Category Archives: War and Peace

Today’s editorial about Georgia

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With Mike gone, I’ve taken up the task of occasionally writing editorials on national and international issues (I say "occasionally" because our editorial emphasis remains as always on South Carolina). So it is that I offer for your discussion the one I wrote for today about Russian aggression in Georgia. Here’s the link, and here’s an excerpt…

… Aw, it was all so good that I couldn’t pick an excerpt. Here’s the whole thing:

Russian aggression
turns U.S. focus
to true global stakes

THERE IS A STRAIN of naive isolationism that has been woven tightly into the American character since the birth of the nation. Insulated by oceans from Europe and Asia, occupied with our own pursuits of happiness, we have through most of our history wished the rest of the world would just take care of itself.

This has been true on the political right as well as on the left. George W. Bush promised as a candidate not to engage in “nation-building” (and his frequent bungling of that task post-9/11 might be seen as a backhanded way of keeping that promise), while Democrats still repeat the post-Cold War mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid!” We prefer to view the rest of the world in simple terms, from the rare need to respond to naked aggression (think the 1991 Gulf War, World War II) to the occasional opportunity to show charity (think the Somalia relief effort, before that day in Mogadishu), or as spectacle (the Olympics).

But the world is more complicated than that, and demands our full attention, and our complete engagement on all fronts — economic, military, humanitarian, cultural and diplomatic. The world was more interconnected than George Washington wanted to face even in his day (as we quickly learned from the Quasi-War with France, and the War of 1812). And since 1945, the United States has been not only the world’s mightiest power, but its most interconnected — whether we want it to be or not.

Last week, a Russia still dominated by an ex-KGB man yanked us back to that mode. Russia’s swift and remorseless move to crush a U.S. ally that had tried to assert control over two disaffected provinces was a direct challenge to U.S. complacency, and a stark warning to other former Soviet republics and satellite states that they had better reconsider their steady drift toward the West, or else.

A resurgent, oil-rich Russia has for some time moved resentfully from emulation of the democratic West toward pursuit of its lost superpower status. Add to that China’s determination to go far beyond dominance in Olympic gold medals, toward an economic and military hegemony that is within the reach of its phenomenally dynamic economy and vast supply of human capital. Both countries have the potential, and apparently the will, to pose challenges to the United States and other liberal democracies that will make Iraq and Afghanistan seem like minor irritations.

America’s first response to the Georgia incursion was to realize just how little it was prepared to do about it. The second response was to send in U.S. troops to provide humanitarian aid, an assertion of soft power that nevertheless drew a line in the sand, evoking the Berlin Airlift.

But this is not the Cold War. This is not Czechoslovakia in 1968, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted. Nor was it either of the other U.S. presidential election years in which Russia used force against its neighbors, in Hungary in 1956 or Afghanistan in 1980. (Today, for instance, oil wealth and control of natural gas supplies are the new “nuclear deterrent.”)

But in this election year, what is at stake goes so far beyond our internal obsessions about celebrity or even such serious domestic concerns as health care. And yes, it goes far beyond Iraq. And it will go beyond Georgia. The selection of the next president of the United States should be about who will lead us more wisely through the global challenges we have not even yet foreseen.

Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama — we’re listening.

Provocative thoughts about Iraq

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Fallujah

Now that the Surge has been indisputably successful, and the debate is mostly about what one does with that success going forward, it’s possible to have more intelligent and dispassionate discussions of what has happened, is happening and should happen in Iraq.

Here are two examples that were side-by-side on the WSJ‘s opinion pages this morning:

  • Francis Fukuyama’s "Iraq May Be Stable, But the War Was a Mistake," in which he tells of a $100 bet he lost. He had predicted in 2003 that at the end of five years, Iraq would be a mess of the sort that "you’ll know it when you see it." Of course he lost, and paid up. But he is not giving ground on whether we should have gone into Iraq to start with. He still says that much-larger-than-$100 gamble wasn’t worth it.
  • Jonathan Kay, in a book review of The Strongest Tribe by Bing West, describes how local U.S. commanders in Iraq understood from the start what it would take to succeed as we now have. But they were hampered by a SecDef who ironically had a little too much in common with the antiwar folks:

    Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary until November 2006, was focused from the get-go on bringing the troops home and insisted that "the U.S. military doesn’t do nation- building."

    It was only after Bush got rid of Rumsfeld and then decided to do what the likes of Petraeus and McCain advised did our success begin.

