Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Incestuous Amplification

“defined by Jane’s Defense Weekly as ‘a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation.’”

Paul Krugman uses this military term today to explain the Bush administration’s reaction to the California energy crisis. By doing so, he also cleverly highlights the fundamental problem with the Republican establishment that runs Washington. They live in an intellectual echo chamber of insular think tanks, political operatives and partisan media.

But, war is not as controllable as the American political process.

Brad DeLong posts this article and rightly points out that 3 senior administration officials say that: “President Bush’s aides did not forcefully present him with dissenting views from CIA and State and Defense Department officials who warned that U.S.-led forces could face stiff resistance in Iraq.”

The New York Times explicitly stated this back on March 18th:

During a White House planning session with his top military advisers late last month, President Bush turned to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with a pressing question: How long would war with Iraq last? But before General Myers could respond, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put a hand on his arm and said, “Now, Dick, you don’t want to answer that.”

The exchange is recounted by senior officials at the White House and State Department, as well as the Pentagon, as a window into Mr. Rumsfeld’s complicated management style — and, indeed, it presents a Rorschach test to separate Mr. Rumsfeld’s detractors from his supporters.

Critics cite the meeting as evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld muzzles the military, as an effort by the defense secretary to prevent the nation’s highest-ranking general from performing his lawful duty to give his best military thinking, unvarnished, to Mr. Bush.

Keep in mind that this article was written before the current cover-your-ass operation began. They had no way of knowing at that time that the rose colored glasses scenario would not come to fruition, but there was obviously concern on the part of some that Junior was being managed by the IraqHawks, particularly the starry eyed neocons.

As DeLong noted, this “Sr” complaint can only come from a very limited number of people (my guess being Rove, Card and possibly Powell.) And most amazingly, in the March 28th article, they name Cheney and Rumsfeld as being the ones who misled the Commander in Chief. It’s possible that Rove is beginning to circle the wagons to protect Bush’s viability and as a result, Rummy (and Cheney?) are feeling a little heat coming from the inside.

This is very intriguing, if true. Much depends upon developments in the war over the next few days. If the troops remain dug in outside of Baghdad for any length of time (even if air power is being used relentlessly against the Republican Guard positions) there will be a news vacuum that might very well portend a continued drumbeat of complaint against Rumsfeld. If suicide bombings become common, he looks very bad indeed.

And, that might lead him to want to take a big gamble and push into Baghdad before the situation on the ground is optimal. The question then would be whether Bush’s true inner circle would start to lead Junior away from Rummy and toward the Generals. The only person, after all, who can stop Rumsfeld from ordering General Franks to take a wild unnecessary chance is Bush himself.

Rumsfeld’s problem is of his own making. There were many reports of friction between Rumsfeld and the pentagon staff from long before Iraq planning began in earnest. Daily Kos has a great post up about Robert Novak’s reporting on the dissention in the pentagon going back more than a year. Everyone chalked this up to the “transformation” that Rumsfeld was attempting and in typical Howie Kurtz style, it was

reported by most of the press as it interprets everything — as a high school turf battle. But, this goes way beyond that to a serious concern amongst the brass that Rumsfeld is actually endangering national security.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that he depends almost entirely upon a small group of advisors from Republican think tanks. His insistence on deploying a missile defense system that doesn’t work, his uncritical dependence on unproven theories like “effects based warfare” and most importantly, his refusal to allow for contingency battlefield planning are seen by many as not just bad management, but as reckless and dangerous at this particular time. We aren’t just playing any more, it isn’t theoretical, Rumsfeld is insisting on actually using untried military doctrine based upon pop futurist and techno dreamer scenarios. And he is so sure he is right that he refuses to fully consider back-up plans, instead seeing any deviation as a political concession and therefore without merit in its own right. Franks asks for extra time to adjust to the Turkey debacle and Rumsfeld grumbles that he already gave him 50,000 more troops, what more does he want?

Military planners and intelligence sources were all very aware that Iraq was a different situation than Afghanistan, as anyone with half a brain could see. But, in the tight world of right wing thinkers (remember, they fired all the moderates and liberals that had previously given the Defense Policy Board a variety of perspectives) it was time to put their long time theories into practice. They were not going to be dissuaded by a bunch of cowardly military officers or ossified state department careerists.

