Preventive War

Kevin Drum asks if the Iraq war proves preemptive war is a bad idea. Since the has been recent upheaval of who was right about the war, I thought I'd put up my own views.

While some of my opposition to the war was that I believed at that time the incompetence of the Bush administration as evidenced by decisions made at Tora Bora and the tossing aside of proven military doctrines to experiment, I'm not sure that's germane to the question of preventive war, and it's probably less important.

The greater prewar failure was the inability of the Bush administration to engage the international community and its almost perverse desire to go it alone. The American people are simply more predisposed to accepting such adventurism, which was sold as preemptive but was really preventive, than the rest of the world, especially at that time with 9/11 so fresh.

This forced us to act pretty much unilaterally. Remember the coalition of the willing. That joke of group was virtually bereft of international power, and more importantly, cash to pay for the fiasco. They were just a bunch of toadies willing to put their name on the list.

I just really don't think you can pull off an Iraq sized project anymore without a greater degree of international participation.

No Do-Overs

Jonah Goldberg the other day wrote this about opposition to the surge. From the LA Times:

Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition — which not long ago was in favor of increasing troops, when Bush was against that — won't say what it wants. This is flatly immoral. If you believe the war can't be won and there's nothing to be gained by staying, then, to paraphrase Sen. John Kerry, you're asking more men to die for a mistake. You should demand withdrawal. But that might cost votes, so the Dems don't. And, of course, Kerry, Pelosi and other Democrats were in favor of more troops before they were against it.

Yes, its true that some Democrats were in favor of more troops...before the war. Not listening to them is one of the reasons we are currently mired in this fiasco. At this point, however, we are through the looking glass and they have rightly changed their position to being in favor of ending the war.

Let me see if I can simplify this for those like Goldberg that can't seem to grasp that concept.

Let's say you decide to jump off a cliff. You have a few tools to choose from to aid your decent, but you only get to pick one. They include a helmet and knee pads, a beanbag chair to break your fall, some makeshift wings made out of chicken feathers, a Hefty bag made into a parachute, and a hang glider. All of these will get you to the bottom, though with varying degrees of success.

The point is that after you jump, there are no do-overs. You've passed the point of no return. That's where we are in Iraq. We've jumped off the cliff, and we didn't pick the hang glider so no matter what we do the end result is going to be a rather messy splat. The only question now is how many people are we going to land upon killing them also.

Greatest. Post. Ever.

Matt Taibbi has one of the greatest blog posts I've ever read. It starts with a take-down of Tom Friedman and moves on to an indictment of the Bush administration's handling of the war. I'll excerpt liberally, but go read the whole thing. From Alternet:

Tom Friedman is the oracle of this crowd, the tormented fat kid with a wedgie who got smart in his high school years and figured out that all he had to do to be successful was shamelessly and relentlessly flatter his Greatest-Generation parents, stroke their outdated prejudices, sell them on the idea that the entire aim of the modernization process is the spreading of their amazing legacy through the use of space-age technology.

So he goes into America's sleepy suburbs with his seventies porn-star mustache and he titillates the book clubs full of bored fifty- and sixty-something housewives with tales of how the internet is going to turn Afghanistan into Iowa. The suburban guys he ropes in with a half-baked international policy analysis -- whats "going on" on "the Street," as Friedman usually puts it -- that he cleverly makes sound like the world's sexiest collection of stock tips: "So I was playing golf with the Saudi energy minister last week, and he told me..."

This is just a modern take on the same old bullshit rap that traveling salesmen all over America have been laying on wide-eyed yokels at 99 Steak Houses and Howard Johnsons hotel bars for decades: So I was having lunch with Jack Welch at the Four Seasons last week when I heard about this amazing opportunity... And these middle-manager types who live in Midwestern cubicles or in the bowels of some federal bureaucracy in Maryland eat it up; they buy every one of Friedman's books, treat his every word like gospel, and before you know it they're all talking about Israeli politics and "the situation" in Yemen or Turkey or wherever like they're experts.

This is as good a job at nailing Friedman's shtick as I've read. The sad thing is that I usually agree with where Friedman says we need to go as a nation, it's just that I virtually never agree with how he thinks we should get there. Today's column is a fine example. Friedman suggests that we need new alternative energy initiatives, but for those he is willing to trade surging in Iraq. What the fuck does A have to do with B? Especially when you're never going to get B.

Taibbi goes on to make this comparison about the surge. From Alternet:

The whole war has been characterized by this kind of behavior. The Americans continually make ghastly mistake after ghastly mistake, and they keep responding to their mistakes by digging down and seeking the aid of the same homespun American pseudo-folk wisdom that got them into this mess in the first place. Our foreign policy initiatives in the area resemble attempts to mend fences with a neighbor whose lawn has been mussed by bringing him a tuna casserole cooked specially by wifey; only in Iraq, when casserole-presenting Dad ends up with his eyes gouged out and his skull charred black, hanging upside down from a telephone wire and impaled on the shards of the casserole dish, the neighborhood committee convenes and... decides to bake a bigger casserole.

