Posted 9:41 AM by extinct

Cigarettes do cause cancer. They certainly cause government intrusion to metastasize. Check out Ban the Ban.

Posted 5:02 PM by extinct

What I learned at the blog-a-rama:

The blogarama (blogorama?) at Kalorama several days back produced a few insightful discoveries:

1. Julian Sanchez can retain lucid top-level intelligence despite the distractions of alcohol, fun, crowds, and female pulchritude that would kill the ordinary human. Sorry to learn of his recent experience with a private-sector attempt at income redistribution. Glad he's ok.

2. Jim Henley really did lose all that weight, and while every weightloss entry on his blog may not be riveting, he is the Salam Pax of the Battle of the Bulge.

3. Women who blog and/or like comic books are NOT unattractive nerds, quite the opposite … see photos on Julian’s site.

4. Although I already knew this, Gene Healy still does not look like the simian caricature at the top of his blog at AFF. Though he probably does to Sarah Brady.

5. Radley Balko manages to accomplish what most guys merely dream: to look distinguished, hip, and menacing at the same time. I hope he never picks a fight with me. Wait…..he already did. :-)

Posted 4:19 PM by extinct

Libertarians, American Patriotism, and American Conservatism: An Early or Late July 4 Entry

This entry on the subject of libertarians, American patriotism, and American conservatism probably belongs on July 4 but this article from The American Prospect, which includes the near-ferocious skepticism of many of us libertarians to the Iraq venture and the direction of the Republican Party, encourages one to lay out one's thinking about the issues of conservatism, patriotism, and libertarianism without regard to particular occasions.

And just the other day, I think it all came together for me. What all came together? The answer to why many of us libertarians who can be so critical of our national policies, both foreign and domestic, and lately the Republican conservatives of certain stripes, nonetheless feel so strongly an enduring traditional patriotism, a natural pro-Americanism, and a lingering comfort and identity with the American Right.

It all comes together in this basic observation: that Americans' sense of identity and honor is rooted in what we libertarians esteem the most -- a sense of liberty. Recall that overplayed song – “I’m proud to be an American/ Where at least I know I’m free.” For all its jingoism, war context, and falsity on many issues, it reflects the authentic and sincere traditional in-bred American association of pride and honor with political freedom.

The failures of American liberty, from slavery to protective tariffs, from drug wars to Iraq wars, and the hypocrisy of the rhetoric of freedom, do not detract from the sincerity of our belief in freedom, and the many actual sacrifices and successes in trying to make it work.

The association of national honor and liberty also explains something else: why libertarians find a home on the American Right. Despite many radical and untraditional tendencies, non-anarchist American libertarians have a basic conservatism in the sense that they care about American national honor, because of its association with liberty.

Sincere caring about national honor is a ”right-wing” characteristic.

I may find myself in agreement with a Euro-lefty on the Iraq attack or other foreign overstretches, and some other things, but in the end, I like America. I like what the Euro (and American) lefty doesn’t like. I like our passion for private gun ownership, our disdain of government management of social wealth. I like technological modernity, I even like oil producers whatever the sins of the companies. I like the resistance to the idea that health care should be a national government program. I like it that tax cuts evoke favorable passion. I am ambivalent about capital punishment but I like that our society believe in holding individuals fully and equally accountable for the deprivation of others’ rights.

I like the fact that the rhetoric of liberating Iraq proves seductive to Americans, even if fundamentally wrong-headed in purpose and execution.

It is even a qualifiedly attractive feature that we care enough about liberty to be, from time to time, conspicuous hypocrites about it. Hypocrisy, the adage goes, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. I can celebrate that our national honor is such that it requires us to pay tribute not to just any social good, but to the most important virtue a political jurisdiction can possess: liberty. We Americans feel strong enough about it that we have to pay tribute to it even at those times it is irrelevant or we dishonor it, at home and abroad. (Operation "Iraqi Freedom", Operation "Enduring Freedom", the "free world" , etc.)

Patriotism, the love of our way or what our way should be, appeals to American libertarians because of our national sense of honor is rooted in liberty. Such an appeal not only affords us an identity but is also a virtuous call to vigilance.

With our national honor rightly placed, the call to hard work remains alive: to bring that libertarian sense of honor to fruition.

