Month: February 2005

In a commentary for Wall Street Journal yesterday (February 1, 2005; Page A12), pretentiously titled “Set Kosovo Free,” none other than the real Butcher of Belgrade, ex-General Wesley Clark, stumped for the latest outrage by his employer, the International Crisis Group.
(Like other content from the War Street Journal, Clark’s editorial isn’t online.) Continue reading “Wesley Clark and “Free Kosovo””

Before I have my hands crushed by the keyboard KGB, allow me to congratulate the Iraqi Communist Party and its fellow travelers in the West. Christopher Hitchens, one of those Marxist dinosaurs who really should be sent to Cuba while there’s still time to observe him in his proper habitat, must be happy to hear that the ICP appears to have won 10-15 seats in Iraq’s constitutional assembly. (That’s 10-15 out of 275, a ratio of no small consequence: can you imagine what 17-25 libertarians could do in the U.S. House of Representatives?) While "ex"-commie Stephen Schwartz has found a home among the FReeping red-staters, Hitchens has found his useful idiots among the dynamists, who will no doubt cheer on Iraq’s "progressives" as they do battle with the assorted fascists and fundamentalists who fill out this Bizarro World Constitutional Convention.

But as intrigued as you surely are by all the forthcoming drama, you’re probably wondering: When do we get to leave? I mean, first this war was about WMD, then we solved that problem (solved it in the sense that I solved the dragon problem in my house). Then it was about liberating the Iraqis, which we did when Saddam was, in Sean Hannity’s stirring words, "cornered like a rat, caught in a lizard’s den, in a spider hole." Then it was about establishing democracy, which we accomplished Sunday when the greatest election – nay, greatest moment – in history took place with 60% turnout (maybe just a wee bit coerced) and only ~40 dead. So we can leave and let all those Iraqi James Madisons and George Masons and Benjamin Franklins "chart their own course," right?

Are you kidding? Democracy, as every good progressive knows, isn’t just (or even mostly) about voting. You must have missed the understood modifier "social" in front of all this democracy jabber. We can’t leave until we establish social democracy:

Combating unemployment, improving people’s standard of living, and preserving the purchasing power of their incomes.
Maintaining the food ration system and improving the quality of ration contents.
Tackling the injustice suffered by pensioners, and increasing their pay so as to ensure dignified life and secure old age.
Ensuring the rights of workers to earn fair wages, and the rights stipulated by the Labour Law.
Establishing a full social security system, and ensuring free health service.
Offering all necessary help for the disabled, and compensating them for the harm they have suffered.
Rebuilding the state sector (as the main sector) on the basis of efficiency and profitability.
Promoting democratic and progressive culture in society through activating the role of intellectuals and providing them with the required support.
Complete reform of the educational system, to satisfy the requirements of a democratic Iraq in this century.
Combating illiteracy and ensuring free education.

Once Iraq has these things, then we can withdraw. Right? I’m just trying to get some sort of vague timetable here, say a thousand years. Or when we’ve given the Iraqis all these things, is Andrew Sullivan’s great-great grandclone going to demand benefits for the same-sex partners of all Iraqi employees? Is there any end in sight?

From MG at Norwegianity:

Stick your purple finger up in the air,
wave it around like you just don’t care,
Chalabi’s back in, that’s in the bag,
That’s how you do the neocon rag

Catchy, isn’t it? And, so very timely, too.

Bruce R who runs, as Henley says, “…your go-to site for questions about SAM strike authenticity,” on Sunday’s RAF Herc crash:

I can see only two realistic possibilities for why this plane crashed: mechanical failure unrelated to terrorists (something big, too, like a centerline gasoline tank explosion) is still a possibility, although unlikely in such a normally reliable aircraft. More likely, though, is a bomb… and the Al Jazeera footage is meant in part to disguise how that was done (misleading people into thinking it might be a missile extends the threat across the entire country, and may leave open the possibility of a repeat.) Alternatively the footage was done up long ago, and was being kept in the can until some act of fatal chance could be found to pin it on… unlikely, but still possible.

