perfidy

According to the World Tribune US intelligence estimates that over 70% of Al Qaida has been neutralized.

"The Al Qaida of the 9/11 period is under catastrophic stress," State Department counter-terrorism coordinator Cofer Black said. "They are being hunted down, their days are numbered."

Black's assertion, made in an interview with the London-based British Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday, is based on U.S. intelligence community estimates that about 70 percent of Al Qaida has been neutralized, officials said.

Saudi officials agreed with the U.S. assessment and said the kingdom has made significant gains against Al Qaida, Middle East Newsline reported. They said Al Qaida leaders have been arrested and training camps have been discovered.

U.S. officials said Al Qaida has been rapidly losing its attack capabilities and was relying increasingly on smaller Islamic groups based in Southeast Asia and North Africa. The officials said thousands of Al Qaida operatives have been captured, killed or neutralized, with cells eliminated even in such strongholds as Kuwait and Yemen.

With the capture of Saddam, many resources have eben transferred back to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Rumors of his capture were floating around yesterday, including over at the Northeast Intelligence Network. As the situation in Iraq settles down somewhat over the coming months, more resources will be shifted to the hunt for Al Qaida, and I think that we'll see more victories on that front.

Officials said Al Qaida would continue as a much weaker organization and would focus largely on Saudi Arabia, the Horn of Africa while seeking to consolidate under the protection of Iran. They envision attacks being financed rather than carried out by Bin Laden.

The loss of veteran insurgency operatives has reduced the lethality of operations, officials said. Another factor has been the lack of success by Al Qaida to establish and sustain cells in many Western countries.

"The next group of concern would be a generation younger," Black said. "They're influenced by what they see on TV; they are influenced by misrepresentation of the facts. They seem to be long on radicalism and comparatively short on training."

This is substantial progress, but we need to focus on other terrorist groups, and find more ways to put pressure on state sponsors of terror. My earlier post on hezbollah speaks to both of these concerns.

James over at Outside the Beltway (which name doesn't exactly narrow his location down much, does it?) links to a report from UPI and Janes that the United States is seriously considering striking Hezbollah bases in southern Lebanon. Jane's Intelligence Digest released a report saying the administration is considering strikes in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where the bulk of Syria's forces are deployed, as way to pressure Damascus.

"Our sources are pretty damn good," Standish [editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest] told United Press International. "We've never had a libel action since we were founded in 1938. ... If you look at the track record of people who have given us this sort of information ... these are tried and tested sources that we have confidence in."

Standish dismissed the possibility that the information could have been planted by an American who wanted to derail any such attack.

"I think this is a U.S. administration that does what it says it will do," said Standish, stressing that this is a plan under consideration, not a decided course of action. "Clearly, this is about ratcheting up the pressure on Damascus. ... I think this is also part of the wider Realpolitik, which is to start the process of isolating Hezbollah much further. ...

"What we're looking at in this context are air strikes and the use of special forces snatch squads -- that kind of activity. We're not talking about a peacekeeping deployment or an invasion of southern Lebanon."

Standish said if this were another administration, there would be more room for skepticism. But the Bush administration is willing to go in a new direction after Sept. 11, 2001.

The prospect of an attack in Lebanon is not so crazy when you consider the incursions that US forces have made across the Syrian border in the past several months. The motivation behind any potential attacks, suggests Standish, is this:

"I think one can understand the reasons why people in Washington would like to apply this kind of pressure, because if Syria can be forced to cease backing Hezbollah -- which obviously has its own connections with Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- this is an issue. If you can cut the funding off for international militant organizations, that's a pretty big first step in reducing the effectiveness that they have in terms of the trouble they can cause."

How would air raids and special forces operations cut the funding?

"The funding comes from Damascus and Tehran. If the administration shows that it actually has the will to strike directly at Hezbollah targets, it sends a very powerful message: 'Look what we've done with your proxies. The next step along the line will be you.'

Standish was asked why U.S. air strikes would have a different effect than Israeli air strikes.

The psychology would be different, he replied.

"Hezbollah expects to be hit from time to time by Israel. ... But if the U.S. itself chooses to engage, I think that is an enormous step forward because it's a difference fundamentally between Israel saying that it's acting in self-defense or in a measured response to a particular incident and the U.S. saying, as a matter of policy, that just as it made war against al-Qaida and closed its bases and denied it the freedom to operate in Afghanistan," it is taking the same steps against Hezbollah. ... "A key issue is to deny the enemy the ability to train, to maintain bases, and of course ultimately -- on the political level -- to attract funding from Tehran and Syria."