Posted 9:15 AM by extinct

Scroll further down for:

* a look at libertarians, patriotism, and conservatism

* a less-than-starry-eyed view of Irish contributions to America

Posted 9:14 AM by extinct

The "Effendi Theory" & Iraq Policy: Leon Uris Lives On

One of the main people morally responsible for the mess in the Middle East, author Leon Uris, died several weeks back ironically not long before his writer-nemesis Edward Said, who died just a few days ago. But Uris is the topic here, however. For he successfully pioneered a romantic and sanitized version of the founding of modern Israel in his novels that reinforced prejudices and misinformation influencing many Americans in evaluating the broader issues of the entire region today. But instead of his myths' being cast aside by age and greater understanding, they appear to resonate and thrive in the Iraq policy thinking of current Administration advisers, particularly the neoconservatives and also the President himself. The influence is manifest most clearly in the oft-stated belief that somehow the act of simply eliminating Arab dictators, as was done with Saddam in Iraq, is the ready one-step key to uprooting terrorism emanating from the area.

Uris' major works like “Exodus” and “The Haj” influenced Americans who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s and who now are running the show. Indirectly, he introduced into popular culture a theory of Arab society that seems to fuel the idea that terror and violence in and from the Middle East is not an outgrowth of any real complaints or problems or complex interactions but only a matter of trouble-making petty Arab leaders "stirring up" the dim-witted peasantry against assorted infidels in order to distract from their own misrule.

We can give this old-new doctrine a name: the "Effendi theory." The term "Effendi" was a title for landowners who formed a semi-feudal lesser nobility in Palestine and other parts of the Near East at the time of World War One and the end of Turkish rule over the region. In the Israeli romantic myth promulgated by Uris, Arab resistance to Zionist-sponsored Jewish settlement in the early part of last century, as well as resistance to post WWI Western rule, was rooted primarily, if not solely, in some kind of backward religious xenophobic anti-Semitism and anti-modernism cynically incited by the "Effendis" who feared losing their power.

We encounter an amplified echo of this theory in the Iraq policy thinking of the Administration through FoxNews, MEMRI, and the National Review. We hear it when it is proclaimed that local Arab dictators are manufacturing out of whole cloth hostility to things Western and Israeli. Or when we see people overly obsess on the content of al-Jazeera or Arab textbooks, noxious though that content may sometimes be, as if to say that that rhetoric is the "real" root of regional trouble, Arab-Israeli hostility, and anti-Western sentiment.

It is sad that our foreign policy hopes are descended from a fiction emerging from the pop-rationalizations of one side of a local turf conflict. Those rationalizations in turn were developed by now discarded and discredited empires, like the British and the French in the Middle East. And then translated through hyperbolic and, frankly, simplistically bigoted writers like Uris.

Actually, Arab resistance to the founding of Israel and Western rule rested on far more than just nervous nasty Effendis. Despite the actual existence of such demagogic grandees and their machinations, particularly the repugnant Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who became a Nazi collaborator, Arab objections to Jewish settlement and Anglo-French colonization was pretty much the same as anyone's would be if foreigners were injected into one's country, or injected themselves, with the express unratified intent to take it over for their own purposes.

Other issues, like local anti-Semitism, backwardness, religious and ethnic chauvinism were and are all there, and they do matter, but the basic picture has been that of one group being settled upon by others who did not take them into sufficient or honorable account. And then the receiving group getting riled about it in ways fair and foul, something which happens all the time in our species. Whether or not hostility to the West and Israel among Arabs has been kept in rational proportion to the claimed grievances, and whether it is riddled with prejudice and misunderstanding, present fair questions. But we need not accept that hostility and terrorism are all a matter of incitement by local plutocrats. In fact, such a theory of plutocrat manipulation sounds a little like a theme of anti-Semitism itself.

Nevertheless, as President Bush's recent address indicates, we Americans are resting our whole multi-billion dollar and multi-American-lives strategy of regional anti-terrorism and pre-emptive warfare on a bogus theory requiring a vast campaign of dubious social engineering. That is dangerous enough alone, given that top-down social revolution is rarely likely to work. (Japan is not a valid counter-example for reasons too long to get into here.) But it also remains the case that the idea of imposed social improvement curing terrorism is predicated on the false assumption that there are no understandable or valid grievances against the USA, the West and Israel (however wrongly they may be pursued at times), and that the fears and resentment are all a chimera manufactured by the modern Effendis, who today are said to be the Saudi "Wahhabis", Saddam Hussein, the (non-Arab) Iranian mullahs, the dictator of Syria, etc.