Well said.

One Seat

Please, let us pick up one more seat in the Senate in 2008 so that we can throw that fucking dickhead Joe Lieberman out of the party. From Newsweek:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

[snip]

But the decision by Lieberman, the new chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to back away from the committee's Katrina probe is already dismaying public-interest groups and others who hoped the Democratic victory in November would lead to more aggressive investigations of one of the White House’s most spectacular foul-ups.

This isn't even about my hatred of Bush, it's about the greatest failure of the federal government in the history of natural disasters, but I guess to Lieberman, having the tip of Bush's cock tickling his tonsils is far more important than making sure the same thing doesn't happen again.

Fuck Lieberman, the House Committee for Government Reform should subpoena the records from the Bush administration and those subpoenas should read that they are seeking the materials that Joe Lieberman is too big of a fucking cunt to ask for. Fucking dickwit.

Another Reason Bush's Plan Won't Work

Last year's plan, well, really it was more of a treatment, was glossy and had bullet points and arrows and shit. This one just has shit. It can't work. There are still way too many recurring characters.

Is This Rare?

Researchers at Cal-Irvine have found a woman with an extraordinary memory. From ABC News:

James McGaugh is one of the world's leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he's stumped.

McGaugh's journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago.

Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date.

Given my past relationships I was under the impression that this was a trait that all women shared. Who knew?

Loading The Powder Keg

If you are reading this and you live in Baghdad, now might be a good time to leave. The plan President Bush laid out last night in his address is nothing more than a loading up of the powder keg that is Baghdad. From the transcript:

Now, let me explain the main elements of this effort. The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi army and national police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi army and national police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations; conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

So, we're going to put 18 brigades of Iraqis in Baghdad that are rife with militiamen, then probably turn and attack the militia that most of the infiltrators most closely associate themselves and not expect this to turn into a free-for-all? This is the recipe for disaster. It appears that we are going to keep the neighborhoods separated and only go in to conduct search and destroy missions where we will be subject to ambushes and what not.

I'm not saying the Iraqis shouldn't be involved in the security, it's just that I don't feel they have enough troops that are not compromised to participate at this level. I hope I'm wrong.

Also, the strict dividing of these neighborhoods will effectively kill commerce in the capital, which is scheduled to be jump started by the Iraqis kicking in $10 billion of their own money. It's money that they simply don't have, so look for us to end up giving them the money.

It all comes down to this, George Bush allowed this thing to fester for almost four years to get where we got, and at this point we have to now ask ourselves the three questions Aaron Mannes poses of at Counterterrorismblog:

1. Will the surge of troops allow coalition forces to break the forces fomenting civil war?

2. Has the U.S. military developed a sufficient understanding of Iraqi society and experience at counterinsurgency to maintain some level of order in Iraq?

3. Will the American public tolerate for a decade of U.S. casualties in Iraq?

One and two are unknowns that are probably a little better than fifty percent chance of success, eventually. Three, as we all know, is inoperable.

The only good part of this plan in my mind is something we should have done from the very beginning. Equal sharing of the oil revenue among all Iraqis. It probably would have mollified them somewhat then. I guess those morons at the Heritage Foundation thought is was too close to socialism.

Now, with no banking system, I don't even know how you begin to distribute the money.

$10 Billion?

Where in the hell is Iraq going to come up with an additional $10 billion? Their entire governmental budget for 2007 is only $41 billion.

Hopes And Dreams And Ponies And Lollypops

Joe Klein of Time magazine has started blogging at their Swampland blog. It only took one day for Klein to attack the Left, of which he purports to belong to, of hoping that America loses the war in Iraq because we are very much against the escalation of the war. From Swampland:

But it's possible to have been against the war and to hope for the best in Iraq. I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of Americans who now oppose the war are praying for a turn for the better in Iraq. Listening to the leftists, though, it's easy to assume that they are rooting for an American failure. And so a challenge to those who slagged me in their comments. Can you honestly say the following:

Even though I disagree with this escalation, I am hoping that General Petraeus succeeds in calming down Baghdad.

Does the thought even cross your mind? As for me, it's easy--I've been rooting for U.S. success ever since the invasion because, after the overpowering arrogance and stupidity that led to this disaster, we owe some peace and stability to the Iraqis and the region. For the record, I'm outraged Bush is ignoring the election results and the reality on the ground in Iraq. I think he is sending more young American lives into an impossible situation. I am fairly certain that Bush will wallow amongst our worst presidents for getting us into this mess. But I hope events prove me wrong. I don't even care if Bush gets credit for the "victory" and smirks all the way back to Texas.

