~ BANNED IN EUROPE! ~
| My Webpage
| |
"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
U.S. aid to survivors of the catastrophic Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, including the largest American military operation in southern Asia since the Vietnam War, could help restore some U.S. prestige in the Muslim world that has been lost in Iraq.
But U.S. political leaders and analysts caution that Americans should not over-trumpet the American role, or risk a backlash.
"Our image will improve because of the efforts we're making, as long as no one knows about them."
Now, that's not what he meant, and a reflection on it shows it's a good point - as long as it doesn't seem like we're doing what we're doing for political gain and just to display ourselves, then people might think better of us. It's a good point and would probably apply in most circumstances, for most countries. But it won't for us.
Before I get to why, I want to make it clear that it doesn't change how much help we are and should be giving. Because we're not giving it to enhance our image around the world. But our image won't be enhanced, regardless. That's the point I'm making.
To refute that is necessarily a political act that will require highlighting rather than downplaying our role in the relief effort. So we're pushed into the usual "heads, anti-Americanism wins or tails, the U.S. loses" position. That is, either we can step back and let our actions speak for us, which means not confronting the anti-American propaganda machine, in which case we're painted as Uncle Scrooge, or we can refute it by talking up all we've actually done, in which case we'll look like braggarts patting ourselves on the back and expecting to be thanked for it, which will also be resented. In either case, we're not going to get this "image enhancement" effect the AP suggests might be out there waiting for us if we're just more quiet about how much we're helping.
It's a good point in general - it just isn't going to apply in our case, and we shouldn't be surprised. If the world worked that way, then rather than being resented in the Moslem world we'd be recognized as the country that pressed the world to help the Bosnian Moslems, pressed the world to help the Albanian Kosovar Moslems, helped the Kuwatis, helped the Afghanis against soviet occupation, and helped free Afghanistan and Iraq from despotism that they deplore. But that isn't how it turned out then, and it won't now.
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.
Frankly, I'm against torture. But I'm not against harsh interrogation techniques, intimidation and the like. What's the difference? In some ways it's a matter of degree. It's a difference in the level of physicality. On the practical side, I'm not sure it's effective in getting accurate information - getting people to say what they know rather than just tell you what you want to hear. I'm certainly not sure it's better than other methods of getting them to talk, psychological pressure and tricks and the like. Sure, you can make anyone talk - almost anyone - and say what you want them to say. But that's not the same as getting them to tell you the truth.
Also, I simply think it's wrong, even if it were effective. Sure, it's time-honored and done around the world, and they do it to us when they get the chance. But we're fighting against them, not to emulate them. Just because a practice is effective doesn't mean we adopt it - we don't fire from Churches or Mosques, take civilians hostage and slash their throats or decapitate them, and the like. We don't deliberately target noncombatants, indeed we spend far more effort and money than anyone in history to insure our weapons are as accurate as technologically possible, and that our rules-of-engagement are such that we avoid killing innocents as much as we can even when the enemy deliberately insures they are in harms way. Sure, it happens anyhow, despite our best efforts but because of the best efforts of our enemy, who tries not only to kill noncombatants but to get us to do so as well.
That isn't right, and we're not going to do that, because it's wrong. We're not going to emulate that practice. Instead, we're going to continue to make efforts to avoid civilian casualties rather than emulate the practices of our enemy, even if it hampers our own efforts and indeed sometimes results in higher casualties on our side.
It should be the same with torture. Of course, the counter-argument to that is that there is a difference between noncombatant civilians, who should be protected, and a rather vicious enemy combatant who is guilty and whose hands may very well be covered in the blood of those they have tortured and murdered bloodily. But if we think that it's wrong when they treat our people that way, then why would it be right for us to do so? We live within a certain code that excludes treating people like that, even when they are our enemies. That is one of the differences between us and our foes in this fight. When they torture and murder, they celebrate it, while we are ashamed and condemn it when some of our people do it.
Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers, and thanks to Glenn for the link!
Responding to Jeff Cole's letter in the Instapundit link: I'm not against sleep deprivation, loud music, and the like. I believe that falls into the category of psychological pressure and tough interrogation techniques. I'm not against that. But some have argued for real torture - it's not our policy, we've condemned aberations (as I pointed out in my original post). I simply don't want it to become a policy through debate/discussion over it, as some (Glenn for example) feel it might. "might" is a hypothetical, but one of the things we do on blogs is debate/discuss what policy should be and what it shouldn't be, not just what it is now.
Oh, and by the by, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a simple soldier, a Private First Class in the U.S. Army.
Well, I didn't blog much over Christmas & beyond. I didn't get a chance to spend it with my family, which was a bit - well, it blows. I did take the time to read & enjoy life. Didn't read much serious stuff, just a lot of Knights of the Dinner Table. I also got back into hanging out with some internet chums at The Young World, posting & such. I made some political type posts over there, related to debates happening on that board. I'd have posted them here but it would have required lots of editing to make it fit, mainly because of the context of the debates there are different from posts here. But I recommend you check it out.
If you like political message boards, especially conservative ones, you might want to check Conservative Friends out. It looks like a decent site, though I haven't posted there. Check it out.
Anyhow, hope to be increasing the number of posts now, and the quality. The main posting will probably be on the weekends. We'll see how thing goes. I have some ideas for posts, I just have to get the muse to write 'em.
