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.
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But the author, General Mirza Aslam Beg, the former Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, did not realise it at the time. I particularly liked:
The Iraqi nation has shown its resolve and resilience, to stand up against the over-powering superiority of the aggressor, who has been forced to recoil back, for replenishment and re-enforcement. It is the coalition forces, which suffer from “shock and awe” due to the stiff resistance and the remarkable display of courage and capability, to fight according to a well thought-out war plan, which is holistic in conception, embracing all tenets of operational strategy.
Read and laugh 
Funny how these things work out. Al-Qaeda sowed the wind, and the people of Iraq are now reaping � a crop! No 9/11, and there would never have been this. Not nearly so soon, anyway.
Looting? Well, according to our TV people it seems to be reasonably well targeted, maybe not exactly laser guided, but heavily concentrated on The Bastards rather than just inflicted on random innocent civilian shopkeepers. Good to see that the UN building in Baghdad has been included in the rampaging. And besides, I agree with Instapundit:
Some people think the looting is bad, but I think that a certain amount is good. It reinforces in people’s minds that Saddam is gone, and that he was unpopular.
I’ll say.
I like silly postings as well as sensible ones, because civilisation consists of harmless fun as well as profound goodnesses like those on TV today (provided you exclude our Chancellor Muhammed al-Brownaf spitting in the face of financial reality in the House of Commons). And a rich vein of silliness is Dave Barry’s Blog, which I heartily recommend, even if you just enjoy his fun writing and ignore all the fun links.
Links to individual items in Dave Barry’s Blog don’t seem to work, so you’ll either have to scroll down or else take my word for these stories.
There’s a nice losing the Drug War item. (Kermit with a joint.)
Mice with herpes isn’t so funny. Says Dave: “This is just what we need.” Although this story is really evidence of extreme human ingenuity in the face of the mouse menace.
And how about the escape of 80 million bees? This happened when a lorry full of them crashed, in Florida.
But what is this? “Another reason why we will definitely win.” That sounds like it could be serious, as well as funny of course. And it is.
Laser guided concrete: → Continue reading: Laser guided concrete – a conjecture about why the Iraqi army “melted away”
The crew of the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier Ark Royal have complained so bitterly about the BBC coverage of the war that the captain has removed the news channel BBC 24 from the selection available on board. Ark Royal is one of the few RN ships that receives TV channels directly via satellite.
And just to add insult to injury… the captain has replaced BBC 24 with arch rival SkyNews. Ouch!
(via Biased BBC)
Allied claims of the fall of Basra and reports of American tanks in the centre of Baghdad were robustly denied this evening by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf.
Attending a press conference before by a rapidly dwindling troupe of Western journalists, Minister al-Sahhaf took the podium to address his audience beneath a solitary, naked lightbulb. In the distance, the crump of tanks shells could be heard.
Despite the gloom, the Minister could be seen standing in front of a map of the world carefully arranging a sheaf of papers that he claimed were messages being relayed from the front lines by Iraq soldiers.
“The so-called Coalition forces have been completely routed by the Iraqi Armed Forces. There is not a single British or American soldier on Iraqi soil”
Pausing only to wipe away the plasterdust that was settling on his head from the cracked ceiling above, the Minister continued:
“In accordance with the brilliant strategy devised by our beloved leader Saddam Hussein, our glorious soldiers have launched their successful counterattack which is destined to end in a great victory for our side. Already the cities of London and Sydney have been laid waste by the bold actions of our heroic and fearless fedayeen”.
Just at that moment, the building was shaken by a heavy rumble coming from outside.
“It is nothing, it is nothing”.said the Minister “Just a thunderstorm”.
Unphased by the interruption, the Minister continued with his address:
“Advance units of our elite Republican Guard have also surrounded the American capital city of Washington and, in the next few hours, they will begin their final push to capture the Whitehouse.”
As he finished his final sentence, a nearby explosion shattered the windows and blew out the single overhead lightbulb, plunging the room into darkness. There was a pregnant silence suddenly broken by the clatter of a chair as the BBC Correspondent leapt to his feet to applaud enthusiastically and shout “Bravo, bravo. More. Bravo!!”.
