August 2005 Archives

Here’s an Essay from 2003 in Foreign Affairs

That essay is a perfect example of why I subscribe to Foreign Affairs. Concrete things that should be in the constitution are listed and discussed in light of Iraq, but in May/June of 2003! Here’s a quote:

Restructuring Iraq’s political system will be laden with difficulties, but it will certainly be feasible. At the same time, the blueprint for Iraq’s democracy must reflect the unique features of Iraqi society. Once the system is in place, its benefits will quickly become evident to Iraq’s various communities; if it brings economic prosperity (hardly unlikely given the country’s wealth), the postwar structure will gradually, yet surely, acquire legitimacy. As is shown by the eastern European example, where ex-communist dictatorships have now lined up to join NATO and the European Union, putting in place democratic political institutions that function properly, meet the particular needs of a given society, and deliver the goods can rather quickly produce “habituation” — that is, inculcate democratic habits in the population that become well entrenched and resilient. A democratic federal system would turn Iraq into the standard against which other Arab governments are judged, and make the country a natural ally of the West. Such an outcome would benefit everyone — but especially the people of Iraq, who, after suffering for so long, deserve no less.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal weighing in:

So here’s a radical thought: How about letting Iraqis debate and vote on their new national charter before we Americans summarily denounce it as a failure?

By any existing Middle East standard, the new constitution is a great achievement. It promises to protect human rights, including free speech and the right to worship. It applies the very American principle of federalism, or decentralized power, to reassure multiethnic regions and various Muslim denominations and thus keep the country together.

Yeah, what he said.

This result would certainly be better if Sunni leaders, including some on the drafting committee, were not urging other Sunnis to defeat it. But consider this: For the Sunnis to defeat the constitution they will have to participate in the vote. That’s more than they did in January’s elections, and by itself represents a commitment to a democratic process that many Americans

It is also by no means clear that the constitution will be rejected by Iraq’s voters. The pact must be repudiated by a two-thirds vote in at least three of Iraq’s 18 provinces. A large Sunni turnout could mean “no” votes in two of Iraq’s three predominantly Sunni provinces—Anbar and Sulemaniyah—but is less likely in Nineveh, which has a large Kurdish population. Ratification in the other 15 predominantly Kurdish or Shiite provinces is all but assured.

I kind of think this too. I have lots of faith in the democratic process (even ours), and I’m not so sure that the Sunni voters will vote it down. These Sunni leaders were the same ones that were urging boycotting elections the first time…

The larger truth here is that Americans have no choice but to let Iraqis sort these basic questions out for themselves.

Yep. For all that the Bush Administration is sort of muddling through Iraq, I don’t see any credible alternatives to what they’ve been doing. To quote one of the generals in Iraq:

this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations. It’s going to be settled in the political process.

Political processes suck. We know that from our own country. How can we expect Iraq to be any different?

Technorati Tags: Iraq

I wrote before about how paper trails in voting were a bad idea.

Vindication

If you don't understand the problem, having paper isn't going to help.

Just because I actually enjoyed the Dukes of Hazzard movie?

Granted, its not Citizen Kane. Good thing too, because that movie was really boring...

Rosebud!

Here are some interesting bits:

Article (2):

Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:

1. No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.

2. No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.

3. No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.

Several people have focused on 1 above, but I think that 2 and 3 are just as important. Islam does talk about government being just, so this isn't necessarily a huge blow to women's rights. In practice, I think that it may not mean anything at all.

Entities or trends that advocate, instigate, justify or propagate racism, terrorism, “takfir” (declaring someone an infidel), sectarian cleansing, are banned, especially the Saddamist Baath Party in Iraq and its symbols, under any name. It will be not be allowed to be part of the multilateral political system in Iraq, which should be defined according to the law.

PART ONE: RIGHTS

FIRST: Civil and political rights.

Article (14): Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status.

So this would imply that women's rights are secured.

Article (93): Establishing private or exceptional courts is forbidden.

So no sharia courts?

Personally, you got me. I've been trying to draft Volokh into commenting, perhaps he will.

Anyways, this is still only a draft anyways.

[The constitution empowers legislators, not clerics}(http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007157)

Read This

Michael talks about “catch and release” terrorists.