The United States, as the last superpower, can send such a message, Standish said.

"Already I think it's having an effect in the Iranian situation," he added, "if you look at the concessions in real terms that have been made on the nuclear front and the willingness to conduct covert diplomacy. It's been a pretty open secret that there have been middle-ranking talks (between the United States and Iran) over the last few years in Switzerland and other European locations. So I don't think we should be surprised if Tehran decides that to continue to put funding into Hezbollah is counterproductive for its own safety."

"I think this sends a message, and I think the message is uncompromising: 'There is still time for diplomatic maneuver, but patience may be limited.' "

I would not be opposed to these sorts of actions. The more direct pressure we can put on terrorist groups, and psychological pressure on their state sponsors, the better.

Katzman really does, or doesn't really think about it.

Why is it that any attempt to understand the mindset of these people is automatically labelled pro-terrorist sympathizing? I don't know anything about this particular case, so I am generalizing somewhat.

The first order of business in defeating an enemy is understanding him, and understanding his motivations.

If a man is without hope, full of anger, fueled by religious fire, I can see where suicide bombing is something that would be a consideration. Right now I don't think it's something I could possibly ever do, personally, but I think I understand the objective factors that would lead to it.

Here's what really bothers me about such knee-jerk "you're a terrorist too" responses. We all sit here living with our shiny veneer of civilization, working hard at our information technology jobs, driving our SUVs, and cluck-clucking at the foibles of those crazy foreigners from the televised comfort of our suburban living rooms. If you're someone surrounded by that kind of comfort and you pass judgement on someone else because terrorism is "inconceivable", you're forgetting one thing:

You don't know what you'd do if you were in the same situation. We all want to believe that we wouldn't do it. It's inhuman, it's inconceivable, it's abhorrent. Not a chance.

So what could push you over the edge? What within your life could happen that would make you a little crazy, make you lose the civilized veneer? What if that happened; a son or daughter lost, and your anger became uncontrollable?

From my office, it could never go that far. I just don't think I have it in me. But I'm not going to pass judgement on those who try to understand, when doing so means pretending that I know my true self, when faced with the same situation.

"Very well... Security for some, and tiny American flags for others! [wild cheering]"

The Weekly Standard (!) (?) (!!) (???) (....!) (.) is running a cover story making the case for creating a federal terrorism court so that cases like Gitmo and Jose "dirrrty" Padilla can be dealt with in a clear, standard, and lawful manner. Whoda thunk the Standard would come around?

If you can stand a certain amount of horseshit (see the following excerpt... "bullying" my arse), do read it. Support for a very good idea, from an unexpected quarter.

Morally intimidated and bullied by civil libertarian ideologues, partisan opportunists, and a press almost universally hostile on these issues--yet having accepted, along with the rest of the country, the lessons of Korematsu, the Red Scare, and the due process revolution of the 1960s--administration officials seem, not surprisingly, to prefer to evade the debate or retreat behind the rhetoric of "security." The administration has failed to make its case well or to take modest actions that could strengthen its case. This in turn encourages the critics and deepens the government's reluctance to touch a set of issues on which it feels it can only lose.

The time has come for the government to break this poisonous cycle. Balancing liberty and security in a way that is plain and understandable to all is a tough job, but it must be attempted. The centerpiece of a Bush administration civil liberties offensive should be creative institutional reform. A new terrorism court is the place to start.

[wik] I had to pull out this observation too, which lends a particular urgency to the Standards' call: "The enemy combatant designation, while it fills a legitimate need in the current context, exists in a legal limbo where no court, civil or military, has clear jurisdiction, and thus opens the door to valid concern about due process." Damn straight.

Slate is hosting a week-long series called Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War. As a centrist fencesitter whose support for the war changes like Ohio weather, I have to say it's interesting reading.

Well, that's not quite fair to myself. What I ought to say is this: I remain deeply skeptical about the reasons that the Bush administration offered about why Saddam Hussein needed to fall. Whether or not Hussein was thisclose to using lethal force against the US remains very much in doubt and no matter how you parse the words that Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc. used on any given day the undeniable impression which accrues is that they wanted us, the Amurrican people, to think that Hussein was, in fact, thisclose.

For me, the humanitarian argument was one of the strongest in favor of getting rid of the rat bastid. A close second was the "unfinished business" scenario. Unfortunately, I also believe that "unfinished business" is no reason to go to war.