    Probably the most compelling part of the review is at the beginning, where a passage describing what it was like to be a gyrene in Fallujah in 2004 was quoted at length:

    "Imagine the scene. You are tired, sweaty, filthy. You’ve been at it day after day, with four hours’ sleep, running down hallways, kicking in doors, rushing in, sweeping the beam of the flashlight on your rifle into the far corners. . . . there’s a flash and the firing hammers your ears. You can’t hear a thing and it’s way too late to think. The jihadist rounds go high — the death blossom — and your M4 is suddenly steady. It has been bucking slightly as you jerked and squeezed through your 30 rounds, not even knowing you were shooting. Trained instinct. . . . ‘Out! Out!’ Your fire team leader is screaming in your face. . . . [He] already has a grenade in his hand, shaking it violently to get your attention. . . . He pulls the pin, plucks off the safety cap, and chucks it underhand into the smoky room."

Apparently, Bush has looked a little more closely into Putin’s eyes this time

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This just in from the NYT:

WASHINGTON — Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush Bushputin administration’s relationship with Moscow, senior officials said Thursday, forcing a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia and jeopardizing talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses.

The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration’s view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president turned prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend. Now Mr. Bush’s aides complain that Russian officials have been misleading or at least evasive about Russia’s intentions in Georgia….

Do ya think? Apparently, the president didn’t gaze deeply enough into his eyes the first time. If you ask me, this second look has produced a more accurate assessment.

A latter-day Berlin Airlift?

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I had thought that the U.S. was sort of out of options as far as confronting the resurgent Russian Bear as it mauled Joe Stalin’s old stomping grounds. But I had not thought of this: Sending U.S. troops in with humanitarian aid, a sort of latter-day Berlin Airlift, if you will.

This accomplishes a couple of things: It applies soft power in a way that also puts the U.S. military smack in the middle of the confrontation, thereby drawing a line in the sand. It’s an approach that combines subtlety with bravado. With statements such as this from Bush:

We expect Russia to ensure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit…

The U.S. both establishes itself as the nice guy, but also, in the words of Huck Finn, "dares them to come on."

I don’t know, but this may be the right approach. What do you make of it?

All quiet on the pundit front

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Speaking of Kathleen’s column, what I said yesterday about she and George Will being the only nationally syndicated columnists to comment yet on the Soviet — oops, I mean "Russian," silly me — invasion of Georgia still holds true. Wait, let me double-check:

  • Leonard Pitts — nope
  • Tom Teepen — nope (sorry, I couldn’t find a link)
  • Bob Herbert — nope
  • David Broder — nope
  • Maureen Dowd — nope
  • Robert Samuelson — nope
  • David Brooks — nope
  • Paul Krugman — nope
  • Nicholas Kristof — nope (although he did an important piece on how this country underinvests in diplomacy, so props there, or snaps, or whatever the kids say these days)
  • Thomas Friedman — nope
  • Gail Collins — nope

Oh, dang — Cal Thomas just moved one, for tomorrow publication. And I forgot, Bill Kristol did one on Monday. But that still holds with my theory that only those on the right want to tackle the subject — which is one reason I’m not running Thomas’ piece — after Will and Parker back to back, I’m looking for some variety of viewpoint here. And besides, Thomas loses points because he also did one of the six columns above on John Edwards, even as Soviet — I mean, Russian — tanks rolled toward Tbilisi.

And have I written a column on the subject, or do I intend to? No way. Besides, I’m not paid primarily to comment on national and international issues, like some fancypants people I could mention (and just did).

Don’t test the cranky old guy

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Did you read Kathleen Parker’s column today, which I recommended yesterday? Well, go read it now before the rest of this, because it’s good, and I’m about to give away the punch line.

Basically, she imagined three missives to Putin, the first one from Bush — an excerpt:

    Hey, which reminds me. What’s up with Georgia? This is not good,
Vlad. You and I have had our moments. And, OK, fine, your dog’s bigger
than mine. A lot bigger. Stronger and faster, too. We got it. But you
can’t just go invading democratically elected countries that are U.S.
allies. You can’t have everything, Vlad. If you don’t stop, I’m going
to have to do something, and you know I don’t want that. What I want is
for you to not make me look like a fool.

    Look, Vlad. Seven years
ago, it was you and me in Crawford. We had a blast. You loved my truck!
We bonded. I went out on a very big limb and told the whole dadgum
world that we were soul mates….