They had spent many years, from the Plan B group up through the back halls of the Reagan administration to the AEI/CSP/PNAC echo chamber refining their dreamy utopian vision of a world easily dominated by American technology, business and values and they were not going to let a bunch of cynical naysayers get in their way with nitpicking about how to get there.

We’ve made this mistake before, as The Pentagon Papers made clear. But, this time it is even worse. There is no rival superpower to keep us from completely destabilizing the world order and then having nothing tangible to replace it with besides the chimera of brute American force.

Despite all the hype and all the money, we are kidding ourselves if we believe that we can rule the world with our military power. The American people are not Spartans and we are not willing or able to take on that project. These people know that which is why they are depending upon this “projection” of power, “effects based” warfare, “3rd wave” information manipulation and fake missile defense to do the job for us. They believed that we would not really have to demonstrate our power because we can make people believe that they face sure defeat.

And remember, many of the people who have theorized this new world order have no personal experience with war, have learned all the wrong lessons from history and formulated many of their ideas from popular fiction, movie myths and half baked futurist proselytizing. These are not the smartest guys in the world. Remember, the two top planners of the war with Iraq came from the Ford administration. The intellectual neocon claque of Wolfowitz and Perle are slightly deranged from having spent their entire careers convinced that the Soviet Union was so all-powerful that any compromise was a defeat. Wolfowitz thought Gorbachev was a stooge and lobbied hard for the US to name Lithuania a US vital interest so as to put a US presence on the ground to prepare for our inevitable invasion of Russia. And, this was after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

They have always been wrong. Always. But events have now taken on a life of their own. We may just have to depend upon Karl Rove to pull Bush back from the brink. That is a very slender thread to hang on to but it looks like it’s all we’ve got.

Update: Josh Marshall also believes that this “3 senior officials” designation is significant also and may mean that there is some serious rumbling inside the administration.

Fudgy Liar Cake

Ken “Cakeboy” Adelman just said that the war is going much better than anyone predicted because we haven’t had any terrorist reprisals or nuclear war. And, they will STILL greet us with rose petals just as soon as we’ve won the war. Chris Matthews is such a nice polite fellow. He didn’t mention the “cakewalk” comment.

Perhaps if Adelman had done something really dangerous like receive a furtive hallway hummer, Chris would have been reduced to screaming, spittle flecked outrage. There are limits.

The Worst and the Dumbest

Reuters reports that Sy Hersh has a big one coming out about Rummy:

“He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn,” the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. “This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.”

Following up on my post below, here is a June 2002 article from National Review that discusses the ongoing tension within military circles between the radical technophiles and the traditional services. He describes the varying schools of thought as “strategic pluralists,” “strategic monists,” and “technophiles.”

The first are the traditionalists who have believed that they need every possible weapons system and believe in maintaining a large capable force that can meet any threat. This group has been at odds with Army Chief Eric Shinseki, who began an ambitious and long needed Army transformation plan in 1999. But, they had no idea how good they had it until Rummy came along. He pretty much told Shinseki that his plan was scrapped in favor of a much reduced role for the Army in the future and that “boots on the ground” is a discredited concept.

The second group “strategic monists” are simply the types who believe that “air power (or whatever) is all you need.” It has been proven wrong time and again. Still, it persists.

The third group falls into the Tofflerite category described in my previous post. Rummy is a technophile of the highest order with a deep and enduring belief in the efficacy of missile defense and space weapons. When he is forced to come back down to planet earth, in the near term this translates into a belief that “standoff and precision-strike weapons, delivered from the air or from space, will always provide a substitute for land power in future combat operations.”

The author concludes with:

The fundamental flaw that characterizes both the strategic monist and the technophile is their certainty that they can predict the future. As Loren Thomson of the Lexington Institute recently observed, “much of what transpires under the rubric of transformation is actually grounded in implicit assumptions about future threats.” But the future isn’t knowable. The fact is that since 1940, the United States has suffered at least one strategic surprise every decade. “So any concept of transformation that proposes sweeping programmatic changes based on a presumed understanding of future challenges is likely to go wrong. There are simply too many possible threats, and the very act of preparing for some reduces the likelihood that those are the ones we will face.”

We should be very skeptical of anyone who claims we can know the future well enough to eliminate or substantially reduce certain capabilities, such as land power. Strategic pluralism and balanced forces have provided a hedge against uncertainty in the past and, as such, have served the interests of the United States well. We should not use special cases such as Kosovo and Afghanistan to justify a return to the strategic monism of the 1950s to the detriment of overall U.S. security.