My other, more specific objections over timing and preparation are well-covered in this month's Atlantic Monthly cover stories by James Fallows and Kenneth Pollack. I suggest you check them out.

That all being said, it's an interesting thing to watch hawkish liberals play Monday morning quarterback on their own predictions and opinions about Iraq.
Jacob Weisberg starts things off as moderator, offering his own assessment:

To me, the liberation of 25 million Iraqis remains sufficient justification, which is why I don't think the failure to find weapons of mass destruction by itself invalidates the case for war (though it certainly weakens it). What does affect my view is the huge and growing cost of the invasion and occupation: in American lives (we're about to hit 500 dead and several thousand more have been injured); in money (more than $160 billion in borrowed funds); and in terms of lost opportunity (we might have found Osama Bin Laden by now if we'd committed some of those resources to Afghanistan). Most significant are the least tangible costs: increased hatred for the United States, which both fosters future terrorism and undermines the international support we will need to fight terrorism effectively for many years to come. Of course, the fall of Saddam has made us safer and is likely to produce all sorts of positive side effects, such as Qaddafi's capitulation. But the diminution of America's ability to create consensus around actions necessary for collective security makes us less safe. So, while I still think the Iraq war was morally justified, I'm not at all sure it was worth the costs.

Kenneth Pollack offers his (re)assessment thus:

I think the war put to rest the fantasies of the neocons that we could simply arm Ahmad Chalabi and a few thousand followers (followers he still has not actually produced), give them air cover, and send them in to spark a rolling revolution. Richard Perle and others argued for that initially, but in the end they had to support a full-scale invasion as the only realistic course. The covert-action-based regime-change policies that I and others in the U.S. government had pushed for as an alternative never had a high likelihood of success, either—they were just slightly more likely to produce a coup and much less likely to create a catastrophic "Bay of Goats," as Gen. Anthony Zinni once put it. Ironically, I think the events of the last 12 months have also indicated that containment was doing both better than we believed, and worse. On the one hand, the combination of inspections and the pain inflicted by the sanctions had forced Saddam to effectively shelve his WMD ambitions, probably since around 1995-96. On the other hand, the behavior of the French, Russians, Germans, and many other members of the United Nations Security Council in the run-up to the war was final proof that they were never going to do what would have been necessary to revise and support containment so that it might have lasted for more than another year or two.

Pollack goes on to mention deterrence as a possible gambit to keep Hussein in check. I find this curious. Hussein had a gift for self-preservation at all costs (the same impulse which makes it very unlikely he was going to do anything on his own to infuriate the USA). But at the same time he has proven a notoriously slippery customer, more like the Saddam Hussein of South Park's imagination (yeah, budday!) than a brittle aging autocrat like that shit Castro.

Just a thought: given the interplay of these two things-- self-preservation and perfidousness-- how would it be possible to know whether deterrence was working?

Anway, moving on. The next commenter, Thomas Friedman, also mentions deterrence but then swings for the fences.

The real reason for this war—which was never stated—was to burst what I would call the "terrorism bubble," which had built up during the 1990s.

This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as "martyrs," and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we too are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it's not very diplomatic—it's not in the rule book—but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could—period. Sorry to be so blunt, but, as I also wrote before the war: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.

I can almost buy this-- almost. I would be more convinced that this analysis is correct if we had invaded Syria or Pakistan-- a real, live, state sponsor of Muslim extremist terrorism.

The way I see the libervasion of Iraq, in a geopolitical sense, is like this (cowboy analogy to follow-- please excuse me): the US walks into the meanest, roughest bar in town, pulls out a sixgun, and shoots the guy closest to the door in the face. Sure, it makes everyone think you're crazy and not to be fucked with, but might there not be better, more efficient ways to make it utterly and unmistakably clear that the USA is unfuckwithable?

That's it folks. The half-bakery is closed. No more donuts today.

Den Beste is a good writer, and I certainly wouldn't want to get into any kind of intellectual pissing match with him; I wouldn't last long.

But.

"For thirty years we've been told that patriotism was shameful. " " For thirty years we've been pelted with the message that there was nothing about America that justified any pride."

What the hell is he talking about? "Pelted" with this message? By who? Most of the time? Some of the time?

Be honest. Exactly how much of the time are you pelted with the message that there is "nothing about America that justifies pride". The answer is, of course, hardly ever. The reason? The world's gray, and so is America. There are some very great things about this country and some not very great things.

