We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Basra: latest news The latest reports on SkyNews are showing large crowds of ecstatic Iraqi civilians greeting the British mechanised troops deep inside Basra. One clip showed jubilant Iraqi children and young men clambering over a Challenger 2 tank and shaking the hands of the vehicle’s bemused commander and driver.
On a less happy note, one British soldier was killed earlier by a booby trap, so it is too soon to regard the Basra operation as completely ‘done and dusted’ but it seems clear that to all intents and purposes, the city has indeed fallen.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
I’m wondering if the Brits got worried at all at the possiblity that Baghdad might fall first (which is, I grant you, unlikely).
Not to imply that competition between these allies is an unfriendly one, but ya gotta think they considered, “How will we look if the Yanks are in their city center, and we’re still sitting out here”, and speeded up the schedule.
Wouldn’t be the first time generals considered what their allies were doing as much as what their enemies were.
Either way, if it’s a race, looks like the Brits will win it in the next 48 hours. Well challenged.
I doubt it. One Brit officer being interviewed said (and I am paraphrasing):
“If we rushed into the city, we would have to find them in order to fight them on their turf… by staying on the edge, if they want to hurt us they had to come to the edge, which means they are coming to us. They did that and we hurt them badly each time. We only went in when it suited us and our intelligence was good. Now there are a lot less of them and so it is time for us to end this.”
Should we start asking the prophets of doom for their apologies?
Excellent!! I’ve been trying to follow as many reports about the fighting in Basra as possible.
I would be very proud of their achievements and happy they were *my* fellow citizens if I were British. It would make me very proud to be British.
(I actually am proud because many of my relatives came from the UK.)
I’m very thankful the US and UK have been in this together. The US is weaker without UK and other ‘Anglosphere’ country’s support.
One thing I was wondering: Do any of you think achievements such as this, liberating the Iraqis even though it wasn’t *the* main goal, will cause an increase in British pride?
As more torture chambers are uncovered and more Iraqis feel free to tell their stories, all the nations who took part in this war should feel very proud.
As I stated, I know liberating the Iraqis wasn’t the #1 goal, but their liberation has been possible because of the war. (Kind of like WWII’s #1 goal wasn’t to free the Jews and others from Hitler’s ethnic cleansing.)
It may be a misperception on my part, but it has seemed to me that many Britons consider British Pride to be outdated and non-PC. Will the knowledge that Britain helped liberate the Iraqis change things much? (Perhaps enough to demand changes so the EU doesn’t revolve around what France and Germany want?)
Just curious as to what others think the impact of winning this war may have on citizens in the UK.
Regards,
Chris J.
One of the main benefits of victory from my point of view is that the French will be even more pissed of with us than they already are about having been freed from the Nazis by us.
Doing down the French is the raison d’etre for the British navy and army.
The 100,000 people from the second Hyde Park protest should be loaded on a Galaxy, be unloaded in Basra, be made to line up and bend over for a communal ass kicking the like of which has never been seen.
I thought we weren’t supposed to draw any conclusions about how this will ultimately turn out when its is only a couple of weeks old, or does that only apply to news that may look bad (but good news is eternal).
does that only apply to news that may look bad (but good news is eternal)
No, it applies to news which suggests an outcome that is, actually, vanishingly unlikely.
They love you on day 1, so they will obviously still love you after several years of occupation? This is why divorce doesn’t exist, since they loved each other enough to get married, no couple will ever break up in the future.
The Saudi govt wanted us there for Gulf War I, and our still being there angered people enough for 9/11, which was the excuse for Gulf War II……..
Did you look at the happy Kuwaitis at the end of GWI and just assume all Arabs would love us forever?
Kuwaitis’ Gratitude to U.S. Gives Way to Resentment
By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 22, 2003; Page A09
KUWAIT CITY, Jan. 21 — Hakem Mutairi is on trial in the country often called the most pro-American in the Arab world, charged with “spreading rumors that caused harm to Kuwait.” But his real crime, according to Mutairi’s supporters in Kuwait’s powerful community of hard-line Islamic politicians, is that he criticized the United States.
