Proof of the pudding- or, how to make an idiot of yourself.


Two conflicting reports on the Basra situation. The Telegraph versus the Times

The appropriate response to events in Basra was "wait and see", but the Telegraph hadn't the necessary patience and instead preemptively declares the action a disaster. I've long had doubts about the UK military policy in Southern Iraq- when the Western relativist goes abroad, many avoidable mishaps accompany his overponderous and self-important particularity. That, and the fact that the British army (and cheerleading journalists) were so keen to preach their easy-going do-nothing gospel to the benighted Yankees, meant that I was ever so slightly sceptical...

Looks like Basra's better for some action.

Richard North has a go at the Telegraph here.

The deeply impressive Petraeus

I managed to catch about 90 minutes of Gen. Petraeus' testimony to the Senate committee yesterday- I couldn't believe it when I heard them say how much there was left; those sessions are incredibly long.

One little glitch I noticed was his Bush-like slip where he talked of the terrorists' global war on terror- which of course should have been of terror.

I was interested by this short clip via HotAir of a bit I hadn't seen, later in the session, where he corrected that slip very pointedly.



That self-correction comes amid another self-correction- he is explaining how the war in Iraq is making America safer, having been non-committal on the point in answering an earlier question. It's easy to understand why he didn't answer immediately- is it a soldier's job to survey the whole world like some latter-day Alexander the Great? According to the Senate committee you would think so.

Yet Petraeus, like any army man, has a sense of territory. If you keep it, no-one else can except someone you permit to inherit it from you. That, strangely, is why in this non-state war it is so vital not to give up territory. It's because you wish to prevent a group of people who don't respect territorial sovereignty from getting their own territory, which they personally don't care for, which is for them merely a launch pad for infiltrating more territory, causing more chaos, increasing their power base, reach, influence and prestige.

Petraeus knows all that instinctively. Others need to learn it.

Oh, and btw, I think that what Petraeus is doing will make the UK a whole lot safer than it would otherwise be as well. Certainly winning in Iraq would have that effect, though any such judgement is a finely balanced one in the grand scheme of things.

Gordon's feet of clay.

It has pained me to see people writing Iraq off as a failure. Recently, it has pained me even more to see Prime Minister Gordon Brown give the orders for the British to get ready to leave Iraq.

It does seem foolish to leave at a time when this can be construed as failure, when our allies still need us, but even more so when it is considered that Iraq may be on the verge of a breakthrough.

Yesterday GW Bush met with his own secretaries of Defence and State, his Generals in Iraq, and the Iraqi Gvt.- all in the province of Al Anbar which has been the principle sphere of conflict for most the period since 2003.

Was this a symbolic act a gesture that the US is not beaten in Iraq, before a gradual withdrawal? Maybe. But maybe it was both a practical move and a political one, which shows that there is nowhere, and no group, that cannot be tamed and brought into the political process of Iraq- except Al Qaeda in Iraq.

So, Gordon Brown chooses now to back down from Tony Blair's commitment to Iraq? Nice one, Gordy. Rather like selling gold at the bottom of its price cycle (this Gordon Brown also did). Just when you could reap the rewards of a steadfast ally, you choose to remind the US that their worries are their own, and not to be shared beyond a certain arbitrary and unpredictable point. The British people aren't with you George, says Gordon, as George begins to scent a victory parade and an appreciation (well-deserved) that will be as rapturous as his critics were rancorous.

The only upside is that if Gordon's feet are this clayey, they will probably crack and fall apart by the time he comes to call an election (he won't have the nerve in the next few weeks, I think, if he is true to form).

One thing...

But it's a good thing. I'll point you to Richard Miniter's exemplar of how to deal with a story- and how not to. Hope you enjoy it.

Time for a bitter Sunday evening conspiracy post... which could only be posted here.

Something to be ashamed of...

Whilst I am often sceptical of the need for national apologies, especially those that go back over the centuries and involve the latest fashionable racial groupings, I do think that if this story transpires it will be time to hang the head in shame.

Britain's coming home, they're coming home.

This brings it home. There has become a depressing regularity about UK casualties in Basra.

"The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad. They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as "surrounded like cowboys and Indians" by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months."

Article here.

Obviously I am not a military person, but I would say a few things about this.

1)It's not primarily been a military problem, but a political one. From instilling the rule of law, to suppressing harmful political forces such as Moctada al Sadr, to being modest when times were quiet, to protesting and acting against Iranian interference, we've made the wrong decisions.

2)Both our politicians and our military top brass are arrogant and unrealistic- the politicians in thinking that our military must be expert diplomats just because they're British; our top brass because they thought that, being British, we would have the nouse not to stick our noses where they were not wanted and would be automatically secure and respected through technical prowess and military discipline. The politicians because they thought they could just make assumptions based on favourable metrics and bring troops out of the area before anything had truly been secured; the military because they took every setback as evidence of unrealistic political aims rather than as military problems which they had a responsibility to solve.

