Well, we'll see. There have been premature cries of victory before. But right now I'm much more concerned about the premature cries of defeat, and the spread of Newspeak terms in the rhetorical attempt to mask capitulation.

Responding to some things came up here, about force size vs. composition and overall unity of action. In my earlier post I considered adding further details: That the increased troop strength should concentrate on light, counter-insurgency forces, and that we should have a school of counterinsurgency, &tc. Also I did mention as well that other government departments need to be more fully involved, but didn't expound upon it as I felt the post was already long enough. In many ways I agree with the Thomas P.M. Barnett of his books - not so much his weblog - that we need a "Department of Everything Else" and a "Leviathan" force as well as a "SysAdmin" force, and much greater interdepartmental coordination overall.

Anyhow, what I'm saying is I too agree with all that others are contributing on this topic; that's what makes the bloggospheric conversation so great. One person doesn't have to say it all.

This Christmas. The snowflakes are over.

We never should have gotten rid of it. It was a false economy, an ironic one since the closest thing to immortality is a government program: Especially "temporary" ones.

We have all heard of Pat Tillman - as well we should. He is not quite alone, though, in being someone who gave up a potentially lucrative athletic career to serve his country, and give his life in its defense:

Sometimes, the athletes we write about do stay with us. It isn't always the most famous and most talented that leave an impression on you. All those millionaires I've covered, and I always wondered how it turned out for Steve Reich, a small-town hero out of Washington, Conn. We had a common friend – the sports information director at West Point, Bob Beretta – and he would sometimes give me updates on Reich.

So, Beretta called Thursday afternoon to report that it was believed Reich had been flying that M-47 helicopter in Afghanistan earlier this week – delivering reinforcements to a fight against al-Qaida forces – when militants shot it out of the sky, killing the 16 American soldiers on board.

Major Steve Reich had beaten the odds on three voluntary tours in Afghanistan. This had been his fourth turn there. He kept asking to go back. He was 34 years old.

Our chief weapon is surprise and fear.

Our two weapons are fear and surprise and a-ruthless efficiency.

Our three weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and a fanatical devotion to the President.

Amongst our weaponry are such elements as. . .well, you get the picture. I'll come in again.

I'm neither endorsing nor condemning Tony Blankley's defense of Donald Rumsfeld in this column. In my opinion, the specific reasons for the current uproar seem bogus - after all, the unit in question's vehicles were up-armored. I do think he should have been signing all the letters of condolence, but I think too much of a fuss is being made over these things. On the other hand, Rumsfeld does have things to answer for. No war is ever perfectly run - it's an impossible expectation. The military we took to war at the onset of WWII was hardly perfect or perfectly led. But discrepancies were made up - or at least attempts were made to correct them. We credit our war leadership during that period for their brilliance, but even those brilliant leaders erred from time to time, because nothing involving such a mass of humanity going up against foes who are also creative and well-led can be error free.

in Iraq, if you're a U.S. soldier, at least.

BCT Experiences: Military & Civil Relationship

Shifting focus a bit, one thing about Basic Training troubled me, and from what I can tell it isn’t just limited to Basic Training. That is exacerbating attitudes towards civilians, and a greater encroachment of politics among uniformed personnel. This, I believe, is a natural reaction to politically motivated policies being foisted on the Armed Forces during the ‘90s. We live in a push-me, pull-you universe, so some of this is understandable, but still troubling.

Of course, this isn’t exactly new. I’m not someone who believes that partisan politics and the uniform never mixed. It’s a change in degree, rather than a change in kind – but significant none the less. Sometimes people act as if we live in a binary universe rather than an analog one, and either something is or is not, but the degree to which it is prevalent is not significant. But more of something rather than less of that same thing is an important difference, too. Just remember that if you ever have a problem with your bank account, call them up and say tell them that there isn’t as much money in there as you deposited, and they tell you “well, you do have some money in your account, it isn’t empty, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about”.

Here’s what I mean. I could perhaps venture a guess as to the political views of my Drill Sergeants from Fort Leonard Wood in ’87, but it would be little more than a guess. None of them ever made any partisan political comments around us. It is, of course, acceptable for members of the military to have political opinions and even express them – just not in an official capacity, in uniform. Military bloggers, for example. But it isn’t done “in the color of authority”. Or at least that’s how it should be.

