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]
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I am still catching up with my email backlog after a week in which my server was ‘under attack’ by a storm of spam. High on my ‘must read’ list are the transcripts of the various DOD press briefings. I found a gem in this briefing from Saturday, given by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Coalition Operations; and Dan Senor, Senior Adviser, CPA. In the words of Dan Senor:
“And if you look at where we are now, unemployment is about a third of where it was when we arrived. There’s an unbelievably liberalized economy here, free trade, no — outside of natural resources, no limits on foreign investment, tax rates capped, personal income tax and corporate income tax rates capped at 15 percent provides in the long run a very foreign investment friendly environment for Iraq, which is good, while we are in the midst of deploying some $18 billion just from the United States alone, not to include other commitments of the international community. Independent central bank.”
Virtually anyone who reads Samizdata would understand tax rates this low necessarily lead to economic growth and the betterment of all citizens.
Could we perhaps borrow Paul Bremer for a year or two? I believe he may be in need of a job…
This has been on Fox News for a few days now, but it made me laugh: the individual behind the first WTC bombing, now under lock and key, is going on health-strike:
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is currently serving a life sentence, has reportedly stopped taking his insulin medicine and started eating M&Ms to make his diabetes worse. The blind cleric has apparently been upset about not getting the specific brand of tea he likes in prison.
Abdel-Rahman is a highly regarded spiritual leader among his militant followers, and there is still concern that should his health decline, those followers would retaliate against the United States.
Still, things could be worse- at least the Sheik is not expecting retalliation about other, more significant wrongs. Being forced to drink Tetley’s rather than Twining’s is one thing, but not being able to leave the building in order to blow up places is another thing altogether. Really quite a serious constraint, when you think about it.
I suppose if he was angry about bigger things than tea, Abdel-Rahman would be beating himself up even worse than by eating M&Ms. A few dozen Krispy Kremes, perhaps? The ones with lemon-custard inside are especially good. Then again, so are the raspberry jam ones. Tough call.
Perhaps this sort of thing could become a trend as more major terrorists get arrested. On the one hand, we could be seeing suicide-bombers all over the place blasting people to smithereens because some mad old cleric wanted the central heating turned up a couple of degrees. On the other hand, there might be a drastic reduction in the costs of keeping said evil lunatics alive, if they all manage to kill themselves by refusing their blood-pressure medication and overdosing on tubs of lard.
Coming soon: Saddam gets angry about being tried for murdering all those people, and shaves off his beard to incite retaliation against the US. While eating M&Ms and refusing to take aspirin for his headaches.
Paul Bremer has left the country… Two days earlier than was expected, he handed the administration over to the Iraqi government under Iyad Allawi. More than 100,000 foreign troops will remain as well as the funds voted for by the American Congress to finance the work of reconstruction.
John Keegan offers a ‘meta-contextual perspective’ on what is “rotten in the state of Iraq” (and in Washington) with regard to the aftermath of probably the most successful war ever fought between a democracy and a dictatorship. The entourage of highly opinionated advisers, that have become known as “neo-conservatives” may be at the root of the problem with the ill-conceived nation-building in Iraq:
A more accurate way of describing them would be as “post-Marxists”, in that, like many 20th-century intellectuals, their thinking was formed in reaction to the Soviet system, whether originally for or against. In the world in which they matured, it was impossible not to perceive politics as the supreme and dominant human activity. Their perception had distorting after-effects.
The new conservatives who had rejected Left-wing solutions to the world’s problems were nevertheless left with the conviction that any solution would be political. Confronted by the residue of tyranny, as in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, they expected democracy to take its place. Inside any people’s democracy, they might have said, there is a real democracy struggling to get out. In the case of eastern Europe, they were genuinely right.
Although the journey to freedom and democracy in the former communist bloc has not been straightforward, the assumption that those who opposed the communist tyranny saw democracy as the natural alternative, was certainly correct.
The neo-conservatives’ mistake was to suppose that, wherever tyranny ruled, democracy was its natural alternative. So, when planning for the government of post-war Iraq, the lead agency, the Pentagon, dominated by neo-conservatives, jumps to the conclusion that, as soon as Saddam’s tyranny was destroyed, Iraqi democrats would emerge to assume governmental responsibility from the liberating coalition and a pro-Western regime would evolve seamlessly from the flawed past.
To think in such a way was to reveal a dangerously post-Marxist cast of mind. Marxists can think only in political terms. They accept, even if they despise, liberal and conservative opposition. What they cannot accept is that their opponents may be motivated by beliefs which are not political in any way at all.
John Keegan concludes that the real opposition force is religion. There are others opposing the American presence, such as the survivors of the Ba’ath Party, a strictly secular organisation, however, religion is the only force that can provide an ‘alternative’, however flawed, to the current state of affairs. He admonished the Americans for dissolving the Iraqi army or police or civil administration, regardless of the number of Ba’ath Party members they contained.
