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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This is amazing, considering the source. Arab News war correspondent Essam Al-Ghalib reports that Iraqis who chanted pro-Saddam slogans told him privately that they only did so out of fear of the massacre that would follow if Saddam’s rule were to return to their area. He says he heard the same sentiments many times.
Kudos to Essam Al-Ghalib for reporting things that will make him very unpopular at home. His willingness to do so is a good sign for the future of the Arab press.
I found the link in Joanne Jacobs’ blog. If the permalink is bust, try the general link here.
British forces are continuing their aggressive incursions into Basra, capturing some senior Iraqi Army Officers and killing a Republican Guard colonel in the process.
My guess is that the object of this is keeping the Iraqi forces off-balance and probably trying to demonstrate to the population of Basra that Ba’athist control is decaying daily… hence the day before yesterday’s foray into the city by British Challenger Tanks for the decidedly non-military objective of blowing up a statue of Saddam Hussain in a public square with the tank’s 120mm gun!
In a horrifying, senseless and brutal attack on innocent Iraqi mothers and toddlers, a British ship carrying more than 500 tonnes of aid for Iraqi civilians has docked in the southern port of Umm Qasr.
The Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Galahad, carrying food, water and other essential supplies, arrived at the quayside just before 12.30pm British time. The ship had been delayed for several days while mine sweepers and American forces using specially trained dolphins cleared a path through a minefield in the approaches to the port. That’s right. Dolphins. I am not joking. These people will go to any lengths to ensure their sick plans are carried out, even to the extent of training charming sea-creatures to perform impressive tasks. Is there no end to their evil cunning?
Aid agencies grudgingly described the shipment as “a meagre and pathetic attempt to steal our thunder” and expressed concerns over British soldiers distributing the supplies, suggesting that maybe trained idiots would do the job better than them. However, the Americans explained that although they had managed to train dolphins to do quadratic equations and sew patchwork quilts now, their attempts to communicate basic reason to people such as themselves had utterly failed, and they were even beginning to lose interest in trying.
There are fears that the most needy Iraqis are in areas outside army control where deliveries are not being made. The Americans suggested that maybe even more of their troops should risk death in order to be able to get food to the people whose country they were liberating? But the aid workers completely missed their sarcasm and agreed.
Military planners have yet to decide where this delivery will be sent, but there is little prospect of it reaching the centre of Basra, where Ba’ath party paramilitaries have forced a stand-off with British troops. The delivery is seen as central to coalition hopes of winning over critics of military action around the world as well as ordinary Iraqis.
Alex Fentoon, spokesman for a big food-aid charity, said:
We welcome any aid that can be delivered to the people of Iraq. They needed it before the war and they will need it all the more as the war goes on. But it is terribly obvious that civilians in a war are tools, whether used as human shields or propaganda. It would be better to let them starve than to give them food and tell anyone about it. Charity should always be done in secret.
While we welcome this aid, a few boxes chucked out of the back of an army truck may look good but it is not the same as organised distribution to the 16 million in Iraq who needed it before the war even began. Why weren’t the Americans feeding Iraq before? Whose fault do they think it is that this country is in such an economic and political mess anyway? Don’t they realise it is their job to deliver food to all the peoples of the world who are hungry, in a huge Marixst wave of wealth redistribution?
The Americans told Mr Fentoon to fuck off.
(Thanks to The Telegraph)
Aqui hay algo para personas que hablan Español, quienes son unos ‘utiles idiotas’. Esta presentación ha sido creada por algunos que no lo son.
(Although it helps if you speak Spanish, the meaning of the presentation can be understood by anyone.)
Although war still rages, it is already time to start looking to Iraq’s future.
All but the most willfully blind will have seen that no accommodation is either possible nor in fact desirable with Ba’athist Socialism, and that must shape how the allies act not just now but when victory has been won.
Since 1945, we have had the examples of the overthrow of many totalitarian regimes: National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, Fascist Imperialism in Japan and Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe… each informs us in very different ways.
In Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia, Communist totalitarianism was cast off by internal dissent, made possible by a decaying security apparatus and enervated ruling elite that were the inevitable long term result of Marxist economics.