This is yet another example of the radical Republican experimentation with every institution of the United States. Like the wild supply side experiment with radical tax cuts, the Federalist Society assault on the legal system, and the abrupt change to a doctrine of unilateralism and preventive war, it is the result of insular, second rate, ivory tower think tank intellectuals taking the reins of power and completely running amuck.

It is hard to overestimate the level of damage this chaotic agenda of dangerous, radical change these people can wreak. This is no joke. The Democrats had better get a grip on this threat to our way of life. It is not about offended sensibilities or cultural niceties or social conformity. It is about a bunch of mediocre minds and megalomaniacal personalities who are experimenting with the most powerful government on the planet as if it is a Heritage Foundation seminar.

This war is still likely to turn out all right (for the US) in the short term, but it is not nearly the sure thing that it would have been if Rummy wasn’t a pie-in-the-sky true believer who has no respect for history, tradition or intellectual inquiry. If we end up having to bombard civilians in large numbers in order to end the Saddam regime, the blood is on Rummy’s hands. He really believed that you can win wars through nothing but propaganda and precision bombing of empty buildings. He didn’t realize that the only enemies who are that gullible are the Democratic Party.

WE are the conservatives now, folks.

Future Shock and Awe

Last week I wrote a post about the likelihood that Newt Gingrich is heavily involved in the actual war planning for the Iraq invasion. I had no proof other than some gossipy items in newspaper columns. However, I have since been informed that Newt has had almost unequalled influence in long term strategic military planning for many, many years.

And, when he introduced the Generals to his intellectual mentors in the early 1980’s he began a revolution in military affairs that is playing itself out in the Iraqi desert at this very minute.

Last November, Newt spoke to the U.S. Joint Forces Command about the future of the military in the 21st century. He spoke of fast paced deployments, joint services, men on horseback with cell phones commanding B52’s, “The Bridges at Toko Ri” and “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” and a whole lot of other stuff. It’s quite a speech and he’s given many just like it for the last 20 years.

… in 1979 as a freshman congressman …

My dad retired as a lieutenant colonel, and here is a brigadier general [Donald Starry] in the United States Army asking me to advise on the core pattern of how you fight a battle. I promptly said to my staff, “Hold the phone calls, postpone my next appointment…He said, “We have a real problem.” I whipped out a legal pad and said, “Now to understand what we’re doing, let me share with you a framework so you can advise them.” I was thrilled. Back then, this was pretty powerful, and he pulled out a little flip chart from his attaché case, and for 45 minutes he walked me through every battle doctrine.

[…]

Now, the thing that actually sold me was when he left he had taken notes that would begin a dialogue which continued until 1987. I advised the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command from the spring of 1979 through the fall of ’87 on Army battle doctrine. Oh, and I guess in that sense the only elected member of Congress to have ever done anything quite like that.

He says in the same speech:

…my stepfather who was an infantryman who was stationed in Orleans, France, and he took me to the battle field for the Verdun, and we spent a weekend with a friend of his who had been drafted in 1941, sent to the Philippines, served in the Bataan Death March and spent 3 1/2 years in a Japanese prison camp. And at the end of the weekend of Japanese prison camp stories at night and Verdun battle fields during the daytime, I had this sense that this stuff’s all real. People die, and not just in Tel Aviv malls, but, as we discovered on September 11th, in our biggest cities.

So I come down here with a passion which is the equivalent to the passion some of you may have felt in combat…

One supposes that those who have actually been in battle might feel differently, but there you have it. In any case, Newt has been advising the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) for many years, (where he also spent a lot of time talking politics apparently.) He remains very active in military matters since he left office:

(June 18,2002)Command leaders briefed Gingrich, who was accompanied by the Commander in Chief of U.S. Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, U.S. Army Gen. William Kernan and Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, British Admiral Ian Forbes, at the JFCOM Joint Warfighting Center.

During those early years in congress he was also heavily involved with some other big thinkers, the authors of the popular bestseller, “Future Shock,” Alvin and Heidi Toffler. He introduced his good friends to the above mentioned General Starry in 1982 and they soon came to have an almost unimaginable influence on a certain group of military planners in creating a new military doctrine called alternatively “third wave” and “information warfare.”

