Need to be More Ruthless…

How can we expect to do well in Iraq when, after relieving six insurgents of multiple explosive devices, we just let them go? No way to run a railroad…

The United States-led coalition in Iraq said in a statement on Thursday that an Iraqi security patrol had intercepted six “heavily loaded donkeys” carrying dozens of land-mines near the Iran-Iraq border.

“While on routine patrol in eastern Diyala Province, five kilometres from the Iraq-Iran border, Iraqi security forces intercepted six heavily loaded donkeys”, according to a statement posted on the website of the Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I).

“Upon investigation, the patrol discovered six donkeys carrying 53 anti-tank landmines and one anti-tank projectile”, the statement said…

The donkeys were later released unharmed into the local area.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Oh my, we are breathlessly informed in the National Post that Mark Steyn’s antiliberal and anti-Western values book is–despite an endorsement by Mona Charen!–being “boycotted” by Canada’s largest book chain. How desperately has Indigo struggled to keep this second-rate theater critic’s new political rant out of the hands of Canadian wingnuts and mouth-breathers?

Mr. Steyn has charged that Indigo and its chief executive officer, Heather Reisman, underestimated demand for his book as a means of “boycotting” it.

His publisher made several attempts to persuade Indigo that its first order of several hundred books was inadequate, he said.

[...]

The company offered America Alone for sale as soon as it came out in September, but it quickly sold out, she said. Ms. Gaulin could not say how many books were originally ordered.

“Upon realizing we had grossly underestimated the demand for this title, Indigo immediately reordered several thousand more books, but Mr. Steyn’s U.S. publisher was unable to fulfill our order because they, too, underestimated demand in the U.S. and Canada,” Ms. Gaulin said.

Worst. “Boycott.” Ever.

Friday Cat Blogging

(l to r) Henry, Emma, and Herbert.

Although Henry may appear to be the aggressor here, the picture does not accurately convey the 12 years of petty, accumulated provocations from his sister, who is almost solely to blame for the swat she is mere nanoseconds from receiving. Herbert, meanwhile — believing that conflicts outside his own bubble of personal space are inconsequential — has momentarily adopted a neutral stance. Little does he realize that in what we like to call “the feline world,” regional disputes often escalate rapidly and unpredictably, drawing in the two canine superpowers, whose combined throw-weight hovers just over the 200-pound threshold. The broader structure of law and order, meanwhile, has completely broken down. The addition of a new, smaller human into the household has distracted and exhausted the usual brokers, whose reputation for honesty and fair-dealing has suffered in direct proportion to their declining ability to dispense treats and affection. The resulting instability has encouraged rogue cats like Emma to pursue risky, adventurist policies designed solely to maximize her own advantage.

Blood and Guts Peters

Everybody’s talking about Ralph Peters “give up on Iraq” bit, and I think that Glenn and Spencer, among others, have demonstrated how dishonest and incoherent his new position is. Peter’s previous argument is also worth some attention, as he summarizes what has come to be the new dodge on the war, the idea that we would have succeeded if we had just been more willing to massacre us some Iraqis.

This argument has become quite common, and goes something like this:

The war was lost because we won too quickly and too cleanly. If the Iraqis had suffered mass casualties on the same level as, say, the Germans or Japanese in World War II, they would have become quiet and docile. Domestic liberals and international organizations can be blamed for our failure since it is they who prevented us from using the necessary brutality.

The argument is popular because it places the blame for defeat squarely upon those least deserving, the UN and the Democratic Party. Moreover, it attributes the problem (implicitly or explicitly) to the fact that liberals aren’t really man enough to acknowledge that slaughtering people is often a necessary part of war. Finally, it depends not in the slightest on any historical analysis. If you don’t present any data, then no data can be critiqued or properly analyzed. All we really have is an assertion of a relationship (more killing=more docility) with a couple of data points invoked (Germany and Japan) while literally thousands of points are ignored. For example, one might mention that, while Germany and Japan suffered heavy casualties in World War II, those casualties were considerably lower than those suffered by other countries that continued to struggle, including Poland, China, and Russia. One might also note that Vietnam suffered casualties far in excess (corrected for population) of either Japan or Germany, yet continued to fight long after the United States had backed away.

So, what we have is an argument that has appalling policy implications (why worry about precision guidance, since killing a few extra is a good thing?), has virtually no evidentiary support, and isn’t even logically compelling (it’s unclear why people react to their neighbors deaths by surrendering, rather than by resisting more vigorously). In short, it’s an argument that’s tailor made for the wingnutosphere.

Cross-posted to TAPPED.

Charles Johnson, Genius

As a follow-up to Dave’s post, get this from reactionary fusion jazz musician and Trainwreck Media founder Chuck Johnson. The New York Times article says this:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Johnson:

Is the New York Times actually conceding that Saddam was just a year away from having a nuclear weapon in 2002?

