Friday, March 28, 2003
OH NO...
Davenport remembers Korthaus, 'Our Fallen Hero'
My condolences to his family and friends.
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THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY…
If you spend any time at lefty websites (try this one) and peruse the comments sections, you’ll run into the canard that Saddam and al Qaeda would never work together because Saddam is secular, al Qaeda is religious, and, thus, they hate each other.
Well, read this article in the Syndey Morning Herald. (Thanks to Croooow Blog.)
Also take a look at this interesting picture at Michael Totten’s website.
As Totten says, “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.”
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THE ALMOST QUAGMIRE?
Following on the heels of the Des Moines Register’s Worst Column Ever comes a possible nominee for the Worst Editorial Ever. It’s only a possible nominee because it gets a few things right. A very few things. Let’s begin:
When President Bush told the people of Iraq "the day of your liberation is near," it evoked images of joyous civilians cheering the arrival of U.S. troops. One week later, it's clear that was mostly wishful thinking.
Well, it’s quite a bit more than wishful thinking, as various pictures show. But let’s be clear about a few things. First, it was not President Bush who said that the Iraqis would be cheering. The Register is a bit too coy in the editorial for me to say that is what is implied. But the editorial is vague enough that one could easily walk away with the impression that Bush was promising a bed of roses. Second, because such things are happening with considerable frequency doesn’t mean that the war isn’t going well.
The most serious miscalculation of the war so far may have been the belief that troops would surrender en masse and civilians would rush to welcome Americans as liberators.
Who made the miscalculation? The Register doesn’t say. It’s a little hard to believe that the military made its plans on the hope of mass surrenders. It seems the Register is trying to put the blame for this on Bush, without actually saying so. Rather weasely, if you ask me.
Perhaps that will still happen when Baghdad falls, but the opposite appears to be happening now.
The opposite, as in the Iraqis will take up arms against the U.S. And what is the evidence for that?
One report told of residents of Baghdad interpreting the savage sand storm as a sign that God was intervening against American troops. Another report said expatriate Iraqis who dislike Saddam have returned home, or are considering returning, from Jordan to fight for their country.
Reports of a sandstorm and a few expatriates? Surely they must be joking.
Most Iraqis may hate Saddam Hussein, but what if they also hate the prospect of their country being occupied by a foreign army?
Well, no way to know for sure. But if anyone at the Register editorial board wants to bet me $100 that by this time next year that by this time next year most Iraqis don’t appreciate the U.S. for removing a dictator that kills his own people, I’ll gladly take that bet.
U.S. military authorities acknowledge they underestimated the strength and determination of the Fedayeen militia units. Protecting the long supply line from guerrilla attack has become a serious problem.
Okay, got that one right. But it’s a problem we can deal with. Not exactly a quagmire.
Even Iraqis who opposed Saddam are sure to be embittered by civilian deaths resulting from the war, despite efforts to avoid them.
Oh wait, I was wrong. Quagmire! QUAGMIRE!!
The broader worry is that people throughout the region will interpret the war as a Western humiliation of the entire Arab world. If so, the war could fan the flames of terrorism for another generation.
Again, no way to know for sure. But here’s something the Register didn’t consider: we’ve been sending troops to the Gulf for the better part of a year, and the U.S. has seen exactly zero terrorist incidents. Perhaps when the terrorist part of the world sees that we’re serious about kicking ass and taking names (and not just sending a few missiles into a $10 tent to smack some camel in the butt) they’ll be less inclined to commit terrorism against us. Just a guess.
I must say the editorial is artful in its spin: the war is not going too well because a few pie-in-the-sky expectations aren’t being met.
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WHILE I'M ON THE SUBJECT
Apparently the Des Moines Register’s war coverage is beginning to be dictated by the editorial page. According to Joe:
It's a shame you don't get the print edition of the Register. Today greeted us with a big headline "Iraq's Resolve Misjudged" and a subhead about "Iraqi Leaders Show Taste For War." Nothing like that on the web site.
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Thursday, March 27, 2003
DES MOINES REGISTER’S WORST COLUMN EVER
Rekha Basu has written the Des Moines Register’s Worst Column Ever (DMRWCE). It has a creepy beginning:
I woke up last Friday morning in a Venice Beach, Calif., hotel to the sounds of a little boy crying in the next room. "Don't Mommy, don't," he wailed as a woman scolded him. Then his cries grew louder, and he was pleading for his mother as a man with a booming voice took control. I heard some thuds and then I didn't hear the child anymore for a long while.
I couldn't tell if I was listening in on child abuse or just a couple disciplining a fussy child, but it left me with a haunting sense of helplessness and shame for being unable to do anything.