However, this time around, on at least two occasions one of my Drill Sergeants said that members of the military shouldn’t vote for Democrats because they always cut budget and pay – among other overtly (not indirectly) partisan political statements he made. My own political views on everything he mentioned didn’t differ that much from what he expressed, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t bother me that a NCO was telling subordinates these things while on duty, in uniform. Similarly, in AIT here a Sergeant at the school instructed a soldier to read the first chapter of a religious text (Christian-based, though not the Bible) after that solder was caught violating one of the rules (he brought a book to class and had it in his cargo pocket – the horror, the horror!). Again, it’s fine for people in the military to be religious, but pushing sectarian religious texts on duty, and ordering soldiers to read sectarian religious texts (for whatever reason) crosses the line.

These are arguably “conservative” violations of proper military etiquette. However, the current Army is not without the flip side of the coin. Several “PC” policies exist. One example from Basic Training sticks out, and that was breaking people down by ethnic group. The Army has had a tradition, since integration in the ‘50s, that we’re not black, white, or brown – we’re all green. However, that is belied by some of the policies. For example, two “Command Sergeant Major’s Surveys” were conducted during Basic Training. Three soldiers from each Platoon in each Company were selected to go before the Battalion CSM and talk about their experiences. The selection process was entirely group-oriented: there had to be one female, one African American, and one other person representing some “group” (and groups obviously categorized in PC/Multicultist terms).

But the most troublesome thing is the attitude towards civilians, which seems worse now than I remember it being. Several of the cadre at B 2/60th said they hated civilians – and clearly meant it. They were not joking. Indeed, the opposite joke was made one time by our Company Commander at one point, who told us our 1st Sergeant loved meeting civilians so be sure to introduce our families to him on graduation day. When the 1st Sergeant had an opportunity to speak to us next, he informed us the commander was joking, that he hated civilians, and went into detail as to why. But the Army defends the society at large, and the fact that most members of the military despise that society cannot be seen as a positive development – even if, arguably, their reasons for doing so are sound ones. I’m not going to go into detail of some of the reasons why members of the military might look down on civilians and the society at large, or whether I agree with them or not, because it’s almost irrelevant. Indeed, one might argue that it would be worse if they are right in despising civilian society, especially insofar as military and civilian cultures continue to diverge. Now, there is no good solution to this problem that I can think of: certainly not the draft. As I’ll go into later, the people coming into the Army as trainees aren’t that different from their peers back home when they arrive.

In large and small ways, many of the current training policies in the Army are in response to political directive rather than prompted by what is most effective in creating a good fighting force. Again, it isn’t exactly a new thing that politics interferes with combat effectiveness – but a growing change in degree can be significant enough to create a change in kind. As it so happens, for example, Jessica Lynch had Basic Training at B 2/60th, the same Company I just completed Basic at. If military skills such as keeping your weapon clean and functional at all times had been stressed more when she was in training, perhaps things would have gone better for her. If basic navigation techniques had been stressed more, perhaps the convoy she was with would not have been lost in the first place. This isn’t just hypothetical “what if” speculation – this is application of the maxim “the more you sweat in peace (during training) the less you bleed in war”.

Discipline was a lot tighter and the training & teaching methods a lot more effective, I must say, back at A 5/10 in 1987. Now, not all of that is due to the way the Army is run now. I also must say that while the people enlisting in the Army these days are, by and large and for the most part, better educated and better equipped, mentally, to be a part of a technological/information age military, they also seem less self-motivated. Of course we had slackers then, and of course there were people who had to be pushed and driven hard. But it seems that, right now, people blow things off a lot more. In some ways, they are “too smart for their own good”. One example of that is a remark I commonly hear in response to “smoking sessions” (motivational/corrective PT – grass drills) – that it’s “all mind games anyhow”, and thus no need to change behavior in response to it. Back in the day, we kept our barracks a lot cleaner without having to be constantly harangued about it, cut threads off our uniforms to look sharp, and the like. We polished copper pipe with brasso in the bathroom and made sinks gleam in the morning by putting baby oil on them – and soldiers didn’t have to be told not to go in there and mess it up during and after cleaning it. Now, they routinely ignore such admonishments and do what they want, and no consequence seems strong enough to deter them from doing their own thing. There are a lot of people who take the “Army of One” slogan to heart in this way.

