| Saturday,
November 22, 2003 Subject: Scary interview
with General Franks
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml
Generals talking like this worries me.
Terry Armstrong
Nothing lasts forever. Those who would exchange
essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety, said Franklin. We may be working at testing the truth of his
observation.
And see below
Subject: Wired: Speed Kills, Military Wants More
Not quite Thor, but an interesting idea.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speed Kills, Military Wants More
Ever in search of more powerful weapons, the Pentagon
is planning some big and mighty fast missiles and rockets. By Noah Shachtman.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61268,00.html
Gary Pavek
Indeed
=======================
The new Homeland Security Bill has
passed.
Things will be different now.
Internet surfing will be tracked by the FBI with a
non-intrusive method.
The FBI says you will not notice anything
different.
For a demonstration click on the link below...
======================================
This came last week, but got
passed over due to COMDEX:
Well, we disagree about a lot of things, but
this isn't one of them.
Exporting jobs increases overall system wealth. It
also creates displacement, alienation and unhappiness for individual people.
I have come around to the view that it is a legitimate use of state power to
provide a cushion or safety net for those people, on utilitarian and
state-defending grounds. Displaced, alienated and unhappy people revolt.
Better a welfare state than a Bolshevik revolution.
However, a tariff on imports is not the way to fund
this. The key principle of taxation is that whatever you tax, you get less
of. Since imported goods are a net good for Americans (300 million of us get
to enjoy the cheap widget, while 100 of us are thrown out of work by it), we
don't want to discourage their consumption.
Instead, I would float the unemployment tax rate of
companies doing business in the United States on the basis of their net U.S.
jobs per annum. That is, if a company's job FTE count goes down in the
course of a year, their (hefty) taxes for unemployment goes up. If the count
goes up, their tax goes down. This alters the calculus when companies decide
whether or not to outsource jobs to Mexico and allocates the burden of the
displaced worker to the economic entity that made that decision.
Best wishes,
Bob Hayes
This probably needs discussion. Tariffs are simple
and easy to apply, and apply across the board. They raise some revenue,
change purchasing patterns, but if kept in the "tariff for revenue" range
don't do much to distort genuine changes for efficiency.
The US is definitely changing, and one change is
new efficiencies in manufacturing eliminate jobs as new efficiencies in
farming eliminated farming jobs. The question is, can democracy as we know
it survive this efficiency? And it is not a trivial question.
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
A tariff IS a subsidy to the workers who are protected
by it, at the expense of consumers who pay a higher price for the good in
question. Your "philosophical" point is silly.
Regards, Gene Callahan Author, Economics for Real
People
I must have missed something. A tariff is a tax. It
raises revenue. A subsidy is a payment. It costs the government money. Now I
suppose in some philosophical sense you can say that since the effect of a
tariff is to protect a job, those workers are being "subsidized" but that is
to deprive words of meaning, and end us in a soup of verbiage that makes it
impossible to have a real conversation.
If that is economics for real people I must have
missed something.
Some years ago, Jim Baen and I debated the point:
would it be better to protect some key industries by tariff or by subsidy:
that is, do we put in protective tariffs so that certain industries stay in
the US despite their not being able to compete internationally, or do we
simply pay tax-collected money to the industries so that they can pay higher
wages: this is known as a subsidy.
Now you seem to argue that there is no difference
here. Yet in the case of a tariff the tax is paid by those who use the
particular goods; in the case of a subsidy the tax for the subsidy is paid
by all, or generally so.
Your argument that there is no difference between
the two policies, since both are "subsidies" does not seem comprehensible.
======================================
And now for something
frightening:
Dear Jerry,
I have learnt that today Mr. Brett Bursey should
stay trial. Google ["I'm lucky"] showed
http://eafarris.al.umces.edu/node/view/429 [from 26 June, 2003]
It's short:
"The trial of Brett Bursey, the man arrested for
"threatening the safety of the President" in South Carolina, has been
delayed, for at least a month, according to [http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/6161748.htm
] from the AP wire. So what did Brett Bursey do that threatened George W.
Bush's safety?
He
held up a sign when Bush was in SC. The sign read "No War For Oil." "
No word in popular press today; nothing of importance?
Respectfully, Stef
PS. Interestingly, I've known people in [Stalin's
time] Poland who went to jail for 5 years for a joke about Stalin [and it
was a mild sentence!]. The man in question did not live long [tb] after
leaving jail. Many, many years later I read about two drank polish farmers
sentenced to jail for offending then president, Lech Walesa. They were
sentenced on basis of the old, communistic law. Dura lex, sed lex which some
translate [into polish, onomatopoetically] as stupid law but law.
