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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Chickenhawks!
I just want to notify regular readers that I should have an article up next Monday at Enter Stage Right on the whole "Chickenhawk!" argument, and people's right to express their point of view.
That'll be my last piece for awhile, and it's a pretty elementary argument - but unfortunately one that apparently must be made. Please check it out when it's up.
My last major post for awhile, it was actually written for a message board, thus it is in the form of replies to points other people made in the debate. This is a link-rich post that I hope will be a useful resorce for people in making counter-arguments against common assertions against the war.
Legionair wrote:
personally i don't think we should of gone. They could not launch a missile at us and there was no evidence of a wepons of mass destruction
Except for the ones that he had used, and his continual efforts to maintain the ability to produce more, and his efforts to acquire more.
People might remember last year, when Joseph Wilson was going around saying "Bush Lied!" because Saddam never tried to acquire uranium from Nigeria. Well, as I linked to here, buried in Joe Wilson's book, and in this Washington Post story, Wilson now says that
It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.
That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium. Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source.
So Wilson asserts "Bush Lied!" about Saddam's efforts to aquire uranium from Niger (even though Bush never actually mentioned Niger), but it was Saddam's head spokesman who tried to aquire uranium from Niger.
And we have found considerable evidence of Saddam's ongoing efforts to maintain WMD capability, see here.
Except that he kept shooting at American and British aircraft and announcing his intentions of striking us.
no evidence of a terrorist connection.
Except for the fact that Abu Abbas was in Baghdad when he died, having been given sanctuary there by Saddam. Except for the fact that Saddam Hussein paid large sums to Palestinian terrorist groups. Except for the fact that Ansar al-Islam, a al-Qaeda affiliate, was in Iraq before the war.
I think that mister bush went in for more personal reasons and oil.
The idea that Bush invented it all for personal reasons and for oil is also false. Regime Change became the policy of the U.S. government in '98, well before Bush took office, and unless Clinton was involved in the conspiracy to create the preconditions for Bush to engage in his personal pursuit of oil, that assertion does not hold water. The intelligence on Saddam's WMD programs and terror ties pre-dated Bush in office, going back to the Clinton Administration. The analysis of this intelligence was shared throughout the Western intelligence community (again, I refer you to this post). If it was inaccurate, the problem isn't Bush inventing things - that's a political and ideological assertion that distracts from the real problem, which is fixing Western (not just American) intelligence. Intelligence failures are significant and not just in possibly over-estimating threats, but under-estimating them (see here for just one of many posts on that subject, and here for another). We now know, for example, that Libya's WMD program was far more significant than we thought (and Khaddafi only revealed it and said he would give it up because he didn't want to share Saddam's fate - that's what he said himself when he did just that). It doesn't score partisan political points, though, so no one focuses on that.
But what we have found shows that Saddam's ambitions always remained focused on WMD, in violation of the UN Resolutions he lived under after the invasion of Kuwait.
Regarding whose interests were driven by greed for oil, one might look at the nations who used the UN's Oil-for-food program as a means of graft and corrupt deals with Saddam, as posted here - it was the countries opposed to the war, France and Russia, whose positions were driven by oil interests. This is important (and I have tons of posts on UNSCAM, and so do others. It is more accurate to say that opposition to the war was driven by oil interests than support for it was. There's certainly more actual evidence), because of what Ickus said:
Carinthe, you are right. There were many chemical weapons used in the Iran-Iraq war. The problem is the U.S. gave them to Saddam. The U.S. was so against the Ayatollah that we actually gave Saddam Hussein a lot to fight him.
That's not true either. It's a falsehood, commonly asserted but with no basis in fact. It was the aforementioned countries, France and Russia, which did the most to arm Iraq. See here and here and here; there's also a bar graph if a visual aid would be helpful. See also point #4 here (also #5. . .#6. . .&tc) and here. Indeed, it was Russia - not the U.S. - that continued to provide technical support for Saddam's efforts to acquire such weapons in the years proceeding the war. See also here for ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
There's also this on the whole WMD thing. I'll highlight this part:
How much ricin, after all, do you need to kill thousands of people? To listen to anti-war critics, it would seem that modest amounts of biological agent somehow don't count as WMD, or a re-started nuclear programme is no threat because it is only rudimentary.