But this ties in with the fact that they treat us a lot more like children than they did in the past. What do I mean? Well, we’re not allowed to even have asprin or over-the-counter cold medication without it being issued by Sick Call. So you have to go on Sick Call for every little thing, because they don’t trust you with Tylenol. In the past, in Basic, we could have lighters, and used them to burn off dangling strings or heat up kiwi, for instance. But not now. In ’88 when I went to AIT, people who smoked could smoke on break and we were allowed to drink (if of age), even on post at an Enlisted Club. We signed out on pass on Friday and weren’t expected back till Sunday evening. There were also Post passes most weeknights after class. Not anymore: a lot of makework fills the time, and you aren’t permitted to go anywhere without a “battle buddy” – not even across the street, or to talk to the Drill Sergeant in the barracks. Aside: at some AITs on other bases, from what I gather things are still more similar to what I experienced in ’87, at least as far as weekend passes. Were these policies introduced because people act like children, or do people act like perpetual adolescents because that’s how they’re treated? Probably a little of both. I do know that some of them were introduced in reaction to specific events in the recent pass – just like the abhorrent “Zero Tolerance” policies were introduced into many schools, shaping policy for everyone in reaction to statistically insignificant episodes. The problem then is that no one ever takes into account the “Law of Unintended Consequences” – the fact that the policies introduced to “fix” such problems make things in general worse than before.

Which brings up another thing: apparently no one in the Army has learned economic theory, in particular perverse incentives. Take for example the towel display we’re all required to have hanging outside our Wall Lockers. In Basic Training, this was so our towels would air-dry in the open and not get funky. In theory, that’s the reason we have them at AIT as well. However, our towel display is expected to be immaculate at all times: effectively ironed and perfectly aligned. So of course no one uses the towel or wash cloth they have hanging out “to dry” on the outside of their wall locker. That is just a display item: instead, the towels we use get stuffed into the wall locker itself, and can get funky as a result.

But that’s all minor compared with the perverse incentives involved in their reaction to discovery or reporting of wrongdoing. They inflict mass punishment on the entire Company (or, in Basic, the Platoon). So of course, whenever someone wants to report misbehavior for whatever reason (for example, people not pulling their fair share of the load in cleaning the barracks, or even fighting, or smoking, and the like), no one will do so and the “peer pressure” is entirely to not do so, on the grounds that we’ll all get jacked up in consequence.

Now, obviously people shouldn’t be ratted out over every little thing. But even for incorrigible misbehavior and really bad conduct, the method of mass punishment (or, as our Company Commander likes to call it, “team building”) has only managed to create a trainee version of the Mafia code of Omerta. Our Senior Drill Sergeant says he doesn’t understand why this is, why people refuse to report violations, but then he’s a big supporter of mass punishment. So, duh, go figure, eh? But they can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – make the connection. Note that this isn’t just a means of keeping us from reporting things, because it’s how they react to everything regardless of how they learned of it. Perhaps someday someone will have the balls to tell them what the phrase “perverse incentives” means, but I think I’ll give it a pass. You know how that’d go over – like a lead balloon.

This of course also generates cynicism about the rules and everything else, which is rather akin to what policies like “Zero Tolerance” do outside the military as well. So in that sense it’s not unrelated to things in the society at large. Constrictive rules that guarantee that just about everyone will be a violator in some sense at some point is of course detrimental to respect for the Rule of Law. So we get what we have here – which is also reflected in how the Drill Sergeants behave from time to time. For example, at AIT they were directed to retest us in some of the Basic Soldier Skills that we learned at BCT. How did they handle that? Well, the other day right before our Command Inspection, our Drill Sergeant called us into the Day Room, handed out our test sheets, asked us if we knew how to do x, y, and z, and told us to mark ourselves as “GO” on all of them. Just one example of leadership by example in the Army Value of Integrity. Why did they do that? Well, I suspect they were told to retest us in all those things, but not given the equipment and time to do so properly. So it became what it was, a farce and a sham.

I haven’t had as much opportunity to post here at AIT as I initially hoped. Not because we’ve been too busy learning, mind. We actually do about two hours worth of course work per day. The rest of the day is filled with tedium and monotony – detail (pick up every leaf) or time wasting in classroom (but not allowed to do anything semi-productive but personal, like go on the internet and write blog posts or read on what is going on in the world).

I mention that because some have said that what I learn here may save my life. Well, what I learn here may very well help soldiers – that’s what my MOS is all about, and I’m diligent in learning that. But there’s a lot of extraneous “hurry up and wait”, really deliberate wasting of the time of Soldiers in Training that goes on now.