Then, she imagined one from Obama. An excerpt from THAT:

    I’m sorry to be writing this e-mail instead of meeting you in person, preferably in the Oval Office, where I belong. Soon, soon.

    Nevertheless,
and notwithstanding the foregoing, I felt it imperative that I express
my deep concern about Russia’s invasion of the tiny, democratically
elected sovereign nation of Georgia. It would appear that you are not
familiar with my platform for change and hope. War does not fit into
this template, and I am quite frankly at a loss for words to express my
deep, deep distress.

    As the chosen leader of a new generation of
Americans who speak a global language of peace, hope, harmony and
change, this is simply unacceptable. Quite frankly, your actions pose
potentially severe, long-term consequences. I’m not sure what those
might be, but they won’t be nice or fun.

Then, finally, the message from McCain, which you should be able to enjoy whether you like him or not. The following is NOT an excerpt, but the entire message:

Hey, Putin.

    Don’t make me come over there.

McCain

Actually, I’m not certain she made that last one up. Maybe she’s tapped into his e-mail.

Is the Georgia invasion ‘McCain’s moment?’

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You may note that the pundits most eager to write about Georgia and what it means are of the conservative persuasion. And there’s no question that they, at least, believe that moments like this one make McCain look like a more attractive choice for commander in chief. George Will wrote this:

    Vladimir Putin, into whose soul President George W. Bush once peered
and liked what he saw, has conspicuously conferred with Russia’s
military, thereby making his poodle, “President” Dmitry Medvedev, yet
more risible. But big events reveal smallness, such as that of New
Mexico’s Gov. Bill Richardson.

    On ABC’s “This Week,” Richardson,
auditioning to be Barack Obama’s running mate, disqualified himself.
Clinging to the Obama campaign’s talking points like a drunk to a
lamppost, Richardson said this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama’s zest
for diplomacy, and that America should get the U.N. Security Council
“to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some
restraint.” Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the U.N. for 19
months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto.

    This
crisis illustrates, redundantly, the paralysis of the U.N. regarding
major powers, hence regarding major events, and the fictitiousness of
the European Union regarding foreign policy. Does this disturb Obama’s
serenity about the efficacy of diplomacy? Obama’s second statement
about the crisis, in which he tardily acknowledged Russia’s invasion,
underscored the folly of his first, which echoed the Bush
administration’s initial evenhandedness. “Now,” said Obama, “is the
time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint.”

    John McCain, the
“life is real, life is earnest” candidate, says he has looked into
Putin’s eyes and seen “a K, a G and a B.” But McCain owes the thug
thanks, as does America’s electorate. Putin has abruptly pulled the
presidential campaign up from preoccupation with plumbing the shallows
of John Edwards and wondering what “catharsis” is “owed” to
disappointed Clintonites.

In tomorrow’s paper, Kathleen Parker even more starkly — and more amusingly — contrasts McCain to both Bush and Obama.

Whomever you like for president, you gotta admit the KGB line is a good one. It’s a favorite of McCain’s, and we’re likely to hear him saying it more. His campaign is already putting out the line that events in Georgia have shown him to be "‘Prescient’ On Russia And Putin."

So how about it, folks? Does this affect your choice for November, and how? Does it make you more likely to vote for McCain — or for Obama? Or does it not affect your thinking one way or the other?

Yes, it’s grotesque to speak of such awful events in terms of its effect upon an election, but face it, folks: About all that you and I and the guy down the street can do in reaction to what’s happened is choose the guy who’s going to lead us in a world in which Russia knows it can get away with stuff like this.

The Rooskies catch us with our pants down

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Tanks_georgia

The central narrative of global affairs in the first 37 years of my life (I choose that number out of convenience, since German reunification occurred on my 37th birthday, and that is sort of midpoint between the fall of the Wall and the failed Soviet coup of 1991) was dreading, preparing for and at the same time trying to avoid the moment that Slim Pickens, in "Dr. Strangelove," described as "New-q-lure combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies."

Well, we put all that behind us some time ago — people voting for the first time in this year’s elections have no memory of the time when our itchy trigger fingers hovered over that calamity, fueling such pop culture reflections as not only Strangelove, but its dead-serious counterpart "Failsafe," or lesser touchstones such as "The Day After," or "Twilight’s Last Gleaming," or "WarGames," or … well, we could go on and on. Suffice it to say, we thought about that stuff a lot.

