It's been a reading day more than a writing day.
UPI has disconnected their search engine, apparently their stuff is going to be much more restricted in future. However, for now at least, if you have the right link you can still drill in to the articles. So I've been running around the search engine caches, digging for links, and saving off pages of particular interest (like everything by James C. Bennett).
If you have faves in there, go ye and do likewise.
Now that I think about it, this brings up a couple of points that I'll have to write more about later.
One is that computers and the Internet are very much a mixed blessing for historians.
Another is that I (and you) really could use near-infinite data storage. I'd like to have everything cached, forever (or at least as long as I live). Why? Because servers come and go. They're as ephemeral as moths.
A salute and a moment of remembrance to the Australian and New Zealand armies, and people, on ANZAC Day. Here's one Yank that has not forgotten their sacrifice. God Bless their brave souls.
For those who do not know the story of ANZAC Day, and why it is so important to Australia and New Zealand, here are some links:
ANZAC DAY 25 April (NZHistory.net)
A somewhat defeatist rendition by the Australian government.
What could possibly cost $30,000 to mail?
A stamp to the International Space Station.
Note that I didn't say you get to mail a letter. Just the stamp.
Think of it like those deals where you donate $100 to your local PBS station, and you get a $20 video. The excess proceeds go to help fund space activities.
Still, it's plenty expensive running mail to space. $80,000 a kilo just to haul it up and back. Then $19,000 an hour for astronaut time to cancel the stamps. But how many stamps in a kilo?
I don't think I'll be getting one of these.
Further proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This VOA article starts with this quote:
Russia and France have agreed to boost bilateral defense ties and increase joint efforts to develop military technology for export to other countries.
Now why doesn't that surprise me in the least?
This opinion piece in the London Times offers, I think, some fair criticism of the current American situation in Iraq and the world.
Because so very much of the criticism has been senseless, we've gotten to the point where, as the Times put it, "Merely to express such doubts risks being branded anti-American."
This is true, and it's unfortunate. America isn't perfect, and we don't know it all. This effort in Iraq is one of the most important and difficult tasks we have ever undertaken. Anything that could help us make a success of it should at least be considered.
Anyway, it's a good, thoughtful piece. Check it out.
Remember that defense meeting that the Weasels announced they were going to have? Well, it's going forward, but it almost sounds like they wish it would go away.
Reuters has this story. Here are some excerpts:
Four European nations that opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq meet next Tuesday to launch an initiative for closer European defense cooperation, but their ambitions have shrunk in the wash even before they begin.
Diplomats say that if Chirac and Schroeder had not felt bound to return political favors to Verhofstadt before a May 18 Belgian general election, they would have postponed the meeting.
"The timing could not have been more unfortunate. The French and the Germans want as low a profile as possible. The less we talk about it the better," one EU diplomat said.
With the swift Anglo-American victory in Iraq, France and Germany are scrambling to repair ties with London and Washington amid U.S. talk of punishing Paris for its active campaigning to prevent U.N. backing for the war.
"There's no point in launching into an adventure that could be divisive and bring us into opposition with some of our partners," another diplomat said, reflecting French thinking.
It appears there is still something to be said for decisive military victory.
Check this NY Times (reg req) article.
The Bush administration's foreign policy factions have begun to coalesce behind an omnibus proposal that would endorse the authority of the American-led forces to control Iraq and remove Iraq's oil revenues from the sole control of the United Nations, Security Council diplomats confirmed today.
You have to wonder, are they actually expecting to pass anything like this any time soon?
I think is is a devious ploy (of which I fully approve).
The US comes out forthrightly and asks to fix everything up all at once. We claim the "good of the Iraqi people" (which just happens to be true). We immediately claim the moral high ground.
To ourselves, we expect that the wrangling over such a large and complex resolution will be interminable.
This leads to two likely outcomes. Either the UN rejects the thing out of hand, in which case we can ignore them while retaining the high ground, or else the wrangling goes on for months, in which case we also ignore them, perform a fait accompli, and retain the moral high ground. Either way, we win. :)
Well, as usual I ended up not liking my original install and had to do it over, but I think this is gonna work.
Ok, yeah, it's the World Socialist. All the same, it's delicious.
Here're some samples:
American military successes in Iraq have provoked severe factional conflict within the French ruling elite.
French ruling circles have not completely abandoned hope that they will be able to profit from the occupation of Iraq and whatever reconstruction takes place there.
The French government has made desperate appeals for a greater UN role in the “rebuilding” of Iraq, with an eye to granting French companies a larger share of the spoils and trying to calm popular anger in France and the Middle East caused by the US occupation.