And that's hooey, or at least not wholly true. And even if it weren't mostly false, nevertheless the measures required to forcefully implement such a social revolutionary change -- the requisite warfare and repression and related inevitable mistakes -- would most likely create those grievances, especially when ""liberation" is undertaken by inept hands. At that point, it won't be a matter of Effendis, sheikhs, and dictators but of populations and armies and terrorists confronting each other in ever greater violence. As has happened between Arabs and Israelis.

But it should not happen to us though it appears to be starting.

Leon Uris wrote his first popular Middle East romance in the late 50s. Since then, there have been many more Middle East wars, more destruction, more terror. And more Leon Uris novels. Obviously he failed fundamentally at getting something right. Romances like his, and their underlying theories that Arab societies are simply dictator-manipulated automatons of hate, have not worked in any helpful way. Let's not compound the idiocy: those raised on this mythology, including leading government officials and think-tankers, should be able to break their own programming.

If we are to end terrorism from the Middle East, perhaps it is better to work not to exacerbate the mutual crimes between Arab and Israeli, now degenerated into suicide-murder and indiscriminate raids. It is best to regard the peoples of the region as worthy of their own internal mistakes and development. Prosecute and kill those who attack us, sure. Stop aiding dictators and military occupiers, definitely. Approve reasonable international norms, including the legitimacy of Israel and the basic rights of occupied Palestinians, undoubtedly.

And start minding our own business, absolutely.

In any event, let's try to avoid sending our kids and others' to die based upon bad and outdated social theories spread by hack writers and internalized through pop fiction.

Posted 3:39 PM by extinct

Scroll down for entries on libertarians and patriotism, and a wry look at Irish contributions to America, and more.

The Plame Game. Oh, via Jim Henley, via Atrios, an outraged CIAer on the Plame leak.

Libertarians, American Patriotism, and American Conservatism: An Early or Late July 4 Entry

This entry on the subject of libertarians, American patriotism, and American conservatism probably belongs on July 4. But in the context of the often cynical appeals to patriotism that occur today and the near-ferocious skepticism of many of us libertarians to the Iraq venture, thinking about the issues of patriotism, national pride, and libertarianism is more constant than just an Independence Day meditation.

Further the time is right because just the other day, I think it all came together for me. What all came together? The answer to why many of us libertarians who can be so critical of our national policies, both foreign and domestic, nonetheless feel so strongly an enduring traditional patriotism, a natural pro-Americanism, and a lingering comfort and identity with the American Right.

It all comes together in this basic observation: that Americans' sense of identity and honor is rooted in what we libertarians esteem the most -- a sense of liberty. Recall that overplayed song – “I’m proud to be an American/ Where at least I know I’m free.” For all its jingoism, war context, and falsity on many issues, it reflects the authentic and sincere American association of pride and honor with political freedom.

The failures of American liberty, from slavery to protective tariffs, from drug wars to Iraq wars, and the hypocrisy of the rhetoric of freedom, do not detract from the sincerity of our belief in freedom, and the many actual sacrifices and successes in trying to make it work.

The association of national honor and liberty also explains something else: why libertarians find a home on the American Right. Despite many radical and untraditional tendencies, non-anarchist libertarians have a basic conservatism in the sense that they care about American national honor, because of its association with liberty.

Sincere caring about national honor is a ”right-wing” characteristic.

I may find myself in agreement with a Euro-lefty on the Iraq attack or other foreign overstretches, and some other things, but in the end, I like America. I like what the Euro (and American) lefty doesn’t like. I like our passion for private gun ownership, our disdain of government management of social wealth. I like technological modernity, I even like oil producers whatever the sins of the companies. I like the resistance to the idea that health care should be a national government program. I like it that tax cuts evoke favorable passion. I am ambivalent about capital punishment but I like that our society believe in holding individuals fully and equally accountable for the deprivation of others’ rights.

I like the fact that the rhetoric of liberating Iraq proves seductive to Americans, even if fundamentally wrong-headed in purpose and execution.

It is even a qualifiedly attractive feature that we care enough about liberty to be, from time to time, conspicuous hypocrites about it. Hypocrisy, the adage goes, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. I can celebrate that our national honor is such that it requires us to pay tribute not to just any social good, but to the most important virtue a political jurisdiction can possess: liberty. We Americans feel strong enough about it that we have to pay tribute to it even at those times it is irrelevant or we dishonor it, at home and abroad. (Operation "Iraqi Freedom", Operation "Enduring Freedom", the "free world" , etc.)