Instapundit links to this stirring piece in the Mirror by Tony Parsons, with which I almost wholly agree. Wow, says Instapundit. Indeed. But here’s the one bit I have a problem with.
Yes, there have been deeply disturbing images of dead and burned Iraqi children. But do we honestly imagine that Allied forces, fighting a war unrestrained by political concerns, didn’t kill and maim countless numbers of innocent French, Dutch and Belgian children in the Second World War, never mind the babies we burned alive in Japan and Germany.
We just didn’t see pictures of them.
But I haven’t seen any pictures of dead Iraqis either. Not at any rate on television, which is the news source I’ve been relying on.
Neither has James Lileks. → Continue reading: Where are the dead Iraqis to be seen?
When I was a boy, soldiers communicated by yelling at each other, and with big boxes which they yelled into and also listened to, carefully. Each bunch of soldiers had one box through which all orders came, and through which they sent all their news back to their superiors. Remember those boxes which malfunctioned in A Bridge Too Far, to the disgust of Sean Connery. Those.
Fast forward. On TV I’m now watching our soldiers, and they all seem to be wearing headsets to talk into, like in a Van Damme SF movie. Every infantryman has become like a fighter pilot. Mostly they seem to observe radio silence. I guess they don’t want to be jabbering all at once.
When did this happen? It’s a big change, and surely a big, big step forward and a big, big difference between our guys in this war and the other poor fellows, who do not have headsets unless I’m much mistaken which is of course only too possible.
That’s it. No links, because if I had a link to something on this I’d probably have the answer. Just questions. When did this change occur? What did it consist of? And what does it mean? A lot, I’m guessing. Commenters please let rip.
Since Samizdata, along with the rest of the Anglosphere, seems to be in us-Brits-great-or-what? mode today, please permit me to mention here that over on my Education Blog, I did a piece about the British Army as a teaching organisation, based on a conversation with a friend who is a captain in it. If what you’re now thinking is: “Wow, those Brits, how do they do it?”, well, I think this little piece goes some way towards answering that question.
At the centre of the piece is an accronym: EDIP. This stands for: Explain, Demonstrate, Immitate, Practice.
The other key principle “embedded” – to use this month’s mot du jour – in British Army practice is that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Quite junior officers start the “high powered” bit of their army careers by instructing at Sandhurst, and Sergeants and Corporals do most of the day-to-day training of the soldiers. At the end of it the soldiers may not be completely in command of what they’re doing, but the men who’ve been teaching them have it ingrained into them. Soldiering can be taught, and so can leadership, and this is how.
The thing I remember most vividly about that conversation was, well, how vivid it was. The question “Education – How about that then? – How does the army go about doing that?” is just about the best way for a civilian like me to get inside the head of a soldier that I could possibly have picked. “So, what’s it like killing people?” is useless by comparison. (a) It’s insulting. It makes it sound like that’s the thing they most like doing. (b) Half of them don’t know. (c) Those that do have no way of really telling you. And above all (d) they don’t want to talk about it. But asking them about how they teach is, as I said in my original piece, like taking the cork out of a shaken champagne bottle.
I want to do a lot more pieces like this one, about actual teachers and how they set about it, for my Education Blog, but so far have only done one more, about my friend Sean Gabb. So if any Samizdata readers are doing any teaching, of any sort, in the London area or near offer, and of a sort they wouldn’t mind me sitting in on and/or writing about (I promise to accentuate the positive – almost all teachers are doing some good things), please get in touch.
Ode to British Armed Forces:
Yesterday, in Basra, we were reminded. Our soldiers conducted themselves with courage, patience, discipline and, when necessary, appropriately directed violence. They were splendid.
[…]
…as they advanced through Basra’s suburbs, our Servicemen had to rely on older attributes: unit cohesiveness, steadiness under fire, controlled aggression, trust in each other. Strip away all the artefacts of modern war and we are left with an undeniable truth: man for man, our soldiers are better, braver and deadlier than theirs.