This February, Ricin was found in the U.S. Capital building - some might say "oh, that's only payback, it wouldn't have happened if we left well enough alone". But see also this post which notes that Ricin was found in London, in the hands of terrorists connected to al-Qaeda - before the war. Then there is this story about Ricin in the hands of terrorists in Paris, and the connection to Iraq and al Qaeda.
There were numerous good reasons to topple Saddam, and any involvement we may have had in allowing him to continue to rule is one such reason to do so - certainly not a reason to not do so. I also recommend this piece by Christopher Hitchens and indeed just about everything he has written on the subject of Iraq and finishing the job. Also this piece, which includes the following:
Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York?
Saddam was happy to harbor those involved in the first WTC bombing, and indeed Clinton Administration-era investigations linked Iraq to it. Saddam was continuing to violate the UN Resolutions, as late as March, right before the war, in trying to acquire prohibited weapons. The only reason he didn't get them then was the North Koreans decided it was too hot at the moment, with the U.S. troop buildup in the gulf. But the idea that Saddam was an innocent man framed by the U.S. is just false.
I'll also mention this story on a poison gas plot foiled in Jordan a couple weeks ago. Mentioned in the article is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al-Qaeda in Iraq and author of a strategy memo for opposing U.S. forces there. Interestingly, he is also tied to the Ricin plot I mentioned earlier. That story also mentions:
After staying in Iran for a while, al-Zarqawi supposedly went to Iraq, where doctors amputated his leg, which was injured in Afghanistan, and replaced it with a prosthesis.
This done in Baghdad during the time when the government of Saddam Hussein ran the health care system. It also was during a time when people complained of shortages (we now know why - skimming of funds from the 'oil for food' program by Saddam and his accomplices at the UN and in France & Germany, to enrich themselves while Iraqis suffered). It strains credulity to believe that they aided him with scarce medical care but had no ties to him.
Also, regarding Saddam and involvement in the first WTC attack in '93, I will point out this, quoting from this article by Christopher Hitchens:
The man most wanted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled straight from New Jersey to Baghdad, though there are still those in our "intelligence" services who prefer to grant Saddam the presumption of innocence in this and many other matters.
On far less actual evidence people conclude that Bush is after oil or plotting for personal reasons. It often seems like lot of people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to our enemies but believe only the worst of America. In any case, people have a lot of misimpressions about the facts. That is why this is a link-rich post and I'm asking people to read a lot of materiel: there is so much that people know that just isn't so, it's the only way to correct it. The reason people have the misimpressions they do is because there is a lot of politics involved and partisan axes being ground in the kind of information is emphasized in reports and what is downplayed and soon falls off the radar. It's no longer true that "politics stops at the water's edge".
As for the difference between North Korea and Iraq, the problem is that, because of a deal struck in '94 that North Korea violated, continuing to pursue their nuclear program, it can't be handled the same way. That's why, in his controversial State of the Union speech on the eve of the war, Bush did not say the threat from Iraq was imminent but that we could not afford to wait until faced with an imminent threat:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
Also, it is always interesting that people accuse Bush of not using diplomacy and resorting to force on every issue and not understanding that different things need to be handled in different ways, but the fact is North Korea and Iraq do need to be handled differently. I'm not sure that Ickus is saying we should have gone to war with North Korea instead - I tend to doubt it. I would recommend checking out Steven Den Beste's website and entering "North Korea" into his search engine, for posts on the difference between how North Korea should be handled vs. that of Iraq, and why it needs to be handled differently. I'd get the URLs but I'm tired from searching and introducing the subject of North Korea is digression enough.
