Stephen den Beste posts an email he received that about brought me to tears (ok, so I'm sentimental, so sue me).
I live in Catalonia (that's, Barcelona). In other words, Spain. One of the countries that have more popular opposition to the War on Terror, and more popular support to the "No-War" (nearly 80% of the population) and antiglobalization movements, in spite of the spanish government's opinions. For example, my whole family has been against the war in Iraq, and is lightly but without any doubt antiamerican and antisemitist. And EVERY(with every I mean 100%) person that I know thinks the same in a stronger or weaker way.That's not my case. I felt 11-S as something personal, while european press talked about it as "just an american's problem". I have supported the war in Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning of the War on Terror, and I will support any wars that should come in the future if they help to erradicate the threat to western civilization. I consider myself clearly pro-semitist and pro-American. All that, in spite of having ALL the people around me against my ideas, and in spite of having lost several friends because of that. And I know that, if necessary, I would die defending US, Israel or any of their allies.
I just don't care about the criticism I receive every day, because I know the cause I defend is right.
Now the thing is, that all this time I have felt as if I was "in the wrong place". Being the only one with one idea, while virtually all the people around me (in fact, all the europeans) is against it, makes me feel as if I was not from there. But then, if not Catalan, Spanish or European, what am I???
I haven't had the complete answer to this question until today, when I read your article. Now I do know it.
I'm American. In the wrong place, far from home, but American.
And, sincerely, that's an honour.
As SDB sez, "He gets it". And that's all it takes to make him an American, in my book.
Send that man a green card!
Speaking of Blackfive, he has another home run with The Cost of Humiliation. A good analysis of humiliation and its role in the current culture conflict. I think it's an important point that we need to keep in mind. Arab cultures are shame cultures, and that is a powerful motivator in such cultures. Witness such things as "honor killings" (I shiver even typing that) of your own children. Blackfive also ties the seething in Europe to the same basic motivator, only this time the shame is the failure of both Europe and the East, one to repeated war, the other to tyranny.
Money line, referring to Old Europe:
...No coward has ever been short of good reasons for doing nothing.
Blackfive has a great exclusive on his site - a lengthy report on what conditions on the ground are like from an Infantry Battalion Commander in Iraq. It's a far cry from the simplistic mush that we get from media "analysts". Based on what little this armchair military historian knows about guerilla wars, this one is playing out in a fairly expected way. The enemy is learning quick, but we're also making good progress. MORE of some things is needed, first and foremost MONEY. So here's hoping that $87B is in hand and flowing.
The recent terrible attacks against Turkey and Saudi Arabia were, I believe, a strategic blunder on the part of al Qaeda. A blunder so large that it may cost them the war.
I think this is going to turn many in the "Arab center" against them. Attacks on uninvolved Muslim Arab civilians, with only the slightest blush of "provocation" even by Islamofascist standards, are not going to win hearts and minds. Quite the contrary in a blood feud society.
And Europe can no longer pretend this is something that will go away if they just ignore it hard enough. Turkey is a NATO member, EU supplicant, and about the nearest thing to Europe that isn't Europe. Europe proper is right across the border. Support for our side will, even if with reluctance, increase. It's becoming harder and harder to ignore the assertion that this really is WW4, and a battle for the future of civilization.
Is al Qaeda accelerating their overall plan? Are they acting out of strength? Are they lashing out in desperation?
Hard to say. But I think the strategic tide has now turned. It's going to be awfully hard for any sane person to advocate the "go slow, don't provoke" fantasy now. And every fresh attack just makes the case clearer.
A report on FoxNews just stated that 76% of Iraqi women over the age of 15 can't read or write.
What the heck does that say about what was going on in that country?
Well? It still is, after all.
Communist China. Red China.
Let's be clear about it. These are not the good guys.
Communist China. Doesn't have a nice ring to it. But maybe that's the point.