More here. Thanks, Jim.

Tom Knapp quotes Tim Cavanaugh:The real surprise is how even the war skeptics seem to have no counternarrative to put up against the story of a Miracle In Mosul.

We don’t need a counternarrative. We’ve been right all along. We just get caught flat-footed everytime the warbots lie their asses off. For example, who among us ever claimed that the Shiites and Kurds wouldn’t vote en masse? No one. So, when they trumpet “high-turnout” as a Victory for Democracy (I actually thought alot more expats would vote), we’re standing there going, well duh. We say it will be violent, and they pretend 40+ deaths at the hands of a world record NINE SUICIDE BOMBINGS in ONE DAY is, whew! Such a relief that it wasn’t bad at all! And so on.

The fact is that the Sunnis are in a worse position now than ever, just like we said would happen. The insurgency will now intensify, just like we said. The “liberated Iraqis” who now think they voted the occupation out of the country will turn on the new “government” if it doesn’t get rid of them right off, just like we said. The Kurds are talking about Independent Kurdistan while the Turks sabre-rattle ominously, just like we said. We now have an Iranian Grand Ayatollah as the defacto leader of Iraq, just like we said. Moqtada al-Sadr’s army is waiting in the wings for the al-Sistani faction to do something wrong so he can take to the streets again. So, we just keep saying what we’ve been saying and they’ll keep changing the goals and rationalizations more frequently than they change their undies, as usual. The supreme irony is that when all this goes to hell, as it will, it’ll be all our fault for being “negative” and not having sent enough positive faith-vibes Iraqwards. You can see it coming, but what can you do? We can’t prevent it anymore than we could convince the neocons, “conservatives” and Bush cultists that the Iraqis weren’t going to throw flowers at them as they paraded triumphantly into Baghdad.

You can’t beat people who lie like that. It’s like you said in an earlier post, we’re stuck with reality while for them every day is a new day and nothing they said before matters and they can change the language to mean new things and proclaim their fantasies in unison.

The Republican Surrealists and their fellow travelers in the War Party have no problem talking about the Iraq elections. After all, their modus operandi is to make big claims and ebullient predictions. If those predictions fail to come true (“WMD!” “Welcomed as liberators!” “When we catch Saddam, the resistance will collapse!”), then they simply deny that they ever predicted any such things, or claim that the predictions were true and that it’s just that damn leftie media lying to us, or that the predictions didn’t come true because the rest of us slackers didn’t click our heels together hard enough while wishing.

Anti-war libertarians, on the other hand, are pretty much stuck with the facts. Reality-based community and all, you know.

How do you have a real debate with people who have taken the Big Lie technique to the extremes these people have?

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

And they aren’t kidding, either. How do you counter that?

Later…..Here’s an interesting take on this issue:

I don’t know about you, but one of the most frustrating aspects of criticizing Bush’s recent embrace of dreamy idealism is that it almost forces you to attack things that you don’t want to attack – idealistic appeals to freedom, democracy, and an end to tyranny. Quite suavely, Bush and pals are attempting to define the terms of the debate. If the debate is about being for or against freedom, they can’t lose. But I think I’ve figured out how to respond. You simply can’t get mired in the terms that they choose. You have to see the total reality of what they’re doing – and not let them reduce it to a simple dichotomy of either for or against freedom. Essentially, they have adopted a two-step process to distract people from the reality they have created: (1) focus on – and isolate – one tiny piece of the overall picture; and (2) create a fairy tale out of that tiny sliver of reality.

This is a small excerpt – read the whole post.

An Islamic Web site shows a picture of what appears to be an American soldier in desert fatigues, with his hands tied and a gun pointed at his head.

A statement on the site threatens to behead the soldier in 72 hours unless Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The statement also suggests the group is holding other prisoners.

UPDATE: It’s a HOAX. Drudge has the goods.