Exactly. The oh-so-principled French. What was that about "legitimacy"?
The crisis in world politics and French foreign policy triggered by the US invasion of Iraq has led to open warfare between vying factions of the ruling conservative parties. An anonymous member of the UDF, which did not entirely merge into the UMP last year but which is part of its ruling coalition, told Libération that France “will be isolated, we are going to pay very, very dearly for having been in the losing camp.”
Hmmm. I see the message is getting through to at least a few Frenchmen.
You've probably heard of the call to boycott US goods (yet again) in Europe and the Muslim world. Mecca-Cola is a brand that has been mentioned, but I didn't realize it was only launched in France last year. Apparently intended to be "just in time".
This article outlines another new entrant in the anti-US beverage race, Qibla Cola. Some excerpts:
A Derbyshire company is launching a range of "Muslim-friendly" drinks as part of a backlash against American brands including Coca-Cola.
The Qibla Cola Company claims its products are an alternative for people who "reject injustice and exploitation" and as a means of protesting against what it calls the "colonial" administration of President Bush.
Heh. Here's hoping this fails miserably. To our UK friends, include these folks on your boycott lists. They claim to be selling a million bottles a month in the UK.
Heh! Great little piece on the WSJ website. A series of remarks from throughout the journosphere that in retrospect seem, shall we say, not terribly accurate.
As the WSJ themselves put it "With Saddam Hussein's regime now ousted, it is instructive to look back on the writing that ensued in the early (and sometimes not so early) days of the war. Though only a small selection, the snippets below illustrate the extent to which the war was misjudged, or, in some cases, spun, by analysts and reporters alike..."
Gotta read this one. Bookmark it, even, to trot out as appropriate. :)
Hard to believe, but read this article and see.
The owner of a pizzeria in Denmark who refused to serve German and French customers because of their countries' stance over the Iraq war has been charged with racial discrimination.
Racial discrimination?!? What? The Germans and the French are now a "race"? Apparently in Denmark:
Aage Bjerre, who owns Aage's Pizza in Nordby on the tourist island of Fanoe, faces a 5,000-kroner ($740) fine if found guilty.
Mr Bjerre told the Danish Ritzau news agency he did not intend to pay the fine and would rather go to prison.
A man of conscience. Elect this guy mayor or something.
When he first imposed the ban, Mr Bjerre said he was tired of French and German attitudes toward the United States, calling them "disloyal" and "anti-American".
Here's a guy that gets it. :)
However, many local residents on the island have protested against his boycott and his restaurant has been vandalised on a number of occasions.
Wuh-oh! Here's some locals that don't. Ever notice how those who "oppose oppression" are plenty ready to do it themselves? Oh well, old news.
French customers are banned for life from the restaurant "because they are cowards" whereas German patrons will be only be barred for as long as their government is "disloyal" to the Americans, Mr Bjerre said.
Yup, he gets it. :)
Found in this Turks.US article. Here's a quote:
"France greatly appreciated the restraint, the moderation and the maturity that Turkey showed," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said at a press conference that followed talks with Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul in Ankara.
Well isn't that just special.
Regarding Turkey's entry into the EU:
"We see Turkey's deep aspiration to join the union and France plans to stand by your side on this road, which is the road of democracy, economic development and social cohesion," de Villepin said.
Cha-Ching! There it is, the payoff. Turkey was a good French Poodle during the war, and now they get their bone.
I don't know as I can reasonably blame Turkey, but that don't mean I have to like it.
"BRITAIN is set to withdraw two of its three Brigades of ground forces in Iraq leaving just the Desert Rats in the South of the country near Basra.", says this article at the Edinburgh Evening News.
This makes me nervous. Will the Shi'a see this as a further power vacuum and entrench themselves more deeply. It might be the devil to get them out if the locals see them as succeeding at rebuilding community structure.
The Brits have done a fabulous job, and they deserve our eternal thanks and respect. Certainly they have earned their trip home. But I worry that it's too soon, that the country is still too close to anarchy.
Timothy Noah has a piece called "Let the U.N. Rebuild Iraq", subtitled "We don't want to. Let them".
I think it's kinda scary. He argues that the Govt is already looking for exit strategies in Iraq, and cites a number of things. His suggestion is that, if that's the way we're going to be about it, we should just let the UN take over.
The thought makes me shudder, on both counts. We must succeed in Iraq. it must be seen as a primarily American effort, and hence American success. If Bush needs prodding to stick to it, we need to do that.