Patriotism, the love of our way or what our way should be, appeals to American libertarians because of our national sense of honor is rooted in liberty. Such an appeal not only affords us an identity but is also a virtuous call to vigilance.

With our national honor rightly placed, the call to hard work remains alive: to bring that libertarian sense of honor to fruition.

Posted 2:48 PM by extinct

Scroll down for:


a. a less-than-flattering view of Irish contributions to America

b. stuff on the Iraqi war

c. Ways for bloggers to make $$$: Product placement blogging

Posted 3:52 PM by extinct

WEARIN’ DOWN THE GREEN: A ST. PATRICK’S DAY “APPRECIATION” OF THE IRISH-AMERICANS AND OUR OVERLOOKED “CONTRIBUTIONS” TO AMERICA

[*Warning to the humor-impaired and ethnically hypersensitive, DO NOT READ FURTHER!! The author is actually obscenely proud of his Gaelic heritage (not that he did anything to earn it), thinks British misrule in Ireland was horrible and enabled the Famine, thinks Sinn Fein and the worthy Congressman Peter King (please vote for him) have articulated real grievances, regards the Rev. Ian Paisley as a first-rate scumbag, and admires greatly (most of) the priests that educated him. He also thinks the police and other emergency security civil servants are underpaid folks of actual or potential heroism who put their life out on the line for the average person. A nice little reflection on Irish libertarians is available on Gene Healy's blog today.]

Others have a nationality. The Irish and Jews have a psychosis. -- Dead Irish writer, nationalist, and internationally renowned drunk Brendan Behan, sagely explaining more than one world trouble spot in a single epigram.

Few realize how many Irish contributions to American life there are. St. Patrick’s Day allows us to recall them. They go well beyond President John F. Kennedy, best known to the current generation for being killed, or Bing Crosby, best known to the same generation for being dead.

I am qualified to speak. My ancestors migrated to these shores from the Emerald Isle circa 1847 during the era of the potato famine. Between 1845 and 1850 as many as 2 million Irish died or emigrated as a result of a recurrent blight that killed large portions of each year’s potato crop. Finally in 1850 after 5 years of unprecedented catastrophe, a committee of leading Irish agronomists studied the problem and solved it by arguing that “sure’n after 5 years we might start growin’ and eatin’ somethin’ else.” To which the nationalist Ireland Youth movement further added the phrase, “And if it weren’t for the damned English we would have thought o’ that earlier.”

Some background. The original language of St. Patrick-land, by the way, is Irish Gaelic and not the familiar hi-brow classy English of the Lucky Charms leprechaun. The original language disappeared because its pronunciation and spelling bear no logical relation to . . . anything.

For example, in that language my name, Matthew Hogan, is spelled as follows:

Mathghamhainneachaigh O-Ni hOgaimhbheanneachainne

Which two words are pronounced roughly as follows: “Muh Hoy”. However if the word is used as a possessive as in “Matthew Hogan’s” it is pronounced “Vuh Vay”). In the Donegal county dialect the name is pronounced Deh Vay because Mathghamhainneachaigh is spelled Mhathghamhaineachghaighe there, and most accurately means “devoted to Blessed Mary, Ever-Virgin, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and of the Rosary.” In fact, all Gaelic words mean some variation of that.

Today it is standard to refer to the old language simply as “Irish.” This is more authentic. It seems to be, though in authentic Irish, the word for “Irish” is “Gaelic”. The word for an Irish native is “Gael” and to sharply distinguish them from foreigners, the word for “foreigner” is “Gall”.

Add to the above the fact that in Gaelic, the city name Dublin is pronounced “Blaakleeah” and sometimes “Mlaakleea” and even “Vlakleea”, conceivably all in the same sentence (true: I’m not just satiring here), and we see why the Irish only pretend to want to preserve the ancient tongue.

The only reason they want the language to continue is for politics, in order to keep Ireland’s leading parties names in Gaelic, even when speaking English. This is not done out of “nationalism”, but out of “embarrassment”. The leading Irish parties are the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. The first means “The Tribe of Gaels” and the second means “Warriors of Fate”. Now if your country had party names that in plain English sound like something that should be spray-painted on an underpass by acne-faced teenagers claiming “territory”, you’d keep it to yourself. So Gaelic lives.

Still more background.The Irish and their language derive from the larger ethnic group called Celtic. This is pronounced “Keltic,” as with a hard “c”, except when they are playing basketball. The word Celtic comes from “Kaltoi” an Indo-European root word meaning “people who cannot tan”.