No.

This has been easy answers to idiotic questions posed by dead-ender hacks.

…An Army of Morons.

…to his credit, unlike many of his XFL Media colleagues Glenn Reynolds is literate. To his discredit, he claims that the fact that Hussein was close to nuclear weapons in 1991 “undercuts that whole “Bush lied about WMD” thing.” Um, run that by me again–the fact that Hussein could have had nukes in 1992 makes him an immediate security risk in 2003 how exactly? We seem to be back to our old warblogger friend, the conflation of will and capacity: whether or not Hussein had, or could plausibly acquire, nuclear weapons is beside the point because he really wanted to have them. Similarly, if I announced that I really wanted to marry Gretchen Mol, you should send the wedding gifts immediately!

Friday Cat Blogging… Starbuck

Way to go

Looks like Office of Special Plans: The Home Edition has been shut down. Who would have thought that dumping 48,000 boxes of unprocessed, unauthenticated Iraqi documents onto the internets would generate — to use a term of art — a howling clusterfuck? Then again, I guess the misreading of unfiltered intelligence to reach wacky, unsubstantiated, faith-based conclusions is what got us into this bovine war to begin with. Why let Doug Feith and Dick Cheney have all the fun?

. . . and the wingnuts prove why they shouldn’t be allowed to read in the first place.

I can’t believe that a guy who named his blog "Confederate Yankee" would be anything less than a genius, but . . .

Shorter Bob Owens: “While nothing that appears in the New York Times or The Lancet could possibly be true, I see no reason to question the journalistic integrity of the fine reporters at World Net Daily. No wonder Powerline named me Blog of the Week.”

On The Apex of Fake Libertarianism

Actual libertarians Julian Sanchez and Dave Weigel have some fun with Jennifer Roback Morse’s…er, contrarian claim that Rick Santorum is a good choice for libertarians based on his fealty to the policy positions of…the Family Research Council. The most obvious question is why NRO would publish it; not only is the article utterly worthless on its own merits, but is directed at 1)a relatively small part of the population that 2)has no chance whatsoever of being persuaded by its idiotic claims. (Most boilerplate at least serves some function of reassurance.) Roy’s speculation that “many National Review articles are written on a bet — you know: Hey, Lowry, two large says you can’t write a thousand words on how a billion-and-a-half dollars for marriage lessons is “conservative”!” seems as good as any.

Sanchez also runs at the significance of Santorum’s support for tax cuts from another angle than mine:

The extent of Santorum’s actual demonstrated commitment to “fiscal conservatism” appears to consist of his support for tax cuts, which in the current political climate ought to count for pretty close to nothing with libertarians. Tax cuts are not smaller government; smaller government is smaller government, and the evidence that tax cuts tend to produce it is quite thin. If anything, there’s good reason to think that tax cuts without commensurate spending reduction just delink the provision of government goodies from the pain of paying from them, making it easier for government to grow. Something that, again, Santorum seems to have no problem with provided the well-intentioned programs it funds are his.

Am I being unfair to Santorum for lumping him in with “Miss America conservatives,” then? I don’t think so. Sanchez is certainly right that “starve the beast” fiscal policies will be a highly ineffective means of getting rid of programs supported by powerful constituencies, and since these–especially middle class entitlements and defense–make up the vast majority of the federal government’s non-interest outlays, they will fail to make government significantly smaller. The Bush era’s fiscal strategies will, however, very likely undermine programs for constituencies that aren’t politically powerful, with the programs for the third world poor on which Santorum’s reputation for compassionate conservatism rests especially vulnerable. Anyway, whether you’re a libertarian or left-liberal, you can agree that Rick Santorum is a very bad Senator and his imminent rejection by the fine citizens of Pennsylvania most welcome.

I am looking forward, however, to NRO giving Glenn Reynolds space to explain how he can simulatenously call himself a “libertarian,” “Whig,” and “Jacksonian.”

Good Ideas in History: November 2

In the middle of a 1959 game against the New York Rangers, Jacques Plante, Hall of Fame goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens, returned from the locker room with a mask after being hit in the face with a puck shot by Andy Bathgate. Although Plante was not the first goaltender ever to wear a mask during an NHL game, he was the first to wear one on a daily basis. In addition to preserving the teeth, cheek and orbital bones of several generations of hockey goalies, Plante’s innovation offered an invaluable contribution to the roster of cliches that govern American horror films.

Good for him, I say.

