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This remark by ‘G’ posted by Iraqi blogger Salam Pax pretty much perfectly sums up why I have such contempt for most of the protestors:
Amen to that, Bro! November 21st, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
 As always, Glenn Reynolds is the first one on to a fascinating new blog. The Counter Revolutionary is posting a series of New York Times articles from the period of months after the end of WWII. I suggest starting at the bottom and reading your way up to the top as he is posting them roughly in time sequence. I think you will agree it sounds very, very familiar. November 21st, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The latest Al Qaeda action in Turkey is their logical response to the US pushing democracy into the Muslim world. Could it be that Al Qaeda is trying to push democracy out of its only Muslim stronghold? So much for the fly-paper theory (which smacked of an ex post facto rationalisation) that Iraq would draw in the world’s assorted Muslim terrorists into a military battleground of the Pentagon’s choosing. It may be that in the future Istanbul will suffer more than New York and London. Ironic given that Turkey rejected intervening wholeheartedly in Iraq. Attacking Anglosphere interests in Turkey and other Muslim countries in the Western orbit seems to be the best response of the terrorists. Bombing HSBC and the British consulate in Istanbul is a lot easier than bombing Britain’s biggest bank in London. My impression of Turkey from my last visit (pre 9/11) is that its elites have firmly decided their future lies with the western democracies, but a vocal minority side with the mullahs. I had lunch with an urbane sophisticated somewhat worldly banker, I challenged him about the recent arrest of opposition politicians, piously telling him that Turkey would never enter the EU if it did not respect political and human rights. Without hesitation he simply said:
I did not respond, it is an interesting point, democracy will certainly produce uncomfortable outcomes in Iraq as well. Paul Staines November 20th, 2003 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
I think you will find this DOD transcript a fascinating entree into the current situation in Iraq. Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., the Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, is high enough to have a fairly global view but not too high. He’s still close to the combat and day to day reality. It is well worth a read. November 19th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Glenn Reynolds has a blistering post at his other blog (sheesh – I can barely hold up my end at a group blog, and Reynolds has two of the damn things) about the “anti-war” activists and their willing accomplices in the media. The picture he paints (and documents) of traditional media outlets is horrifying. Groups raising money to fund the guerrilla/terrorists are “anti-war militants.” Western reporters have hired their former Saddamite minders as interpreters. Massive pro-American protests in Iraq go unreported in the elite media. I would add the major media blackout on the Hayes report discussed below, and the near blackout of the interim WMD report confirming to a large degree Saddam’s WMD capabilities. Punchline:
As the man says: Indeed, and, Read the whole thing. November 18th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
An article called Case Closed by Steve Hayes in American conservative journal, The Weekly Standard has yet to cause much of a stir in Big Media. But it should. If this story is even partly correct, and frankly given my scepticism about our intelligence agencies, we have to be careful, the findings could be crucial to the war debate. It has been a frequently made point from the anti-war and war sceptic crowd that there was no provable connection between Saddam and radical terror groups linked to 9/11. (They have tended to dismiss this possible link with rather blase haste, as if Saddam was some sort of misunderstood old fellow). Well, that claim of no-link is looking a lot weaker now if Hayes’ article is correct. I hope this story is properly analysed, the evidence sifted and cross-checked. And please, could bloggers like Jim Henley, who has probably been one of the most articulate anti-war libertarian writers these last few years, and with whom I have enjoyed a friendly email correspondence, do better than just dismiss the Hayes story out of hand? November 18th, 2003 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Okay, I finally found a couple hours free to count and double check the data, relearn how to use an app I used once before, find where I’d left the input data files… So here it is:  Dale Amon, all rights reserved. May be used with attribution to Samizdata. All raw data is publicly available. I’ll leave my discussion for the update in December because the October numbers do not really tell a story unless taken in conjunction with the already striking but incomplete November numbers. I will only comment that a brief look at the data to date speaks very loudly that the enemy forces have recreated a command structure. Note that I updated the September figures to include some fatalities that were not announced until several days into October. November 18th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
I shall miss the fuss in London on Thursday because of a prior engagement in Brussels, but I will spare a thought for the demonstration of collectivists versus the protectionist. Mr Bush is in the unlikely position of being a villain during this visit to London because he is defending tariffs on steel imports, and I can hardly praise a man for making the European Commission appear like the good guys! Some of his opponents will actually be protesting against protectionism on the grounds that opening trade is the best hope for greater prosperity worldwide, with the handy by-product of reducing the number of layabout juveniles dreaming of doing something spectacular and violent: they are too busy doing MBAs or training to become plastic surgeons. I could even support the demonstration if there were a chance that the message would be received in Washington DC that protectionism is an abomination and a great source of warfare (I believe it even triggered the US Civil War, and in that respect the wrong side won). As