The Celts’ greatest accomplishments include:

1) ruling half of Europe for a millennium while leaving behind no written or architectural record,
2) developing Halloween’s decorations, and
3) being regularly slaughtered by the Roman and British empires respectively.

Contributions to America Now back to our main St. Patrick’s Day theme: Irish contributions to America. Ireland has sent countless emigrants to America who upon arrival chose to become immigrants. They and their progeny have shaped America and its institutions in many ways that are still not fully appreciated. Here I consider just a few overlooked legacies.

The least appreciated of this immigrant legacy may be municipal corruption. Without the Irish, Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, and the Pendergast machine of Kansas City that produced Harry S Truman would have been nowhere. Nepotism in police and public service recruitment and promotion would be far harder to find. Civil service in cities like New York would have much too fair personnel practices and far fewer people would be upset by firemen’s statues with Negroid features. And didn’t Mayor Curley govern Boston for a while from jail? Do I have to even mention Chicago Mayor Richard Daley? The Irish helped heal America. Why, without the Irish, voter fraud and other vices of ward politics would have been restricted to Southern backwaters, leading to continued post-Civil War self-righteous sectional stereotypes.

And speaking of Richard Daley, let’s not forget a related Irish gift to America -- police brutality. When some West Indian sporting a cigarette lighter in the wrong place gets gunned down by 80 law enforcement bullets, you can be sure most of the involved officers’ names will read like the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ roster. And wasn’t it a moment of personal pride when a van full of very swarthy types was fired on a little too quickly by New Jersey cops some years back and one of the officers was named Hogan? Without the Irish, Southerners would also have been saddled with this redneck albatross.

And we cannot forget the lasting Irish blessing upon American collegiate and other escapades, and the source for countless entertaining teen films --- no, not the creation of Notre, Dame but the promulgation of public vomiting. Yes, at my strongly Gaelic-American university, I can yet recall unsatirically decades later a keg drinking contest at which Kevin O’Daly, after expelling from his stomach beer “head” foam in an Exorcist-reminiscent projectile flourish, announced with a ruddy face, “And that was just a burp!”

He is a cardiac surgeon today and only occasionally gets nauseous during “opening”.

But all that pales next to another freshly discovered Irish innovation in America: systematically concealed massive clergy child abuse. What state of the union doesn’t hear of a local Bishop O’McFitzpatrick being under scrutiny for diverting the Angelic Friars Poor-Due to buy off the silence of some grown-up kid who in altar boy days once received on his tongue more than just Christ’s body at the hands of a priest with a name like Liam MacSwineegan? Once again, the Irish to the rescue, feeding America’s hungry trial lawyers as well as starving journalists who need yet another issue for “anguished debate” and “startling exposes”.

The above examples are far from exhausting the list of Irish impact on American society. There are still more contributions to remember on St. Patty’s Day. How about the Irish creation of a really expanded Cold War? Without names like Buckley, McCarthy, Donovan, McNamara, Casey, Kennedy, etc. the Cold War with Russia would never have morphed into an orgy of hysterical fears and reckless global interventions which helped keep countless Americans employed over the last decades.

And let’s not forget the gift, encountered all over society, of Irish Alzheimer’s Disease where one progressively only remembers grudges.

Other areas of early influence on modern American society by St. Patrick’s Isle’s descendants in the New World are the invention of the combination race and draft riot (1863--New York), and the financing of foreign subversives and terrorists (Irish rebels and IRA -- 1860- today) . It is widely believed this continues and that the IRA’s inner Executive Command Council consists of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, “two guys called Seamus . . . just Seamus”, and New York Congressman Peter King.

On a related point, let’s also not forget the pioneering Irish development of “passionate attachment to a foreign land” ethnic lobbying, now improved on so well by others in the Israel and anti-Castro lobbies.

Nor have the Irish been remiss in cultural pursuits. They gave new energy for example to immigrant and second generation plebian city-dweller bigotry over the last two centuries. Although the tasks of street anti-Semitism and/or color racism have since been passed on to Italian-Americans (cf. Howard Beach) and thence to the Albanians (Bronx and Manhattan) who hold the portfolio today, the Irish do have so many pioneers in that field, particularly the South Bostonian anti-busing rioters of the 1970s. The late 1930s era Father Coughlin was not only a major example of this contribution, but he also illustrates another great Irish contribution to our land -- the political media loudmouth.