Stef
When Clinton did this sort of thing we were
outraged. We should be no less so now. But it is of a piece
with the new imperium. He is supposed to be President
of a Republic, and lese majeste is a crime previously unknown to the law.
Threatening the safety of the President by holding
up a sign that he does not like.
Again I doubt Bush is aware of this sort of thing
being done in his name, and I suspect political sanity will cause all this
to go away: but that's this year.
We are not yet to the point of having the emperor's
horse appointed to the Senate. We have elected the south end of a north
facing horse or jackass or elephant more than once, though, so the precedent
is there...
===========================
And to keep the record straight
Subject: Saudi
sand
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I believe someone has told you less than the truth.
Just before leaving for Saudi Arabia in 1996 I read an article about Saudi
Arabia buying sand for construction. I mentioned it to my ISP as an example
of a super salesman at work. Imagine selling sand to Saudi Arabia! He had
been there and was familiar with the incident. The Saudis were doing a lot
of concrete construction. The sand there was too fine to be a good aggregate
for concrete. The best answer was to import coarser sand from outside and
get on with work. My own experience was that the sand was very fine, and the
pebbles too large for concrete work. I am not a civil engineer, and may be
corrected, but did have contact with construction people, and my ISP had
been on a construction project before I ever went there.
The Saudi royal family has reviewed satellite
photographs of the entire country looking for mineral deposits. Various
areas of the country, some quite small, have been fenced off an labeled as
royal family preserves to protect this mineral wealth. Theft in Saudi Arabia
is very rare, and penalties are severe. Outsiders might be trying to loot
these preserves, but they will soon be eating their meals with one hand.
The Empty Quarter deserves special mention. The royal
family discovered a much larger than expected population there in the
satellite photographs. They attempted to set up army posts to gain control,
but none of the posts survived. Settlements in this area, such as Shawalah
and Uballah, are ghost town remnants of these army posts. The Empty Quarter,
Ar Rub Al Khali, belongs to the Bedouins. No one else can take the severe
conditions. I visited and lived in areas bordering the Empty Quarter, and do
not regret missing visits to the interior. I once saw a large directional
arrow built of large stones there. It was to guide Bedouins to a water well.
This is the home of the people that built those arrows and dug the wells,
and I wish them the best that The One True God can provide.
regards,
William L. Jones wljones@dallas.net
And
Dr Pournelle,
Saudi Sand
“And the Saudis have
announced a shortage of sand.“
When I was working in the place over two
decades ago, sand was regularly imported— from England— because it was not
possible to find the right grade locally to make concrete.
Jim Mangles
Which should take care of that.
=================================
Rather more important on setting the record
straight:
Subject: Jessica Lynch and Anger at Iraq
Based on some of your comments in the mail section
today, it's clear that you were shaken and disturbed by the revelation that
Jessica Lynch was raped in captivity. I understand that -- I share it, to be
quite frank -- but before you brand every Iraqi male as a co-conspirator I
wanted to point out that this tactic has been used against the Iraqi
population for a very long time...
(I understand, and you said as much on your site, that
you were angry when writing and were not thinking with a clear head, but
that just makes it more important to point such things out... misdirected
anger can be disastrous).
I remember back in the first Gulf War there was an
article (in the Washington Post, I believe) about an Iraqi dissident living
in the US who received a video tape in the mail. When he played the tape, it
was of his niece being raped by Iraqi Baathists. It was sent as punishment
for his defection, apparently -- since they couldn't get to him, they got to
his extended family.
I use that example because I remember it fairly well,
but there have been reports of this going on for a while, and right after
Baghdad fell and people started to think Saddam was actually gone they
started telling all kinds of horror stories, and a lot of them featured the
use of rape as a form of intimidation and punishment.
The use of rape as a form of keeping the populace in
line is especially effective in Muslim countries, because Islam considers
the rape of a woman in much the same way as the rape of Tamar is portrayed
in the book of Samuel. Tamar is raped by her half-brother Amnon, after which
he spurns her. Her only chance to lead a respectable life after this is for
Amnon to marry her, which he refuses to do -- and so she is forced to live
out the rest of her life in seclusion in her father's house. (2 Samuel 13
thereabouts)
The Iraqi secret police (or whatever you'd call them)
obviously didn't care about any shame brought upon themselves (the Baathist
were fairly ambivalent about religion unless it came to trying to unite the
Arab world against the US) but they certainly counted on the fear families
had of it happening to their daughters.