In Den Beste's America, you're either with him, or you're against him. That is exactly what America is not about.

Several hundred words of bitching about poor, trod-upon "Patriotism", and he doesn't bother to define the term. That seems like something of an omission, until you realize that is isn't an omission. Everybody's definition of patriotism is going to be different. Den Beste's might be "unquestioning adoration for anyone who kicks random ass in response to terrorism". Mine might be "liberty and truth for all". Who knows? But it is almost certain that we disagree.

Den Beste further obscurs by failing to point out that virtually all criticism of America comes from overseas. His "real Americans" are in a sea of, well, people who don't agree with them! Dammit!

The constitution is a fuzzy document, deliberately, so that multiple viewpoints can find a home in this country. We reign in the extremes, and trust that the majority will be reasonably correct.

The poll question I'd like to see answered: Given what we now know about Saddam Hussein's WMD (there aren't any), would you have supported the invasion?

This NY Times article on Captain James Yee's case is rather sobering. Yee, as a few citizens in America may remember, was charged by the military with aiding the enemy, treason, or some such nonsense.

The result of all that is that there has been no evidence whatsoever supporting the charges. They are a complete fabrication. Good, you may say to yourself...the system worked.

Except that this guy spent 76 days, a fair number of them in leg chains, while the assholes who put him there did everything they possibly could to justify their having done so. They've destroyed his life, his family, and everything they could get their hands on.

The military's reaction to this? Pretty much nothing. Would somebody please explain to me how two officers, being charged with exactly the same crime, can be treated so differently? One is given immunity from prosecution, and tells her story. The other is thrown in jail for two and a half months. There must be some kind of legal principle that prevents this. Of course, that may not apply in military courts.

I am just stunned by the whole thing. At what point does a prosecutor figure that it's time to back off?

The double standard is appalling.

I wonder if Donanld Sensing, the team players at LGF, Winds of Change might care to refine their assessment of the case, and perhaps state their views on prosecutor infallibility.

Go read Charles Krauthammer. Now. I'm no expert on the Arab world, so I can't speak to the accuracy of his historical context, but this is dead on:

The race is over. The Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject, goes to . . . "Saddam's Dental Exam."

Screenplay: 1st Brigade, U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

Producer: P. Bremer Enterprises, Baghdad.

Director: The anonymous genius at U.S. headquarters who chose this clip as the world's first view of Saddam Hussein in captivity.

In the old days the conquered tyrant was dragged through the streets behind the Roman general's chariot. Or paraded shackled before a jeering crowd. Or, when more finality was required, had his head placed on a spike on the tower wall.

Iraq has its own ways. In the revolution of 1958, Prime Minister Nuri Said was caught by a crowd and murdered, and his body was dragged behind a car through the streets of Baghdad until there was nothing left but half a leg.

We Americans don't do it that way. Instead, we show Saddam Hussein -- King of Kings, Lion of the Tigris, Saladin of the Arabs -- compliantly opening his mouth like a child to the universal indignity of an oral (and head lice!) exam. Docility wrapped in banality. Brilliant. Nothing could have been better calculated to demystify the all-powerful tyrant.

[And then a bunch of stuff about myth-building and imported Stalinism]

On the run, Hussein enjoyed one final moment of myth: the ever-resourceful, undaunted resistance fighter. Perhaps, it was thought, he had it all calculated in advance, fading silently from Baghdad like the Russians withdrawing from Moscow before Napoleon, to suck in the Americans only to strike back later on his own terms in a brilliant guerrilla campaign masterminded by the great one himself.

And then they find him cowering in a hole, disheveled, disoriented and dishonored. After making those underground tapes exhorting others to give their blood for Iraq and for him, his instantaneous reaction to discovery was hands-up surrender.

End of the myth. It is not just that he did not resist the soldiers with the guns. He did not even resist the medic with the tongue depressor.

Absolutely. The most evil of men are still just men, and I seem to remember something about... what was it? Sic transit something something.

Glory. Right. Sic transit gloria, you murderous jackass. Lucky for you, we don't use woodchippers.

Jose Padilla, US citizen and suspected "dirrty bomber" cannot be tried as an "enemy combatant" according to a three-judge panel.

This is a good day for our civil liberties. Guilty or innocent, this guy deserves due process.