This doctrine relies on the Tofflers’ thesis that the United States is in the midst of a transition between the 2nd wave industrial society and the 3rd wave information society. This concept is the single biggest influence on Newt Gingrich’s “vision” and the military is the one place where Gingrich seems to have been taken very seriously as a planner and long term strategist from very early in his career. (At one time he had 5 active military officers serving on his congressional staff, a fact which raised eyebrows but since he was the Speaker nobody said much about the obvious conflict of active duty personnel directly involved in the political process.)

After the Gulf War the Tofflers wrote “War and Anti-War: Summit at the Dawn of the 21st Century,” in which they claimed that the first Gulf War was the first war to occur between the 2nd wave and 3rd wave of civilization and was the greatest military victory in history. There were

dissenters but many in the military began to plan along the lines that the Tofflers suggested developing a theory called Information Warfare.

In its most benign form it is merely a doctrine for attacking and defending the ever more important information systems (i.e command and control.) But the concept became merged with another doctrine called the Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA that includes the ideas of small, fast “niche” special forces, “information driven” airpower, psy-ops and propaganda and as Don Rumsfeld called it “Exquisite Intelligence.” And these ideas are the basis for Rumsfeld’s military transformation, including his personal favorite “effects based warfare.”

To 3rd wave military enthusiasts, Information Warfare is the thrilling notion that:

“Information dominance is superior situational awareness applied to seize and maintain the initiative, influence the enemy’s actions, and induce operational paralysis while denying your adversary the ability to do the same.”

In other words, war as mind fuck. “Shock and Awe,” falls into the Information Warfare doctrine with its psy-ops goal made possible by information driven precision weapons. IW relies upon the assurance that, in the face of proper information (i.e. the massive superiority of the offensive force) that logically the enemy will not fight. Well…

The target of information warfare, then, is the human mind, especially those minds that make the key decisions of war or peace and, from the military perspective, those minds that make the key decisions on if, when, and how to employ the assets and capabilities embedded in their strategic structures.

Newt put it more prosaically in a speech at the Hoover Institute last July:

…their [old] answer has been to design campaign plans that are so massive – I mean the standard plan in Afghanistan was either Tomahawks or 5 divisions, and that’s why Rumsfeld was so important. Cause Rumsfeld sat down and said, “Well what if we do this other thing? You know, 3 guys on horseback, a B-2 overhead.” And it was a huge shock to the army. I mean, because it worked. Now I’ll tell you one guy who does agree and that’s Chuck Horner who ran the air campaign.

You can still find people out there who are warriors who came up during the Reagan years, all of whom will say flatly to the Secretary of Defense, “The right model is simultaneous, massive, immediate combined air and land forces, period.”

Now, some people see much of the Afghan campaign as a failed strategy, particularly the battle of Tora Bora, which was roundly condemned for its misjudgment of the Afghan “allies” and a failure to put adequate troops on the ground. (Sound familiar?) This was the battle from which Osama bin Laden was believed to have escaped. The guys on horseback with cell phones didn’t quite get the job done.

After Operation Anaconda was proclaimed a victory, (why, we do not know) Junior turned to Condi and said “what’s next?” Immediately, the planning began in earnest for the invasion of Iraq. News reports said that Rumsfeld and crew initially believed that the operation would only require 50-60,000 troops, in keeping with the rapid deployment of “niche” special forces theory. And although they were ultimately persuaded that a much larger force was needed, events of recent days suggest that the adjustment was badly planned and then micromanaged.

Certainly, it would seem that the planners badly miscalculated the Iraqi response to the invasion, sent in light armor when heavy armor is more appropriate and is now scrambling by putting forces into areas for which they are not specifically trained. Perhaps most importantly, their exquisite intelligence was very selective:

Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against Saddam once the Americans attacked.

Perhaps this is the fatal flaw of this 3rd wave Information Warfare theory (although there are many.) Relying upon rosy scenarios is a human failing, particularly amongst those who are invested in certain beliefs and ideals. No matter how good the information, if ignored it is useless.

(All of this was, of course, predicted by the Millenium Challenge wargames played earlier this year in which they simply refused to adapt to the idea that “the crazy middle eastern dictator” was not going go along with the script.)

This article from the Intl. Herald Tribune from last fall is interesting in light of Rumsfeld calling it “Franks’s Plan” today. Newtie himself said at the time:

Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, said he was confident that General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, would not be swayed by suggestions that he include more reinforcements and plan a more cautious attack.

He said that Franks, an army general, “will probably have a more integrated, more aggressive and more risk-taking plan.”

“If the chiefs wanted to be extremely cautious, extremely conservative and design a risk-avoiding strategy, that would be nothing new,” he said in an interview.