This isn't meant to disregard what happened to Jessica
Lynch, by any means... but to point out that not all (or even most!) of the
males in Iraq thought this practice a good thing -- and in fact that many
probably lived in *fear* of it happening to their daughters or sisters.
As for Jessica Lynch, there is some hollow consolation
in that she apparently has no memory of the event (though since I know
nothing little about psychology I'm not sure it that is actually a good
thing) and she lives in a society where she will not be universally regarded
as a woman who is "ruined." That doesn't make it better in any way -- nor
does it heal any of the injuries she sustained -- but she still has options
she can pursue and a life she can live.
As for the people who did that to her, I can only hope
they get exactly what they have coming to them... I'm just not sure I can
comfortably point a finger at every Iraqi man and say "let this crime be on
you and yours."
Christopher B. Wright (wrightc@ubersoft.net)
====================
>> There was a time when most educated people
in the United States were >> pretty familiar with the English Civil War from
Ship Money and Star >> Chamber to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Many had
read Macauley. >> Ah well.
>I'd say most educated people still do. A much
smaller percentage of >people nowadays are educated, of course.
I aspire to be one of the educated people, I looked
and looked for the book on Google and on Amazon. I often buy books that I
hear mentioned on Chaos Manor.
I did find that "Home Alone" is on DvD for a good
price. I don't think that tyke knows anything about a Roundhead.
Any idea for a source, or is there a reprint with an
ISDN?
Dominick
Actually, Macauley's Lays of Ancient Rome
are posted here, but of course
when I said "Macauley" I meant his History of England. That is a five volume
set, available from many sources -- it is still in print -- as well as in
good editions at used book stores. Reading it will take some time, weeks at
least.
It is a history of England largely from the
accession of James VI and I through William and Mary/William III, with as
much about the Restoration and Glorious Revolution as all of English history
up to that time. It is also an experience. Churchill used to read Macauley
before making a major speech: that kind of experience. This is English as it
can be but usually is not.
The Folio Society has Macauley as a bonus, but many
used books stores have good sets at reasonable prices.
=======================
Regarding the police arresting the 9 year old boy
with toy gun:
Jerry,
Being from Ohio I would like to say that I hope we all
are not that stupid as the cop who did that. My feeling on this is that the
terrorists have won. Not physically but definitely mentally. When the
paranoia is so high that a nine year old is arrested at gun point for
playing like a nine year old then there is something wrong.
I had the thought that the paranoia level was too high
when I went into the Southern District of Ohio US Bankruptcy Court where I
go for work several times a week and had to run my shoes and belt through
the x-ray machine just incase I was smuggling weapons in them. The reason
for this was that my belt buckle was metal as were some of the fitting on my
shoes since the didn’t clear the metal detector I had to remove them in
public and walk through in my stocking feet and trying to hold my pants up.
I really hate to think that the bad guys have won but I think on September
11th they not only killed thousands of people they also killed common sense.
Adlai Stein
As I have said many times, what they did to us on
911 is as nothing compared to what we have done and are busily doing to
ourselves. We are not only cutting off our noses to spite our faces, but
blinding ourselves as well.
Ave.
Joanne Dow adds:
Quoth you: As I have said many times, what they did to
us on 911 is as nothing compared to what we have done and are busily doing
to ourselves. We are not only cutting off our noses to spite our faces, but
blinding ourselves as well.
Quoth me: I'd say that we are closer to cutting off
our national balls than our national noses. We have to keep the noses for
proper brown-nosing our public servants.
{O_O}
===================================
And for something more
pleasant, Col Haynes suggests:
==========================
Dealing with Terrorism
"Terrorism is a technique, not an enemy state that can
be defeated." Jonathan Steele: <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,1090844,00.html >. He's
over on the left, so cum grano salis.