From the story:

President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision could force the government to try Padilla, held in a so-called "dirty bomb" plot, in civilian courts.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

I'm going to invite a withering barrage of return fire now.

1) Now that Saddam Hussein has been captured (sweet!), can we please return to the war on terrorism? I've never quite understood what the value was of libervading Iraq instead of Syria or some such overt state sponsor of terrorism. To make a movie analogy, was going into Iraq like Han Solo walking into the Mos Eisley Cantina and shooting the dude nearest the door, just to scare the shit out of the other scum and villains?

Please understand. My saying this does NOT imply that I am an "idiotarian". It does NOT imply I am an America-hater. It does NOT imply I am pro-Saddam. It does NOT imply I am pro-totalitarian. 5) Its does NOT imply that Mullah Misha needs to issue a fatwa on my ass. I'm just asking that the Taliban be beaten soundly over the head, Iraq's infrastructure stabilized, Israel and Palestine made to sit quietly and work shit out (...yeah....), and the rest of the actual America-haters in the region dealt with. I think some of these goals have been neglected of late.

2) Let's not forget that Hussein's capture, sweet as it is, was never the reason for invading in the first place. Remember the imminent threat from Weapons of Mass Destruction? Where the hell are those things, anyway?

3) Did you know that the US's reserve of troops is now down to a few National Guardsmen? Jeeeeesus.

4) Why exclude Germany, France, Canada, etc. from bidding on contracts in Iraq and invite Rwanda to the table? And why do it on the same day that James "The Fixer" Baker is working to get Germany and France to forgive debts to Iraq. It's called synergy, George. It's a business buzzword. Or did you fall asleep during Org-Management class?

5) If the economy's so hot, why is Wal-Mart selling so many gift cards this holiday season, and so much less actual merchandise than expected? Is it because the full-time job market still sucks ass and because most people have burned their savings and run up credit card debt?

[wik] A commenter at Pandagon has framed the Bush's line on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction beautifully. Taking a cue from Bush's intimation that not having found wmd's yet is evidence of their existence, they are going to tell their daughter this Christmas that "wanting a pony is the same as having one." Zing!

Those words are, to paraphrase,

"How about you lay off the bitching about who invaded who and whether it was right, and instead why not lend a goddamn hand, already?"

The Japanese are small and industrious, and wish to enslave us.
The Soviets are devious sociopaths, hell-bent on a Satanic mission of infiltration and subjugation.
The Mexicans are indolent and lazy.
The Italians? Chaos! Lock up your women!
The French? Quislings! Watch your back!
The Germans? You mean, the Hun?
Arabs? "You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

Oh, man oh man. I mean, is that really an attitude we want in a US military officer in Iraq? What about that hearts and minds thing?

I wouldn't lay blame specifically on soldiers in the field who are doing the best they can in the face of insurgency, chaos, and a lack of clear and sensible command mandates. Stereotyping is good for one thing, for good or bad: reducing a percieved overload of information and priorities to simple terms to that you can get on with your life. Given the knotty situation our soldiers on the ground are dealing with, it's no surprise that some of them have become jaded, as Capt. Brown's quote suggests.

Nevertheless, stuff like this suggests a lack of groovy come-togetherness of the kind that will make Iraqi citizens into our allies. This site has written before about the importance of getting Iraq's people on or near our side-- you nkow, by winning their hearts and minds by repeated shows of integrity, trust, competence, and tough/fair open-mindedness-- and as the political side of the libervasion seems increasingly aimless, the happy fuzzy groovy side only becomes more crucial. Dammit.

Bizarrely, I found a piece by Newt Gingrich on the importance of winning the hearts-and-minds war in Iraq. Well, that in and of itself is not so bizarre, but what is, is that I agree with him about how things are going (not well-ish), and why (plans? um...why do you ask?). It's a crazy world where Citizen Newt and I share an opinion.

TM Lutas: Islamists believe that there is one God, he sent prophets down to Earth and the last one was Muhammed. If you believe in this, you get to live a first class life. If you have some other interpretation and only believe in some of the prophets, you get to pay discriminatory taxes and live as 2nd class citizens. Everybody else converts or dies. That's their belief system. Nice pagans get killed, nice atheists get killed, nice hindus, nice buddhists, the whole nine yards. Whether or not you are a decent human being is irrelevant. Read their stuff and understand what they are saying. Combine that ideology with the simple technical fact that it's getting easier every year to build WMD and you have a ticking time bomb. One day, the people who believe in this ideology will have their own shiny red buttons and will be able to enact their dreams of mass genocide. If they die in the process, they get their 72 virgins so it's all ok in the end by their lights.

