Marshall and I Agree On Something:

From Talking Points Memo:

"My sons are 25 and 30," Representative Barbara Cubin (R-Wyoming) said on the House floor a few days ago. "They are blond-haired and blue-eyed. One amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug treatment. So does that mean if you go into a black community, you cannot sell a gun to any black person, or does that mean because my ... "

At this point, Representative Mel Watt (D-North Carolina) cut Cubin off and demanded her remarks be stricken from the record for implying that blacks are presumptive drug addicts.

Where's the Outrage, John Marshall asks. Here, sir. But, it's good to see Southern Democrats on the right side of the race question these days.

Tautology watch:

This story, from allAfrica.com, is titled Fighting in East Hinders Disarmament. That is something like saying "Continued War Hinders Peace," isn't it?

Actually, it neatly captures my reasons for thinking peacekeepers would be wasted in Afghanistan. Advocates of "peackeeping" don't always seem to recognize that you have to have a peace first. If you don't want to see headlines like "Continued War Hinders Peackeeping," you need to accept that soldiers must first make a peace before peacekeepers can keep it. That can be done through a negotiated settlement, certainly, rather than conquest--but it has to be DONE, if peacekeeping is to work.

But they said the border was closed!

Or perhaps these are humanitarian assassins coming from Syria.

Nuclear Baghdad:

Mansoor Ijaz, from today's "Corner" at National Review Online:

Whatever the Marines found there, and none of us know for sure until CentCom confirms what it was, it was dangerous beyond the limits Iraq was compelled to remain within by the United Nations and the IAEA. Saddam's last acts have always been formulated by the "if I can't have it, you can't have it either..." thesis. Let us hope he didn't break the seals at Tuwaitha, and in a last ditch act of terror, decide to take enough uranium to make multiple dirty bombs, deploy them in Iraqi cities for later detonation once civilian life returns to normal.

Lance Corporal Ian Malone:

Toward the end of the article, John Derbyshire cites a remarkable young man: Lance Corporal Ian Malone, KIA in Basra. I've sat through some several renditions of "Kevin Barry," whose young innocent life was ended by British tyrants merely because he shot a policeman in the back. Here's a martyr worth the poetry, if poets live who will stand to the tale. I am myself a poor poet, and will try:

Sandstorms settled in the south
of that sour place,
and terror-men opened wide a mouth
etched in a hate-filled face.

The rifle-spit struck down Malone
and he in a moment gave
a life well-lived, alone,
to set men free of the grave.

In later days men drew down
statues from on high;
they struck Iraqi ground
so dust and cheer could fly.

What, one Irish fighting man
to free millions from cold chains?
Not noble words, not gracious plan
could make real such gains.

Or--Is our time so coy,
so wild and free a thing?
Not Harvey nor Kelly, boy
of Killarn, not the Brian King

Freedom bought at such a cost,
where glory's priced so steep:
Where the name of each good man lost
Can memory's Herald keep.

But They've Always Said They Had No Control...

Sinn Fein's control over the Provisional IRA is brought into question by current events. Sinn Fein has always denied that they were, as they are always said to be, the "political wing of the IRA." Just patriots, so they'll tell you. Pass the half-and-half (we won't call them Black and Tans here), and that little coin-box with the white cap.

I'll Take a Hit:

This deck of cards is the best idea I've seen out of the war, and it's been a war of good ideas. Now my only question is--where can I get one?

Syria:

The Voice of America reports that Syria is closing its Iraqi border to all but humanitarian traffic. Meanwhile, on that border, US airstrikes and Special forces troops are engaged in continuing operations against fleeing members of the former Iraqi government and anyone trying to slip in to help them:

Syrian fighters have turned up on the Iraqi battlefield--one was found hiding in a Baghdad refrigerator on Wednesday--and other Arab fighters have crossed into Iraq via Syria to attack the U.S.-led coalition.

On Thursday, after Saddam's regime collapsed in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, it appeared some were returning the way they came: A correspondent for Al-Jazeera at the Syria-Iraq border said he had met Palestinian and Syrian volunteer fighters at the border who had abandoned their positions in Mosul and were returning home.

Meanwhile, the good people in San Francisco are convinced that Damascus is next.

Nuclear Baghdad:

Jed Babbin doubts it, at least not at this location.