It appears that the high command of the military is not as smitten with the Toffler’s New Age vision as a military plan of action. They came through Vietnam and their desire for political support and a clear goal makes them McClellans to the civil war buffs like Cheney and the RMA types who read too much Tom Clancy. Derision toward the traditional idea of overwhelming force is emblematic of Newt and his 3rd wave super true believers.

I do not know how much Gingrich has been involved with the war planning since 9/11. There have been numerous reports that he has been advising Rumsfeld and we know that he is a member of the Defense Policy Board. But, even if he isn’t, in his own way, he has been as influential on the thinking in military affairs as any of the neocons (which he isn’t, really) and his influence is being felt today and will continue to be felt for many, many years to come. He’s the man who brought pop futurism into the American military and got a lot of people to believe that we can run the world militarily without having to commit human beings in great numbers to face the enemies that result from such adventures. Perhaps someday that may be true. kosovo worked out ok, but Milosevic wasn’t laboring under any illusions that his neighbors might join the fray or that he could leverage world opinion. The Afghanistan campaign was a very middling success considering the circumstances and Operation Exquisite Intelligence is turning out to be messy and ill-planned at the very least. The post war scenario looks quite grim.

I have no great quarrel with the Tofflers. They are pop futurists and they have had an enormous influence on the way we think about change and the information age. But, it is truly amazing to me that their thesis has become a serious basis for military planning. While these concepts are intriguing and give one plenty of food for thought about how the future will play out, they are also extremely limited. Their prescriptions for how to deal with new challenges in a non-military sense are almost entirely utopian nonsense and have no practical application. There is no reason to believe that their thinking about military strategy is any more realistic.

The vision of Information Warfare is premature at best. We would like to fight a 3rd wave war. But, it appears that Saddam, still mired in the 2nd wave, refuses to cooperate.

In “Creating a New Civilization, The Politics of the Third Wave,” the Tofflers define their ideas as this:

“The way we make war reflects the way we make wealth and the way we make anti-war must reflect the way we make war.”

I know that I will always be grateful to Newt Gingrich for introducing that kind of clear thinking into our military back in 1983. We can only be more secure as a result.

Goin’ Courtin’

Souter wonders why Texas doesn’t limit sodomy among heterosexuals. “Because it can lead to marriage and procreation,” says Rosenthal…

Wow. And I thought California had some unusual dating rituals.

Even If They Hate Him

I have often wondered how anyone could accept the Perle Wolfowitz claque’s rose colored glasses scenario with a straight face. Perhaps they’ve all been watching “Patton” on a loop with Michael Ledeen and believed that it would be just like the scene of the Americans liberating Paris. (And when Condi said that the Americans had liberated the German people from Hitler, I just assumed she was carried away with the moment.) But, now that I fully realize how completely these people depended upon the Iraqi people to welcome them with open arms I’m convinced that their biggest problem, from diplomacy to war planning, is that they are completely clueless about what motivates and animates human beings. They are psychologically crippled.

Clearly they never gave even a moments thought to the fact that average Iraqis might assume that a bunch of American guys in uniforms running around shooting at Iraqis aren’t really a whole lot different from a bunch of Iraqi guys running around shooting at Iraqis. Except for one thing. The Iraqis, at least, have not invaded their country under circumstances that many people in the world, much less the citizens of Iraq, find suspicious. And after our ignominious bail-out in 1991, it’s not hard to predict that those most likely to rebel might just be a little bit gunshy. We don’t exactly have a good reputation for follow through.

And, did it not occur to the neocon planners that our determination to overthrow and occupy Iraq without international sanction or support would be looked at askance, even by the victims of Saddam Hussein? Merely proclaiming yourself to be “good” and Saddam “evil” is unlikely to persuade anyone but silly red-staters who carry around signs that say “W Is A Hottie.” Nobody else is going to buy it. Certainly not Iraqi people who have every reason to be a teensy bit skeptical of politicians who talk and act tough. They’ve learned the hard way that strong men aren’t particularly thrustworthy.

And they underestimate the fact that just like people everywhere the Iraqis love and will protect their home, their country from a foreign invader. It’s instinctive. One would have thought that if the Bush administration were depending upon a popular uprising against Saddam (or at least a passive reaction) they would not have cavalierly dismissed the value of international support, particularly from the UN, nor would they have neglected to make their post-war plans for a free and democratic Iraq known to everyone in great detail. It might, at least, have helped to allay the obvious fear that the Iraqis are trading a horrible Iraqi dictator for a horrible American one.