That same feeling of impotence returned later that morning when I turned on the TV to see a smoke-filled Baghdad being pounded by American bombs. The image has not left me since.
Helpless? Has Ms. Basu never heard of 9-1-1? Regardless, it’s a neat rhetorical trick to open a column in a way that hints this war is like child abuse. A lame argument, but a neat rhetorical trick.
The DMRWCE gets creepier:
This is the tyranny we see unfolding: A man takes power in a country by means many of its citizens consider illegitimate. It's a country blessed with great treasures and human resources, but he is determined to plunder them by starting a war that most other countries denounce as illegitimate.
Ah yes, the Florida election all over again. Some people just can’t move on. Bush didn’t “take power,” he was elected.
Apparently she doesn’t consider what motive Bush could possibly have to “plunder” America. Wouldn’t “plundering” the resources of our country hurt his reelection? Of course, such simple considerations never make their way into the DMRWCE.
He finds a myriad excuses to justify it, but most of the "facts" he invokes remain unproven.
He says, for example, that the other country is a threat to our people, participated in terrorist attacks on our soil, has weapons of mass destruction it wants to use on us. (A week after troops went in, they had found no evidence of any of the alleged biological or chemical weapons. None had been unleashed. No links to Al-Qaida had been uncovered.)
I guess Ms. Basu missed the stories about Iraqi soldiers having chemical suits and gas masks. Or perhaps the story came out after the DMRWCE went to press.
But that’s no excuse, because the troops have only been in Iraq for ONE WEEK! And right now, our troops have a few other things to concern themselves about other than searching for WMDs. Anyone who expected that we’d find WMDs after only seven days is a clueless fool. Any link to al Qaeda would be in intelligence files in Baghdad. Newsflash to Basu: We haven’t captured Baghdad yet! Note also how Basu begins the section in parenthesis with the phrase “A week after,” as though seven days would be enough time. She’s either very stupid or very deceptive, but that’s exactly what you’d expect from the DMRWCE.
He demands that the country disarm, but when that process is under way, when international weapons inspectors report that progress is being made, he calls for war anyway.
The “process” was not underway. What was underway was Saddam’s usual cat-and-mouse game with the inspectors. The burden was on Saddam to show us where the WMDs were, not on the inspectors to find them. The inspectors were supposed to be there to ensure the Saddam was complying with the demand to disarm. As for “progress being made”, that is highly debatable. As Hans Blix reported, there were many WMDs that were unaccounted for.
He then demands the other president flee. When that does not happen, he unleashes a massive bombing campaign with the help of a few allies and tries to assassinate him.
Yes, when the enemy doesn’t concede to your demands, you attack him. That’s what happens in war.
All this is done in the name of democracy, as if getting carte blanche from his own Congress gives him the license to disregard the rule of international law and treaties, the concept of national sovereignty and borders.
The one disregarding international law was Saddam. He violated over 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions. The latest one, Resolution 1441, warned that he would suffer serious consequences if he failed to disarm. If anything, President Bush is enforcing international law.
If this is the kind of democracy we want to export, you can see why some countries would want no part of it.
That is so ridiculous, worthy only of the DMRWCE. We want to export the kind of democracy that respects individual rights; you know, Ms. Basu, the kind that doesn’t put people feet first into plastic shredders.
What if the rogue regime is ours? What if we were sold a bill of goods?
What if the author of the DMRWCE is just an idiot?
At first President Bush left the impression that the conflict would be brief and victory swift. Now he hits Congress up with a bill for $75 billion for the next six months.
Hmmm…back in October Bush warned that a war with Iraq “could be difficult.” Perhaps it depends on what the definition of “brief and swift” is.
At first, he vigorously objected to the concept of nation-building in other countries. Now he says we won't stop until we've engineered a regime change in Iraq.
That’s right, he did object to nation building. That was before a little event called 9-11 happened. You see, sometimes traumatic events can seriously alter one's worldview.
He said Iraqis would welcome their "liberation." So far, the vast majority of Iraqis have responded to us as one would to enemy invaders.
The vast majority of Iraqis are still under Saddam’s rule you nattering fool! If they started cheering on the U.S. they would probably be executed by Saddam’s thugs. And of the ones who have been liberated, if they viewed us an “enemy invaders” they would either be taking up arms or running away to hide. They wouldn’t be coming out to greet the soldiers.
Yes, Saddam Hussein has ruled illegitimately, attacked some of his own, invaded another country in the past. But is a U.S. occupation force, driven by questionable goals, any better?