Well, that's not fair. It's not the French Government this time, strictly speaking, it ex-French Government.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing shows the diplomatic grace of a hippo as he proposes even more Tranzi control at the EU. An excerpt from the article over at EUobserver: "The European Commission has reacted furiously to the proposals by Convention president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing for reform of the EU institutions. The swift and harsh reaction illustrates the difficulty Mr Giscard will have pushing through his - largely intergovernmental - plans."
"Reacted furiously". Ya gotta love it.
We had some strange things happen in the media with this war. Embeds, live battlefield reporting, and multiple channels of 24x7 news. These resulted in, among other things, the over-hyping of stories-that-weren't. Once this became obvious to all, things calmed down, and much embarrassment and finger-pointing ensued, but what didn't stop was the pace at which the stories leapt into and out of the artificial world that is "news".
One that is already "old news", and should not be, is Iraqi war crimes. I don't know about you, but I am still PISSED-OFF about the war crimes that have been committed during this conflict. It's not just indignation that "they cheated". That would be natural enough, but that's not the point. The point is that the Geneva Convention was instituted, after millennia of warfare, to help alleviate the suffering of the innocent. We should object to those who would gut it.
And that is exactly what those who committed the particular war crimes in Iraq would do. Again and again, Iraq violated the integrity of non-combatant status. Human shields were used. Combat troops engaged in operations from crowds and inhabited areas. Schools, hospitals, mosques, and other protected structures were used both to stage and hold military operations. Perfidious surrenders violated the integrity of the white flag. Disguises as civilians were used directly to engage Coalition forces. In one of the worst of the outrages, marked ambulances were used to stage combat operations.
In a period of a week Iraq managed to commit a list of war crimes that would make Tojo shudder.
There should be outrage about this!
Not so we can blame the now-dead regime with yet-more atrocities. Rather so that the world cries out that this is not acceptable, that the Geneva Conventions must be respected. Those who purposely violate them to this extent should be shunned, they are anathema.
If this is not done, I fear that the Conventions will become an irrelevance, and that would not be a good thing.
Newt Gingrich. Do you realize how uncomfortable it is, how it almost makes my skin crawl, to sit here and say I agree with Newt Gingrich?
But there it is. I just saw him speak on TV at a session sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. His basic premise was that the State Department is seriously broken, and that it will actually act to the detriment of the President's policies in Iraq. He also picked out USAID for scathing criticism, pointing out that they have not managed to pave a single mile of road in a year in Afghanistan (a truly UN-like performance).
The contention is that the problems are cultural and pervasive. I think he makes a good case for this. You can read the prepared version of his remarks here, "The Next Challenge for the Bush Administration".
If Newt's contentions are true (and yeah, he's as apt to hyperbole as anyone), then this is a matter of some importance. Let's hope it gets the attention it needs.
In further signs of Iraq getting back on its feet, a refinery in Baghdad has started operations again, albeit at diminished capacity. The refinery's output will be used to fuel Iraq's power plants and for other domestic consumption, for now.
So just what do the United Nations Oil-For-Food program, and its administrators, have to hide? As outlined in this NY Times (reg. req.) article, the UN Oil-For-Food (OOF) program is one of the largest financial transactions ever undertaken by the UN, involving billions of dollars.
The UN has a far from sterling reputation when it comes to corruption and cupidity. We must have an accounting of the OOF program before putting it back in the saddle.
Can someone explain this to me? What does this guy want? Maybe I've missed it, but I've looked around and I can't seem to put my finger on any specific beef. He's acting like he wants to be bought off. Ok, what?
What do you want, jerk?
This post on the Command-Post leads to this article, "Regime sucked life out of marshes" (flash! Saddam's regime sucks!), on Gulf News. Upshot of the story? Saddam deliberately destroyed one of the world's great wetlands in an effort to destroy the Marsh Arabs, who had opposed him. The wetlands was reduced from over 200,000 square kilometers to ten percent of that size. 210,000 of the people who had lived in those marshes for thousands of years were killed or relocated.
I find it irritating that the left won't speak out about this sort of thing.
There has been some talk about trying to restore the wetlands. My guess is that this will prove largely impossible. When you dry out a wetland you get dust. When you Just Add Water the dust doesn't reconstitute itself into an ecosystem. All the same, good wishes to those who will try. Here's a good article on a proposed restoration effort.
There is only one crime higher (or lower, depending on how you look at it, and just imo) than genocide. Ecosystem-cide. Grrr. I'll write more about that some other time.