Nuclear Baghdad:

More on the nuclear complex the Marines have located. The IAEA has apparently inspected the above-ground site numerous times, and had done some examination of some undergound facilities; but an underground complex is something they had never discovered, "despite persistent rumors." Interesting read.

Meanwhile, the Scotsman is reporting that we may have found plutonium. PittsburghLIVE has a more up to date and complete version of the story.

"The Onion a trouv� la solution"

Le Figaro discovers America's Finest News Source. At least the French knew it was satire.

So what are we doing with Syria?

I'm still unsure myself. We're obviously not worried about provoking them, having cut their oil, taken a town right on their border, had Rumsfeld warn them twice on military cooperation with the former government of Iraq, and even hinted that Syria might be next if they didn't behave according to our wishes. That last article mentions an unnamed military source who claims that we are drawing up plans to invade Syria--indeed, we almost certainly are, if we haven't already. As I said recently about Pakistan:

If Pakistan falls, you can bet we have a plan for dealing with it--one that likely involves Navy SEALs. In fact, we probably have ten plans, and the resources to carry them out. The president--whoever he might be on the occasion--need only choose among them if the time comes.

We have lots of people who make their careers on drawing up contingency plans; it doesn't mean we're going to do anything about them. I wouldn't be surprised to find that we had drawn up plans to invade parts of Europe under certain circumstances. Sure reads nastily in the press, though.

Actually, I suspect we are going to invade Syria, though only informally. Jed Babbin suggested it today in his warblog on National Review Online, with regard to assassinating/capturing leaders of the former Iraqi government. I think we'll see a cross-border situation like we have with Afghanistan and Pakistan right now: militants, terrorists, and other groups are likely to try to hide on the other side of the Syrian border. We will hunt and kill them, and we will officially deny doing so "except in hot pursuit." In fact, though, we'll do it gladly. But will there be a formal war with Syria?

I honestly don't know. Watch Rumsfeld, though, for the answer--if he actually says so, rather than merely hinting at it, then we're going.

Al Jazeera:

"Objective and balanced global news coverage," indeed. Today's headlines include a story about Rumsfeld and Syria, whose subhead is: "Emboldened by US military action in Iraq, hawks have turned their sights on Iran and Syria." Which hawks? Well, if you go and read the story, you find out that it's really just one guy: Michael Ledeen. But Ledeen, though a member of the American Enterprise institute, is mostly a journalist who writes for the Jewish World Review. He's not a member of the administration. All the quotes from actual government officials explicitly deny military action against Syria or Iran. The only counterexample al Jazeera could find was this:

It was widely believed that Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to Syria and Iran when he said in a speech that Washington would �do whatever it takes� to defeat terrorism and must confront nations that sponsor it.

More on the Syrian oil pipeline:

Syrian oil exports are dropping by half following the US destruction of the Iraq-Syria oil pipeline. It's only a coincidence, say the Syrians, who deny that they were ever illegally importing oil from Iraq. (NB: That is, "illegally" according only to several UN resolutions. Since the UN has demonstrated disinterest in enforcing its mandates, as far as I can tell, it's not really illegal at all.)

War Has Gamblers Folding:

So says ABC News in this report. Well, not me. Those of you who have lost bets can post your forfeits to my PO box; email if you need it. I wrote to the one of you who may have won one earlier, and as discussed, we'll wait for better evidence before deciding.

New war bets welcome. I'll consider anything, but you may have to take odds if you want to lay really strange bets.

Nuclear Baghdad?

The wife's nightmare scenario is not something I am particularly concerned about, given the apparent collapse of what little command and control remained with enemy forces. The collapse of the former government of Iraq today should preclude the use of weapons of mass destruction, including nukes if they existed. Someone's got to carry out the orders, after all.

Still, this report that the 1st Marine Division has captured an undeclared nuclear site in Iraq is interesting.

Afghan situation:

The Post also has its lead editorial on the Afghan situation.

Seen from a complacent Washington, Afghanistan still may look better than it did before the U.S. intervention. But experts following the country say they worry about a steady unraveling, much like that which preceded the Taliban's seizure of power in the mid-1990s. The symptoms are similar: Outside the capital, warlords and bandits rule the country, sometimes battling each other and regularly robbing their fellow citizens at highway checkpoints. At the borders, aid shipments and "customs collections" on imported goods are diverted to the warlords, depriving the central government of resources and revenue. The opium trade is booming. In some places, the Taliban's extreme practices, including the persecution of women, have been reimposed.