Now, we argue over Iraq, worry over Afghanistan, and basically are unmotivated to think about any greater military challenges — such as that posed by our host in the current Olympics. Our toes are now too busy on the starting lines at poolside, waiting for the starting pistol, to be set against the toes of the Rooskies.

And into that vacuum strides, suddenly and decisively, a newly resurgent, confident, muscular, resentful, petulant, oil-rich Russia, once again under KGB management. And takes out Georgia before we’ve managed to say so much as, "Hey, wait a minute…"

That’s the thing that strikes me about the events of recent days. While Americans have concerned themselves with Beijing’s festivities and the sins of John Edwards, the Russians have dropped the hammer on one of our most promising allies in their once and future sphere of influence. Decisively.

I had to wait yesterday past the usual time for a George Will column — the one we ran today — which was the first commentary from one of our main syndicated columnists on what was happening in Georgia. And by that time, the Russians had essentially achieved their goals.

And the lesson here is that they can do this, and will do it again when they choose — and no one here, or in Europe, is ready for either this time or the next one.

The Iraq paradox

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Obama_2008_iraq_wart

We’ve arrived at a very weird place in terms of our presidential candidates’ positions with regard to Iraq. Thanks to the amazing success of the surge — the policy that Bush at long last initiated after four years of John McCain saying that’s what we should do — both McCain and Obama find themselves in an awkward situation.

  • The Surge has succeeded so well that Maliki is emboldened to say that we can start talking about the Americans leaving, since the Iraqi government sources have gotten so much better at kicking the Sadrists around and other such demonstrations of prowess.
  • Obama is so wedded to the mythology of MoveOn.org et al, for whom it is a religious precept that every soldier or Marine ever sent into Iraq was the worst, most horrible mistake in the history of the universe (actually, I’m probably understating their position just a little here).These are the bruised innocents who reaction to the surge was, "What? We’re going to send MORE soldiers in to be maimed and killed; have we lost our freaking minds?"
  • McCain feels like, "Finally, everybody (except the MoveOn types) recognizes that MY idea of boosting our force levels has worked beyond our wildest dreams, bringing us closer and closer to being able to declare victory." Of course, with things going so well he’s not about to say that the success of the surge we can, irony of ironies, speak about Americans drawing down forces — just what Obama’s always wanted to do, regardless of realities on the ground. That would look like Obama was getting his way, and among the simple-minded it would look like "Hey, Obama was right all along" — even though he was the exact opposite of right, even though we only got to this good spot by doing what Obama adamantly opposed.
  • And Obama certainly can’t recognize currently reality and say "Oh, well, the surge worked. Wow, great jobs guys; you proved me wrong. But now can we leave?" If he ever uttered the phrase, "the surge works," his most intense and devoted supporters’ heads would explode spectacularly.

So here we are:  Things are going well in Iraq, and neither campaign can use that fact advantageously.
How weirdly ironic is that?

Mccain_2008_wart

Oh, yeah — Obama’s a senator, isn’t he?

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Yesterday, when I got the release from Jim DeMint about his request to Barack Obama for hearings on Afghanistan, my first thought had nothing to do with the substance of what DeMint was saying.

My first thought was, "Why’s he asking Obama that?"

And then it hit me: Obama is a United States senator. Not only that, he’s the chairman of a subcommittee on European affairs. I had momentarily forgotten the first fact, and I don’t think I ever even knew the second one.

Set aside for a moment the fact that it’s still a bit of a political stretch for DeMint to try to hold Obama, as European affairs chair, somehow accountable for some of our NATO allies not pulling their weight in Afghanistan — which, politically speaking, is what this challenge is about.

I’m still left marveling that it took me by surprise that someone was asking Obama to do some actual Senate work. We all have a bit of a tendency, don’t we, to think of Obama as this presidential candidate who’s more or less always (as far as we’re concerned) been a presidential candidate, rather than, say, a lawmaker.