The Sniveling Hackitude of Mark Halperin

As more than one person has said, my favorite part of Eric Boehlert’s Lapdogs is Chapter 3, his fierce and detailed takedown of The Note. Between its endless pro-Republican spin, vacuous obsession with mind-numbing personality trivia, and smug insularity, it represents everything wrong with political media in concentrated form. Given the sad-but-funny spectacle of Mark Halperin prostrating himself before third-rate Republican shill Hugh Hewitt, it’s worth revisiting one of the Note’s most feeble examples of right-wing hackery, it’s ongoing attempt to create a new pseudo-scandal in the Whitewater vein by pumping up the trial of a Hillary Clinton fundraiser. As Boehlert explains:

Taking the lead in trumpeting the importance of the Rosen trial was ABC’s The Note. An inside-baseball daily tip sheet for a readership it has dubbed the “Gang of 500″ (politicians, lobbyists, consultants, and journalists who help shape the Beltway’s public agenda), The Note is posted online every weekday morning and is widely viewed as the agenda-setter for the political class. On 14 different days between May 2 and 27, The Note posted cumulatively nearly forty links to Rosen-related articles, calling them “must-read.” A typical Note entry came on May 10, highlighting “The opening and closing paragraphs in Dick Morris’ New York Post column–perfectly explaining why the David Rosen story is going to be with us for a while.”

On the day before the Rosen verdict, The Note listed “Waiting for the Rosen verdict” as the number-one priority among the Gang of 500. The next day, a federal jury acquitted Rosen of any wrongdoing. How did The Note handle this news about the trial it had hyped? By ignoring it. The next edition of The Note included a long round-up of must-reads from the Memorial Day weekend. Rosen’s not-guilty verdict was not among them.

The abrupt disappearance of the story shouldn’t have surprised close readers of The Note, which ABC’s website has posted publicly since January 2002. In theory, what drives The Note is anything that’s generating Beltway buzz. “We try to channel what the chattering class is chattering about, and to capture the sensibility, ethos, and rituals of the Gang of 500,” Mark Halperin, ABC’s political director and founder of The Note, once explained. Too often, though, The Note’s definition of buzz has been whatever Beltway Republicans are chattering about. The Note has been nourished on an era of total Republican rule. It shows.

Halperin has always been an embarrassment; his abjection before the shrine of Hewitt is just the latest example.

Lame Flags

Flags of Our Fathers was one craptastic movie.

I consider it my professional responsibility to see most every major war movie. People ask me, in class and out, what I thought of particular films, whether they were realistic, and so forth. I answer as best I can, never really having been in Ancient Greece, or Omaha Beach, or Stalingrad. So I felt compelled to watch Flags of Our Fathers, even though I had some deep reservations. Critics love Eastwood for some reason, and when an Eastwood film gets only mediocre reviews, you have to suspect that there might be some major problems.

Eastwood uses more or less the same framing device that Spielberg used in Saving Private Ryan, bookending the film with modern day scenes of the veterans and their families. This is handled, if anything, in a more clumsy fashion that Spielberg’s treacly sentimentalism, which at least had the virtue of being short and of not trying to make any deep observations about the father-son relationship. The scenes of the preparation for the invasion and the beach assault are alternatively reminiscent of The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan, without the metaphorical weight of the former or the technical expertise of the latter. It’s perhaps unfortunate that I watched parts of Saving Private Ryan the afternoon before I saw Flags, although I can’t imagine that my conclusions wouldn’t have been different. Simply put, whether you liked SPR or no (and I quite like it), it really changed the way that war movies should be made. Spielberg’s Omaha Beach can’t be outdone, both because most directors lack the chops and because Spielberg says all that there is to be said about high intensity combat. One can prefer, for example, Malick’s battle on the hill in Thin Red Line or Fuller’s depiction of Omaha Beach in The Big Red One, but both Malick and Fuller were after different responses.

Eastwood’s Iwo Jima, on the other hand, comes off as warmed over, half-baked Spielberg. He simply doesn’t have the technical ability to pull off an impressive invasion scene, or the good sense to realize that it’s already been done. I enjoyed the battleship porn (although I don’t recall hearing about an Iowa class battleship being heavily damaged by coastal artillery at Iwo), but that’s about all Eastwood had to offer. There was nothing in the battle scenes that we hadn’t seen before, and Spielberg actually did a much better job than Eastwood of conveying the quiet periods of the campaign. Say what you will about the various ethnic stereotypes that populated SPR, they at least helped distinguish the characters from one another such that the conversations made sense. As pointless as the war footing is, however, the scenes in the United States are even worse. Believe it or not, the US war effort was not about to grind to a halt in mid-1945 had the Iwo Jima photo not been taken. Eastwood has three things to say while his characters are in the US; Ira Hayes liked his booze, these guys were really popular, and it was all really important. He proceeds to say these things over, and over, and over again.

Finally, we’re supposed to care about the son of one of the veterans, even though he has very little dialogue and appears irregularly during the film in utterly uninteresting scenes. I suppose that Eastwood does a good job of lighting those scenes, which could count for something. Although I almost never walk out of a movie (Pearl Harbor and The Terminal being the exceptions that leap to mind), I really wish that I had saved an hour of my life by leaving halfway through Flags. I hope that the Japanese perspective is better.