Perhaps the current security problems in Iraq prove him right. I do not know whether using ex-Ba’athists in the post-Saddam Iraq would have prevented the deterioration of security in Iraq we have witnessed. I do, however, have a problem with moral implications of not purging the society of those who propped an oppressive regime. One man cannot sustain a totalitarian regime alone, it is the thousands of ‘little’ authoritarians that help to maintain the regime’s grip on its victims and destroy its opponents. I believe it was wrong (morally and politically) for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe not conduct a thorough ‘de-communisation’ of their political systems and societies. Similarly, I believe de-Ba’athification is desirable for the Iraqi society to find its footing.
However, I also find it hard to disagree with Keegan’s parting shot:
Looking back, better a Ba’athist Iraq than an Islamic one. Let us hope that it is not too late.
And now for something completely different. Matthew Maly writes in with a fascinating and challenging essay about Islam, civil society, Iraq, Western Civilisation, American politics, Jennifer Lopez, the fixed quantity of wealth fallacy, strange Shiite self-flagellation, tribesman with no clothes… well, about all those things and much, much more. Whether you agree with the general thrust of it or not, it is very interesting stuff
Having bombed some mosques, George W. Bush has built a Protestant mosque at Abu-Ghraib prison. Here, the Iraqi Moslems are taught that pork may be good for them and that the teachings of the Holy Koran are supposed to be subordinated to the teachings of Democracy, as represented by handpicked Iraqi exiles protected by American armor.
As many people before him with a gleam in their eye and fervor in their speeches, George W. Bush wanted to do good. As many revolutionaries before him he fell victim to technology, too awesome to reveal its implications.
Technology as the main cause of revolutions
Martin Luther, George W. Bush’s intellectual predecessor, correctly sensed that thanks to improved manufacturing processes, people were becoming economically independent. They no longer wished to be led blindly, to be told to behave “just so” without being given a reason that they could intellectually accept. People were becoming literate, able to read the Bible by themselves, and to think about their lives in a more rational way. The Germans, British, and Dutch did not speak a Romance language, and now they wanted church services in their own language since they simply did not understand Latin. Suddenly, they had become mature enough to want their Mass to be more meaningful, that is, understandable, to them. And when the language of the Mass became an issue, there were other matters to discuss. The Catholic Church failed to account for the social change that manufacturing brought about, and Germanic peoples turned Protestant as a result. The French, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese remained Catholic, since a Latin Mass was understandable to them. Thus the Protestant revolution reflected the fact that manufacturing technology had made people more self-sufficient, able to read and to think for themselves. → Continue reading: George W. Bush: Martin Luther for the Islamic world
The occasional refrain here at Samizdata is that we are relentlessly pessimistic. Even though the recent series on Burt Rutan’s space adventure was anything but, our political writings rarely highlight good news. Alrighty then, two items that should brighten your long-term outlook for liberty:
First, Mark Steyn reviews recent history in Latin America and notes how it might apply to the Middle East.
If you think the democratization of Arabia is a long shot, so was the democratization of Latin America. But it happened.
Second, the Iraqis are showing more spine than most, maintaining confidence in their pending government in hte face of terrorist brutality.
The first survey since the new government was announced by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi about three weeks ago showed that 68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders. The numbers are in stark contrast to widespread disillusionment with the previous Iraqi Governing Council, which was made up of 25 members picked by the United States and which served as the Iraqi partner to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
Connect the dots.
In Saudi Arabia the government’s response to attacks on foreign workers is to allow them to carry firearms. Any chance of that happening in London? I can get a foreign passport if necessary.
However, foreign contractors for the Saudi government will not be allowed to carry weapons because they are under the protection of the State. Good luck to them.
On balance, I think I would swap the British Home Secretary for his Saudi counterpart: less fascism, less victim disarmament, more effective law enforcement, and slightly less political correctness.
The eight British sailors arrested by Iran have been paraded on television and forced to make public confessions. It just occurred to me that these are both violations of the Geneva Convention, which I believe applies in this case because the British sailors were in uniform, etc.
So why have I not heard any screams of outrage from the Usual Suspects? There are, after all, interest groups out there so enamored of the Convention that they want it followed in cases (illegal combatants, nonstate actors, etc.) where its provisions clearly do not apply. You would think they would be double-extra hot to have it followed where its provisions do apply, but apparently not. I guess we can file their complaints under Outrage, Manufactured Selective Partisan, Discount and Dispose of Soonest.