Neither Obama nor McCain meets Energy Party standard

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are lucky there’s such a thing as Republicans and Democrats in this country, because neither would be able to get the Energy Party nomination.
    They’re also lucky that the Energy Party exists only in my head, because I believe its nominee could tap into a longing, among the very independent voters Messrs. McCain and Obama need to court for victory, for a pragmatic, nonideological, comprehensive national energy policy. This independent voter longs for it, anyway.
    What is the greatest failure of George W. Bush as president? If you answered “Iraq,” you lose. His greatest failure was summed up well by Sen. Joe Biden, who said at the 2006 Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting, “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
    The biggest wasted opportunity was when he failed, on Sept. 12, 2001, to ask Americans to sacrifice, to work together to shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” and “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism.”
    Gasoline was between about $1.40 and $1.50 a gallon then. If we had applied a federal tax increase then of $1 or $2 — as voices as varied as Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Jim Hoagland and Robert Samuelson have urged for years — we’d still have been paying less per gallon than we are now, and the money would have stayed in this country, in our hands, rather than in those of Mahmoud Ahmajinedad, or Hugo Chavez, or our “friends” the Saudis (you know, the ones who underwrite the Wahhabist madrassas).
    And who, on the day after the terrorist attacks, would have refused? Most Americans would have been glad to be asked to do something to fight back.
    We could have used that money for a lot of things, from funding the War on Terror (rather than passing the debt to our grandchildren) to accelerating the development of hydrogen, solar, wind, clean coal, methanol-from-coal, electric cars, mass transit — on something useful. We would have started conserving a lot more a lot faster, reducing demand enough to deliver a shock to world oil prices. Demand would have resumed its rise because of such irresistible forces as Chinese growth, but we would have had a salutary effect.
    But we didn’t. We didn’t do anything to defund the terrorists or the petrodictators, or to reduce upward pressure on the national debt, or to respond to rising world energy demands, or to save the planet. We didn’t do it because we can’t do it individually and have an appreciable effect — it would take a national effort, and that takes leadership. And no one in a position of political leadership — not the president, not his fellow Republicans, and not their Democratic opposition — has stood up and said, Let’s get our act together, and here’s how….
    Getting our act together would require leaders who are no longer interested in playing the Party Game. In Messrs. McCain and Obama, we had an opportunity. No major Republican is less into party than John McCain, which is why so many Republicans wanted to deny him the nomination. And in Barack Obama, Democrats have finally settled on the far-less-partisan alternative.
    But in the energy realm, what have we gotten? Sen. Obama generally sticks to the liberal/Democratic playbook: No drilling offshore or in ANWR. Play down nuclear, play up solar and wind.
    Sen. McCain, at least, is not doctrinaire Republican on energy. For that, you have to look to someone like Jim DeMint, whose op-ed piece on our pages a week ago extolled drilling, but excoriated “cap and trade.”
    Sen. McCain will at least take some items from the left (cap and trade, CAFE standards) and some from the right (let states decide whether to drill offshore), but he’s mushy about it. And any credit he gets for ideological flexibility is overshadowed by his being the author of the biggest pander on energy this year — the proposal for a “gas tax holiday.”
    An Energy Party nominee wouldn’t propose to lower the price of gasoline at the pump, so if that’s what you want — and a lot of you do want that — you can just stop reading now. Making it temporarily easier to buy more foreign oil is in no way in the national interest, and a leader would have the guts to explain that.
    The Energy nominee would increase domestic production in the short term and lead a no-holds-barred national effort to take us beyond major dependence on anybody’s oil. He (or she) would put America at the forefront of both energy innovation and environmental stewardship, and would not let any sort of ideology stand in the way. (We must distinguish, for instance, between an environmental goal that matters, such as global climate change, and the inconvenience of a few caribou.) The Energy nominee would, given the chance:

  • Drill off our coast, something we’ve seen can be done with minimal environmental risk.
  • Drill in the ANWR (which, as detractors note, would not solve the problem, but it would help, and would demonstrate that we’re serious).
  • Prohibitively tax the ownership of SUVs, and any other unconscionable, antisocial behavior.
  • Lower speed limits, and enforce them (use the fines to pay for more traffic cops).
  • Take money away from highway construction, and devote it to mass transit.
  • Build nuclear plants with the urgency of the Manhattan Project.
  • Develop electric cars at Apollo speed.

    We need leadership that respects no one’s sacred ideological cows, left or right — leadership that will take risks to do what works, both for the nation and ultimately for the planet.
    Is that really so much to ask?

Why we went to war in Iraq

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We all read all sorts of back-and-forth about Iraq. There are the coulda-woulda-shouldas of whether we should have gone in or not, how we could have managed things better after we got there (which we sure as anything coulda and shoulda, long before we finally implemented the Surge), and whether we should stay or not now (which, of course, we should).

But few couch the situation preceding the Iraq decision the way I remember it as clearly as Doug Feith's piece in The Wall Street Journal today.