In speaking out in a televised interview against the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Mutairi also challenged the official orthodoxy in Kuwait, a tiny emirate that owes its continued existence to the United States. “We thought America was a friend for our country, but we think now it is a colonial power,” Mutairi said last week, summing up the evolving views among conservatives here. Kuwaitis “are very angry,” he added. “They think Kuwait now is not free.”
Mutairi is the face of anti-American sentiment in Kuwait — religious, politically influential and on the rise. Public statements such as his were seldom heard here before Sept. 11, 2001. But now, as the United States threatens to use Kuwait as a launching pad for an invasion of neighboring Iraq, even a crackdown by the Kuwaiti government on such people as Mutairi cannot obscure the burgeoning resentment.
It took two attacks last fall on U.S. soldiers based here to awaken Americans and Kuwaitis to how much admiration for the United States had waned in the years since a U.S.-led coalition liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991. Some of the resentments that have spread through the rest of the Arab world have reached even this pro-American enclave — bitterness about perceived U.S. targeting of Muslims in the war on terrorism and anger at Washington’s support for Israel in the conflict with Palestinians.
Islamic leaders here regularly complain about U.S. pressure on Kuwait to adopt American values. They decry invasion plans, despite lingering enmity toward Iraq. And they espouse the view, voiced elsewhere in the Middle East, of the United States as a would-be “colonial” power. …
Why the love won’t last:
US heavy-handedness baffles British
…. British troops who have witnessed the Americans at close quarters in this war are baffled at their approach to Iraqi civilians. One captain in the Royal Marines, watching a US unit monitor a checkpoint, said: “The Americans are still behaving like invaders, not liberators. They behave as if they hate these people.”
Many American troops speak as though they do.
You often hear them describe “Eye-rakis” in disparaging language. One US officer in charge of delivering humanitarian aid earlier this week likened the crush of people waiting to get hold of food and water to a pack of stray dogs.
His troops lashed at those pushing to the front with fists and rifle butts, even firing shots into the air.
When Irish Guards were nearly mobbed by a crowd trying to grab the food they were delivering to Zubayr this week, Major David Hannah urged his men to keep calm and get the people to sit down.
“They need to have their dignity respected,” he said. ….
They love you on day 1, so they will obviously still love you after several years of occupation?
I didn’t hear anyone say that. Or is it your contention that you can’t celebrate anything unless you can guarantee it will last, undiminished, forever?
You often hear them describe “Eye-rakis” in disparaging language.
Yep, accent mocking. Always the measure of a balanced, thoughtful editorial.
That’s either accent mocking or a direct quote of Iraqis being mocked.
How about waiting for it to last, say, the year?
This is how governments love to operate – they put in some big social program, get the recepients interviewed on TV praising the program, and the long term damage done by that program becomes another social crisis requiring more government intervention.
Its no different when the government takes off its business suits and puts on snappy uniforms.
How about waiting for it to last, say, the year?
Request denied. I don’t feel constrained by arbitrary deadlines pulled out of the bodily orifices of strangers. How about we take it for what it is…one hopeful sign along what is sure to be a long and difficult road?
Incidentally, we had Eye-talian for supper last night. And we intended it no disrespect at all.
Unfortunately, your willing to pull the tax dollars to pay for this war out of the bodily orifices of strangers. Your rules, your war, your bill.
Scott: an occupation to carry out a ‘de-baathification’ process, in parallel with a transition to an Iraqi government, is what is going to happen.
If I had to guess what was going to happen I would predict something similar to the situation in 1946. After the lessons learned by the experience of bitter guerilla fighting in Germany and Japan after World War 2… oh… hang on… that is not what actually happened, now, was it? 🙂
60 years later, we still have troops in Germany and Japan, and they don’t seem to love being “liberated” enough to share the joy with the Iraqis, since neither country has been a pillar of support for your war.