What in the world would American TV do or have done without Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Pat Buchanan, Bob Dornan, Joe McCarthy, and the originator of the television loudmouth brigade -- the late Morton Downey, Jr.? On St. Patrick’s Day it is always good to remember who put the “bully” in “bully pulpit.”


So, the next time you see a shamrock, or a real rock, I charge you with remembering the contributions above. At the very least , remember the words of G.K. Chesterton’s “Ballad of the White Horse,” if I recall the title correctly:

The Great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad

Or, if you prefer the Gaelic version:

“Zheh” -- spelled

Gaelmoreireannbeanachtpogmothonglochandoraiseiregobraghbasinherieannmaccumhaillgaelteachtcuplafocaleannaighcennetigbrianboramha.

Posted 2:01 PM by extinct

You're a blockquote, Charlie Brown! Thanks, Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings (see side of page), for the blockquote tag tip. Now if only there were an "edit and format tastefully and automatically" tag.

Posted 8:58 PM by extinct

INVADING IRAQ: UNCANNILY FULFILLING THE BIN-LADEN DOCTRINE

Jason Vest’s recent article in The Nation, whatever its political view, contained commentary from very credible mainstream military sources and critics on the state of our forces, and on the political doctrine under which the invasion of Iraq is supposed to happen. What is most scary is that it appears that our military status and political risks in invading Iraq match what can be called the “Bin-Laden doctrine“. Below I provide the terror master’s political military doctrine -- in his own words as expressed in his latest broadcast -- alongside the assessments of the knowledgable among our military critics, as Vest reports.

Bin-Laden’s assessments of our political-military weaknesses are disturbingly uncanny. An invasion of Iraq plays right into his hands for his aim of clash of civilizations. Invading Iraq is almost a textbook bin-Laden trap. (Which suggests the question: where is bin-Laden, Mr. President? He’s the guy we need to get first.)

Vest reports key military concerns in an Iraq takeover:

Officers ... have real concerns about anti-US backlashes or acts of terrorism down the road--not just against occupation forces in Iraq but against Americans all over the world.

The Bin-Laden doctrine cackles the correctness of their fears:

I also assure those true Muslims should act, incite and mobilise the nation in such great events, hot conditions, in order to break free from the slavery of these tyrannic and apostate regimes, which [are] enslaved by America....

We all know how hot he can create conditions.

Vest reports the widespread commitment required to hold Iraq and stop bin-Laden elsewhere:

These situations may require the dispatch of anything from small special operations detachments to scores of smaller expeditionary forces. ...

Bin-Laden confirms the long-term scope of conflict; he seems not to think Iraq will be over when we say its over:

Our mujaheddin brothers in Iraq....We advise about the importance of drawing the enemy into long, close and exhausting fighting ... in plains, farms, mountains and cities

And he is confident of it spreading to much of the world:

....Among regions ready for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, the country of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia), Yemen and Pakistan.

Vest reports on real fears on systemic weakness in current US military doctrine and personnel in fighting bin-Ladenites:

A recent study by the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute discovered that more than half of enemy positions went undetected by the high-tech eyes in the sky. How could this happen? "The earth's surface remains an extremely complex environment with an abundance of natural and man-made cover and concealment" that--surprise!--can escape or counter all manner of high-tech detection.

Bin-Laden is hip to the limits of that precise weakness and how to exploit it:

We have recognised that one of the best, effective, and available means to devoid the aerial force of the crusading enemy of its content is by digging large numbers of trenches and camouflaging them in huge numbers....The American forces were bombing us with smart bombs, cluster bombs, and bombs which invade caves. B-52 aircraft were flying every two hours over our heads ... The modified Sinmo 13 aircrafts were bombing us daily ...If all the evil global powers were not capable of defeating one simple mile occupied by mujaheddin using very poor equipment, how can such evil powers triumph over the Islamic world? ...

Vest cites mainstream mlitary critic John Gentry, a retired Special Forces officer and veteran of East Asian and Bosnian operations, for the overemphasis on technology; technology, we might note, that has failed to kill or stop bin-Laden‘s small band:

Gentry points out that as the US military continues to spend money to make its systems and weapons more technology-dependent, the rest of the world will probably find cheap, low-tech ways to get inside this technologically driven decision cycle. This means that "opponents can take deception actions that lead US forces to waste scarce precision munitions on low-value targets.”