That’s the biggest and most annoying change from what I remembered about AIT in the past vs. what I’m experiencing now: Being treated as a child and having my time wasted isn’t very cool. Especially when if I had only joined a year or two ago, or had joined in the Guard or Reserves, I wouldn’t have been treated as a Soldier in Training having to go through AIT as a newby, but instead been sent here as Permanent Party soldiers are. They do of course have to clean their barracks and the like, but get their evenings and weekends off and are allowed to be adults. There are two of them in our class, receiving the same MOS training under the same conditions we are, but without the pointless B.S. that I mentioned above. Ahh well, it’s only another month of this – then off to Fort Hood, and after that Iraq, where I expect to be doing something meaningful. That’s what it’s all about, and I’m more than willing to get through this part in order to come out on the other side as a contributing member of the greatest Army in human history.

I just wonder if it will remain such if training continues to go down the path it’s currently on, with the problems I’ve mentioned. One might have expected Bush and Rumsfeld to fix some of what was introduced by a very un-military Administration during the ‘90s, but while they are making a number of other reforms to the military, they don’t seem to be touching most of the things that I see as troublesome developments in entry-level training, which are themselves reflections of troublesome developments in society at large (such as an increasing failure to make good judgments regarding the important and the trivial) and in civil/military relationships. The good news is that the militaries of the rest of the world are in even worse shape – my point is we shouldn’t rest on our laurels and believe that everything is just as it should be. Continual examination and improvement should be our goal, so we can retain our preeminence.

Now, I’ve been concentrating on the things I think are wrong and need to be fixed. But by no means is everything negative. More on that in a later post.

Obligatory Post: every good blog post should have at least one link, right? That's a rule, or something - and I've been violating it. Well, here's a link to a book by Samuel Huntington that relates to this topic: Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations.

Sorry for the delay in posting this. I meant to post it last weekend, but, well, it is after all a Porphyrogenitus.net tradition that any time I say “I hope to have a post on X Subject up by Y”, it’s late. We may have been offline for awhile, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to change our standards!

So here’s the good, bad, and the ugly regarding BCT, at least as I experienced it. Again, I’m going to compare my present experiences with B Co. 2/60th Infantry Regiment, 2004 with my experiences in A Co. 5/10th Infantry Regiment in ’87.

First off, if you knew you’d have a Drill Sergeant who was into Cowboy Beebop and South Park, that might make enlistment more attractive. SFC Byrd, our Platoon Sergeant, was into both. On our field march back from the “Victory Forge” FTX, he and another of our Drill Sergeants were joking. Sgt Schwanke mentioned “dictator”, and SFC Byrd said “No, I’m not a dictator. . .but I do have authoritah”. If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you know I grooved on that.

The good: This time around, most of our Drill Sergeants had combat experience, something that was not the case in ’87. The aforementioned Sgt. Schwanke, for example, had been in Panama, Desert Storm I, and in Somalia. He was on the scene in a helicopter during the “Blackhawk Down” incident, and knew MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randal Shughart, America’s most recent Medal of Honor recipients. The experience they had gave them some greater authority when they taught us what we needed to know that could save our lives on the battlefield some day.

That’s the best I can say about Basic Training today, and it is a Big Thing. However, whatever you may have read about Basic Combat Training deteriorating is pretty much true. Almost all of this is the result of directives from on high and restrictions placed on the Drill Sergeants, rather than a fault of the Drill Sergeants themselves. However, I do think that, however much they emphasized the contrary, Drill Sergeants today, like so many authority figures in our society these days, would rather be liked than feared. A lot of them let us get away with too much indiscipline, and were too solicitous of the malcontents. But, again, it’s hard to tell how much of that was them, and how much came from above their pay-grade, as several times the Captain intervened to prevent a soldier from being punished, giving not only second, but third and fourth chances to people when it wasn’t warranted. Indeed, there was a directive from the TRADOC Commander that no soldier be released from Basic Training till after five weeks, which meant that we carried on our roster one particular soldier who obviously wasn’t going to pass for that time, and beyond (because they didn’t even start out-processing till after then). This (non-)soldier pretty much spent that entire period on and off profile, not training, but eating with, hanging out with, sleeping in the bay with, and more or less disrupting the unit. There was also another soldier that had a similar impact, but that started later.

Which is a good segue into another matter – the nature of the recruits. The good news is that overall, they are somewhat older and there are more with education beyond High School. However, this doesn’t mean they are more mature, much less more disciplined and motivated, than the recruits were in ’87. Quite the contrary. As I remember it, in my Platoon in A 5/10, only two people didn’t graduate with us, and one was the result of an injury. We had one person added to our unit then, about half-way through, recycled from another unit. He started as a malcontent but eventually shaped up.