By yesterday afternoon, American commentators were hailing the pacification of Basra as a model for what should happen in Baghdad. To have occupied a city of 1.2 million people with negligible casualties to the attacker is extraordinary; to have done so without incurring the hatred of the inhabitants is little short of providential.
Britain’s standing in the United States is as high as it has ever been, and with good reason.
As a former prime minister once put it: “Rejoice – just rejoice!”
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.
I have no idea – no idea whatever – whether or how much of this is true, or made up, or what. But here it is, for whatever it may be worth – it being from a website run by something called Bikesport, “Michigan’s largest road and triathlon store”. I kid you not.
I’m guessing that not all of the blogosphere has seen this yet. If it has and I was the last to hear about it, apologies. Thanks to Boris Kupershmidt for the link.
[EMBARRASSING UPDATE: It’s fiction, as commenter number two has just pointed out. Oh well. Maybe something approximately like what follows has been happening. Follow this link for the background to all this, which is definitely a story, if not anything like the story I thought it might have been.]
It’s a big night for Mike. He’s at work tonight. As I mentioned his clothing is wet, partially from dew, partially from perspiration. He and his four co-workers, Dan, Larry, Pete and Maurice are working on a rooftop at the corner of Jamia St. and Khulafa St. across from Omar Bin Yasir.
Mike is looking through the viewfinder of a British made Pilkington LF25 laser designator. The crosshairs are centered on a ventilation shaft. The shaft is on the roof of The Republican Guard Palace in downtown Baghdad across the Tigris River
Saddam Hussein is inside, seven floors below, three floors below ground level, attending a crisis meeting.
Mike’s co-worker Pete (also an Ironman finisher, Lake Placid, 2000) keys some information into a small laptop computer and hits “burst transmit”. The DMDG (Digital Message Device Group) uplinks data to another of Mike’s co-workers (this time a man he’s never met, but they both work for their Uncle, “Sam”) and a fellow athlete, at 21’500 feet above Iraq 15 miles from downtown Baghdad. This man’s office is the cockpit of an F-117 stealth fighter. When Mike and Pete’s signal is received the man in the airplane leaves his orbit outside Baghdad, turns left, and heads downtown.
Mike has 40 seconds to complete his work for tonight, then he can go for a run.
→ Continue reading: Hell’s athletes
British forces have overrun Basra, with 16 Air Assault Brigade taking the north of the city, 7 Armoured Brigade taking Central Basra and 3 (Royal Marine) Commando Brigade taking Southern Basra.
Although the British military authorities are studiously avoiding actually saying that ‘Basra has fallen’, it seems clear from all the reports I have seen from the journalists inside the city itself that this is indeed the case, bar the inevitable mopping up of isolated die-hard elements. Fedayeen Saddam resistance is being described as sporadic and uncoordinated and at one point a reporter with SkyNews said several thousand jubilant people mobbed the British as they pushed deep into the city.
Although fighting is continuing, it seems clear that Ba’athist Socialism is dying with a frightened whimper rather than a defiant roar. The Fedayeen are discovering that two decades of murdering civilians has not prepared them for fighting some of the most fierce and professional troops in the world.
Or in this case, the Shatt Al Arab waterway. The ever flexible and innovative Royal Marines have taken to small fast boats to show it dominates even the waterways right around Basra, at one point helping out an astonished local fishermen who was having engine troubles.
This and other tactics show a couple centuries of colonial experience are serving the British military well, illustrating the way to ‘hearts and minds’ is a mixture of well armed ferocity when challenged and common helpfulness otherwise. Keeping the focus on the fact this is an anti-Ba’athist war, not a war against Iraq, UK forces in Basra are reacting cleverly to propaganda targets of opportunity, as reported in the Washington Times:
In another incident, when an Iraqi colonel was fatally shot in his vehicle, British troops found a thick wad of local currency. Instead of handing it in to officers, the troops decided to dole the cash out to wide-eyed local youngsters, a monetary variant of candy handouts.
Nice one!
Update: British mechanised forces are now reported as fighting Fedayeen irregulars 7 km inside Basra!
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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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