Bin-Laden is once again totally aware of the precise weaknesses:

Our mujaheddin brothers in Iraq, don't worry about ... their power and their smart bombs and laser ones. Such smart bombs have no use among the mountains, trenches, plains, and forests...The only way is haphazard bombing which depletes the enemy's ammunition and the enemy's money. ..Such a way will deplete all your enemy's reserves in a few months.

Curious, by the way, that our government has asked networks not to broadcast bin-Laden videos for fear they contained instructions, yet this broadcast contains the most specific and frighteningly accurate instructions, to date, directed at killing large numbers of our soldiers, and it was practically heralded by government officials.

Anyway....

Vest notes that quality and morale of ground fighting forces and officers have decreased markedly over the past few years.

Maj. Donald Vandergriff, author of last year's critical personnel and doctrinal study The Path to Victory,[says personnel policy for midlevel officers] essentially amounts to "bribing people to stay, buying their loyalty, patriotism and moral strength to go in harm's way, based on the dehumanizing assumption that our officers and NCOs are mindless, undifferentiated, replaceable cogs in a machine."

Gentry’s critique also warns of the underreliance on strong human training and attention:

Gentry ... draws attention to the recent Defense Department planning document Joint Vision 2020. ... “[It]'s the epitome of simple arrogance.... [Technology] has little applicability ...sensors cannot identify human motives, measure human emotions, quantify the coherence of human organizations, or assess the importance of the data they gather. ...[Troops] must acquire adequate background knowledge and understanding of their areas of responsibility before they deploy in order to be able to convert the incremental bits that their sensors give them into useful information."

Bin Laden too felt that human ability was lacking in the force he faced.

We recognised after fighting and defending ourselves from the American enemy that it depends on its fighting mainly in psychological war for the huge propaganda machine it has, and it also depends on the heavy air bombing. America uses these two in order to hide its soldiers' weaknesses....Despite ... heavy shelling [at Tora Bora],... they (American soldiers) turned back carrying their killed and injured soldiers. The American troops couldn't dare to invade our bases, which indicates ... the false myths they spread concerning their military capabilities.

One need not agree with his baiting invective against the character of our soldiers or accept the wrongfulness and failure of our fight against him to realize that he has hit correctly upon weaknesses in tactical training, weaknesses that can used as here to improve enemy morale. The proof is in the facts. He is, after all, apparently still alive and free and troublemaking.


Vest notes that critics see that hi-tech emphasis in the military, along with supply and training problems, can backfire, especially in an urban setting:

For a military that, in the context of Iraq and beyond, is likely to face urban warfare and subsequent low-intensity conflict in cities and mountains sans adequate training, wonder weapons, and networked surveillance/communications systems may not only be lacking; they could even be exploitable weaknesses.

Bin-Laden is frighteningly and directly hip again about where to hit:

The enemy fears the most the town fights and street fights. Such fighting would cause the enemy huge losses of souls.

Vest finds alot of officers uncomfortable with our plans for a post-invasion Iraq:

While the Iraqi people may initially respond to the deposing of Saddam Hussein and his clique with euphoria, many officers do not expect a quick or easy transition to anything resembling stability or democracy; indeed, some who have made a close study of the region anticipate "spheres of simultaneous civil conflict all over Iraq," as one put it, that will tax resources as well as US public opinion.

Those fears might prove correct, as a gruesome bin-Laden doctrine sits in cheerful ambush for our ill-advised Iraq adventure:

So Muslims in general and Iraq in particular must pull up your pants legs for jihad against this unjust campaign [against Iraq].

But what should happen in the event of an American victory? Bin-Laden’s setback? Hardly, bin-Laden is unfazed, even eager, and plans a South Lebanon/West Bank for American GIs, as he addresses Iraqis and others who will follow him:

You should also keep the ammunitions and weapons, as it is an obligatory mission. We stress the importance of martyrdom operations against the enemy, these attacks that have scared Americans and Israelis like never before.

Indeed prior experience shows we have no clear policy on how to govern others wisely. And that may earn bin-Laden the recruits he needs for a barbaric insurgency in Iraq and elsewhere. Vest reports:

A high-ranking British officer who did a tour with NATO [says], "All the US written orders and briefings I got treated the whole of Bosnia as bandit country...with the end result being, the GIs on the ground treated it like the Wild West with Indians behind every bush; their weapons were always at the ready, even when they talked to the natives, which was a very antagonistic stance. If anything ...the locals in areas under US control viewed the GIs as imperial occupiers....”