The seizure of eight British sailors and their small patrol boats by Iranian forces means it is time for the British government to show that unless a swift accommodation is reached, the consequences will be severe for the Iranian state. If the UK forces did indeed stray into Iranian waters, nothing more than a curt apology is due the Iranian state, and only that if they return the British sailors and their equipment without delay. The Iranian state is a vile tyranny and the sooner they are put under real pressure the better.
Of course I would like to see as much instability as possible within Iran regardless of the incident with the sailors. There is no shortage of people in Iran who would love to see the end of theocratic Islamic rule and now would be a good time to start taking advantage of the fact UK and US forces control the Iraqi side of the border. Surely there must be some fairly large stockpiles of weapons from Saddam’s army that have not been blown up and are just sitting around in Iraq…
But if the Iranians want to turn this into a hostage crisis however, the only response should be to use whatever force is required to resolve the situation, not just via anti-regime dissidents but directly by Britain against the Iranian state, and as soon as it is practical. If the theocrats want to engage in brinkmanship, I hope the UK and US will be prepared to not just go to the brink but to step straight over it very forcefully indeed. A nice opening move to the ‘negotiations’ would be to redeploy a division right up to the Iranian border.
Update: Hopefully this will all be over by tomorrow (Thursday). Perhaps the Iranian state decided it was unwise to push things too far. It will be interesting to see if there is any long term fall out from this incident.
For those who insist that the lack of an Al-Qaeda/Iraq link means Saddam should have been left to mass murder his own people unmolested, Melanie Philips has some measured words for you.
The excitement was over a preliminary assessment of evidence about al-Qa’eda by the US commission investigating September 11. The only problem was that the press coverage was untrue. The report does not rule out links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda. On the contrary, as the commission’s chairman, Thomas Kean, confirmed: “There were contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’eda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there.” As so often in the coverage of Iraq, those who make the (illogical) claim that there was no such contact and therefore no cause for war saw in this report only what they wanted to see.
[…]
Bill Clinton’s administration was absolutely certain that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qa’eda. It was a given. That is surely why, after September 11, Pentagon officials were obsessed with Iraq. Whether Saddam was personally involved in 9/11 was irrelevant; if he was aiding al-Qa’eda’s terror, he had to be stopped. But this has been obliterated from the collective memory in order to place the most malign interpretation possible on the motives of the Bush administration.
Nothing new and from my point of view, so what… that Saddam was a tyrant was enough of a reason for me… but seeing as how people keep repeating ‘there was no link’ (I was highly sceptical myself at first), continue to oppose the overthrow of the Ba’athist regime if you like but please find another approach because ‘that dawg don’t hunt no more’.
We noted that Our Man in Basra, spurred to action by some less than informed commenter(s), to put it mildly, in the comments section of our post expressing outrage that the government has not greatly reinforced UK forces in Iraq. As he has so courageously by-passed his ‘handler’ and put much interesting information in a comment, I shall give you the full juicy goodness of Our Man in Basra (perhaps I should take this opportunity to rename him to Our Man in British Army), herewith:
As I notice I am being referred to, under my pseudonym “Our Man In Basra” (not I am no longer working, I should say) I thought I would throw my two-pence worth in.
Do UK troops need more equipment? Absolutely, enough personal radios, body armour, working Land Rovers – I could go on for hours. (In fairness, where I was the food was excellent). Some more helicopters would be hugely useful, but beyond fantasy as a hope.
However, more troops – abso-bloody-lutely. I cannot comment in detail for reasons that I take to be obvious, but to give generic examples of why more troops would be useful in a counter-insurgency
- More patrols, at more frequent intervals, so you can dominate the ground, throw uncertainty into your enemy, and essentially take the initiative. As all the military experts commenting above must know, having the initiative is the key to winning any kind of military confrontation. And if all your troops are tied up guarding your bases and vulnerable points, you cannot do anything to get the initiative. You cannot reduce the number of bases (much) or vulnerable points, so you need extra troops. QED.
- More (reliable) troops to guard the vital infrastructure, i.e. the electricity and oil lines. Not necessarily by sitting on them, but by frequent unpredictable patrols.
- Troops to act as dedicated QRF (Quick Reaction Forces), so that you can react rapidly to any enemy action- so that eventually he learns that any attack by him gets a very rapid response, thereby reducing the scale and effectiveness of what he can try.
- More guards for your own installations – not necessarily to boost the number on guard, but so you can rotate them more regularly, and keep them fresher/more alert.
- Crowd control. One man with a machine-gun can shoot a loot of people. But if you need to control a large angry crowd with sticks and stones, and you do not want to shoot – well then you need a lot of hard men with batons. Crowd in Iraq are in the 100s and up. That means you need a lot of troops – crowd control is labour-intensive. Unless you want to take the capital-intensive solution, and start shooting.