A practitioner of Islam is not an extremist. An extremist is an extremist. Every religion has them. The socio-cultural circumstances of the origin states of Islam have resulted in a surplus of extremism for that religion, unfortunately. Each of the major religions has some pretty crazy stuff in it.

Judaism has pretty much been able to characterize many of its quirks as "tradition"; for example, foods that are not eaten are not necessarily viewed as "commands from God", but rather as continuations of tradition, critical to cultural survival.

Christianity sits a little farther away from this, with some issues being stamped with "word of God" status.

Islam is, to its detriment, a more structured religion, with quite a few direct commands from God. As such they are less flexible, less able to bridge across change in society. Their culture has paid an enormous price for this inflexibility, over time.

The point is, we are not dealing with a universal whole. Do you truly believe that 99% of Arabs/Muslims in the world want people who are different to suffer? I do not. I believe in an absolute morality. I don't put very much into that category, but essential tolerance and goodwill towards your fellow man are definitely there.

My main point is this: I firmly believe that the only way to control extremism within a given target population is to bring the bulk of that population to our side. We will never be able to stamp out extremism within another culture. The members of that culture are capable of stamping it out themselves, though, which they will do if a positive cultural relationship is established. This is not a PollyAnna vision; the Nazis were decimated as a social entity, ultimately, through the changes the German people themselves enacted, over decades. They decided to be something different than they were.

We need an environment where the average citizen in a "muslim" country views extremists the way Germans view Nazis. As we move towards a future containing the "super-empowered angry man", we must rely on social means as our primary defense. We make it very difficult for an average person to come to our side when we casually discuss extreme solutions, like turning the Middle East into a glass ashtray, or "eliminating" the only religion they have ever practiced, from the world. It is the wrong starting point for the discussion.

You make in case, in the linked entry, that "spiritual warfare" should not be overlooked as a means of change in this asymmetric conflict. There are a number of problems with your approach.

• Are you really talking about forced conversion to another religion? How do you propose to accomplish this? What religions will be on the "list" of "bad" religions? Or do you propose that we simply forcibly convert everyone to Christianity?
• How do you suggest that the US project its power across the entire world to accomplish this? The Muslim population in the US is simply not a threat, and is in fact the most powerful weapon we have to counter prejudice in other countries. Our Muslim population is free to live their lives and worship their God in any way they see fit, and they choose to do so.
• What time scale do you see accomplishing this? Religions have been present, persectured, evolved, and cast aside for thousands of years. Pogroms have been remarkably ineffective at eliminating the fundamental cultural continuity of Judaism, in spite of thousands of years of trying. What factors make you believe that you can accomplish this, within your given risk time frame of a single lifetime?

I respect the fact that you are trying to solve the problem, and reaching for any solution you can. To me, what you are doing is advocating that it is better to do something, anything...than to do nothing, even if that action means that the situation will become worse.

As with virtually every complex endeavor, we need to really think about the consequences of what we do and choose, in a sober manner, those paths with the highest probability of success.

What sociological implications, world-wide, do you see for your religious suppression? How controllable are those implications? Remember that the US military cannot suppress this kind of behavior in one small country. The military can defend against almost any threat, but they cannot change hearts and minds. They're not set up to do it.

Islam in this country is not the problem. Followers here are, with virtually complete agreement, quite aware that they have far more freedom and potential in their lives than practitioners in the old world.

My solution is a combination of "Good Samaritan", principled stands, true ethics in international relations at the economic level, and decentralization within the US. I will write another time about decentralization...it is a key defense concept.

Joe Katzman cheerfully avoids the discomfort of actually having to answer the question I posed: exactly how big is the "big tent" of Idiotarianism?

"Leftists" in universities wink at Jihadists in the same way that "Rightists" at CCC meetings wink at cross burners.

You (the collective you) draw connections where they don't exist. Can a female university student believe that Palestinians have a legitimate cause, as a people? Not in Katzman's world: her belief structure means she is a "feminazi", an "islamofascist", an "anti-semite", an "animal rights nazi"... you get the idea. But there's more! She's also "hostile to rational thought", "winking at jihadists", an an apologist for murder, to boot!

Wow, that's a lot of evil in one little girl. Who knew?

All I say is she thinks the Palestinians might have a point. But your dots become fully connected, defensively, instantly...