Overall it's been a big cock up, which had everything to do with the contempt the British establishment by and large has had for the Iraq expedition, and little or nothing to do with historical inevitability. We haven't seemed to understand that sometimes it's better not to do things rather than to do them badly and unwillingly, while to do them willingly and positively would be the only actually good option. I don't blame the soldiers specifically, but the military culture hasn't exactly vindicated itself.

Of course I have no "overwhelming moral authority" to talk about this, but I feel things could have been so much better.

As a football lover and a fan of Iraqi freedom to boot, I just loved this.

Omar, blogging at Iraq the Model, gets better and better in his command of English. Actually I find his writing inspiring just for its style, let alone all the other qualities he brings.

Asian Cup final match highlights here

If you view one thing on the internet this week, I recommend this, a Bloggerheads discussion between Robert Wright and Eli Lake. Bloggerheads, in case you are wondering, is a site where two way video conversations are broadcast. Robert Wright's a liberal, Eli's a conservative journalist. Eli's embedded in Iraq, following the "surge" of US troops there; Robert's back in the USA. It's nighttime in Iraq when this is recorded, daytime in the USA. Eli's account is full of excitement and tension- the real thing in other words. (via Instapundit)

Also fascinating, to get into the mood of Lake's reporting, this from Michael Yon- Rattlesnake- embedded with the British army and active on night missions. Again, electrifying.

I should also add that I will be away for the next few days, visiting relatives. I may be absent from these pages for five days or so. Then again, maybe I won't be.

"Everybody's watching, everybody's gloating..."

-Sandmonkey on the world reaction to the political retreat of the US Congress and Representives from Iraq. In a fascinating interview with the ubiquitous Atlas the Egyptian blogger talks of a political thaw in Egypt following Bush''s reelection in 04, and a crackdown following the election of the Democrats last year. Some things needed to be above politics- unfortunately the pols lack the imagination for things like that.

Cat. Bag. Open. Heh.

Iraq revisited- what does go down the toilet.

Melanie Phillips has a fascinating post up on Iraqi WMDs.

Mmm. Kind of retro now, isn't it.

Yet I think it is instructive, and I have more respect for Melanie Phillips than for any other journalist.

It's almost a welcome relief to think about Iraqi WMDs than to think about mounting death tolls of US and British troops.

In truth I never expected anything else. I did hope for a miracle though, given that the goal was certainly a noble one. The really interesting thing is to reflect on the weakness of a military giant that can allow an insurgency to defeat it despite, and this is key, the overwhelmingly receptive nature of most Iraqis to an occupying force in place of a terrorist regime.

When you consider it, victory in Iraq is critical- yet it is not apparently happening. The opponents are very active- the Iranians, the Syrians, even the Saudis one suspects, at a distance. But America and its allies should have been able to enforce their will. So it's imperative to examine in detail why they haven't, and I'd start here:

"The docile US media, dependent as it is on government sources and handouts, is all too easily intimidated or bought off by pressure from a myriad different sources which all have their own conflicting reasons to suppress such politically damaging revelations. Too many important reputations in the media now rest on the ruthless suppression of the faintest possibility that they might have been wrong."

The US media, I would add, is docile when it comes to things which feed its preening narrative, and totally reactionary when it is contradicted. The poverty of the US media in understanding and reporting the stakes and the realties of the big wide world mirrors the starvation of intelligence which characterises the involvement in Iraq. Idealism remains, but is not enough. To know friend from foe and rightly estimate their designs is the key, and the media love throwing such realities down their toilets after the fashion of top mag Newsweek.

Allah's Moneyed Enslavers

I've not come across anything that exposes the utter evil of the people the US-led coalition are confronting in Iraq more than the story of a handicapped 13 year old, bought- yes, BOUGHT-, by Al-Qaeda to do its bidding.

It's Oliver Twist, Iraq-style, and instead of picking pockets, we find that the lad is assisting in attacks on US forces.

The difference in this story is that although motherless, like Oliver, unlike Oliver "Barack Muhammed" was sold by his father for 10,000 dollars.

Quite a lot of money, when you think about it.

Oh, "source" I hear you asking?

The UN, actually.

Thanks to the excellent Pamela from Atlas Shrugs for the link.

Another area of interest

The "surge" in Iraq. Working? Well, Robert Kagan thinks so.

The booze is back in town...

Good news from Pajama clad Iraq the Model.

Apologies for the lack of posts. I plead unusual busyness, physical unwellness, and a few items of bad news which have had me preoccupied.

I've still kept in touch with news online, I think. One the issues that really involves me emotionally is the Iraq situation- everything seems quite emotional to me at the moment.

This, for starters, is an insightful foray into understanding one part of the Iraq insurgency- coming from a man who has subsequently been killed. More of his work here. I wonder, partly in the light of this, whether some individuals in the Coalition are targeted for their effectiveness- implying a kind of surveillance and intelligence operation against the Coalition. Could be.