All of these phenomena have flourished in a vacuum knowingly created by the Bush administration, which refused to support the deployment of peacekeeping forces outside Kabul. Rather than disarm and disable the warlords, U.S. commanders continue to depend on them and even to finance some of them.

We need Afghanistan as a floursing, stable state. We aren't going to get there with peacekeepers, though--as demonstrated in the Bosnian conflict, peacekeepers' rules of engagement quickly turn them into "armed hostages," as my professor Tom Pearce used to say. Securing the borders in a rugged country, and pacifying rival clans at war, that isn't the work of peacekeepers. Let's be of a serious mind about this. Peacekeepers have their place, but this isn't it.

Disarming the Afghans isn't the solution either. For one thing, it will create a tremendous amount of hostility. All of the various cultures in Afghanistan have strong traditions that bearing arms is part of manhood. There can be no faster way to turn the country against us than to try to enforce the Washington Post's ideals of gun control. Those ideas don't even fly in the American South, whose citizens get a vote in any such laws. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Southerner say he'd take up arms against the government rather than let them seize his guns, I'd be a rich man. Such ideas are definitely not going to fly in Afghanistan, where they would be imposed by an outside force, on a culture with at least as strong a tradition of arms-bearing.

In the short term, we can carry on fighting opposition forces with the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces. In the long term, though, we need to found an organization like the Texas Rangers. That link is to a site on the history of the Rangers, who began in conditions not unlike those of modern Afghanistan. The Rangers began as a military force, and have evolved over 180 years to become a police force. We are, hopefully, looking at a shorter span of evolution for the Afghan situation, but the Texas Rangers are the best model. Small companies of rangers, with what amounts to martial-law authority but with backing from the central government, can act as a military force in the early days, to secure the borders and destroy the bands of warlords hostile to the government. They need to be skilled, trained in mountain warfare, and capable of moving quickly and acting on independent authority.

In time, as the Texas Rangers, they can evolve into a police force, once the situation on the ground changes. To start with, a mixed American-Afghan company would be ideal, trained by the US Army's 75th Rangers (who are closer in form and function to the early Texas Rangers than the modern Texas Rangers). As the methods and the ideals of the Rangers become ingrained, we can move to an all-Afghan regiment. Such a force, highly mobile and well trained, loyal to the government and able to enforce its will, would be just what is needed for a wild and difficult frontier.

The Metro:

The Washington Post reports this morning on a possible al Qaeda threat to the Washington, D.C. Metro. It sounds dubious to me, but mass panic in tightly constrained areas gets ugly, quickly.

I would be remiss...

... as a proud citizen of the Great State of Georgia, which gave the world Sir James Edward Oglethorpe, Lachlan McIntosh, (especially) James Jackson, and Doc Holliday; and as a brother to a UGA alumnus; if I did not include a link to this picture of a UGA flag flying over a Saddamite palace in Baghdad.

Go, Mighty Dawgs.

Alas, John, that I can't agree:

John Derbyshire is my second favorite conservative columnist, after Mark Steyn. John, whose occasional correspondance I consider an honor, has this to say about Iraq:

"This may, of course, be premature. I am writing this on Monday afternoon. It is well-nigh certain that brave young troopers from the Coalition forces - aye, and brave young Iraqis, and poor helpless noncombatants too - will be maimed and killed before the business is wrapped up and done. It is possible something large and ghastly will happen. I hope you will forgive me for setting these things aside and saying: Even so, we have won. There is nothing so large and ghastly it could change that."

I wish I could agree. One possibility remains, the one that has been bothering my wife all along. The Iraqi information minister said today that our soldiers must surrender or be "burned in their tanks." His statements have been delusional all along, and there is no special reason to think this is more than bravado. Yet... there is a chance that there are atomic "doomsday devices" in Baghdad. That the Iraqi government might have these is possible, and indeed, such weapons do not need to be tested. Detonation of such weapons could take out a division or more of forces inside Baghdad, which would be a loss of such magnitude as to raise the cost of victory beyond what we would readily pay again. Hopefully, though, if such weapons exist at all they are known to our intelligence people, and have been priorities of all those Special Operations gentlemen in country.

It strikes me as highly unlikely. Still--it is not impossible.