While I sympathize with the commander, if we just killed them outright, he would be leading a death squad.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Terrorism

While there is lots of brouhaha over the mention of Islam in the constitution, and whether it uses Islam as “the” source, or “a” source, dare I say it may not matter?

Empty platitudes probably won't have much influence on laws, I'd expect...

Think I'll go ask Volokh what he thinks.

Al-Qaida's Network in Iraq Goes (Temporarily) Silent

Be really cool if it was good news...

Well, a week has gone by so its time to look at the latest brookings report and numbers from icasualties.org.

As I said before, fatalities in August are going to be higher then in previous months. The Brookings report has them at 65 so far. Breaking the fatalities out by week we can see that even without August 4th when 20 soldiers got killed in two separate attacks, the weeks have been pretty heavy.

So even before the week of the 4th, we were getting about 12 fatalties/week in Iraq. Though its also obvious that there are good weeks and bad weeks.

Something you can tell from looking at the press releases that you can't tell from these numbers is that no longer are the biggest chunk of the fatalities coming from the Haditha area. So perhaps that Operation Quick Strike worked, the intent was to push the insurgents out. They've tried that before of course, but this time they pushed in multiple areas so the insurgents would have nowhere to run to.

The wounded number is always a bit less volatile, it shows the number of servicemen wounded as 364 about halfway through the month. So August will probably show a peak there was well, though it has slowed down quite a bit lately.

Interestingly enough, attacks on Iraqi Policemen have slowed down quite a bit. It's too soon to tell, but August may show a slight decline in IP deaths since January. Similarly, Iraqi civilian deaths and car bomb attacks are lower then I would have expected.

So basically, if the US goes rooting after the insurgents, the low-key civil war that is going on in Iraq slows down, but our casualties go up as the terrorists move from shooting at the civilians and police to shooting at us. Attacks on oil and gas infrastructure are way down as well.

Every month, about 3,000 more Irai Police go on duty, though it will take about 10 more months before there are more Iraqis then US soldiers in Iraq; there are about 98,000 on duty now.

Electricity is not quite as good as July, but much better then it has been in the past, which is good. We're going on 3 months now with more electricity available then there was before the war. The problem is though that the Iraqis are doing better then they were under Saddam, so they all have more toys nows...

So overall, I would say that Iraq is better for the Iraqis, slightly worse for our troops at the moment.

Check out www.militaryvideos.net. It's all raw footage shot and edited by our troops. You'll need a bittorrent client to download the footage.

As a Macintosh/Computer guy, it's interesting that this kind of stuff is within the reach of privates now. Though QuickTime is still better then Windows media, hands down.

Of course, it just makes me hate the MSM even more. Why do I have to go to sites like this to get a sense of what are troops are seeing? Why aren't they showing these once/week on one of the cable news networks? For heaven sakes, give away 100 video cameras to our troops, and you could start an Iraq Channel!

Warning to hippies and others of delicate sensibilities. Our soldiers are the video game generation, so don't draw any conclusions from the tone of these videos. Even the nicest guys will gloat after killing someone who was shooting at them, it doesn't make them bad people, it makes them human.

Humans can commit acts of utter depravity that would make demons shudder, then turn around and commit acts of utter grace beyond any angel.

Again, that's why the MSM coverage of the war sucks. OK, there was a car bomb in Baghdad last night. Who? Why? Get out of your freaking hotels! I don't need a rehash of the Centcom press releases, I can read them online!

Enron was a player in the Oil For Food scandal

But only obliquely:

Not that Enron did business directly with Saddam's regime in violation of U.N. sanctions, or even did anything clearly illegal. Rather, the tale of its guest appearance in Oil for Food illustrates why in some ways the U.N. scandal dwarfs even Enron. Under cover of Oil for Food, Saddam's system of bribes, payoffs and kickbacks, ultimately totaling billions, ran through chains of often obscure middlemen in places such as Cyprus and Switzerland. Enron shows up on one of the outer spokes of Oil for Food's global web, dealing with a trans-Atlantic crew of companies and characters engaged not only in fraud, but allegedly linked to arms traffic, payoffs to the Kremlin and kickbacks to Saddam's regime. Along the way, this gang did its bit to comply via Oil for Food shipments with Saddam's policy of enforcing the Arab League boycott against Israel.

So lightning struck my local broadband node 2 weeks after I'd gotten addicted to it.