The good thing about the momentous sloughing off of Communist tyranny across the Slavic world was that it came with a relatively small price in blood even in places like Romania. However therein also lies the cost…
Throughout eastern Europe the success of civil and political society breaking out of the toxic legacy of communism has been very patchy indeed. As the overthrow of communism was political, the inevitable political cost was that accommodations with ‘former’ communists were made… in many cases former communists came to dominate the post-communist nations, effortlessly exchanging command economics for so called ‘crony capitalism’. In nations like Serbia, the thuggish national socialist elite retains control over large sections of society as it always did: with assassinations, fear and brutality.
In Germany, Italy and Japan however, the overthrow came not from political processes but at the point of a foreign bayonet. In East Germany unfortunately the bayonets were those of the equally monstrous Soviets but elsewhere it was the Western Allies who crushed the Nazi and Fascist regimes… and brought in their wake a process called ‘De-Nazification’.
In occupied post war Germany member of the Nazi Party were simply forbidden from participating in politics and excluded from any ‘sensitive’ jobs. Leading members of the German National Socialist German Workers Party were put on trial and many were hanged. The British even had what can only be described as military ‘hit squads’ ranging across Occupied Germany in 1945 summarily executing upper and middle rank German officers responsible for atrocities against British personnel during the war.
A ‘De-Ba’athification’ process is what must follow the destruction of Saddam Hussain’s state. Mere membership of the Ba’athist Party must be taken as prima facie evidence that the person is unfit for any political role whatsoever and membership in the Fedayeen Saddam must carry with it a presumption of guilt for crimes. When an anti-Ba’athist Iraqi regime is in place, they must not only not be restrained from conducting their own systematic purging of Iraqi society, but must be required to do so.
Similarly the allies must not get squeamish and should make no apologies for the use of violence to expunge Ba’athist toxins from the Iraqi state and society… Something that many libertarians fail to understand is that when normal civil society has collapsed, normal rules of civil interaction and legal niceties are not just impossible, they are madness. When the guns are out, it is the logic of the lifeboat which applies, not the logic of the lawsuit.
Ba’athist Socialism is institutionalised civil violence and unlike communism, it could have lasted indefinitely as it fed like a vampire on the rich blood of Iraq’s oil wealth. It is not enough to destroy Saddam Hussain’s armies, Ba’athist Socialism too will have to be killed just as National Socialism was, quite literally.
In a similar vein, hopefully the Fedayeen responsible for executing British prisoners and massacring fleeing Iraqi civilians will be summarily shot by British soldiers if they are captured when Basra is finally taken (that may of course happen regardless of any ‘policy decisions’ in London). The most effective way to do this and the best way for Iraqi society in the long run, is simply not to take any Fedayeen prisoners, except a few perhaps for intelligence gathering purposes. Rough justice is the only justice there is at such times.
John Keegan asks whether trying to avoid civilian casualties may cause more deaths:
How much more difficult are the allies making this war for themselves by their determination to spare the Iraqi civilian population as much suffering as is humanly possible? That is certainly a condition of the strategy being pursued.
…is the effort to minimise civilian mortality counter-productive? Do slow and careful operational procedures actually increase the number of civilian deaths and the amount of suffering, when a less precautionary and more peremptory approach might achieve the same, or even a better effect, by hastening the end?
A good analysis of the classic military dilemma. Also, an important reminder that it is Saddam’s ba’athists who are using civilians as a proxy:
Saddam and his apparatchiks have absolutely no compunction about employing violence to keep themselves in power. They will shoot anyone who looks like changing sides or trying to escape from the regime’s control. They benefit from the indisputably powerful effect of displaying force. They equally benefit from the reluctance of the allies to display any more force than they believe to be necessary.
Dissident Frogman magnificently fisks outpourings of several ‘human shields’ about their belated emotional blossoming…
A longish posting but well worth the read, it reminds me of why I support the US and the UK in taking on Saddam and makes the suffering and deaths of American and British soldiers more meaningful, if not less painful.
And what really upsets me is that, consequently and as always, it’s the silent, the weak, the downtrodden, those who stand next to the common graves, waiting for the bullet, those who die slowly, feet first in plastic shredders, screaming in inconceivable pain, those who are forced to watch their wives raped or their children tortured, or those who are “just” condemned to a life in misery and deprivation of their most basic rights who are sacrificed while the anti-war movement is dancing to Samba music in the streets, enjoying a grand day out with elaborated costumes and signs in the comfort of a democratic state that guarantees their right to criticize it without reserve.