The humanitarian case and bringing democracy to Iraq, eliminating a ruthless dictator who was a danger to his people and to the world was always a part of the rationale; I could get links for that, too, but am too exhausted. I'll just have to ask you to search my archives, Instapundit's archives, and actually read the speeches given by Administration officials before the war (instead of simply press accounts of them. The texts of the speeches are all available). There were always a number of reasons for the war, and the only reason the WMD case got more emphasis was because people kept insisting - in many cases the same people who are critics now - that we "go to the UN" and make the case there, and that meant emphasizing Iraq's violations of prior UN Resolutions. But the full range of reasons were always present, and there were always numerous good reasons for removing Saddam from power.
In any case, it doesn't really answer the point of how Iraq should have been dealt with. The best thing to do was to finish the job that should have been finished 12 years ago.
Liberals in general seem to have been able to convince themselves that America is not at war. Bush is at war. Therefore, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and the like feel free to make comments to the world press declaring that Iraq is a quagmire, George Bush's Vietnam, confident that they are not undermining an American war effort, but merely undermining George Bush.
I think that's part of it, but I think a lot of our "Citizens of the World" type Liberals view themselves as somewhat detached from America. That is, when they make criticisms of the country and its policies, they are naturally exempted from it, not part of it but above it.
THE events in Abu Ghraib prison shamed America and our military. The mistreatment of prisoners is utterly unacceptable. And we haven't accepted it.
As a nation, we've taken responsibility for the tragic actions of a few. Our military has been investigating the misdeeds for months. The initial report was brutally frank. There's no hint of a whitewash. The guilty parties will be called to justice.
Even given the strategic damage done by those horrid photos, the fact is that we Americans can be proud our system does not tolerate such behavior. It's an exception, far from the rule. We're genuinely shocked that even a few of our soldiers could behave so grotesquely.
Now consider our loudest critics, those governments expressing outrage over the crimes we've been investigating of our own volition.
Read the whole thing and, again, "yah, what I said."
One more "Yah, what I said" - The Washington Times shows its mooney, looney Right-wing bias by publishing an editorial by Arnold Beichman condemning the fact that the enlightened, sophisticated international community has given the dictatorial, genocidal government of Sudan has been given a seat on the UN's Commission judging Human Rights around the world.
A lot of Senators and Representatives are complaining that they weren't informed of what was going on in Abu Ghraib. But it turns out they were, but ignored it themselves:
The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth's Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for "60 Minutes II."
So this is a case where members of Congress are accusing the administration and the Department of Defense of not paying enough attention to the issue, when the Department of Defense launched an investigation but members of Congress who were sent letters ignored it.
It would be interesting to know which seventeen members of Congress were sent the letters. The NYT report doesn't mention any by name, though the reporter almost certainly knows. If they are supporters of the Administration and the Iraq policy, the Times would probably have named them because it would further embarrass them. That they aren't named makes me wonder if naming them would embarrass the "wrong" people, the good people. . .
So I'm wrapping up and getting ready to go to Basic Training. After Wednesday this blog will be offline for at least two months, probably a bit longer. When I come back it'll probably be light posting till the end of summer, because AIT will be pretty busy.
Which is probably fine because the quality of the blog hasn't been so good lately. My mind's been on other things and certainly will have a different focus in training. Certainly there are people out there who are writing what I would be, but better. Glenn Reynolds on the purpose behind the much of the coverage of Abu Ghraib - not that there’s coverage, but that if it has "you demoralized, and hopeless, and depressed, let me suggest that this isn't an accident -- it's the goal" - because of how it's shaped and the spin put on it. He also has a roundup of others who are writing about the war against the war. Nelson Ascher, as usual, has an insightful post. I would be righting about the same things as these people are and don't have anything much to add.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but that's not really true. Ok, it is when someone is gone for a week or two. It reminds you of all the things about them that you value. But after that, no. After that, lives adjust to the change and people go on. Absence makes the heart grow indifferent.