This is a fine example of the standard boilerplate language of liberals who are "serious" about national security. Failure to go along with every American projection of power whether ill-advised or not is seen as proof that you are "unserious."

And so it goes, Klein will wade into the surge, not because he thinks it will work, but because he has hope. Fine, in for a dime, in for a dollar.

But let me tell you about hope. I, too, hope that we manage to bring some sort of peaceful resolution to the current conflict. I also hope that I win the Mega Millions tonight. In fact, I'm hoping harder than I've ever hoped before. I'm hoping so damn hard that I might go out tonight and "surge" by buying 20,000 more tickets. Then again, maybe that's just foolish.

Moving The Goalposts

As we approach a change in troop levels in Iraq, John McCain is now changing his position as well. While he has for the last couple of months been calling for an increase 20,000 troops, now that it appears we will do exactly that, McCain has came out calling for even more. Why? It has nothing to do with the facts on the ground. It's because McCain's Iraq policy can never line up with George Bush's Iraq policy. From the Washington Post:

This is a serious argument, and the two senators [McCain and Lieberman] have been principled and even courageous in making it. But several questions give us pause. One is whether the administration and the Army will have the political and logistical capacity to carry out the sort of surge that the senators, and experts at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who support them, say is necessary: Total U.S. forces in Iraq would grow from fewer than 140,000 to as many as 175,000 and remain at that level indefinitely. Such a deployment would place severe new strains on the Army and probably require the alteration of Pentagon rules limiting the deployments of reservists. Some reports have said the administration is considering a more modest increase, both in numbers and in length of deployment. Mr. McCain says that would doom the strategy to failure.

Choosing a position that isn't feasible isn't courageous at all. McCain is simply playing presidential politics with other peoples lives. Never fear John, we're still going to wrap this mess around your neck.

Update: Think Progress has pulled up some recent McCain quotes and it looks like he is just plain nuts. He has called for troop levels to be increased by 20,000 (10/27/06), 100,000 (12/6/06), and 30,000 (1/4/07). Looks like he is just talking out of his ass.

They Don't Eat Much Either

Now I see where we are going to get the extra troops for Bush's escalation. Maybe we are going to take a cue from the British. From the Telegraph:

British troops are manning watchtowers with dummies at the Army's main garrison in southern Iraq, it was disclosed last night.

They have used mannequins to take the place of real soldiers during darkness in up to eight of the 16 watchtowers at the Shaibah Logistics Base, west of Basra.

The Grenadier Guards came up with the tactic after being sent out for a six-month tour 47 men short, The Sun reported.

Every two-hour shift change the figures, equipped with desert combat fatigues, helmets and rifles, were moved about.

Put mannequins in guard towers? Brilliant! Using this tactic we could easily "surge" up 400,000 troops for relatively cheap, although I'm sure the Pentagon would find a way to manage to pay $8,000 per mannequin. Plus it would help out with those pesky Baghdad car pool lane regulations.

For The Locals

Posting has been pretty light as I have been somewhat under the weather. My cold finally seems to be going away, and for those of you who are locals, MK is having a party for the game tonight. Also, I've heard a rumor that for the game Kroger is selling gator meat. Has anybody seen any?

Breaking: Rescued Sailor Taps Choice Tail

That's it, I'm buying a boat.

The Enemy Of Our Enemy Is?

Oops, I guess he's our enemy too. By now you've surely heard that Saddam Hussein's executioners were yelling Muqtada al-Sadr's name as a taunt to the soon-to-be executed. That may only be half true. Yes, al-Sadr's name can be heard on the video, but it might not have been why it was being yelled.

It is now known that the masked men in the video were members of the Madhi Army, who had pushed aside government official to perform the lynching, but according to the Saudi Arabian newspaper al-Riyad one of those men was, in fact, the Mookie himself. From The Counter Terrorism Blog:

According to the Saudi daily Al Riyad, citing a witness to the execution of Hussein, one of the masked men was indeed Moqtada Al Sadr. Knowing that Saddam Hussein had Moqtada's father killed, this would not be surprising. In fact the son would want to take part in taking revenge. But if this turns out to be true, this would be another major faux pas for Iraqi authorities.

In fact Moqtada's militia has not only targeted coalition troops but also Sunnis, including mostly civilians. This event could further the gap between Sunnis and Shias around the world especially in Iraq, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

What does the Mookie get for his trouble, aside from some satisfaction that he killed the man that killed his father? Escalation. It is beyond doubt now that when George Bush escalates this war, it will be to take on al-Sadr.