Hence the light posting this week.

In other news, Michael Yon (see blogroll) has an eyewitness report of a failed IED attack.

It seems to me like the individual IEDs are more deadly, but our troops are more experienced.

I read these once a week, here's what I see:

That episode was so mind-boggingly bad that I could only watch 2 minutes, then I had to turn it off.

So after this post I learned that most of the deaths in Iraq are from IEDs. So I'm trying to dig in to find out more about them. Why? Well the mainstream media is so bad that basically the only way for me to really get a sense of what is going on Iraq is to find numbers for me to track, then dig in from there.

Anyways, here's a cool background article on them.

Hat tip: Winds of Change who has a few more links too.

Despite ernie, my socialist comment troll's opinion, I am not a Repulican Theocrat. So this story pisses me off.

I think that we should have both women and queens in the military.

( Yes, I know the queens comment is offensive. I never said I was nice, just tolerant.)

So my wife and I signed up with the local program to help the soldiers families while they're away.

So today, my wife went shopping with the wife of a local soldier. She has a couple of 2 year olds, so shopping can be lots of work, but with my wife there to help it was fun.

Though I dunno, it might have been cheaper to send a care package to Iraq instead...

Just kidding, I did that at Xmas.

Not my wife's choice anyways, it was the other ladies choice.

In a week or so, I'm signed up to go help her move a couch.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Pretty much, this picture shows why its been so hard to get the electricity back on in Iraq. From this report. The report goes on to give a broad overview of all the work they're doing on the electricity, but it's in slideshow form so you have to read between the lines. Basically, we're 2 years into a 4 year project...

The leftist trolls I get in my comments have finally convinced me. No longer will I try for middle-of-the-road moderate opinions, like perhaps the Iraqis don't like being occupied, but neither do they like crazy idiots blowing themselves up either.

Nope, you guys have convinced me. I was wrong, and you were right correct.

Technorati Tags: Britney Spears, Democrats, Howard Dean, Iraq, Star Trek, Terrorism

So I've been discouraged the last couple of days because while July was a low month for soldier deaths, August has been a terrible month so far.

So I decided to dig in and see how those deaths were adding up. How many come from defensive operations as opposed to offensive operations, and how many are IEDs vs. direct attacks?

That meant reading through all the press releases for the last 99 days. You're welcome to check my math. Here's what I found:

This makes me laugh, but supposedly, the 72 virgins in paradise is a mistranslation of Syriac, its actually “raisins”.

Here's the link

Here's a photo:

The non-combat fatality bump in January was due to traffic accidents. The number of traffic accidents increased because of a major US troop rotation during that month.

Cool, thanks.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Sewer, Water, Electricity and Trash is the key to winning in Iraq, as I've said before.

Here's an article (PDF) on the 8th Engineer Battalion Baghdad working on SWET.

Here's another.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

(click to popup a larger version)

Pretty much, we have trouble in the Red areas, and they love us in the green areas. I've said it before, I'll say it again: We need generators more then tanks...

Matt Kaufman and Dean Bonzani got into an interesting discussion about propoganda and the Capra movie Why We Fight. I thought I'd bring it up to the front so they could go back and forth more easily.

BTW, you can subscribe to comments by checking the appropriate box when you leave a comment of your own (you have to supply your own email address obviously). Then you get an email when someone leaves a comment on this article, so you can follow the back and forth more easily.

Here's some discussion ideas from Matt:

I think a big issue today is that the “Mainstream Media” were long thought to present a balanced and objective viewpoint of news and events.  There were exceptions - everybody knew that McCormick's Chicago Tribune was a conservative paper - but now EVERYONE feel that every media organ out there is “progogating an agenda” rather than “reporting objectively”.   Propoganda need not have a bad name - it can have a noble objective, as WWF certainly did, but when it is presented as “truth” rather than “persuasion”, or in the case of totalitarian regimes, “indoctrination”,  then you run into real problems.

And a thought from me is that Fahrenheit 9/11 was clearly a piece of propaganda. Perhaps I could call it Why We Shouldn't Fight.

Contrast that with some other films I've seen about Iraq like Iraqi Voices.

Anyways, here's a recap:

I don't know if this is true but I do think that Apple has one of the best thought out product lines they've ever had.

I watched the second episode of Over There last night.