Things were different right from the start this time around, and we lost over a half dozen people, mostly due to “Chapter 11, Failure to Adapt”, with two of the people who were released for medical reasons arguably really being Chapter 11 cases as well. Some of the people who did graduate with us were pretty much just pushed through. One of our Drill Sergeants called the PT retest an “early Christmas gift for some”.

Which brings me to the PT program. It was a far cry from the past. Then, it really got people in shape. This one was new, created by some very Bright People and doctors and such, supposedly to cut down on injuries while still making people as physically fit as the old one. When it came to running, this program, when fully followed, may be just that. But there were too many “run days” where we didn’t run (something that didn’t happen in the past), due to other training events. But when it comes to upper body strength and to sit-ups, this new, highly sophistimicated program is like Old Faithful: it both sucks and blows at the same time. The Drill Sergeants acknowledged as much, said they fought it’s introduction and are trying to get it withdrawn, but we were stuck with it and they were compelled by regulation to employ it.

Only highly self-motivated, doing PT on their own time, really improved in sit ups and push ups. This was because the “smoking sessions”, the “grass drills”, whatever you want to call Drill-Sergeant directed disciplinary PT, weren’t really that bad most of the time. We only had a couple such sessions this time around that compared with how grueling they were in the past. I’m not complaining, mind. I particularly dislike mass punishment. But one of the reasons to have such things is because of the side-benefit of improved PT Test performance. It may be considered sexist to say so, but if so it’s sexist to do it, but regardless, it was done: such punitive PT sessions weren’t as harsh in no small part because women were present, and couldn’t or weren’t expected to endure the same level of physical strain.

More to follow. . .

Greetings; not much time online. I still hope to get some BCT & AIT experiences posted this weekend. Till then, check out this post on Winds of Change on Iran.

Responding to the letter from Basic, LTC Chris Pastel (USMC, Ret.) writes, via e-mail, as follows:

You are spot on--two different basic trainings is pernicious. We in the Marines know this, although we are aided by our creed that every Marine is a rifleman. So we have everyone go through the same boot camp (except that females are in their own platoons) and then send non-infantry types to a different, vastly shortened, version of advanced infantry training, while infantry types go through advanced infantry training followed by a break-our for MOS specific training, i.e., machine gunners, mortarmen, grunts, etc.

It's been forever since I've done a "roundup". No real time or inclination for a full one now. But two pieces worth checking out, one by Amir Taheri on the UN's power grab in Iraq, and a news piece on Marine action in Afghanistan; very brief and vague but worth reading. Check 'em both out.

Is James Yee a innocent man wrongly accused, as Andrew Sullivan has concluded based on the dismissal of charges? Or this war's Aldrich Ames, as Ryan argues? I haven't posted on this subject because I have no way of knowing.

For those who think we took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan, The Australian has a report that the Taliban are so weakened they're incapable of offensive action.

First and least interesting, I have another piece up at Enter Stage Right, this one on questions of war and politics. Of much more interest is Steve Martinovich's book review of The Pentagon's New Map and interview with the author, Thomas Barnett. Be sure to read both.

If it's done by the enemy in the war and highlighting it could end up supporting the case the Bush Administration (the "real enemy here") has made:

Perhaps the problem here is that covering this story might mean acknowledging that Tony Blair and George W. Bush have been exactly right to warn of the confluence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Responding to this post from earlier in the week, Jeff Metcalf writes, via e-mail:

Actually, I think that the Army needs to reclassify these reformed brigades. What is actually happening is that the brigades are adding some combined arms integral to their structure, and division combat support and combat service support assets are being assigned to the brigades, while divisions themselves are becoming command nodes (much the same way that numbered armies - well, the one remaining numbered army - are) rather than maneuver elements. (Frankly, our divisions are now so powerful that deploying them as maneuver elements short of a full-scale invasion is ludicrous.) There is an old, proud term for larger units than brigades, with integral support, and we still have a few of them in our Army. Maybe we just need to start calling these units regiments.

I'm alerted to this article by my friend Solmyr, via ICQ, on the new "Arab way of War". Check it out, it looks interesting. I hope to have a better look at it myself when I get back from Denver.

In response to this post from Saturday, Beets Werkin wrote, via e-mail, as follows:

Had to email you over the "quibble".

Did a staff ride, about a month ago. Hit the Ardennes, around the Schnee Eiffel. Battle of the Bulge. Two interesting facts. During WWII, the Army built 66 divisions. Of the 8 million, or so, Soldiers in the ETO, there was a recognition that there were not enough rifles.

Fast forward to today.