Unfortunately, I also have to agree with Dissident Frogman in his last bitter paragprah as there is indeed an unlimited supply of simpletons for many more rounds in Iraq and elsewhere:
The freedom of the Iraqis is closing now, despite the “anti-war” efforts, and Daniel’s emotional blossoming won’t change a thing.
I’m way more concerned with the fact that when this is over and when the coalition of the willing starts to deal with other declared threats, using force or not, I’m pretty sure there will be an Iranian student or a North Korean citizen with nothing but grass to feed on, that will end up hearing “Bush bad, war bad” with an expression of incredulity, just before the “I’m not with the CIA – I just can’t help you” tagline comes out.
And that really upsets me.
There is some remarkable information in a larger article about Basra, relating to how Royal Marine infantry and 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards with light reconnaissance vehicles successfully took on Iraqi battle tanks yesterday.
Whilst the Soviet era T-55 is an older tank, facing such heavy armour and 100mm guns in an agile vehicle armed with a 30mm RARDEN cannon and designed only to protect the crew against small arms fire and fragmentation does not leave a whole lot of room for error.
Polish Ambassador Maciej Kozlowski said yesterday that Europe should remember what America has done in the last 80 years, twice saving Europe from calamity. He brushed aside French President Jacques Chirac’s harsh criticism of those European countries which support the war, insisting that France and Germany are misreading the political situation.
In a mostly symbolic move that exemplifies the pro-American stance that Poland has taken, the Polish army sent some 200 troops including special commando forces, navy, and chemical warfare experts to buttress the primarily American and British forces. The country’s small contingent of special forces, which also operated in Afghanistan, is reportedly now in action in Iraq.
Declaring that each country has deeply different historical remembrances, Kozlowski, who came to Jerusalem without a gas mask, said that Poland remembers America opposing communist and other brutal dictatorships.
As such, we accepted as inevitable the war with Saddam, who by everybody’s account is a brutal dictator.
Refreshingly straightforward.
Tom Grey writes in from Slovakia with a summary of a ten page article from the NY Times website about Sayyid Qutb, The Philosopher of Islamic Terror… It is a very reasonable explanation of the power of Islamic ideas – and it is, in its implications, quite scary.
The vigilant police in many countries, applying themselves at last, have raided a number of Muslim charities and Islamic banks, which stand accused of subsidizing the terrorists. These raids have advanced the war on still another front, which has been good to see. But the raids have also shown that Al Qaeda is not only popular; it is also institutionally solid, with a worldwide network of clandestine resources. This is not the Symbionese Liberation Army. This is an organization with ties to the ruling elites in a number of countries; an organization that, were it given the chance to strike up an alliance with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath movement, would be doubly terrifying; an organization that, in any case, will surely survive the outcome in Iraq…
And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, was a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb – the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, he was their ‘Karl Marx’ (to put it that way), their guide… → Continue reading: The ideologicial roots of terrorism
Earlier this year, Britain refused to supply crucial parts for Israel’s aging Phantom aircraft. So what one might ask? Its hardly the most nimble of modern warplanes. It is, it should be noted. reputedly the backbone of Israel’s nuclear capability.
Tough call for Samizdatistas… I am a great supporter of Israel, but I am not sure Western interests would not be complicated by the mere potential of an Israeli nuclear offensive. However, something tells me that the Israelis would not be hampered by missing British ejector seats. There is the legendary tear jerking story of the request to the 1981 Israeli Air Force Academy intake for what was possibly a one-way ticket to bomb the Osiraq research reactor in Iraq. It was not certain whether the Phantom’s would have the range to return. The commanding officer called for volunteers for what he frankly admitted was possibly a suicide mission. When volunteers were asked to step forward, to a man, all did.
Paul Staines
An authoritative analysis of the ups and downs of the US-UK coalition campaign in Iraq. Puts all the dispiriting or bad news into perspective.
We’re winning, the Iraqis are losing, and the American people have executive seats for what may prove to be the most successful military campaign in history.
I do recognize that the majority of our journalists are doing their best to cover this war accurately and fairly. But, with a few admirable exceptions, even seasoned reporters lack the perspective needed to judge the war’s progress. Few have read military history. Even fewer have served in the military. They simply don’t understand what they are seeing.
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As long as the American people keep their perspective – which they will – it really doesn’t matter how many journalists lose theirs.
(via The Command Post)
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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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