First off, much better then the first. Last episode was the pilot though, and pilots are what they are.

Since last time I had to defend the episode from its military critics, this time I'm going to start with the things I didn't like in their honor.

The episode starts with this dream sequence of a soldier being screamed at and tortured by a terrorists.

This whole bit offended me. It was gratuitous, and violent. I ended up fast forwarding through the whole thing so if it had any redeeming virtues, I didn't see them. I do the same thing on Alias, so its not unique to this show. I don't mind violence in shows in general, but sometimes...

The soldier wakes up, and he's in Germany, he's lost part of his leg. (Hence the nightmare.) From that point on the episode was OK though later on there's a comparison between jihad and Woodstock I found fumbly and offensive.

Now the main criticism of the pilot from the soldiers over at Blackfive besides the tactics was the stereotypical characters. That didn't actually bother me at the time, because its standard for the soldier genre, plus its a pilot; you have 40 minutes to introduce 8 characters. Plus sometimes I think pilots are written for the purpose of convincing studio executives, and they have very small brains.

Not so bad in this episode. Instead of forcefeeding the characters to the audience, the characters are allowed to develop more naturally. This makes them seem much less cartoonish.

One character still grates though: The Red-Headed Divorced Slut. I've decided her whole reason for existence is to provide a counter point to my favorite character, Tough Army Wife so I guess its ok if she lives.

Ok, things I liked:

The injured soldier's wife is tough as nails, and she's obviously been an Army wife for awhile. In this first episode, you get the sense that when it comes to her man, if its between her and the entire US Army, bet on her.

She reminded me of my wife, so she's probably going to be my favorite character. Plus she's HOT!

Most of the episode though centers around the soldiers maintaining a roadblock/checkpoint out in the middle of nowhere. There were some key things the writers were trying to communicate here:

1. Guard duty is so boring that its worth starting a fist fight just to have something to do.
2. You have no idea what is going on in a car when its coming towards you. and you have seconds to make a decision.
3. The terrorists are quite willing to sacrifice two young men, 4 old women, a little girl, and two old men; when caught, they will prattle on about the Geneva Convention.
4. Having soldiers who speak the language would be invaluable.

At least, that's what I got from the episode.

I suspect the military folks will have lots of critiques of their tactics, and I welcome them in the comments below. For my part, as a civilian supporting their efforts, for half and hour, I was able to feel some of what they're going through.

That of course, is the ultimate purpose of the show.

Update: Someone else Agrees

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Over There, puppy

Having Islamic law as the basis for Iraqi law doesn't necessarily bother me. Its one of those things where the devil is in the details.

Islam talks a lot about justice. It specifically says its the duty of Muslims to obey just governments, and resist unjust ones.

One of the big problems we have in communicating with Muslims is that we keep talking about freedom. There is no word in Arabic for freedom, so it gets translated as non-enslaved.

Its not freedom we want to bring to the Middle East. When American's talk about freedom, we really mean justice. We're sloppy with our speech, and it costs us lives.

If we started talking about justice, the Quran would be on our side...

I would argue that the most Islamic government possible is a democracy, because it is the most just.

Steven Vincent was killed in Iraq. Steven Vincent was a freelance journalist in Iraq, and wrote some great pieces. You can read his blog here. TigerHawk has a roundup.

I'm sorry though, this doesn't let the New York Times off the hook. Sitting in your hotel in Baghdad and rehashing press releases is not journalism.

To see what a real journalist in Iraq looks like, read Michael Yon.

So Blackfive a milblogger asked his readership for reviews and reactions to the FX show Over There. Both he and his readership found the characters stereotypical, cartoonish, and have lots of complaints about the accuracy of the program.

They're all wrong.

First off, this is Hollywood, so it could have been much, much worse.

I thought it portrayed several things very well, even in the first show:

1. American Soldiers aren't bloodthirsty maniacs. Terrorists are.
2. Being shot at sucks.
3. Keep your head down, asshole!
4. This is a complicated war.
5. Women Soldiers are fighting in combat.
6. The presences of the media is making this war very strange.

Sure, the characters are stereotypical. I can see the soldiers point, but its an entirely irrelevant one. Were the cops on Hill Street Blues, another Bochco show, stereotypical? You bet your ass they were. That's not the point. Over There, like Hill Street Blues is a genre piece. I expect it to follow the conventions of the genre, I also expect it to transcend them, based on the one show I've seen so far and Bochco's history.