Via a great post on Liberal Oasis I found this article in the Washington Post from a couple of days ago that puts it in terms most Americans surely should be able to understand — national pride:

When it came to the cause of Iraq’s predicament, family members pointed to Hussein, describing him as rash. He invaded Iran, trapping them in an eight-year war. He seized Kuwait, bringing on the Persian Gulf War and the devastation of sanctions that largely wiped out Iraq’s middle class. After that war, they were ready to overthrow him themselves.

But they bitterly denounced the war the United States has launched. Iraq, perhaps more than any other Arab country, dwells on traditions — of pride, honor and dignity. To this family, the assault is an insult. It is not Hussein under attack, but Iraq, they said. It is hard to gauge if this is a common sentiment, although it is one heard more often as the war progresses.

“We complain about things, but complaining doesn’t mean cooperating with foreign governments,” the father said. “When somebody comes to attack Iraq, we stand up for Iraq. That doesn’t mean we love Saddam Hussein, but there are priorities.”

Tom Tomorrow said it best:

We took a lot of lessons from 9/11, but it occurs to me that there’s one we might have overlooked. When you attack a nation, people tend to rally around their leader — even if they hate him.

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An Angry Dutchman

Martin Wisse tells it like a REAL leftist:

You may have noticed I have not blogged much this week; with the war now officially started I really have not felt like it. Now more then ever it feels like shouting into a vacuum. I just feel so helpless, you know? Bush finally has his war, innocent people are dying already and many more iwll die before this war is over and I get the feeling none of the socalled adults is taking this fucking serious. William Hague smirking his way through the war debate in the Commons on Tuesday, making oh so clever jokes about Claire Short. Bush and his cronies mouthing platitudes about peace and democracy, Blair and his cronies blaming France for this war because they opposed this war. The fucking reporters on the fucking BBC sounding so fucking pleased with the bombardments going on right now in Baghdad, getting their hardons from all this kewl military stuff. Finally, here’s the New and Improved Gulf War for all those boys and girls who missed the first one: now they too can do the Hero Reporter from Beleaguered Baghdad or Tel Aviv or Kuwait or where fucking ever. Then, escaping to the wonderful world of blogging, I get the same sanctimonious pricks who all along told me I Was Doing it All Wrong that mass protests or direct action is sooo passe and shouldn’t I just vote Democratic and get involved into nice, respectable ways of doing politics. You know the same sort of politics that DIDN’T WORK BEFORE EITHER?? Fuck ’em.

There’s a war going on. It’s time to get serious.

DittoheadJarhead

[…]

The marines are aggrieved: aggrieved that the Iraqis aren’t more grateful, aggrieved that the Iraqis are shooting at them, aggrieved that the US army’s spearhead 3rd Infantry Division tore through Nassiriya earlier in the invasion without making it safe.

“They didn’t clear the place, and then they left, and now the marines sure have to clear it,” he said. “Just like the goddam army.”

And the Iraqis are aggrieved at the marines. A 50-year-old businessman and farmer, Said Yahir, was driving up to the main body of the reconnaissance unit, stationed under the bridge. He wanted to know why the marines had come to his house and taken his son Nathen, his Kalashnikov rifle, and his 3m dinars (about £500).

“What did I do?” he said. “This is your freedom that you’re talking about? This is my life savings.”

In 1991, in the wake of Iraq’s defeat in the first Gulf war, Mr Yahir was one of those who joined the rebellion against Saddam Hussein. His house was shelled by the dictator’s artillery. The US refused to intervene and the rebellion was crushed.

“Saddam would have fallen if they had supported us,” Mr Yahir said. “I’ve been so humiliated.”

Under the bridge, Sergeant Michael Sprague was unrepentant. The money, the marines said, was probably destined for terrorist activities – buying a suicide bomber, for instance. “The same people we determined were safe yesterday were found with weapons today,” he said.

Marine scouts shot two Iraqi men yesterday when they were seen carrying Kalashnikovs. Each man was found to be carrying three magazines, but they never fired at the marines before they were killed.

“They were pointing their weapons in an aggressive manner, and they were taken out,” said Sgt Sprague.

Nathen had been captured the previous day, along with dozens of others, and like them, had been let go, Sgt Sprague said. Then they caught him again with a Kalashnikov in mint condition and 3m dinars.