One of the foolish little things that kept me from doing what I should have done years ago is this sense of things. If I'm gone for several months, will people remember me? Miss me? When you're 18 or 22 you kinda wanna be gone, get away. When you're older it's a bit different. Trust me when I say that there's little in Southwest Colorado that is holding me back, but the community of people I've come to know on Internet is a bit different. People I know "in real life" as they say (as if Internet friendships are less "real") I'll be able to stay in contact with a bit better, through "snail mail" and eventually the occasional phone call. But as it turns out there won't even be minimal e-mail access in Basic.
So there won't be any writing me that way - or at any rate I won't be able to read it and reply - for two months. AIT will be different. I did replace the e-mail address at the top of this blog ("Contact Porphyrogenitus") with what will be my .mil account. If anyone is interested in writing to it, feel free but don't expect a response till mid July.
It turns out that human contact is a lot more valuable to me than I thought it was, and than it was when I first went through Basic years ago. Well, that's perhaps not the right way to phrase it because there will be the experience of meeting tons of new people, and some of the best people in the world you'll ever meet are the people you get to know in military training. But I'm going to miss the people I know outside of that. I'm sure it's no big deal but. . .well, I always get melancholy when I pack all my stuff up in advance of a major move (not that I'm bringing my stuff to Basic, obviously).
I get the sense that I'm leaving the wrong tone here, too. I want to re-emphasize that I'm looking forward to it in other respects. As I say, I should have done it years ago. It's just getting over the initial "hump" of training and then what my permanent duty station is going to be like and where it's going to be. . .which is unknown. It's the anticipation that'll kill ya every time - and for me the concern that when I'm absent, things I care about will fade away.
That's why I considered having a "guest blogger" for the duration. But I got some good advice that it would be a bad idea, and I'm going to take that advice. So there won't be anyone posting here when I'm at Basic, except perhaps I might get family to post an occasional "progress report"/update. I can't guarantee that and there will be no way of notifying anyone when it happens. Maybe that "teaser" and intermittent reinforcement will keep people clicking the button for their pellet even while I'm gone.
But enough babbling. It's hard to not be in a maudlin mood at the moment, for anyone who cares about the war and what its outcome will be. In a lot of ways, while I have part of me that is really going to miss this, a sizable part of me thinks that an "enforced break" will be a good thing. That being in Basic will have intrinsic value, naturally, but that the downside "loss" of being cut off from the world will really be a benefit. A good part of the reason this blog has deteriorated is I've worn myself out. Add to that the other life-changing things (to get all Newagy) and it's really no wonder.
Two months and getting into something where I will have a renewed sense of purpose - a feeling that I should have done something years ago but didn't isn't very great to have. It'll be super to actually be doing it. And two months - four months, six months, however long it takes is hardly a lifetime. But service is something I've thought about since I was a child. The National Guard was one way to do that but I really should have gone active Army sooner than I am. I'll also pursue my studies, my academic and intellectual interests, so I won't slight that. This is going to be a great experience, it's just that there are some things I'll miss till I can get back into the flow of things. But some things that when I really think about it, I probably need a break from anyhow.
My latest article is up at Enter Stage Right. It's on how Abu Ghraib is being used both at home and around the world but why that shouldn't alter how we look at it and how we handle it.
I'm not going to go nearly as bonkers over it as Andrew Sullivan and some others have. It's despicable, but the idea that it is reflective of the leadership in the White House is akin to saying that episodes of war crimes by Americans against Japanese soldiers in WWII was the responsibility of the Roosevelt Administration (here I'm talking Japanese soldiers, not Japanese Americans). Oh, and yes - such things did occur, not often but more commonly than we might remember, in part because of what Americans heard about how our soldiers were being treated by the Japanese.
But people are laying this at the feet of Rumsfeld and Bush not because they really believe that the Administration is directly responsible anymore than they would believe Roosevelt should have been blamed. This is just part of the war against the war, which I have written about on numerous occasions before.