And yes, Joe, filling a few paragraphs fifty percent full of insult and bluster cheapens discourse.

I believe in national health care. Did that qualify me for "radical left"? I think we need more regulation on corporations. Did that qualify me? Taxes don't really bother me all that much, although they should, given what I pay. I can keep going, if I haven't qualified yet.

Maybe I can take a brief time-out, and refer to you as a McVeigh Republican. Makes sense to me; if I have only one brush. You like guns and shootin' stuff and smaller government and blowin' stuff up, and so did he. But I won't, because it's just stupid. You're a more complex individual than that, and because you share one characteristic (smaller government) with a real bad guy, doesn't mean you share the entire belief system.

A system of belief is a complex, evolving entity. Simplification of this is a very bad idea because over-simplicity creates conflict. We need to have room to move. Diplomacy needs to be able to maneuver. Tolerance is based in flexibility. Viewing social issues as members of a class of NP-complete problems renders the whole unsolvable.

The "anti-idiotarian", nose in the air, close-minded, take no shit, f-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on, superiority complex delivered by the average invoker of the word seems, to many of us, to be a great way to create enemies unnecessarily. And that's how my family gets endangered.

Tolerance starts with respect, which is apparently in short supply these days.

So am I or ain't I the big "I"?

Do you want a label, or a discourse? The last line I hear from the right wingers I argue with (sorry, "debate with") in person is almost always "I can't respond to that, but you just have to respect the fact that I believe something different from you".

So I do. It's a start, because they're never going to change their minds if you don't.

I heard an interesting discussion this morning on NPR...the topic was the prisoners down in Cuba. The Supreme Court is hearing the Hamdi case soon, I think...the case will decide the question of whether the US Government is allowed to hold a US citizen without a trial or any other recourse, by declaring that person an "unlawful combatant".

Common sense tells us that the government can't do this. I don't even know why this has gotten as far as the Supreme Court. Sure, the guy was picked up on a battlefield. Yeah, there were enemies in the area. At least, that's what the government says. Our system of justice says that crimes (like this one) need to be proven by the government. We don't just throw people in jail because a prosecutor says they've done this or that. We already know what happens when you have a system of justice that works that way -- take a look at the waning days of the Soviet Empire, or what purports to be justice in China, today.

There are a couple of standard excuses that are trotted out by Bush supporters, to justify this. First is the "just trust us" line. Since when does this country "just trust" its elected representatives? At the heart of democracy is the free and unfettered flow of information. Yes, we "trust" our representatives, and if we don't like what they do, we can throw them out in the next election. Our ability to know whether or not we should toss them out depends on the flow of information. If the government is coming after citizens secretly, other citizens don't have access to the information they need to make voting decisions.

At a bare minimum, the government should be required to publish aggregate statistics on the numbers of secretly held captives. Substantial judicial oversight needs to be in place, and periodic reviews must be in place, with members from each branch of government, who must all be in agreement. Is this a lot of work? Yeah, but if we want to do the right thing, it's important.

On the status of the boys in Cuba: It all hinges on status of an individual. We can probably do a significant amount of sorting with one simple principle. Give each prisoner a chance to declare his citizenship, and then ask that government to acknowledge that the prisoner is one of their citizens. That government can then confer status to the prisoner. If the government declares that person to be a soldier in their army, then the person is a prisoner of war and must be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. If they do not acknowledge that person as a soldier, then they are officially an unlawful combatant.

Once someone is in the "unlawful combatant" classification, we must then determine if they were, in fact, fighting. This appears to be one of the key problems: How do we know what a given person was doing? The Administration's attitude towards this is that we should err on the side of safety, and simply keep these people indefinitely until we are sure that it's OK to let them go. To be sure, a small number of people have been released -- their is no overt desire to hold people that don't need holding.

The question is, why should this process be secret? The only sensible reason is that there may be matters of intelligence that could be compromised. While this is a valid reason, it is applied with a very broad brush. It does not make any sense that virtually all of the Gitmo Happy Campers are in this category. Once again, even if secrecy is necessary, convene a simple tribunal with military, judicial, and executive branch members. Have congressional oversight on these tribunals, which can operate in secrecy if the case is made for it. Otherwise, they're open. Why should they be any other way?

Ultimately it's about deciding whether or not the Constitution and its principles apply universally, or whether American citizens are in some sort of special class or people. Americans don't often consider how they'd like to be treated in other countries. If an American citizen is locked up in China on bogus charges, they'd expect their government to come rushing to their aid, because it just ain't right.

