of Abu Garayb and in the real threat of their own death. 

Inside this country right now, there are extremists who have set up courts where in one room,  they try Iraqis and in the next they kill them minutes later.  Not fantasy - reality.  Again, the death sentence?  Accepting payment for damage we have done in fighting or in an accident.  Taking a job working on a coalition base.  Having a brother who has done his job in the police or ICDC.

Are people so naive as to think that if we left, things would get better?  The country would implode and thousands of people would be killed.  When the dust settled, a more dangerous Iraq would emerge and we would be even more hated throughout the world.  It is that simple.  We came here to help these people and at the same time to make the world a safer place for free people everywhere.  If we leave too early, the people will suffer horribly and the world will have taken one giant step backward.  Maybe we are slow on the uptake but it is pretty clear here what the right thing to do is and it is not to abandon the people to the terrorists.

I understand that some people are simply frightened by the violence - for good reason.  To them I would say, hang in there.  I see people every hour of every day that make me sure we are strong enough to be successful.  To people that say our agenda is anything other than what I have written, I say that it does not matter because the young men and women doing the heavy lifting are doing it for the right reason and at the end of the day, the Iraqi people will benefit.  They may never like us while we are here as there are thousands of years of culture that separate us.  The fact that we are not popular does not change our moral obligation.

Please tell everyone that we are now bathing in coffee and loving it.  I got on the Greenside yesterday. I sincerely appreciate the well wishes and share them with the guys (along with the coffee).  I also appreciate the hopes that I keep my limbs as that lines right up with my own goals as well.  If I could ask anything about the website, my guess is that people go to it to find out what is really happening.  They also probably read the message board to be reassured that other people are holding the line.  Regardless of what is posted there that may seem negative, please refrain from insulting someone who voices their opinion.  Of course, if someone really gets froggy they are more then welcomed to go to boot camp, earn their ticket over here and put their money where their mouth is. 

Love,

Dave

Southern Appeal

Indian Elections:

Irony abounds: one of the best quick summaries I've seen of the fallout from India's recent election comes from Southern Appeal, that collection of gentleman lawyers from Alabama. They are normally a good source for US legal commentary, but apparently their interests are wider than I suspected. Well done.

Marine Corps News> Marines capture, destroy large Iraqi insurgents' weapons stockpiles

Boom:

I've been eaten alive between work (who knew a Datuk was a kind of Malaysian knight?) and the move. However, our faithful spotter JHD has been keeping my in-box full of updates from the front. Take a look at these captured weapons, which were reportedly found via local intel. He sends also a pair of stories on USMC small boats. Seems like a pretty good gig to me, no pun intended.

Playboy Foundation Announces the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards

Playboy Scientists:

The Playboy Foundation has just given a "First Amendment Award" to the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood. Although ironic, the award is deserved. Aftergood publishes Secrecy News, occasionally cited by Grim's Hall, a publication that works to keep the citizens as informed as is reasonable and legal about the projects the government classifies. While respecting the need to protect such secrecy when American lives and interests are at stake, SN also believes that the citizens have a duty to be aware of, and therefore able to control, the government's activities. As I agree with that sentiment completely, I congratulate Mr. Aftergood on his newfound award.

Yahoo! Mail - grimbeornr@yahoo.com

In Iraq:

It's short both in length and detail, but the Naval news has a clip from the commander of the 2/2 Marines, 1MARDIV, I MEF. He says:

These Marines work under incredibly austere conditions, under the constant threat of lethal engagement, and they make miracles happen. Because of that, I know we're winning the fight against Terrorism. I know it because of that, and because I see it in the eyes of the Iraqi children.

Just a sound bite, of course, but it's good to know he feels that way.

Hat tip to JHD, who has been sending lots of emails loaded with good stuff lately. I'm still in the midst of moving, so light posting for a few more days.

UPDATE: The piece has moved to a new location. You can also find the archive of all past news videos if you like.

Getting Out the Vote:

Getting Out the Vote:

Everyone knows it's an election year, and everyone probably remembers what happened to military absentee ballots in 2000. For those causes, the USMC has established a voting homepage for Marines and those interested in USMC issues. Any of you who are planning to vote by absentee ballot will find all the necessary forms and information there. Vote early, and read the FAQ to make it as hard as possible for certain officials to have your ballots disqualified.

Hat tip to JarHeadDad, who is doing Yeoman work in keeping us all on the ball about these issues. Thanks for that.

DefenseLINK News: New Commands in Iraq to Replace Combined Joint Task Force

Keeping Things Straight:

Now that we have two new commands in Iraq instead of CJTF-7, how are we going to keep them straight in our heads? It's worse since they have such similiar names: Multinational Corps Iraq and Multinational Force Iraq.

Kimmitt explained that Multinational Corps Iraq will focus on the tactical fight -- the day-to-day military operations and the maneuvering of the six multinational divisions on the ground. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz will command the corps. Meanwhile, Multinational Force Iraq will focus on more strategic aspects of the military presence in Iraq, such as talking with sheiks and political leaders, and on training, equipping and fielding Iraqi security forces.

So, to recap, the Corps will be doing most of the fighting. Hmm... maybe that won't be so hard to remember after all. :)

Belmont

The Belmont Club:

I'm finally getting around to doing what I should have done a while ago. I'm adding the Belmot Club to the top of the "Other Halls" list. Wretchard's is some of the best thinking out there on Iraq and elsewhere, and his analysis has been excellent at least since the start of the siege of Fallujah. I have mostly posted links to the things he writes with which I disagree, but it's worth noting that all of what he says is of high value.

Today he has several pieces that are worthwhile. I especially liked the reference to Greenmantle. I read Greenmantle while living in the People's Republic of China. The PRC pretty much bans English-language fiction written more recently than a century ago. As a result, during my time there I read a lot of classics that I hadn't gotten around to before--Moby Dick, Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps, the Arabian Nights, some of Shakespeare, and a lot of other things too. It was extremely valuable being cut off from popular culture for so long.

Greenmantle is a candid look at the mindset of First-World-War Britian. It was written by a fellow, John Buchan, who was the Tom Clancy of his day. It's filled with what John Derbyshire calls "the same mixture of disgust, paternalism, and respect that one finds in Kipling -- that was, in fact, normal among thoughtful, humane Englishmen at the height of the Empire." At first it strikes a modern American as ugly, encompassed as we are in a culture that forbids expression of disgust for cultural differences. Perhaps because I encountered it while living myself in a foreign nation, dealing each day with the clash of cultures, I came to appreciate what was indeed humane and valuable in that attitude. It's almost a necessary stance, if you're going to be able to deal respectfully with people whose culture includes and encourages things your own finds repulsive--including, especially, the treatment of women.