DOES A BEAR CRAP IN THE WOODS!? That is easily the dumbest thing written in the DMRWCE. Is Afghanistan better or worse after the U.S. invaded? Is the U.S. going to gas the Iraqis, give them acid baths, torture their children in front of their eyes, and put them in plastic shredders? What’s particularly deceptive in that sentence is the phrase “attacked some.” She puts “attacked” in place of “killed” or “executed” to make Saddam seem less brutal in comparison to the U.S. She uses “some” in place of “many” or “massive” to minimize the thousands of Iraqis who have been murdered by Saddam. Such rhetoric makes it easier to make a case of moral equivalence between Saddam and Bush. Exactly what you would expect from the DMRWCE.
These are not easy questions, but Americans need to ask them: What if the war is really not being waged for humanitarian or security concerns, but a thirst for control of Iraq and its oil?
The same, tired “WAR FOR OIL” mantra of the left. Perhaps Americans should be asking themselves if the concern was cheap oil, why not just end the sanctions on Iraq? Or perhaps they should ask themselves what happened to Kuwaiti oil fields in the wake of the first Gulf War. Here’s a hint: they are back in the control of Kuwait.
Before it began last week, child psychologists were broadcasting tips to help American children cope with the images of bloodshed soon to follow. I wondered what tips Iraqi psychologists were offering the parents in Basra and Baghdad that day, when their very survival was stake.
I wonder what Iraqi psychologists told people about living under a mass murderer like Saddam. Oh wait, they probably didn’t tell them anything, for fear of being imprisoned and executed.
Basu’s column has all the hallmarks of the far left: the real tyranny is in the U.S., President Bush is the biggest threat to world peace, and moral equivalence between Bush and Saddam. It’s a prime example of the morally clueless, paranoid, and delusional ranting from the left. Exactly what one would expect in the Des Moines Register’s Worst Column Ever.
P.S. Here’s Ms. Basu’s email. Let her know what you think.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2003
CRITIQUEES
The Blogcritics Awards for books, film, TV, and video are up. Check 'em out.
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OH NO….
Des Moines Marine is MIA
Quad City Marine is MIA
My prayers for both families that all will turn out okay.
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THE NY TIMES SCOLDS US ABOUT FREE SPEECH
My new column at the American Prowler.
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SOME ADVICE FOR THE UNIVERSITY
After seeing the story on the ROTC being vandlized at the University of Iowa, a gentlamn named Don Cross emails to say:
I got access to you through Instapundit. I live in Phoenix, Az. I was raised and educated in Iowa. I'm in my 60's and lived through the Vietnam debacle. I suggest that residents of Iowa contact the University of Iowa and surge that at a time like this, ROTC cadets should proudly wear their uniforms and if any of the "Willing Idiots" dare to insult/assault them, they should take appropriate action to defend themselves. The University should support them in this approach and quit knuckling under to hooligans.
Amen to that!
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SPEAKING OF THE UNIVERSITY
The protests are picking up in the People’s Republic of Johnson County. Four brave souls allowed themselves to be arrested yesterday. Turns out one of them, Sasha Waters, is a professor of comparative literature. I can imagine her classes: “Western literature is nothing more than propaganda for the imperialist, fascist patriarchy!”
There was the usual protest fare:
Speakers from several Iowa City and campus organizations addressed the group, the members of which shouted "amen" and sometimes broke into chants, including, "George Bush, you're on crack. Get the hell out of Iraq," during the 1½-hour event.
Boy, that’s creative! Did they write that one themselves?
Also of note:
In between speakers, the Radical Cheerleaders led the crowd in chants, including a satirical version of "The Star Spangled Banner" with substitute lyrics that read, "In the land of corporate greed, and the home of shame," drawing the ire of some onlookers and eliciting several boos from the periphery of the group.
Who says these folks are anti-American?
Read the rest of what is a very fine article by student reporter Matthew Moss.
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Tuesday, March 25, 2003
HALF AIN'T BAD
Larry Kudlow holds out hope for the Bush tax cut.
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THE HUMANITARIAN PART
Michael Totten has plenty on the humanitarian aspect of this war. Start here and scroll down.
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CROOOOW ON KRUGMAN
Croooow Blog has the round-up of Krugman takedowns. Also, don't miss this little post. (I second the emotion.)
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DON'T LIKE THE WAR?
Then vandalize the ROTC. That appears to be what has happened at the University of Iowa:
An act of vandalism against a symbol of the U.S. military on the UI campus over Spring Break prompted leaders Monday to stop requiring cadets to wear uniforms to class.
Authorities are looking for a person who smashed two glass doors at the Reserve Officer Training Corps office in the South Quadrangle building and spray-painted such slogans as "Stop U.S. military research" and "Fuck all wars" on four other UI buildings between March 20 and 21, UI police records show.