What I remember is that we had an unsolved problem that needed solving. For 12 years Saddam had violated the terms under which we had stopped shooting in 1991. This was not a mere abstract problem, not a question of tidying up loose ends. As Feith writes, Iraq was shooting at U.S. and British pilots enforcing the No-Fly zone almost daily. Regime change had been, for good reason, the policy of this country since 1998 — but we hadn't figured out how to get it done.

Totally apart from the need to "drain swamps" in the Mideast, apart from whether Saddam still had the WMD we had already seen him use on his own people, this was the situation (and had been the situation ever since the first Bush administration):

    In the months before the 9/11 attack, Secretary of
State Colin Powell advocated diluting the multinational economic
sanctions, in the hope that a weaker set of sanctions could win
stronger and more sustained international support. Central Intelligence
Agency officials floated the possibility of a coup, though the 1990s
showed that Saddam was far better at undoing coup plots than the CIA
was at engineering them. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
asked if the U.S. might create an autonomous area in southern Iraq
similar to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, with the goal of
making Saddam little more than the "mayor of Baghdad." U.S. officials
also discussed whether a popular uprising in Iraq should be encouraged,
and how we could best work with free Iraqi groups that opposed the
Saddam regime.

    Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld worried
particularly about the U.S. and British pilots enforcing the no-fly
zones over northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi forces were shooting at
the U.S. and British aircraft virtually every day; if a plane went
down, the pilot would likely be killed or captured. What then? Mr.
Rumsfeld asked. Were the missions worth the risk? How might U.S. and
British responses be intensified to deter Saddam from shooting at our
planes? Would the intensification trigger a war? What would be the
consequences of cutting back on the missions, or ending them?

However wrong he'd later prove to be about how to conduct our operation in Iraq — and he was WAY wrong — Rumsfeld was at that time raising the right questions.

After 9/11, things changed — among them our willingness to let a problem such as this one fester. As Mr. Feith notes:

To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years.
The U.S. did not rush to war. Working mainly through the U.N., we tried
a series of measures to contain the Iraqi threat: formal diplomatic
censure, weapons inspections, economic sanctions, no-fly zones,
no-drive zones and limited military strikes. A defiant Saddam, however,
dismantled the containment strategy and the U.N. Security Council had
no stomach to sustain its own resolutions, let alone compel Saddam's
compliance.

You may remember it differently. But that's pretty much the way I remember it.

Bloody well right — just ask Her Majesty

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Busy as we are on Friday (I’ll probably be here past 10 p.m. again), Mike just gave me a heads-up on this, and being a lover of tradition, I had to pass it on:

    An RAF pilot has been ordered to trim his handlebar
moustache by an American General who took offence at its length, but
the British serviceman was not prepared to lose his whiskers without a
fight.

    The British airman, who sports a
handlebar moustache in the proud tradition of the RAF, refused to
comply when his superior officer in Afghanistan took offence at his
facial hair.

    Showing a bravado akin to that of
Biggles, he fought back, eventually convincing the general that his
generous whiskers were in line with regulations laid down by the Queen
herself…

I guess he told that cheeky Yank, all right… Let’s here it for Flight Leftenant Ball — hip-hip… Huzzah! Hip-hip…

Through a Marine’s eyes

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This was forwarded to me today, and I pass it on as I received it:

I was part of the Dateline NBC special program titled “Coming Home” that aired Sunday, May 25th. It is about the “cost of killing.” I live in South Carolina. My name is Jesse Odom and I am 25 years old. I served in the Marine Corps and fought in Iraq. Here is my story.  Thank you.