“So the question I would like to be asked is, if this person already went through EPW [enemy prisoner of war] questioning and was found to be OK, why on earth would he come back? The problem with these people is that you can’t believe anything they say.”

Could he understand the locals’ distrust of the US after what happened in 1991?

“If it weren’t for the liberal press, we might have taken Baghdad last time,” said the sergeant.

[…]

So closely entwined were some populated localities with the tentacles of the VC base area, in some cases actually integrated into the defenses, and so sympatheic were some of the people to the VC that the only way to establish control short of constant combat operations among the people was to remove the people and destroy the village….

That it was infinitely better in some cases to move people from areas long sympathetic to the Viet Cong was amply demonstrated later by events that occurred when the discipline of an American company broke down at a place called My Lai.

–General Westmoreland in his memoir A Soldier Reports,

“We must necessarily appear to them in the nature of supernatural beings — we approach them with the might as of a deity. . . by the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power and good practically unbounded.”

Heart of Darkness

Neocon Ecstasy

Josh Marshall has some really interesting stuff up today, but this quote by looney tunes Michael Ledeen is just a pip:

I think it all depends how the war goes. And I think the level of causalities is secondary. It may sound like an odd thing to say. But all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people. And that we love war. And one of my favorite comments on American character, which is Patton’s speech at the beginning of the movie, where he says “Americans love war. We love fighting. We’ve always fought. We enjoy it. We’re good at it. And so forth.” What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well, and if the American public has the conviction that we’re being well-led, and that our people are fighting well, and that we’re winning, I don’t think causalities are gonna be the issue.

I guess Patton is his idea of a great intellectual. And, for an AEI “freedom chair” scholor, you’d think this idiot would know that the speech he is referring to actually took place and it took place on a very auspicious day — June 5th, 1944. (But yeah, the movie was like, cool too.) Patton was speaking to his men on the eve of the Normandy Invasion and he knew that huge numbers of them were going to die. So, what he was doing was pumping up the troops. Here’s (more or less) what he is supposed to havesaid:

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.”

Now, I don’t know what other “scholors” Ledeen may have been referring to, although Tom Hanks made a good speech in “Saving Private Ryan” and John Wayne was positively riveting in the “Sands of Iwo Jima.”

One thing is very, very clear. It’s damned easy being a war loving American when you are a flabby middle-aged doughboy sitting behind a desk and talking the big talk. This really is one of those situations where the chickenhawk label is completely apt. Ledeen is still a little boy in a grown man’s think tank. Had he proved his manhood in Vietnam instead of onanistically watching Patton and absorbing it as “reality,” this country would be a safer place today.

What an utter embarrassment. He makes Newtie’s silly military history book reviews sound like Sun Tzu.

He Knows Something

Wampum posts this heartfelt plea for a call to your Senators to protest this outrage on the part of our own favorite Dr. Catkiller.

She believes that his relentlessness in getting this provision passed has to do with a larger ambition toward “tort reform” and capping medical malpractice awards. But, I actually think it may be more sinister than that.

That explanation makes a lot of sense as it pertains to Frist the majority leader, but it doesn’t really explain his prior undeviating focus on what is surely a rather obscure issue in the entire medical malpractice scheme. Long before he was responsible for bankrupting the trial lawyers to cripple the Democratic party, he was trying to get this bill passed. He has been rebuffed again and again, but he keeps coming back. As we all know, he even stuck it into the Homeland Security bill and forced poor, drunk Dick Armey to take the fall.

No. There must be more to this. The best spin is that he is owned by Eli Lily and this issue is of extreme importance to them. He’s a typical senate whore doing what he’s paid to do. Simple. They do not want any liability on anything. And, one can easily see how it might be that Frist and his cronies want to raid the vaccine trust fund as Wampum speculates. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

But, none of this explains why he specifically snuck the thimerosol issue into the Homeland Security bill in the dead of night.

In an earlier post Wampum links to a story about the new tobacco case that John Ashcroft apparently let slip through the cracks:

Five big cigarette companies and a public relations firm sat down to devise a fraudulent scheme “to preserve and enhance the tobacco industry’s profits by maximizing the number of smokers . . . and to avoid adverse liability judgments” linked to smoking-related diseases, the government charges.

That’s what these greedy bastards do. I think it’s about the thimerosol. And Frist knows it.

correction: Dick Armey, not Bill.