UPDATE:After reading Glenn Reynolds’s comments on this story, I decided to do a bit of digging to find articles about a racial incident that occurred at the University of Iowa Dental School back in the Spring of 2000. In that instance, a dental student sent threatening emails to dental students that warned of harm to come to minority students. It was first believed to be a white student, but later turned out to be an African-American student named Tarsha Claiborne. Here’s an article from the Quad City Times (if the article doesn’t come up, go to the QC Times website, and type in “e-mail threats”—be sure to include the quotation marks—and click on the second story that appears.) Here is how the University authorities reacted to the e-mail threats:
University spokesman Steven Parrott confirmed that a few students had reported the new message to campus security Thursday night. Only dentistry students received the message, he said.
Parrott said Friday that administrators had met with students and faculty, updating them on the investigation and encouraging them to be on alert regarding their personal safety. He said that, beyond the e-mail threats, there had been no acts of violence.
"Our judgment is that even though they included threats of violence, we think it was more toward trying to create a climate of fear," Parrott said.
Iowa computer experts have been working to try to track down the sender.
Also Thursday, the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety investigators said they have begun working with the online company Excite.com and the FBI in its continuing investigation to find the source of the racist e-mail.
Now this is how the University is apparently reacting to the ROTC incident:
"Ever since the war broke out, we've had some minor incidents, but it's continuing to escalate," [UI police associate director Duane] Papke said.
In a separate incident on Sunday, Iowa City police officers arrested Dain Jubal Ring, 23, for allegedly spray-painting war slogans on the fence surrounding the Old Capitol.
Papke said the incidents are not connected.
"We're not going to put extra officers on watch, but we are going to put special emphasis on looking and watching for suspicious activity," Papke said.
In the racial incident, which amounted to only threats, the authorities bust their humps and bring in the FBI to track down the perpetrator. In the ROTC incident, in which actual vandalism has occurred, they’re issuing a “special emphasis”. Why the different responses? Wouldn’t have something to do with campus politics, would it?
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KRUGMAN GETTIN' KOOKIER
Will someone please tell Paul Krugman to check the dosage on his medication?
Last week Krugman cryptically warned about “the shape of things to come” regarding the Bush Administration. This week we get a better sense of what that means:
By and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. One of the most striking took place after Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, criticized President Bush: a crowd gathered in Louisiana to watch a 33,000-pound tractor smash a collection of Dixie Chicks CD's, tapes and other paraphernalia. To those familiar with 20th-century European history it seemed eerily reminiscent of. . . . But as Sinclair Lewis said, it can't happen here.
I guess we now know why Krugman is a professor of economics, and not history. When the Nazis took over Germany, German democracy was a joke, Germany had no democratic tradition, and it had an economy that was in the toilet. None of that applies to the U.S. (Yes, the economy is a bit sluggish, but it’s nothing like that of the 1930s.) Sorry, but protestors in America and other democracies pull publicity stunts to promote a cause all the time. Heck, Krugman should take a look at his ideological brethren in San Francisco. There are many hallmarks of a society slipping into totalitarianism—a cheap publicity stunt isn’t one of them.
Ultimately what has Krugman worried is that Clear Channel Communications, a radio station giant, is apparently organizing pro-war demonstrations. The heads of Clear Channel are Bush supporters, and so, naturally, Krugman sniffs out an unseemly quid pro quo:
There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear, but a good guess is that we're now seeing the next stage in the evolution of a new American oligarchy. As Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic, in the Bush administration "government and business have melded into one big 'us.' " On almost every aspect of domestic policy, business interests rule: "Scores of midlevel appointees . . . now oversee industries for which they once worked." We should have realized that this is a two-way street: if politicians are busy doing favors for businesses that support them, why shouldn't we expect businesses to reciprocate by doing favors for those politicians — by, for example, organizing "grass roots" rallies on their behalf?
Why shouldn’t we expect that a college professor would actually make use of a dictionary? An oligarchy is “government by the few.” That is, it doesn’t have elections. Memo to Paul: Bush has to face the voters again in 2004, and even if he wins that, he’s term limited in 2008.
On the other hand, maybe Krugman is well aware of the definition of oligarchy. Perhaps he really worries that it’s all part of a grand scheme by the Bush family to usurp power and ruin democratic government in America.
Better check the dosage.
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LEFTY WAR BLOGGING WATCH
Some of lefty blogs are having a love-fest with Michael Moore’s acceptance speech at the Oscars Sunday night—this after it was so bad that he was even booed by some audience members.
Both Scoobie Davis and Ruminate This cite what is fast becoming the money quote in Moore’s little rant:
We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.
