Iraq
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Interesting from the Belmont Club
Whilst perusing Wretchard’s thoughts on the current state of Iraq
Philip Bobbitt argued in his book, the Shield of Achilles, that Napoleon’s strategic revolution consisted in fielding armies so large that any sovereign who opposed him would, in matching the size of his force, be compelled to wager the entire State, and not simply a wedge of territory in confronting him. Napoleon’s campaigns were designed to kill enemy armies — and thereby enemy states. What Napoleon failed to realize in his 1812 campaign against Russia was that the Tsarist state was so primitive that the destruction of its army simply did not mean the corresponding demise of its state. Like the proverbial dinosaur of pulp fiction, Russia had no central nervous system to destroy and lumbered on, like the bullet-riddled monster of horror stories, impervious to the Grand Armee. What Russia had on its side was chaos as epitomized by its savage winters.
Saddamite Iraq, like most terrorist-supporting states threatening the world today, are like the landscape of 1812 in that they were cauldrons of anarchy given a semblance of shape by fragile, yet brutal shroud-like states.
Most of what I’ve read actually suggests that Napoleon’s brilliance was in organization of his armies, not his actual command or tactics. In Russia, he was captured by not seeing a qualitative difference between Russia and the rest of Europe. Unlike the Nazi Germany, (who did see Russia accurately, but bungled the strategy) the problem was that he did not conceive of Russia properly.
Needed – software that helps in conception via clever use of 3D motion graphics.
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Thursday rapid fire
- Telegraph fun
- Bluegrass everywhere but here
- It washes, dries and irons! All in one device.
- The Yahoo Ajax blog.
- More Ajax I need to get around to understanding.
- An interesting article about Saddam and WMD. It’s odd how no one seems to be interested in what happened to the WMD. While it’s been proven they’re not there, the details of the removal are absent.
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Quote of the moment
If Bush ends up being right about Iraq, it will be through luck and accident and God’s grace, not through any skillful calculation of his own. Success there will make him a great president the way Powerball makes crackheads rich: they have the money to show for it, but they’re not fooling anyone.
I don’t quite agree with this, largely in that I don’t think the current endeavor is something that can be done well. It’s quite the zinger though.
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Baby Boomer nostalgia
Rather than focusing on the good, though moot, objections to invading Iraq, or useful strategies for withdrawal, Anna Qunindlen writes her variant of the standard column comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Needless to say she doesn’t mention the American occupation of the Philippines as another, more accurate comparison.
There’s no need to read the column, it’s just like all the other baby boomer nostalgia pieces. One telling part was
They should remember one of the most powerful men the party ever produced, Lyndon B. Johnson, and how he was destroyed by opposition to the war in Vietnam and bested by those brave enough to speak against it.
At least Johnson had the good sense to be heartbroken by the body bags. Bush appears merely peevish at being criticized. Someone with a trumpet should play taps outside the White House for the edification of a president who has not attended a single funeral for the Iraqi war dead.
Two Comments
- If Johnson was destroyed by opposition to the war in Vietnam, then how was he followed by two terms of Richard Nixon? Wouldn’t a peacenik have been elected instead?
- Funerals are for family, friends, and people who knew the deceased. They are not photo ops, political opportunities or anything else. Were Bush to attend one it would be dominated by the media and Secret Service and ruin a special sad moment.
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Annoyances
I was looking at CNN.com today and came across the article “Report: More journalists killed in Iraq than Vietnam“. I thought it interesting that CNN wasn’t even willing to stand behind a finding of fact, hence they put the “Report:’ in the headline.
Then I read the article, relevant quote
Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been killed, RSF said.
The latest casualty was a Reuters Television soundman who was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday, while a cameraman with him was wounded and then detained by U.S. soldiers.
The death toll in Iraq compares with a total of 63 journalists in Vietnam, but which was over a period of 20 years from 1955 to 1975, the Paris-based organization that campaigns to protect journalists said on its Web site.
During the fighting in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995, 49 journalists were killed doing their job, while 57 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed during a civil war in Algeria from 1993 to 1996.
Note the separate but sometimes equal “assistants” in the math. They seem to have the figures available (journalists killed during the Iraq War so far) to do an apples to apples comparison but choose not to do so. Also they artificially limit the “fighting in the former Yugoslavia” to a four year period which strikes me as quite fishy as well.
On the whole shabby work from CNN.
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The natural life cycle of American causes
They begin in tragedy and end in farce.
Joan Baez performs for Crawford War protesters.
While there are many actual events happening (see Michael Yon and a A Day in Iraq for more), here in America we concetrate more on aging baby boomer nostalgia, taking the form of listing ways that Iraq is similar to Vietnam (oddly never comparing it to the Philippines, where we also fought a Muslim insurgency.). We’re also careful to take note of both opinion polls and posturing, specifically this article which had the quote:
The protesters at “Camp Casey” can claim some victory for forcing Bush to talk so extensively about the military deaths when he’d rather focus on indicators of progress in Iraq. The campers’ call to bring the troops home now dominated news coverage out of Crawford this week while Bush stayed on his ranch with no public events.
A fixed date withdrawal deadline vs a benchmark withdrawal deadline? Can we live with Hyper-federalism or an Islamic republic in Iraq? How far are we willing to go to capture bin Laden, and what if we’re wrong? What kind of error rate in military endeavors are we willing to live with?
All these things pale in comparison to such gripping matters as the exact verbiage of a speech and who is on vacation.
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Something worth reading
I finally checked out the website of Michael Yon. He’s a photographer and a former special forces officer who’s rambling around Iraq not embedded with any American unit. The commentary is quite different than what one ordinarily sees (it’s more a here’s what I did today in Fallujah) and the quality of the photography is unmatched.
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Memorial Day being an odd coincidence
I was looking at the referral logs for moodyloner.net and came across A Day in Iraq. It’s a blog written by a soldier from Fort Benning (in Columbus Georgia) and his life there. Fascinating stuff with many pictures. A blog very much worth reading.
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More thoughts on the Iraqi insurgency
Via Tom Palmer is this informative article “The Mystery of the Insurgency” which deals largely with the fact that the insurgents are concentrating on killing Iraqis in great numbers.
To me this seems to be no mystery. Police states produce killers and gangsters and to a man with a hammer the world is made of nails. What else are they going to do but murder and crime?
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Iraqi Insurgency
Some very interesting reading; Tom Palmer refers to this WAPO article on the goals of the insurgency in Iraq, and it raises some interesting thoughts.
The article breaks it all down into 3 groups: al Qaida in Iraq, headed by Zarquai, hardcore Baathists, and non-hardcore Baathist sympathizers. It’s all very good reading, most particularly the goals of the hardcore Baathists, which are to regain control of Iraq should the US leave. They thing they have the capability to do so based on their superior organization and ruthlessness.
All of which makes me wonder, the US death rate seems to be holding at around 15 or so per week, with a variance of 5 or so. However they seem to be coming in offensive action, not random murder, and the number of insurgents killed has been skyrocketing lately. Hopefully this is a good sign.