JunkYardBlog has a great piece about Justice Department assertions of a hard link between al Qaeda and Saddam. But he doesn't mean the memo in the recent Weekly Standard article. He's talking about a Justice Department indictment of al Qaeda in 1998. A memo of the same time, referring to the indictment, states thusly
In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq," the indictment said
Hmmmm. Not a "smoking gun" (I'm starting to hate that cliché), but, as JYB puts it:
While the indictment isn't a conviction and is also not necessarily a reflection of official Clinton-era policy, its use in a JD memo does indicate support for its contents. That memo highlighted, among other things, the al Qaeda-Iraqi connection. The Clinton Justice Department believed such a connection was at least a strong possibility, or it would not have issued a memo highlighting it.
Makes sense to me.
Victor Davis Hanson knocks another one out of the park. This is, in my opinion, an important piece of writing, the sort of thing you want to run out and try and get all your friends to read RIGHT NOW. :)
Yeah, that means go read the whole thing: The Paradoxes of American Military Power
Victor covers a number of different topics in this analysis of the new reality of war for the United States, but here I just want to mention a couple of quotes.
In the future, the American military must accept that if it is asked to go to war under a Republican administration, its public-relations problems will pose as much a dilemma as the campaign itself — as the New York Times, National Public Radio, the campuses, the major networks, and the Europeans will almost immediately seek to oppose and caricature America's efforts. In contrast, in our contemporary therapeutic society that gives currency to lip-biting, publicly feeling pain, and professions of utopianism, Democrats can pretty much use the military as they wish — secure they will always be seen as sober and judiciously using force only as a "last resort."
That's not just posturing - he builds a strong historical case for that assertion. The conclusion I draw is that there is something very wrong with our country. I'm not sure I can put it into words, but I never thought of Democrats as warmongering hypocrites before. It's an odd juxtaposition. Or maybe I'm just slow on the uptake.
This as well:
If one finds that stereotype unfair, remember the pathetic scene of a Gen. Clark during the recent Democratic debate, who castigated the president of the United States at a time of war while deferring to the wisdom of Al Sharpton. Take out a mass murderer, free 26 million, and you will earn charges of incompetence if not treason; slander a DA, fabricate a crime, and fan the flames of riot and racial hatred, and you will win respect from a Democratic frontrunner.
Wow. How pathetic is that? And what's really bad about it isn't so much the candidates; they'll say anything to get elected. It's that millions of my fellow Americans want them to say things like that.
Dude, I want my Democratic Party back.
Big hat-tip to JunkYardBlog for the link. I'll have comments on his post elsewhere.
Shades of Vietnam-era senselessness. We're using Hellfire missiles against abandoned buildings.
Not abandoned buildings that have enemies in them. Just abandoned buildings. Empty ones.
Our "reasoning" for this? Well, the buildings were suspected of being used by the enemy sometimes to plan attacks. Not when we were bombing them, just "sometime". There was even some nonsense about "denying them to the enemy".
Hello? Isn't Iraq chock-a-block FULL of abandoned buildings? So we expend some Hellfires, or Spooky missions, and our enemies are so discommoded that they have to... move down the street. Those missions cost HOW MUCH each? Your tax dollars at work.
Oh, that's right, this "show of force" will intimidate them. Our enemies won't DARE appear as abandoned buildings any more.
And the US wonders why it's not taken seriously sometimes. Stuff like this is why.
There is considerable concern abroad about the prisoners in Guantanamo and their legal status. A concern that I, as a guy who still has some big-L Liberal in him, share. The British are expected to bring this up as forcefully as the circumstances allow during the President's visit this week. And well they should! This is exactly what governments are for, the protection of their citizens.
So let me take a minute to explain how things look to one American, and why I support (provisionally) my government's actions in this matter.
As in so much else about this war, we're making it up as we go along. We have to; turning the characteristics of liberal societies against themselves is taught in Islamofascist 101. So now we see not just car bombs, but car bombs inside ambulances.