Then I was also moved by this account of a true shahid (martyr) in Iraq.

"the right-wing blogosphere stands revealed as what they are -- a pack of gossip-mongering hysterics who routinely attack any press reports that reflect poorly on their Leader or his policies, with rank innuendo, Internet gossip, base speculation, and wholesale error as their most frequent tools of the trade. The operate in packs, constantly repeating each other's innuendo and expanding on it incrementally, and they then cite to each other endlessly in one self-feeding, self-affirming orgy of links, as though that constitutes proof."

Ooh, I love it when they get nasty!

The above quote is from Glenn Greenwald, who waxes verbose at just about anything.

The topic at hand is the "Jamil Hussein case". Capt. Jamil Hussein of the Iraqi police force was the named source for a large number of AP reports. US bloggers like Michelle Malkin and especially Patterico began to be suspicious of the veracity of the AP's source, and upon enquiry got the response from both the Iraqi Government and the Coalition authorities that they had no record of such a man's existence within the ranks of the Iraq police in Baghdad- a response that was later rescinded on the Iraqi Government's part.

You would indeed expect that a Captain in the Iraqi Police would be known to the authorities, but the key issue was not his existence- that was just the shocked afterthought, that maybe the source was somehow fabricated. The main concern was the truth of the reports he was giving. Michelle Malkin has confirmed the validity of that concern while in Iraq recently.

Greenwald and friends get in a lather over the acceptance of the Iraqi government's word over the non-existence in the Iraqi police of the AP's source. Which rather begs the question as to why they are accepting it now.

Of course they think it shows the authoritarianism of the right that they would accept the Iraqi Government's initial word. Au contraire, amis, it shows that the right doesn't discount the authorities when it suits them, and accept them when they please- unlike the left. The left loves authority when it's their sort. Other sorts, not so much.

There has never, to my satisfaction, been an analysis (let alone a good one) demonstrated by the MSM of their approach to on-the-ground sources in Iraq (and elsewhere in sensitive regions)- a hugely complicated scenario where everyone may have political purposes. Being a partial war zone, the other means of action (war taken as being politics by other means) is political; and both are rife in Iraq. Yet the MSM wants us to gaily take its word for it time and again without regard to the political context, where we know "insurgents" and "police officers" can be sometimes interchangeable. There is no sense in trusting everything a potentially incompetent Iraqi Govt or partially sighted coalition says- there is equally no sense in believing even the ordinary Iraqi in the street as being without political motivation, let alone the sort who in a sense risks his life providing information.

For a man like Jamil Hussein, there has to be something in it for him, and there have to be ways he is retaining his security while providing a news feed to the West. How does that work- not by adopting a pseudonym, apparently. Then how? How? How?

Questioning minds (and creative ones), of which there are many on the right, would like to know.

Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston are back from Iraq (what? You didn't know they were away? or "who are they?"), and Bryan has some fascinating observations to make about Iraq on the ground.

"Calling Iraq a “civil war” misunderstands the nature of Iraq and the term “civil war.” Most of Iraq’s warring parties don’t have any chance at taking over the entire country and don’t seem interested in doing so. Most of them are reacting to the vaccuum of power since the iron grip of Saddam slipped off the country. Most of them are reacting to threats they perceive are either coming from the presence of foreign troops, or from the presence of Wahhabi-influence terrorists (al Qaeda) or from fellow Iraqis who belong to the other major sect of Islam, or from Iran. Most militia fighters would probably lay down their weapons if the overall environment improved, and by that I mean improvements in the basics: the economy and education as well as the security environment."

Iraq- better than you thought.

Or at least that would be the conclusion to make based on this interesting article from a senior British officer there.

So far in January the casualty rate among coalition soldiers has been low (about 1 death per day), and the civilian rate seems to have gone down too.

Beating Insurgencies

Ok, it's just a guess, of course, but I'm of the opinion one of my favourite moments from a favourite film might help, certainly in Iraq.

The film in question is Silverado, one of the great westerns from a time when westerns were going through their bleakest out of season period (they aren't exactly "in" now).

The big hero, Emmett, played by Kevin Kline, dives into the hideout of some ne'r do wells who've robbed some fetching young settlers, and his cover is provided by just a couple of friends shooting frantically trying to appear like some big posse who Emmett claims are pursuing him. The aim is to distract the bad guys long enough for Emmett to sneak the money box away. They succeed.

Emmett retrieves the booty, but not before he's rumbled. Short but immortal lines:

"BAXTER
  (indicating Emmett)
 Brave man.

   DAWSON
 I think there's only a couple of
 guys up there and this asshole's one
 of them."

It's a great moment, full of irony.

I only say this because I was inspired to think about it by this very realistic, if overly pessimistic, Slate article from Robert Kaplan on the Bush surge and his clever new general. My response is that we should remember what chaos a few assholes can create, trying to appear a big posse. And be clear who the good guys are on this occasion.