The current mess is like the state of an animal
community that has been stirred up. "When you're hip-deep in alligators,
it's hard to remember that the original goal was to drain the swamp." In
computer security, I teach my students that malicious hackers _hate_ being
watched. Computer security people need calm and quiet so the bad guys stand
out. When things are stirred up, there are so many false alarms you get
overloaded, and people stop cooperating with you. You want things calmed
down so you can use data collection and analysis to keep tabs on the
violence-prone, and protect the rest who just want to get along. That allows
you to quietly stop attacks before they get any momentum. The same goes for
terrorism.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing,
University of Sunderland. Computational neuroscientist modeling bat
bioacoustics and behavior. http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her
Steele makes no real sense. Of course terrorism can
be defeated. The question is, at what price? Once again, I pose this
question: suppose someone in Iraq back in 1850 proposed a suicide bombing of
the Sultan's palace? What would his neighbors have done? "We'll all be
killed! Stamp out that man!" Saddam Hussein was pretty good at
defeating terrorism.
=======================
Hi Jerry,
Incredible.
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=1284132003
Such devotion.
- Paul
PS: Who can doubt, that with that kind of mindset,
that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan saved millions of lives?
Indeed.
=================================================
On Kagan's essay and other
matters
Dear Jerry:
I read the Kagan
essay with great interest, It says, more comprehensively and in greater
detail, what many of us who post here have been saying. Bottom line is that
you can't run the military like a business. Hopefully this will see wide
circulation.
As for Bush not knowing what is
done in his name: Does he ever? I don't mean to be cruel or snide here,
but many reporters close to the Presidential beat have remarked how
incurious he seems to be. He doesn't read newspapers, but scans headlines?
Those functionaries who attach themselves like limpets to the powerful are
very likely to overreach and assume authority when they have it not. This
happens is all kinds of organizations. I've seen it in the military, in
community theater groups and in large corporations. It's a power grab which
must always be resisted.
As for the way the police do their jobs. That too is
about power and the use of it symbolically. In the security business you
learn a lot about the mechanics of running a good bluff. The way you keep
bad guys at bay in a big city is to look like more trouble than you're
worth. That gets harder as you get older because the bad guys are usually
both young and stupid, with poor impulse control. Los Angeles, in
particular, is the most under-policed city in the nation.
The last security guard company I worked for
specialized in hotel security and it was here that I learned the basic
difference between security and police. Security is all about "loss
prevention"; something you can not do by standing idly by. Good security
combines a number of techniques and technologies, some of which are so basic
that people never think about them. Making sure that certain doors are
locked at certain hours and that the premises have not just enough guards to
patrol but to react to a threat are examples. The more layers you can add in
the form of closed circuit television, alarms, security awareness education
for other low-level employees, etc., the more secure your premises will be.
Since you are working for hard-nosed business people who want to save as
much money as possible and are always looking to cut costs, you really have
to fight to get and retain these capabilities. The two most common
expressions I used to hear were "What do we need all this security for?
Nothing ever happens around here." and "Why don't we just call the police
and let them handle it?"
In the LAX area, where I had two major accounts and
was effectively the defacto Security Director of the bigger hotel I quickly
found out why you try not to call the police. There aren't enough of them.
Response is slow, if at all. There are along Century Blvd 25 major hotels
and exactly one two-man car on patrol to handle all the calls from all of
them. Likewise detectives and the fire department only come AFTER something
has happened! Hotels are assumed to have their own protection. Cut back that
protection and you become naked and vulnerable to all kinds of threats. So,
security is proactive and policing is reactive. Something bad has to happen
before the police can be called and it's far better not to have anything
happen at all, although you can never convince those cowboys in Accounting
of that.
There are many kinds of costs and Kagan's point that
"efficiency" is actually the counterpoint of good effective service is a
general principle not one just limited to the military. It especially
applies in areas like Homeland Security. People complain about security
measures because it is very hard to see the benefit of preventing something.
If it doesn't happen, it can't happen or will never happen in most people's
minds.
Depressing that. Makes me glad I'm finally out of the
business.
Sincerely, Francis Hamit
As I have said many times, good soldiers do not
make good constables. Constabulary troops are important.
The Romans employed Praetorians: double strength
Legions superbly trained and equipped, elite units able at least in theory
to defeat larger numbers of other troops including standard Legions.
Legions, able to stand up to anything else in the
world. Over time, though, some Legions became permanent occupation forces,
staying in their regions and intermarrying, settling there on discharge.
Benet's Last of the Legions, and Kipling's poem on that subject say much
about that.
Auxiliaries who were locals (there were also
specialists who served as what amounted to mercenaries with regular units).
Think of these as native constabulary.
Now in practice things weren't this clear cut, but
the concepts are easy enough to understand.
In the modern world, constabulary do not need
Abrams tanks capable of single shot kills miles out of range of any
conceivable enemy tank. Constabulary won't be fighting tanks, or organized
stand up units of any kind.