Great news. The largest of the Baghdad powerplants came back on line Monday.
"It may take a day or two to restore the city to some 90 percent of its prewar power, said Janan Behnam, manager of the al-Dora power plant in south Baghdad.
"This is very good news," said Brig. Gen. Steven Hawkins, commander of a U.S. Army engineers task force that worked with the Iraqi electrical engineers.
"It's the Iraqi power people putting Iraqi power systems back on line," said Hawkins, who met with Behnam to get updated on the status of the giant repair job to Iraq's power grid."
Better still, this plant will be used to start an even bigger plant.
"Behnam said his crew turned on one of al-Dora's four steam turbines at 1:30 p.m. Monday, and hoped to have the plant operating in "synchrony" by 10:30 p.m., sending power to the nation's biggest generator, at al-Mussayib to the south, and kick-starting that plant."
I'm hopeful that this is going to help us in many ways. People get frustrated when there's no power.
Here's a related story on USA Today. Lots of good info and comments. Baghdad waits for darkness to lift
One point that was made is the difficulty of trying to restore the grid when the phone system is destroyed.
"Efforts to restore power also have been undermined by the collapse of Iraq's telephone system. On Sunday, when they were trying to figure out what happened to the Samarra power supply, workers in Baghdad couldn't just call their counterparts there to find out what was causing the problem. An engineer had to spend hours driving the 70 miles to Samarra to find out what happened and then driving back with his findings."
Ouch. Talk about frustration. No wonder this is taking a while.
Wow. I had no idea. This little piece in Forbes is very interesting for the perspective it gives on the current winners & losers in the world economy, looking at things at the country level.
"The German market is now worth less than Canada's. That was not true in August, when Iraq war talk began. Canada's stock market has been correlating with those of the two Uniteds, which are hovering at last summer's levels. German and French stocks, in contrast, have tanked. Badly."
Looks like Canada gets to float with the rising tide (or is it avoid sinking?), which isn't so bad for half-a-weasel. Hopefully this whole episode will lead them to Do Something about their party split on the conservative side. Canada, we want to be friends again. Really. We miss you! But episodes like we just went through need to be avoided. Some polls say most Canadians agree. Can you make your government agree?
"The German and French markets combined are now worth less than the U.K.'s 20 largest stocks, or the 4 largest American stocks..."
Wow. Again.
Ok, enough gloating (there's more in the article, have fun). This next is more worrisome:
"Germany's market is down 75% from its high three years ago--worse than 75% in real terms, since there has been a little inflation. That puts its bear market in a league with America's 1929-32 debacle. That period saw the S&P 500 down 86%, but the decline was partly offset by a 33% deflation. In real terms the U.S. Great Crash came to 79%, in line with Germany's current crash. Very similar."
Ouch. Dangerous. For Europe and for us. This little spat is going to cost Germany a certain amount of trade. Sounds like they really can't afford it. What happens if we push too hard and Germany collapses? It's out of economic crises that revolutionary sentiments grow. Can't happen? Not in Germany? We thought The War To End All Wars really was, too. Things change.
We wanted to destabilize the Middle East and push things in a certain direction. A risky strategy, but it didn't look like anything else could prevent terrorist attacks with WMD.
I'm not sure destabilizing Europe was one of the plan goals. Have we done that? If so, what's next for Europe?
We live in interesting times...
SecDef Don Rumsfeld has flatly denied both the specifics and implications in this NYT article.
It strikes me that there are an awful lot of sharpened axes swinging about.
I suspect we would like to have basing rights in Iraq if the Iraqis are amenable. And it's also true that we must stay and have basing until Iraq is capable of defending herself from neighbors who might get out of hand - and there are several. That means we have to, among many other things, rebuild the Iraqi Army.
Much work to do. Let's not get in a hurry.
In this article, Chutzpah at U.N. Plaza, Mark Q. Rhoads makes the interesting case that a number of countries in the United Nations are actually in violation of the basic conditions of membership spelled out in the UN Charter.
To whit: Chapter 2, Article 4, Section 1 reads: "Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations."
Which of course implies the obverse, that nations that are not peace-loving, or which do not accept the obligations of the Charter, or who are not able and willing to carry out the obligations (emphasis mine) of the Charter are not elgible for membership.
Hmmm. Ok, so just what are these obligations?
Here's a good one, right in the Preamble.
"...to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small..."
Oh, really? Can anyone reasonably claim that North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, or any of dozens of other UN members, support this basic obligation? Can anyone claim that the Axis of Weasels have been able and willing to enforce the notion that Iraq should respect these things?