Today, the killing power of the US Armed Forces (Ground) is not in the division, but in the brigade (Unit of Action--what the 1st MEF has arrayed against Falujah, if politics would let them free). GEN Schoomaker is pushing for going from 33 UAs to 45.

Air Defense Artillery is a dying MOS (as long as the USAF is supreme). Those, "fungible" personnel will be retrained as rifles.

Bottom line. We are transforming. But not in the "peace dividend" sort of way.

I argue with my friends, but for me, it is a reality--- the only way to transform is under pressure.

We feel the pressure. And are transforming.No more could Bush have attacked
Afghanistan in 2001 (early), than we could have seen the changes we're experiencing now. Pressure.

Hold off on the "draft". Please.

Former NFL player and current U.S. Army soldier Pat Tillman has been killed in action in Afghanistan. The letter Major John Tammes sent to Glenn Reynolds is a better tribute than I could write. May the Lord keep his soul, comfort his family and friends, and may Tillman's service inspire others.

Update: Check out this Peggy Noonan piece from two years ago.

Richard Meixner alerts me to this post at Belgravia Dispatch on the still delicate issue of how to handle the nuclear ambitions of Iran's Mullahcracy.

Theodore Dalrymple examines it, not from a distance but having treated patients. Check it out for sure.

Here's the kind of Liberal I wish we had more of, Paul Berman writing in the New York Times:

A quarter century ago, some of the extremist movements pictured the coming utopia in a somewhat secular light, and others in a theocratic light. These differences, plus a few other quarrels, led to hatred and even war, like the one between Iran and Iraq. The visible rivalries left an impression in some people's minds that nothing tied together these sundry movements.

American foreign policy acted on that impression, and tried to play the movements against one another, and backed every non-apocalyptic dictator who promised to keep the extremists under control. The American policy was cynical and cruel. It did nothing to prevent those sundry movements and dictators from committing murders on a gigantic scale.

Nor did the policy produce anything good for America, in the long run. For the sundry movements did share a common outlook, which ought to have been obvious all along — the paranoid and apocalyptic outlook of European fascism from long ago, draped in Muslim robes. These movements added up to a new kind of modern totalitarianism. And, in time, the new totalitarianism found its common point, on which everyone could agree. This was the shared project of building the human bomb. The Shiite theocrats of Iran pioneered the notion of suicide terror. And everyone else took it up: Sunni theocrats, Baathist anti-theocrats of Iraq and Syria, the more radical Palestinian nationalists, and others, too. . .

The whole point in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, from my perspective, was to achieve those large possibilities right in the center of the Muslim world, where the ripples might lead in every direction. Iraq was a logical place to begin because, for a dozen years, the Baathists had been shooting at American and British planes, and inciting paranoia and hatred against the United States, and encouraging the idea that attacks can successfully be launched against American targets, and giving that idea some extra oomph with the bluff about fearsome weapons. The Baathists, in short, contributed their bit to the atmosphere that led to Sept. 11. . .

But the bigger problem has to do with public understandings of the war. People around the world may not want to lift a finger in aid so long as the anti-totalitarian logic of the war remains invisible to them. President Bush ought to have cleared up this matter. He has, in fact, spoken about conspiracy theories and hatred (including at Tuesday's press conference). He has spoken about a new totalitarianism, and has even raised the notion of a war of ideas.

But Mr. Bush muddied these issues long ago by putting too much emphasis on weapons in Iraq (and his gleeful opponents have muddied things even further by pretending that weapons were the only reason for war). He muddied the issues again by doing relatively little to promote a war of ideas — quite as if his loftier comments were merely blather.

The Democrats ought to thank and congratulate the countries that have sent troops, and ought to remind the economically powerful Switzerlands of this world that they, too, have responsibilities. The Democrats ought to assure everyone that support for a successful outcome in Iraq does not have to mean support for George W. Bush. And how should the Democrats make these several arguments? They should speak about something more than the United Nations and stability in Iraq. They should talk about fascism. About death cults. About the experiences of the 20th century. About the need for democratic solidarity.

This is not a project for after the election — this is a project for right now. America needs allies. Today, and not just tomorrow. And America needs leaders. If the Bush administration cannot rally support around the world, let other people give it a try.

Ok, so my general principle is to not criticize military decisions that I don't know enough about. But sometimes, one is just left befuddled. I don't think enough has been made of our attempts to get a cease fire in Fallujah (link via Winds). What the hell? When is this peace craze going to blow over already? Have we learned nothing about the nature of the enemy we're fighting?

Lord God, help them triumph.