Dirty shirt blue cavalry policed the West. When the
Plains Indians had the capability to fight actual pitched battles, Nelson
Miles's infantry defeated them in the Winter War. After that, the cavalry
served as constabulary. Custer found out what happens when you throw
constabulary cavalry against superior numbers of an organized force. (Yes, I
know, it was a near thing, and Custer had prevailed with a bold charge in
the War, and "the only tactics he ever knew was to ride to the sound of the
guns." The point is still valid: he led constabulary cavalry against an
organized force that chose to stand and fight. That is a job for the real
army.)
If the US is to be a competent empire -- that is,
to impose government on other people regardless of their wishes or consent
-- then we will need constabulary as well as soldiers.
Marines, interestingly, can be both, although
Marine units can't prevail against heavy armored units. But then they
shouldn't be used that way to begin with. The Marines have been our
traditional force for imposed government (Nicaragua, Dominican Republic,
Monroe Doctrine enforcers in general; Small Wars).
=========================
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
Unlike your correspondent, I
don't find General Franks particularly scary: instead, he should be praised
for stating the obvious...which is that failure in keeping WMD from being
set off in our country would be horrifying, and would have horrifying
consequences.
I did not read anything in his comments that suggested
he thought of the possibility of a military government as a positive: quite
the contrary. I understood his observations perfectly straightforwardly, and
indeed in a way consistent with my own: if the government of these United
States is perceived to have allowed--through laxity, political correctness
or general fecklessness--this situation to occur, a large mob of Americans
will descend on the capital and rend every politician they find limb from
limb.
As Justice Jackson rightly observed, the Constitution
is not a suicide pact. John Adams and a Federalist Congress passed the Alien
and Sedition Acts; Andrew Jackson evicted the Cherokee from their ancestral
lands in direct defiance of the Supreme Court; Abraham Lincoln suspended
/habeas corpus/ and thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court in /ex parte
Merryman/; Woodrow Wilson and FDR violated civil liberties on a mass scale
in two world wars; many of the laws presently on the books--decried by all
as terrible intrusions into our rights, to be sure--were enacted during the
Cold War.
Despite this, the republic survives: the very fact
that this colloquy remains possible, without any of us worrying that we will
be arrested or interrogated, is indicative of that.
And as long as we are throwing quotes from the Framers
around, I'll give you one from our first President under the Constitution,
the father of our country: "Eternal vigilance is the price of our freedom."
Very respectfully,
David G.D. Hecht
Eternal vigilance against what? Against nine year
old children with toy guns? I agree that vigilance is needed, but I am not
certain that our present course is directed against the right enemy.
For a somewhat different view (strong language
warning...):
Franks is a fool. But at least he's consistent about
it. He illustrates a point I've made: anyone foolish enough to support
invading Iraq is foolish enough to screw up the occupation - evidently a lot
more foolish than that, with the crap about any sufficiently big terrorist
hit being the end of freedom. Screw him and the mule he rode in on.
Gregory Cochran
The question remains, what do we do NOW? We are
there.
Much of this came in during the night:
it is well to keep it all together:
Mr. Pournelle:
I believe that Mr. Cochran is the fool. As you have
pointed out time and time again on your page, we are destroying our own
freedoms after just one such attack. More to the point, I have no doubt that
the politicians will be more than happy to declare martial law to *keep
themselves safe* with little to no regard for the effects upon the average
citizen.
After all, I as a *juror* cannot take a pocketknife
into the Dallas County courthouse. Absolute mindlessness; I don't remember
such checks prior to 9/11.
Time spent replying to me would be better spent
writing more science fiction; you'll get paid for it and I'll get to read
it!
Thank you for your time.
-- Mark A. Flacy (USMA 1980) Any opinions expressed
above are my own. Any facts expressed above would imply that I know what I'm
writing about. Sometimes, I do! "The road to hell is paved with good
intentions." -- Anon
I can testify from long experience that Greg
Cochran is no fool. It is also self evidently true of General Franks. I
probably should not have posted Greg's comment, which was clearly made in
haste.
Fool is not true of the general, who defeated an
ancient empire in days.
It is also not true of Saddam Hussein who
anticipated the collapse of his conventional armed forces and took much
money and other assets underground in order to wage the kind of war that
defeated the US in Viet Nam. (That the defeat did not come until after our
victory of attrition against the real enemy, the USSR, is not relevant here:
we lost, not in Saigon but in Washington, and Saddam knows this.)