We also let the Japanese keep the Emperor (to make our lives easier – he was the one person who could order a surrender). Without that concession, the likes of which you oppose concerning Iraq, we may have had guerilla fighting thru ’46.
That, and both countries had a Soviet Union to fear more than they feared and/or disliked us.
60 years later, we still have troops in Germany and Japan, and they don’t seem to love being “liberated” enough to share the joy with the Iraqis, since neither country has been a pillar of support for your war.
We also let the Japanese keep the Emperor (to make our lives easier – he was the one person who could order a surrender). Without that concession, the likes of which you oppose concerning Iraq, we may have had guerilla fighting thru ’46.
That, and both countries had a Soviet Union to fear more than they feared and/or disliked us. That Soviet Union (and Mao’s Comminists) wound up terrorizing huge portions of what was “liberated” from the facists – the law of unintended consequences applies to the end of WWII also.
Unfortunately, your willing to pull the tax dollars to pay for this war out of the bodily orifices of strangers.
This war and all others. I’d be for the libertarian solution – banding together and hiring mercenaries, I suppose that would be – but somebody else will have to pass the plate and do the paperwork. I’m terrible at paperwork.
I took a lot of convincing on this war, by the way. It certainly isn’t “mine”. But that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of seeing a hopeful sign as a hopeful sign, or that I believe positively everything that emanates from it has to be shit. I don’t understand how one would get that polarized.
That describes positively everything that emanates from any government.
“Anything governments touch turns to crap.”
–Ringo Starr
Sturgeon’s Revelation: “Ninety percent of everything is shit.”
So, really, government is only 10% worse than universal average. (Often cited incorrectly as Sturgeon’s Law, which is actually: “Nothing is always absolutely so.” Hm. Fairly applicable, as well).
Taliban Reviving, Afghan Gov’t Faltering
…
At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago.
Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.
“It’s like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem,” said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan’s president and his representative in southern Kandahar. “What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business.”
Karzai said reconstruction has been painfully slow — a canal repaired, a piece of city road paved, a small school rebuilt.
“There have been no significant changes for people,” he said. “People are tired of seeing small, small projects. I don’t know what to say to people anymore.”
When the Taliban ruled they forcibly conscripted young men. “Today I can say ‘we don’t take your sons away by force to fight at the front line,'” Karzai remarked. “But that’s about all I can say.”
From safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, aided by militant Muslim groups there, the Taliban launched their revival to coincide with the war in Iraq and capitalize on Muslim anger over the U.S. invasion, say Afghan officials. …
I dunno, man. Damnedest thing. Every time I thought we had a conversation going, he’d start reading out loud from the newspaper.
<shrug>
Scott comes from some alternate universe in which US and presumably British forces in Germany are in ‘occupation’ of that country. So I guess if the German government said ‘time to leave’, Scott thinks we would go to war with them rather than just leave. If not, then it must be a strange sort of ‘occupation’.
Actually from his comments I am starting to think he is just a troll.
Oh, no, not a troll. A classic anarcho-libertarian-whatsit of the “tear it all down, man!” variety. You know, the kind that believes you shouldn’t vote because it only encourages the bastards.
The breed is admirable in its philosophical purity, but somewhat impractical in the real world.
I didn’t say we were “occupying” Germany and Japan – the fact that they were free not to support the war shows they aren’t puppet governments. I simply said we still felt the need to have troops there instead of bringing them home like we’re promised w/ a de-Baathed Iraq.
Do we need Germany’s permission to bring our troops back?
Fallen? I would say that for the first time in twelve years, the residents of Basra are at last able to stand.
An interesting question…Why were there no guerilla attacks on allied forces stationed in Germany (and Japan) after World War II? There there was a complete process on the formerly brain washed population called Denazification (Germany at least). This encompassed everything from jail for former Nazis to history for school children. Why in Iraq are Mullahs allowed to preach and protest anti-allied/democratic speeches….Why no ‘Dejihadification’, classes for the children etc…etc…Perhaps then attacks would end