What a trap Iraq will prove if that is the attitude going in, and it is likely to be as we are still in a psychological post- 9/11 “payback” mind-set. And Iraq is wildly unpredictable even by Yugoslav standards. If the precedent the British officer provides continues, how many Iraqis and others will fall prey to bin-Laden’s siren-song and become GI-killing “martyrs” for his clash of civilizations doctrine of endless war? He gives them a pre-fab articulated grievance that our behavior may not fail to overcome:

We are following with utmost concern the Crusaders' preparations to occupy the former capital of Islam (Baghdad), loot the fortunes of the Muslims and install a puppet regime on you that follows its masters in Washington...

Well, it's one thing to walk unknowingly into an ambush but it appears we are going in, eyes knowingly wide shut.

PS -- BTW, have you got this bin-Laden guy yet, Mr. President? I campaigned for you, ya know.

Posted 4:51 PM by extinct

Green-Eyed At West Point? In an otherwise interesting and useful article at the Nation, the following sentence appears: "[T]here's a smaller group {of military people} that believes political leaders, instead of really addressing problems and resource issues, are going to go out and empire-grab and disguise it as something else so we can feed a warped version of the American dream, in which we continue to consume more resources and produce more waste, rather than really struggle with what it takes to keep the American dream viable and inspirational in a world of 6 billion people." Isn't it convenient that these dissenters exactly mouth Green rhetoric and that the Nation has found them? While I am not surprised to hear of Empire skeptics in the military (thank God), this sounds a little bit wishful-thinkingish.

Posted 5:45 PM by extinct

INAUGURAL RIBBON-CUTTING POST


PRODUCT PLACEMENT BLOGGING. I inaugurate my long-delayed blog by introducing to bloggery what may be a new concept, yet one designed to address the great blogger uber-complaint: the complete absence of money in blogging. For many bloggers this absence of income extends to their non-blog life.

Now, conventional advertisement is a problem because it is distracting, especially in the form of pop-up ads. So I submit the new concept for the benefit of all. A means of non-distracting income generation from web-log scrivening:

Product Placement Blogging!

Many have heard of the practice of consumer product manufacturers paying to have their product displayed or mentioned in a movie or on TV: movie shots of Times Square with the famous Coke sign flashing, or scenes where a pack of cigarettes is suddenly pulled out, label hugely legible. It’s called product placement.

So why can’t we import this into cyberia? (Perhaps it is already being done and I don’t know it yet.)

Think of it, marketers out there, the entire blogworld, the infinite Internet, being reminded again and again of your product as the denizens of geekdom pop off on a pet dismal subject:

“The need to act came to me while sipping a ___{your beverage product here!}___ at my computer table, wondering how soon I could start up my ____{your brand vehicle here!}___ in order to go down to the protest .”

“I have often wondered about the separation of church and state. While dining the other day at __{your eatery here!}___ I began to oppose faith-based charities and their funding. Many good books like {your book here!}__ explaining why you should oppose it too can be found at __{your Greek mythology-South American waterway-inspired non-sequitur URL here!}__.com.”

“Poetry has never been the same since Keats. The other day I took a trip to London, having bought my tickets through ___{your on-line travel discount service here!}___.”

Bloggers themselves can get incestuously into the game:

“Boy, that Glenn Reynolds {or your blog here!} really can make a point. Even when I disagree I see why they call him Instapundit {or your own clever blog name here!}.”

Even causes and special interests can chip in to product placement blogging:

“The country is going to hell! In a handbasket! And they have brought us to this. They won’t give up until we’re all screwed. Yes, it’s all because of the __{insert your hated group here}.”

Each reference would of course include a link to the product or service’s website, or any other site where the product, service, or cause can be purchased or funded.

But that mention and link will only come for a steep price, of course. Measured in hard dollars, and soft integrity.

Done.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

ABOUT ME. Oh, the obligatory “about me”.

About me are some clothes, a desk, and a pile of books. (For specific mention of the designers/authors, manufacturers may email me with bids.)

Which anyway all reminds of an old “guy line” -- try it, it usually works ... if one or both of you are in a severely altered state of consciousness:

Guy to Gal: You know what I like about you?

Gal: What?

Guy: My arms. {throw arms around her}

She’ll think it’s so cute that by the time she recovers you’re already there.

Or you’ll get kicked in the crotch and sued for sexual harassment (do NOT try on employees), but at least you tried, man, and face it, that’s all that counts.

Done.

Posted 9:23 PM by extinct

Still trying to figure this out.