Let's move along to Chapter 1. Article 1 is "The Purposes of the United Nations are:"
Here's Section 1:
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace,...
So, let's see, one of the obligations is to take measures for the PREVENTION and removal of threats to the peace. So much for the oft-repeated claim that a preemptive war is ipso facto illegal. If ever there was a threat to the peace, it was Saddam's regime. Taking action was not optional, on the contrary, it was clearly an obligation of the UN.
Moreover, members are required to take effective measures. Ineffective measures, such as the sanctions and the weapons inspection program, don't count. The Coalition has taken the only effective measures so far. These measures are also required to be collective. That means you have to help out, or be in violation of your obligations to the UN.
Looks pretty damning for the Axis of Weasels so far, doesn't it?
Let's keep going, and move along just a little to Chapter 1, Article 1, Section 2.
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples...
Equal rights and self-determination? Huh? Fully half or more of the UN membership is in clear violation of this.
Here's part of Section 3:
...and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion...
Another whopper The list of violations of this, in spirit and in deed, would make an encyclopedia.
Yes, there are many other portions of the Charter that mitigate against any actions of censure or force taken without UNSC approval. I have left those out here, but they do exist.
The point is that when some people and countries get on their high horse and start talking about the war on Iraq being "illegal" due to a lack of UN backing, I would answer that the UN itself, as presently constituted, is illegal, damned by its own charter. Many of the current members are clearly not eligible for membership, and hence their deliberations are moot.
As Rhoads says, "The U.N. apologists who now have the chutzpah to lecture the U.S. and U.K.-led coalition on how to restore freedom and the rule of law to the Iraqi people should first find a way to recommit the U.N. itself to the same principles. Only then may it claim to confer moral legitimacy on actions of the world community."
Exactamundo.
There have been various calls for "reform" in the UN. Perhaps we should start by strictly enforcing the membership requirements.
Hopefully this has been addressed by now. The article states that Iraqis claimed US troops had promised protection, but that they had not arrived yet.
James Bennett, in his always-excellent "Anglosphere" column of January 27th, last, mentions a proposal by two members of the European Commission to formally combine France and Germany. In view of the events since, I think this article is worth reexamining.
A combined France and Germany? Has Chirac bought into this? Is this idea driving some of the seemingly-inexplicable behavior of the French and Germans which we have seen recently?
It's obvious the US is going to have a lot of influence on the new Iraqi constitution.
One thing that might be suggested is a requirement that a certain percentage of the oil revenue be paid directly to the Iraqi people, untaxed. Say 10% off the top. Talk about stimulating consumer spending! Also, money not diverted to the government is probably a good thing for several reasons.
I like this one.
I don't know how it will turn out. I worry that we will fail our test, that our ability will prove unequal to our intent.
But I do not despair. I think the chances are good. But we must remain focused. The difficult parts lie before us.
When the media was shouting "Quagmire!" I knew they were being unreasonable, and that a little patience would be required. Events proved that our forces were brilliantly capable of their mission.
But now the "nation-building" phase is here, and once again it's starting to look, to the most pessimistic, like it might be time to mutter the q-word. Are our forces, our plan, and our leader up to the zillions of tasks that have to be successfully completed in order for Iraq to move to a stable, free, prosperous future? It's starting to seem like that might be a very good question.
Gideon Rose has an excellent piece, "How To Run an Empire - There's more to intervention than fighting wars". Gideon paints a not-encouraging picture. If statements like this are true: " Today the United States finds itself with both extraordinary power and extraordinary responsibilities; what it lacks is the institutional capacity to apply the former to the latter.", and, worse, "As one officer told a friend of mine, "I don't want to do these things. I don't want to get good at doing these things."", we not only have a problem with means, we have a problem with will.
This is not giving me a warm fuzzy. If we screw up the peace it will be very, very bad.
You know what causes a lot of the trouble in the world? (ok, hold the eye-rolling a second and bear with me)
A lack of Truth.
A recent example has been the reporting on events in Iraq. Much of it has been strongly biased, in one way or another, with plenty of examples of the extreme case of publishing complete fantasies as "news". If someone gets fed falsities on a regular basis, it's no wonder if they hold some ideas and opinions that don't work very well when they run smack-dab into Reality.
We'll try to deal with some of that here.
Not that I claim any omniscience or anything. I'm just one more human, with all that implies. But since I believe this lack of truth is the root cause of most of the trouble in the world, any effort to try and fight it, no matter how humble, has value. Or so I tell myself. :)
Thanks for reading.