The prisoners at Guantanamo aren't in any of the contexts that our legal systems were designed to handle. They are, quite literally, "outside the law". We have no good law that can balance their rights and the protection needed (demanded!) by society.
There are various legal traditions we could try to apply. US criminal law, US military law, Geneva Convention law, other international law that would classify them as "pirates" or similar, etc. None of them fit well. Some would result in summary execution. Others would allow many dangerous terrorists to go free, and if that happens, they will kill other innocents, possibly many, many others. They would also return to aiding our enemies when the US is at war, putting our soldiers in danger. This is not acceptable.
No justice is perfect. Risks are balanced against risks, rewards against rewards. To an example with criminal law: much as we like to give folks another chance, society cannot risk letting criminals run around loose, and we lock 'em up when convicted, for our own safety (yeah, for other reasons too, but bear with me). The worse the risk that the (alleged) criminal poses, the more his civil rights are infringed by society. Examples, high or lack of bail in capital cases, sex offender registration, etc. On the other hand, we don't want to send innocent folks to jail, if for no other reason than "there but for the grace of God go I...", so we set limits on the State when chasing and trying criminals: various Amendments, rules of evidence and testimony, requirement of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt", etc.
The problem for the folks interned at Guantanamo is that, for many of them, the risk they pose is extremely high - so high that it completely surpasses anything dealt with in criminal law. I have no doubt that there are folks in Guantanamo who are unlawful enemy combatants, and who would, upon release, try to link back up with those people who are trying desperately hard to make another attack on America, this time with a WMD, in the hope of far surpassing 9/11.
In the past, the only way a risk of that magnitude could be posed was by a government. Individuals and groups simply could not inflict that sort of damage. So, governments do things like war to manage those risks, and we have Geneva Convention law (among others) to "regulate" what can and can't be done during war by governments. Part of that law is the notion that captured (lawful - else the law doesn't apply) combatants have rights, and the risk they pose is to be managed by humane interment, with no repatriation until the end of the war, end of the war being signified by a surrender, cease-fire, etc.
But in this case the war is not between governments. It's between the United States (and anyone else who wants to come along, but we're fighting even if alone) and Islamofascist terrorism. Effectively, it's a war between a nation-state and a transnational-progressive NGO. And note that it's not a war we sought - the transnational-progressive NGO attacked the nation-state.
So now what would the law have us do? We could apply the Geneva Convention...but when would the prisoners be repatriated? Not until the war's over, too dangerous otherwise. But the US is the only one that can decide when that is, and it might be decades. I don't think that's what folks questioning Guantanamo want to hear.
We could try and apply criminal law...but it would be a terrible idea. Soldiers are not criminals when they apply deadly force. Civilians are. These people have deliberately put themselves well beyond the category "civilian" and in fact are self-described warriors for this or that nutball cause. They have claimed the right to use force. We must not allow them to claim the protection of civilian law. It would mean that wartime justice could not be served, and that civilian law would be forever polluted.
So, for now, what the US is doing is stalling. Not for the sake of stalling, but because we're hoping to make Al Qaeda a lot less effective before we cut any these guys loose. In other words, we're looking for an "effective" end-of-war before repatriation. Which is fully in line with the laws of war.
My guess (and it's only that) is that the Supreme Court will hold that jurisdiction does not apply. But lets assume they hold it does, and these people move into the US legal system. The government can and will hold them for a very long time, what with how long it will take to build the cases, get sufficient court time (hire new judges?), have the trials, all the appeals, on and on. Years, many, if they're serious about it.
In any case, I think something will start to percolate one way or another in the next year. Criminal or military, US or UCMJ, something. The easy cases will get processed early and some will be repatriated relatively soon. For others, it's going to be years anyway, and likely they're never going home, unless we get that Total Victory. And I don't think that's happening any time soon. Drat.
We took a break from the culture wars today and went to see the Fred Garbo Inflatable Theater.
Silly, zany, beautiful, fun. Inexpensive ($15). Lots of kids in the audience, and they loved it. Grownups did too. Highly Recommended.