Yes, and he’d know about fiction, having made a fictitious movie.
Oliver Willis does upbraid Moore a bit for continuing his “stolen election” shtick, but then unleashes this corker: “I think the booing showed that as liberal as Hollywood may be, they are sheeeep.” You’ve got to kidding! The booing was the first hint of independent thought that Hollywood has shown since at least the 1960s.
Meanwhile, Sashmigirl exclaims “Michael Moore Rocks” and then quotes Moore’s petulant letter in which he addressed the President as “Governor Bush.” She later claims she’s not anti-Bush, but it’s hard to see how you’d not be after approvingly quoting Moore’s Bush-Bashing.
Isn’t in interesting that the left, which routinely tags Bush as a liar, rallies around a guy who takes more liberties with the truth than Bill Clinton?
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Monday, March 24, 2003
LEFTY WAR BLOGGING WATCH
At the first sign that the war against Saddam wouldn’t be a cakewalk, Hesiod began salivating over the political possibilities:
But...the question is, will we win pretty...or ugly?
And "ugly" means killing tens of thousands of Iraqis. Mostly soldiers. But, inevitably, many civilians as well.
And, there's no guarantee that the coalition forces won't start to lose soldiers either.
If and when this becomes the battle for Baghdad...all the wonderful U.S. technology, experience, intelligence and firepower gets limited in its relative effectiveness.
That will give Saddam and his remaining forces hope for a stalemate that might force a political settlement.
And once the Iraqi's have hope...there will be NO hope for the United States and Britain to win this cleanly and get out of it with no serious political damage. And I mean serious.
I'm talking Bush-might-lose-the-election serious. [That's the only thing the Bushies REALLY care about anyway].
Oh...and massive terrorist reprisals, and a completely unmanageable Iraq.
The first dead soldiers aren’t even buried yet, and Hesiod is near giddy at the prospect of Bush being bounced from office. Isn’t this the same guy who bashed me for arguing that Bush should have made the war a campaign issue last Fall?
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IT’S THE 1960s AGAIN!
That might as well be the title of this editorial in the Des Moines Register that conveys an awestruck tone over the recent anti-war protests:
Outside Iraq, there was a hint of "shock and awe" on another front. The magnitude and intensity of anti-war demonstrations around the world are eye-opening.
It took years before protests against the Vietnam War grew into a mass movement. Not so with this war. Large-scale protests in the United States were instantaneous.
Huh? Have the Register editorialists noticed that the protests have been going on since early this year? Trying to spin the recent demonstrations as a massive, spontaneous reaction is, well, spin.
The protests seem directed not so much at the war itself as at the idea of the United States asserting the right to attack any country it considers to be a threat. The demonstrators see and fear an America striving for world domination through military power.
I don’t really give a damn what clowns who are barfing and pooping in public "see and fear.”
The protests overseas might have been anticipated. The scope of the protests at home was not. It says something about the intensity of anti-war feelings that many Americans are willing to risk being called cowards or traitors by demonstrating against a war at a time that U.S. troops are in harm's way.
Spin, spin, spin. The editorialists must be getting dizzy. Again, have the editorialists not seen the protests the last few months? Or have they never heard of a World Trade Organization meeting? Whenever America takes military action, the one things you can bank on as a near certainty is that the fringe-left will take to the streets en masse.
From the size of the demonstrations, it appears those who are against the war, though they may be fewer in number, hold their views fervently. It's also unknown how much of the support for the war in the polls is due to the "rally effect" of Americans instinctively supporting our president. That support may not run deep or last long.
“We sure hope it doesn’t,” you can almost hear the editorialists say.
The end of the fighting in Iraq will be just the beginning of the battle for public opinion to define the meaning of the war and its justification in history.
And we can rest assure that the Register editorial page will spin it in a left-wing direction as much as possible.
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LEFTY WAR BLOGGING WATCH
Doing his best Pauline Kael impersonation, Rob Goodson doesn’t believe that polls show a majority of Americans:
I Don't Believe the Corporate Media A Washington Post-ABC poll claims to show that 71% of Americans support the war. It just ain't so! Here in Ann Arbor, I'd say 7.1% would be more accurate. The Post and Disney, two key cogs in the Republican propaganda machine, are trying to make those of us who know this genocidal war is illegal, immoral and unconstitutional feel isolated. Blaming this war on Iraq or the French or anybody besides the Bush administration is pure nonsense. Thinking it's a good thing anyway is pure evil.
Yep, the polls must be wrong because in Ann Arbor not that many people support the war. Check out his website. You’ll see a person who almost never encounters anyone with opinions different from his own.
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