This is not a game for fools, although certainly
much of our so-called policy is foolish. Policy balances desired results
against means rationally -- prudentially -- calculated to accomplish those
results. That has not been done here.
Terry Armstrong says that "Generals talking like this
worries me."
I'm not sure whether he and I am reading the article
correctly. As I read it, I believe that Franks was saying "be scared of
this", and "people will demand this", rather than "I think this will be
necessary".
Franks wants us to be scared of it NOW so that we will
have considered replies ready if the situation arises.
Greg Goss gossg@gossg.org
That was my interpretation.
Gregory Cochran paints with an awfully broad brush.
General Franks is no one's fool, and when he says something the wise man
listens.
And anyone who thinks a sufficiently large terrorist
attack might not be the end of freedom, or at least the suspension of
freedom for a goodly amount of time, must have forgotten all we've done
to ourselves since 9/11.
The civil rights and basic freedoms of American
citizens have hardly been a high priority with the powers that be since
9/11. Now imagine a much larger terrorist attack, say a tactical nuke set
off at the right place and time to do the most damage and take the most
life possible. An attack large enough to make 9/11 look like nothing.
I doubt the constitutional rights of anyone would be
even a passing thought in rounding up all those responsible. More, I
suspect a great many who now say such a thing couldn't happen, who say
they would never support it, would suddenly be in favor of just such a
consequence, especially when the majority of citizens might well step
forward in support. Rightly or wrongly, the vast majority of politicians
hold whatever opinion the majority of their constituents tell them to
hold.
Nor is it at all rational to label everyone who
supported the invasion of Iraq a fool, anymore than it's rational to label
all who opposed it as left-wing, liberal fools who couldn't find their own
ass with both hands, as many opponents certainly were.
There are good, wise, rational people on both sides of
the issue. James Ritchie
We can certainly agree on your first and last
sentences. Greg Cochran is so outraged over what he considers the colossal
arrogance that led people he usually supports to blunder into Iraq that it
has affected his usual more careful good sense.
The fact remains that an army of conquest is not
necessarily a good army of occupation. Often just the opposite; just as a
good field commander is not necessarily a good pro-consul for governing
occupied lands.
Occupation and nation building, and leading
constabulary, require skills not necessarily mutually exclusive with being
able to lead an army into battle with another army, but they skills are at
best complimentary: they are not the same.
Franks is no fool; but I doubt he was much
consulted over the question of what he would do with Iraq once he had
conquered it. The problem is that State, the CIA, the President, and the
neo-cons all have different goals and agendas, and those are often very much
in conflict.
The President wants to get in, impose a stable
democracy or reasonable facsimile, and get out. State and the Arabists long
ago concluded that only the Sunni could rule Mesopotamia, and the Ba'athist
structure was a good idea because it sits on Muslim extremism. We even had
the imbecile spectacle of the US Army raiding the headquarters of the US
Pentagon sponsored Iraqi National Congress. I have no idea who issued those
orders, but as one of the troops involved said, "They won't be pro-American
any more, I guess."
Iraq as Iraq is not governable; but local areas of
it are, and some are actually developing self-government. Of course the more
successful those effort, in Kurdish and Southern regions and elsewhere, the
more resentful will be the Sunni's and Baghdad who are deprived of their
traditional rulership over the rest of the Iraqi empire -- for empire it
certainly was, once part of the Turkish empire, then carved into a British
sponsored Hashemite empire ruled by the Hashemites as a reward for their aid
to Lawrence of Arabia (once the Brits proved unable to give them their real
due as hereditary Protectors of Mecca: the Wahabi-Saudi alliance was too
strong for the Brits to put the Hashemite dynasty in charge any part of
Arabia).
I doubt that any of the people involved in making
our "policy" in Iraq knows as much Iraqi history as I do -- and I don't know
much. But then they don't know much about making policy, either. A policy
consists of a realistic goal, supported by measures designed to accomplish
that goal with acceptable investments of resources under your control. Our
"policy" seems to be a wish list.
But then we have been that way a while. When Saddam
invaded the Kurdish areas, Clinton sent in cruise missiles to kill janitors
at night in Iraqi intelligence center buildings: accomplishing nothing but
to show the US as a paper tiger. Imbecile policies did not begin with the
present President, nor did the move to Empire.
The fact remains we are there, and the question
should be, what should our policy be? But first we have to understand what a
policy is.
Continued Next Week
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