In WWII, Frank Capra refined the war picture genre to a high degree. A war picture needs certain elements to be true to the genre:

• Only a few characters. The audience has to bond with the characters so having more then 4-5 characters diminishes that bond. In military terms, this means a platoon size is ideal. Naturally, this doesn't always make sense in reality. Why was a captain commanding a platoon in Saving Private Ryan?
• Those few characters have to in aggregate represent all of America. So there will be a College Guy, an ethnic, (these days) a woman, a WASP, etc. This is one of the most Capraesqe parts of the genre; Capra specifically intended his films to be propaganda; the audience had to feel the platoon represented a representative slice of America.
• Sergeants are tough bastards. Officers (especially lieutenants) are idiots. This isn't strictly necessary, but comes from two great truths: Americans hate authority, and sergeants have won more battles for America then any other type of soldier.

So does Over There have those elements? Of course it does. As a TV program, viewers have to be able to tune into any of these early shows and “get it” immediately. So the characters are going to be stereotypical and shallow at first.

Are the tactics vastly oversimplified? Of course. Complicated tactics won't be shown unless they have dramatic purpose. Similarly, on CSI, they can get DNA tests done in a day, where in real life they take 2 weeks.

So give the show a break guys. I think that while you'll always have problems with the technical accuracy, I think that Over There is going to turn out to be great TV. It may be oversimplifying the war, but that's OK. If the New York Times coverage of the war was as good as this show, I wouldn't have to blog.

Hat Tip: Wind's of Change Iraq Report

Update: Lots of comments keep talking about the officer-noncom thing. They must not have seen the show.

It's really mild in the pilot. The sergeant moves up 25 meters, and doesn't want to move up any farther. He calls his lieutenant who says, “I was told 50 meters, so move up 50 meters”. The sergeant refuses. Later, the sergeant, the lieutenant and the captain have a meeting, where the captain tells the lieutenant “Be more flexible. Bring up stupid stuff like this goes on everyone's record and it looks bad for everyone.”

So I wouldn't characterize it as an officer-noncom thing, after all the captain is being pretty reasonable. Its more of a sergeant-lieutenant thing.

As for the platoon/squad thing, I think that just proves my point...

So the Bush administration last week switched from calling it the Global War on Terror to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Most pundits both made fun of the move, and pointed out that it was closer to the truth then before.

I propose my own change: The Global Struggle Against Violent Stupidity. I've read the writings of these guys first hand: Osama, Saddam, the mullahs, and I have to say:

All these guys are freaking morons.

One would think that these guys are upset because they suffer under unjust governments, and upset with us because the US has propped up these terrible regimes for years in the Middle East. To quote Rice, “we traded stability for Democracy”.

Nope, that's what you or I would complain about. That's because we have a freaking brain, and we realize that their real problem is their countries are run by inbred fools. Saudi Arabia has more doctors then nurses, because the guys who run their country had never actually been in a hospital.

That's not what these guys complain about, these guys actually think their governments aren't severe enough.

Really, I'm not kidding. Osama thinks that the path to a bright shining future for the Arabs to unite under a Islamic dictatorship. (Run by him of course.) When pointed to the counter example of Iran, Al Queda just answers that they would of course “do an Islamic government right”. I guess the Taliban was supposed to be Islamism done right? That's why anyone with any sense in Afghanistan left?

Its like Communism all over again, each country going communist and then saying “oh, well, all those previous guys who tried it didn't do it right.”

Saddam wasn't any different. All these guys talk about Saladin, the great Muslim dictator of a few hundred years ago. It's as if we started pining “Gee, if only Napoleon could come conquer Europe again. That would really help our governments be more effective.”

Their military planning doesn't exactly show incredible brains either. On 9/11, they killed 3,000 Americans plus some other people of various nationalities. What exactly did that action accomplish? What have any of their actions ever accomplished? They're just blind expressions of rage.

The terrorists are not the poor and downtrodden, but invariably men from middle or upper class families. They're the kind of young men that in America, end up living in their Mom's basement. I wonder if we couldn't defuse this whole GSAVS thing if we just sent the Middle East some porn and some blow up dolls.

We probably can't make them any smarter, but perhaps we can keep them busy.