I am sure readers can think of plenty of other tactical uses for extra troops. At the higher level, the more troops you have, the better you can rotate them and manage their morale, thereby avoiding the kind of cynicism and depression. Soldiers thinking I hate this hole, I’ve been here 9 months, I’m exhausted and I’m not leaving for another 6 months. Who gives a shit what happens to the Iraqis? undermines the basis of counter-insurgency, hearts and minds. The British rotate our troops far more frequently than the Americans (average 4 months versus over a year), which IMHO is one reason for our relative success at hearts and minds.
The idea is not to carpet the country with troops, Boer War-style – although it may be worth noting that such an approach would actually work if we had enough troops. No, the idea is to have enough troops to do what we are doing now effectively.
To address some ‘issues’ raised by a particular commenter that goes by name Charlie who says: But if there were more soldiers, that would mean more opportunities for opportunistic attacks and therefore more casualties.
So, if there were no troops, there would be no opportunity for opportunistic attacks? True, but the point is not just to minimise casualties, or else why go there? The mission (should) come first, followed very closely by what our American cousins call “Force Protection”. And that means you need enough troops to do the job.
In this case, the job is not protecting our troops, it is protecting the poor average Iraqi from all those who seek to prey on them, from ex-Saddamites to gangsters to religious fanatics (or at least those who claim religious backing for their own grab for power).
There is an amount required to do the job. At present it might be thought that a great deal of what we are doing is being driven by a desire to minimise our troops numbers and expense, rather than to actually do what is best for Iraqis (and in the long term for us).
Of course, one way to make do with fewer troops is to use what are known as “force-multipliers”, anything that increases the effectiveness of your troop numbers. A good example is the helicopter, because it enables you to dominate larger areas of ground with fewer troops. But the UK has nowhere near the helicopter numbers of the US, because of far smaller funding. Another potential force multiplier would be reliable British Arabic translators. But to have lots of those ready to go would require more funding for Defence languages. You get the idea.
Also, in this type of operation in particular, the distinction between “combat” and “non-combat” troops is spurious. The RMP [ed. Royal Military Police] took a lot of casualties, I do not think they would appreciate being told they are not needed to fight. They, and many other supporting troops, are in great demand to, for example, run PW camps, which I would suggest is better than giving the job to reservists, as well as all kinds of other tasks – from advising the infantry on how to effect arrests while on patrol, to helping to train the Iraqi Police Forces.
That said, more infantry would be good as it would avoid the need to use other troops, such as RMP or Artillery, to perform patrolling functions, in which the Infantry are the specialists. As another commenter, Jacob, actually correctly points out, you can always use more soldiers in any kind of fighting situation. This point was made quite simply by Field Marshal Slim, one of the greatest military minds in history. I highly recommend his book “Defeat into Victory”, I think mentioned on Samizdata before. The more you use, the fewer you lose.
Unfortunately, having said all the above, there simply are not that many soldiers left in the Army [ed. British Army], and there are still many commitments elsewhere – from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, not to mention Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, etc etc. The “Harmony Guidelines” which said that for the sake of their families soldiers should get at least 18 months at their home base between operations are already a poor joke. We might need to send more soldiers, but unless we cancel everyone’s leave, we haven’t got them.
Sorry, rather longer than I planned, but I thought it was worth saying.
It has been reported that the 700 strong 1st battalion of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment has been in contact with the enemy every day for the past six weeks, racking up 250 seperate combat incidents.
Capt Justin Barry, a military spokesman, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph:
The fighters engaged were basically terrorists and gangsters – people who are out to destabilise the area, drive out the Coalition and suck as much out of Iraq as they can. But at the end of the day, we got the better of them. The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment were engaged in very heavy hand-to-hand fighting and bayonets were fixed. There’s a great sense of satisfaction among the men with the way this turned out.
Indeed, but no thanks to Tony Blair. The fact the government has not greatly reinforced UK forces is nothing short of a national scandal.
Whoever came up with all this tosh about the world being a ‘global village’? Seems to me that different parts of the world have a very different way of going about things.
In Saudi Arabia, a BBC reporter gets gunned down and lies bleeding in the street:
Police said Mr Gardner tried to get bystanders to help him as he lay wounded in the street by crying out that he was a Muslim.
Now I like to think that here in dear old Blighty, we would rush to the aid of a badly wounded human being regardless of his religion.
Oh, unless the police are around to stop us:
A police force was accused yesterday of waiting too long to act after a shooting at a family barbecue left two sisters dead. One witness claimed that their lives could have been saved.
Roy Gibson, 70, said he spent an hour waiting for help to arrive as he tried to save one of the women. Paramedics were prevented from entering until Thames Valley Police had completed a one-hour assessment of any further risk to life.
By which time, there was definitely no risk to life because the victims were no longer alive.
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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.
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