On that note, what should we expect. Casualties, lots of them. One thing you have to realize is that right now we are fighting a rather small percentage of the population. Sunni insurgents are responsible for an overwhelming percentage of our casualties. They only represent 20% of the population of Iraq.

We are now going to fight against a much larger Shia population as well. Casualty figures could easily double or more once we pick this fight. Even if we dispatch al-Sadr rather quickly, which we will unless he flees to Iran, the prospect of the Shia joining in on daily IED attacks is not going to be pleasant.

The butcher's bill just went up.

Sidenote: I realize that this is rumor, but in that part of the world rumor and fact are two forms of the same currency. Dollar bills vs dollar coins.

Ridiculous

Who is that in your mailbox? Why, it's George Bush who with another ridiculous signing statement claimed the authority to open your mail. I'm not joking, apparently the federal government now has the right to snoop though your mail. From the Daily News:

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

Those emergency conditions are thought to include being critical of Iraq policy, candidacy for public office not approved by the emperor, and failure to pay tithe to the republican party.

Long live the king.

Hey, I didn't get a hurump out of that guy. Off to the dungeon with him!

We Have A Patsy

It looks like the Iraqi government has its patsy in the case of the filming of Saddam Hussein's execution. From MSNBC:

Al-Arabiya television reported that the person under arrest is one of the guards who was a member of the execution team, according to an MSNBC translator. The information could not be immediately verified.

As for earlier allegations that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s National Security Advisor had been one of the ones taking video, well, that was all a grand misunderstanding. Again, from MSNBC:

On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of possible responsibility for the leaked video.

“I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press.

That got wrapped up as neat as an episode of Scooby Doo. Damn meddling kids.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Click to Enlarge. Damn republicans, I pissed my pants laughing when I read this.

Oops, Rudy Lost The Playbook

When you're running for president, it's probably not a good idea to leave the playbook you've written for your success behind in a hotel room, which is exactly what one of Rudy Guliani's aides did. One of Guliani's rivals leaked it to the New York Daily News, probably McCain know the dirty tricksters he has been staffing up with.

I doubt there is anything of any consequence in it, but I was struck by this passage. From The New York Daily News:

At the center of his efforts: a massive fund-raising push to bring in at least $100 million this year, with a scramble for at least $25 million in the next three months alone.

Umm, if you're planning to raise $100 million dollars in a year, you need to raise $25 million every quarter. I not sure why only the first quarter is a scramble.

What Is Winning?

There is a good piece in the New York Times today on the Bush administration's failures in Iraq, but this passage really makes me wonder, what is winning? From The New York Times:

Mr. Bush came to worry that it was not just his critics and Democrats in Congress who were looking for what he dismissed last month as a strategy of “graceful exit.” Visiting the Pentagon a few weeks ago for a classified briefing on Iraq with his generals, Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”

Wouldn't stabilizing the violence be the very definition of winning? If it isn't, what the hell is?

The AP: You're A Pussy

If you do not support the Iraq War, you must be a pussy, or so the AP implies in its latest article about support for the war. From the AP:

But are Americans willing to hang in a tough fight anymore?

Some wonder if U.S. society, now populated by baby boomers who recall Vietnam and never knew the hardships of the Great Depression or World War II, has simply lost its stomach for great sacrifices.

It's interesting that the AP wonders if Americans are still will to make sacrifices, especially since the Decider-in-Chief is preparing to give his escalation speech in which the central theme will be, wait for it, sacrifice.

Sacrifice. Expect to hear that word at least a dozen times in Bush's speech where he will announce an escalation of the conflict, but I ask this of you, what sacrifice?

The vast majority of the American people have not been asked to make any sacrifice at all, and have in fact until now, been counseled by the White House not to make any at all. How many times have they told us to shop til we drop, to go about our business as usual? The reality is that a very small percentage of Americans have made any sacrifices and will continue to make any sacrifices for this war.

But Bush is going to ask us to make a sacrifice, for his war. And what pray tell shall we sacrifice? Will there be rationing, scrap metal drives? Will we even be asked to drive a few less miles to ease our nation's dependence on the stuff that got us there in the first place? Of course not!

No, the only sacrifice we will be asked to make is to sacrifice believing what we see with our own lying eyes. We will be asked to see ponies where there is only pig shit. We will be asked to ignore what is right, and to clutch at what is wrong. We will be asked to mistake the hand writing on the wall for simple graffiti.

And for what in the world will we be asked to make this sacrifice? Who knows? Hell, the Bush administration doesn't even know yet. From the BBC:

The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.

The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.

So, we know we need more troops, but we don't know why we need them. We do know however that they most definitely will not be doing the one thing we have been repeatedly told is the only thing that will allow us to extricate ourselves from that hellhole, training Iraqis to stand up so we can stand down.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime example of fixing the strategy around the policy, or in this case, the politics.