for the occupation of Iraq: I continue to despair at the difficulty that anglosphere writers have in comprehending the humiliation of occupation. Admittedly this is for the best of reasons: Washington DC was last under foreign armed occupation in 1812, London in 1066. The dislike of foreign occupation is neither entirely rational nor without ambivalence. Of course the occupying troops in Iraq overthrew a dictator who committed atrocities against his neigbouring countries, his own people, even his own family. British soldiers may know that when their predecessors first patrolled the streets of Belfast in 1969 (I don’t remember the precise date, I was about 4 years old at the time), the Catholic inhabitants cheered them, offered them cups of tea, etc. The welcome did not last. If the purpose of allied occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is as cynical as attracting potential Islamic fundamentalist terrorists to those countries and fight them (and kill many of them) away from Western cities, it could be a good plan. There is a certain logic to persuading the extremists to make their way to Jalalabad and Tikrit and face professional troops instead of Manhattan or the City of London and kill civilians. If I thought the ‘War on Terrorism’ were being fought so capably I would be far more confident. But I do not, and I am not. So let ‘the indefensible pursue the inedible’: I went on the Countryside marches in support of the right of hunters to chase foxes. I shall be in the Grande Place enjoying my Trappist beer with mussels and frites whilst following the sport on the streets of London. Tally Ho! November 17th, 2003 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability En Route to Tokyo:
November 17th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Do not listen to the lies of those who would describe the protesters as hypocritical apologists for mass murdering fascism. Being caring, sharing people, the smiling protestors who will be marching through London to protest the visit of George Bush to Britain, will be decrying the state of unemployment in Iraq (Bush strangely seems to get no credit at all for his protectionist, anti-globalisation economic policies). The brutal, uncaring British and American capitalists now in occupation of that hapless country have, with malice of forethought, simply thrown previously industrious workers on the scrap heap of life without the slightest concern for their well being. Hundred of highly skilled ‘information retrieval’ experts that were happily at work debriefing people in every city, town and village in Iraq are now reduced to pouring through the ‘help wanted’ add in the Guardian as they look for alternative uses for their skills with pliers, blowtorches and electricity. The management and workers in the chemical industry of that once proud nation, the people who gained world fame from the use of their products in Halabja, are almost to a man reduced to flipping burgers and slicing donner kebabs or working in Syria. Is there no end to the iniquities of global capitalism? And so it is hardly surprising that the people who will be baying for Bush’s downfall were conspicuously absent on the streets in March of 1988, when Iraqi industry was humming along rather nicely producing useful products, not to feed the evil capitalist Bushist machine, but for local use in Iraq by local Iraqi people, and who could possibly object to that? 
Mother and child sleeping well thanks to better science! I mean, it must all be true, Michael Moore said so! November 17th, 2003 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
John Keegan writes about his meeting with Donald Rumsfeld. Aparently, he does not think the situation is that bad:
Mr Keegan was frequently asked why there is so much less trouble in the British than the American area of occupation. He conceded that America, the Great Satan is target of greater hatred and Britain as the ‘lesser’ Satan does not attract the same degree of hostility. Further he acknowledged that the southern Shia area, where the British are operating, has always been anti-Saddam and therefore their task is easier compared with the American policing of the Sunni area. Also, Basra has a long history of dealing with Britain going back to the days of the East India Company. However, he insisted that there is a fundamental difference between the British and the American approach.
The conclusion is unexpected and I expected will be resisted by those who think the United States’ exceptional history and status is as a result of the country’s banishment of European political practices, especially its opposition to imperialism.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the British Empire by the Americans and by most marxist and statist continentals, namely that it was driven economically, not politically, and maintained defensively for the most part. The British merchants explored the world for new markets and the British state defended territories where trade with Britain took hold. British imperialism was not the sort the Romans would recognise. We do not need to look that far back, comparisons with Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Soviet Empire would highlight the different nature of the beast. So being imperial may not be so bad, provided you stop short of being imperialist. November 13th, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
What would happen if the Sahara Desert went communist? – For fifty years nothing, then a shortage of sand. Remember that old joke? Well, have a read of this, from the BBC earlier in the week:
We speculated here that if the Americans went into Iraq they could then put pressure on Saudi Arabia. Now the American plan is revealing itself. “I know it sounds crazy, but guys, here’s the plan. We’re going to suck all the sand out of the place. We’ll have them over a barrel.” To be more serious, I guess the thing about about sand, compared to oil, is that sand can’t, unlike oil, be controlled. Oil extraction requires expensive infrastructure manned by a highly skilled workforce. Once it’s out of the ground, it can still then be stolen and smuggled, but until then, it’s the possession of the resident power structure. But sand “extraction”? Anyone can do that. November 8th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
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