Well, America is no longer one of the ten freest economies in the world. Mainly because the economies of other countries have liberalized, and only to a lesser degree because of increased regulation here.
So it's been a long time since I've posted on Iraq, which might be a surprise to people who remember when I posted frequently on it. During the run-up to the war and its aftermath, it was the central subject. This has always been a "war blog", with politics & international affairs thrown in. Of late it's more of the latter.
Why is that? It's not because I've lost interest in what's going on in Iraq, or am distancing this blog from it. Far from that. I watch the news and try to learn as much as I can. But it's hard to tell.
It remains at best a mixed picture. Yes, there are good things going on. But violence remains endemic. I figured the aftermath would be more difficult than the invasion itself, and said so time and again, but I didn't think it would be as difficult as its proven. I've said that before, but it bears repeating.
I'm not sure what to make of what's going on, but I will make two observations. First is that however much progress in some areas there may be, it does not offset the violence. Not anymore, because the progress isn't affecting the insurgency. Isn't persuading them to stop fighting. The simple fact is that no amount of "good news" outweighs the "bad" when the bad includes a continuing low-intensity conflict.
Things must at least reach the state that they have in, say, Bosnia, when it comes to violence. That is, it may include a continued stabilizing presence, and it may be precarious. But it must exist. Note that for those of us who supported the war, this is a [i][b]huge[/b][/i] lowering of hopes, if that's all the success that we can get (by we I mean the coalition and Iraqis). I'm hoping there will be more, but it's going to be an uphill fight.
Also, we've been saying things such as "well, the violence will escalate in the run-up to the election". Before it was the run-up to the transfer of power. This has, of course, proven to be true. But the implication left by this - that it would ramp-down after that as the insurgents burned-out their extra-efforts - is not true. ("Insurgent" and "insurgency" are imperfect descriptors, I admit. But there is no perfect term). The enemy will continue to ramp-up the violence, using any excuse they can. We'll know we're getting the upper hand when the violence comes down, that is when the enemy can't succeed in keeping it up. We're not there yet. Clearly.
There's no point in me posting every tidbit of good news here, nor in logging every attack. Other blogs do a much better job of keeping track of that (as always, I think Winds of Change is the best at this). I can't really tell from here whether we're getting the upper hand yet or not. I'm not saying we're failing. I'm just saying that I don't know, and that when I don't know something, it's best to not try and make up a position and post as if I think it's happening, if you know what I mean. It's always tempting to make predictions based more on hope than reality, but I'm going to refrain from that.
I can't even tell at this point what I think we should be doing to make success more likely. I still think we should have increased the size of the army, as I said before the war, when we had the chance, so we would be able to commit more troops. But we didn't. I'm not even sure more American troops would be helpful, anyhow. What we really need is an Iraqi Army that will do the fighting. The Americanization of the Vietnam war is one of the things that caused an already-unreliable ARVN to go to the sidelines and become even less effective, sitting out their own war. We can't have that here. It doesn't work.
There needs to be a decent-sized Iraqi army, which we're working on building up. But more importantly, it needs to be an effective army, willing to fight the enemy, to go after them. That is harder to do, because we largely can't control whether the Iraqis will fight as tenaciously for their own liberty as the enemy is willing to fight to destroy it. We might be able to influence that by doing things right rather than wrong, but it's not something completely within our control.
Many opponents of the war, and critics of American policies in general, often seem to base their positions on the assumption that everything is within our ability to control. In that, they assume we have more power than we do. That is, they base their criticisms on the unspoken premise that if only we did things a certain way, there would be no problems - that we could have gotten the support of France or Russia in the UN, and their troops on the ground in Iraq, if only our diplomacy would have been better. Not that their interests (keeping Saddam, and lucrative ties with him, in place) were different and they make decisions as well. That if only we had done things "thus and such", then we wouldn't have a problem with an insurgency today.
Well, I'm not saying things have been perfectly done. But the assumption that they could have been, and that if only we made all the right choices then there would be no problems now, is a faulty one. Life doesn't work like that. The decisions and actions of others have an effect, too. They aren't just a bundle of stimuli responding to what we do, but make their own choices as well. The critics want to let others off the hook for their decisions as a means of America accountable for everything. But I won't do that here.
Which doesn't mean that I don't criticize things we've done here. I will continue to do so when I think it's appropriate. I just don't think that even if everything was done the way I think it should have been, that would mean the problem would be solved. One thing about such "Alternative Realities" is that while it's easy to draw a pretty picture based on them ("U.S. sends more soldiers in the wake of the war, along with our good buddies the French and the Russians who've been brought on board with more accurate & honest diplomacy convincing them to join after giving the inspectors more of a chance. Increased security lowers looting, catches the bad guys off guard, the insurgency fizzles right away, and rose petals rain down on everyone as the French & Russians & nearby Arab dictatorships, in all their noble sincerity help us build democracy in Iraq without any self-serving stuff on their part"), but reality has a way of throwing wrenches into such things, and one can make cases that outcomes would have been worse rather than better, just as plausibly.
We live in the real world, not a fantasy make-believe world. I still think it remains worth it taking the chance to build a democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East, for all the reasons discussed before the war.