Two wrongs don't make a right. We need a simple mechanism to provide oversight and effectively deal with these people, and a universal mechanism is the American way to do it.

Here's a little reading...the gap between the western and arab press never ceases to amaze me...

Hearts and Minds - US style

Dozens killed in Samarra carnage

Thwarted Ambush Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say

U.S. Forces Kill 54 Iraqis After Ambushes

You can see the dramatic differences...

Here's the thing: Last night the lead on Aljazerra was this:

"Innocents killed in Samarra bloodbath
Al-Jazeera, Qatar - 17 hours ago
US troops in the Iraqi town of Samarra have admitted to perpetrating a bloodbath,
with one occupation spokesman confirming nearly four dozen people were killed ... "

I just cut and pasted that from google's news cache...now, if you click through that same story reads like this:

"US occupation authorities in Iraq have raised the Samarra carnage toll to 54.

An unnamed military spokesman on Monday did not specify if those killed were resistance fighters or civilians."

The Aljazeera headline was revised between last night and today. The question is, what does the Arabic headline say? Who revised it? Who wrote it in the first place? I am still trying to find a cached version of the page from last night, which basically said that US forces went in and shot up a bunch of civilians, in a "bloodbath".

At first I thought that was completely ridiculous. I still do, but this morning I heard another report describing a number of civilian casualties during this event. It is clear that at least some civilians died. It is also very clear that the "resistance" fighters melt into the local population, and therefore put that population at risk. A US soldier has the right to shoot back, when he's being shot at.

My old line about Arabs applies in this situation. What the Arab should fear the most is that we begin to think about him the same way he thinks about us. If that ever happens...they only think they know suffering.

The sheer level of disinformation that the average Arab must wade through is incredible. Read this piece by John Burns. It's a conversation between Iraqis and a reporter. It's amazing. These are smart people; how did they get to this point? How are their information sources so corrupt, so inaccurate?

If you've got the time, I also suggest reading Greg Packer's New Yorker article, which gives us great examples of the hope and frustration on both sides. It's lengthy, so set aside some time, but well worth it. I read the print version, but this online version has additional content.

Armed Liberal and CalPundit are discussing the Iraq situation, which means the rest of us better sit and listen quietly.

CalPundit

My simple question (and I truly do not know the answer to this): Should America have withdrawn from Viet Nam when it did? If America had not withdrawn, what would probably have happened? Was it the right thing to do, at that time, irrespective of why the war was enjoined?

OTB summarizes reactions to Lileks' post about Salaam Pax...no sir, Lileks doesn't like him.

Lileks requires abasement from those he has helped, apparently...and is unable to see the irony in the righteous anger derived from reading about the deaths of _three_ of his fellow Minnesotans, who gave their _lives_ helping people who've suffered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their citizens, at the hand of a madman, and several thousand more deaths at the hands of their liberators.

Are the Iraqis permitted melancholy? Is a bittersweet taste not in their apple-pie deliverance?

Lileks demonstrates with those words that in his mind, each of those American lives was worth a few hundred, or a few thousand, Iraqi lives. And when confronted with this observation, in his opinion, an Iraqi may not have outwardly say anything to an American other than "Thank you, Sir. My Mother died in a bombing for us all, Sir. My heart is full of joy."

Sounds goddamn communist to me.

Freedom of speech is a bitch, ain't it? Get used to the ingratitude. There's a lot more coming.

What, did you think that everyone would magically start liking you? Grow up.

Blackhawk Helicopters seem to be getting the smack layed down on themselves pretty frequently. I recall an assault in the early days of the Iraq war where gunfire disabled a large percentage of the fleet.

Can our resident weapons experts explain the utility of this aircraft? It seems to be very vulnerable to ground fire. What is it good for? The only effective role I can see for it is insertion, at night. It seems too vulnerable during other times.

Tacitus characterizes the first few days of the US's stepped up anti-guerilla campaign in Iraq as "shadowboxing."

I'm reminded of the old adage, "never go in against a Sicilain when death is on the line!" That's gonna bite us in the butt if we're not careful.

Or was I thinking of another adage? Hell, I don't remember.

[wik] Wha? US tactics include a bombing campaign now, except instead of sowing Shock and Awe they're just blowing shit up at random. Because historically, bombing has worked so well against guerilla forces. Follow Tacitus' links.