    People on both sides of the spectrum, those for the war in Iraq and those against the war in Iraq, for the most part, say that they support the troops.  That support is typically limited to putting yellow ribbons around trees or by placing some type of sticker on their cars, and of course, by verbally saying that they support our troops. People automatically assume that our troops will get the armor they need to protect themselves in combat, they will assume that they have decent living conditions here in the States and in our warzones, they assume that our men and women are getting all of the health benefits they need, they will assume that our men and women who have been in combat will get the proper mental health care they need in order to get back on a stable mental track. The list goes on. I am tired of our naïve approach to supporting our troops and I pledge to change that. 
    On March 20th, 2003, my unit (Alpha Company 1st Bn 5th Marines) was the very first group to cross the Kuwait-Iraq border. Shortly after, we were engaged in combat and I found myself holding a fatally wounded Marine in my arms, my friend and leader, Shane Childers. I watched him die and he spoke his last words to me. He was the very first American killed in the war. We fought our way to Baghdad, accidentally and unfortunately killing the innocent, constantly living in fear, and trying to stay alive. Once we made it to Baghdad we found ourselves in what many have said was the most violent and fierce firefight during Operation Iraqi Freedom. We fought for nine hours. Nearly a hundred men were wounded and I witnessed the death of another Marine that I looked up to. We raided Saddam’s palace and the Abu Hanifah mosque where Saddam had been sighted. We killed many men and captured others. We lived at the palace for a while and then moved back to southern Iraq and eventually back to the United States.
    Shortly after getting back to the United States I finished my enlistment while my friends in my unit went back to Iraq. I started to write a book when I got out of the Marine Corps. I didn’t plan to publish the book but I used it as a coping mechanism. I camped out at my computer night after night, putting my unit’s story into words. Throughout this process, I kept up with some of my other friends that also got out of the military. Many of them struggled, and some still do. My friend, Chip Wicks, could not handle his problems and hung himself in February of 2004. This put me on a path to try to change some things. I started talking to my other friends and many of these men also had, and still have, a difficult time coping with the fact that they had witnessed and did things that many in our country could never imagine. They have a hard time coping because they are good men with Christian beliefs and a moral conscious; even though many do not regret fighting in Iraq. Many of these men will not get help, but even those that do, have to fight tooth and nail to get the help they need.
     Some of our men are being asked to use their own money to get counseling for their PTSD. The list of faults is too long to list in this email.  The faults are not limited to mental health care. However, I have decided to focus my efforts on PTSD and the suicide epidemic among our combat veterans.  People read my manuscript and loved it. I was told I should get it published and eventually I took the steps to do this. In the book, I tell my unit’s unbelievable story. But, the story does not stop on the battlefield. The battlefield has followed us home. Also, I tell of the haunting aftermath of war. I describe some of the issues that our troops and veterans face today.  I use real examples.
    In this book, I follow my unit as we prepared for war, when we went to war, and now home, where we have been put on the back burner. I am devoted to support our troops and I am going to do what I can to make a difference.
    I set up a fund titled the Chip Wicks Fund in honor of my friend that took his own life.  I am donating 10 percent of my royalties from the book sales to this fund, and the publisher has agreed to contribute 10 percent of their net proceeds from this book to the fund.  I am also accepting donations on my website.  The fund will be used to seek out and help those that have problems adjusting back into the civilian world.  Those that have or may have PTSD.  I don’t want any more of my brothers and sisters to die due to depression (suicide) when they can be helped.  I want you to help me support the troops. Not by simply waiving a flag or putting a ribbon around a tree. I want you to put this story on the front page of your paper and help me change some things.  I am trying to get more support from our government, but that will take some public pressure. 
    My book is eye opening.  It is not written by a seasoned author, a ghost writer, a politician or journalist who went on a fact-finding tour in well protected areas in Iraq. This book was written by a Marine infantryman who went and served his country and is now asking our country to truly support our troops and our combat veterans. You can help me and our men and women in uniform (and veterans). I want people to read my book and see what is going on behind the scenes of our media. I want to sell books and raise money for an unresolved problem in our country. I want people to read the book so they can see the world through an enlisted man’s eyes. My efforts are not limited to the book and the fund, I am going to go to our politicians and demand change.
    My book is titled “Through Our Eyes” (Bella Rosa Books, June 2008, ISBN 978-1-933523-14-9).
    You can go to my website and copy anything on it you want to put in your newspaper article (excerpt, pictures, bio, etc). My website is www.iraqthroughoureyes.com — I want to open the public’s eye and this book will help do that.

Please support the troops.
Thank you,
Jesse Odom

Speaking of books. On a blog related to the Dateline NBC segment referenced above, a producer mentions one called "On Killing: The Psychological Cost Of Killing In War And Society" by Lt. Col. David Grossman. I’ve read much of it while drinking coffee on a couple of separate visits to Barnes & Noble. It is truly fascinating, and contains a lot of data I had not encountered before. For instance, I had known that a lot of soldiers never fire their weapons when in contact with the enemy, but an analysis of widely scattered battles through history demonstrated that a startling number of those who DO fire more or less intentionally MISS.

Herbal domino theory

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Herbal_003

A couple of weeks back we accompanied my brother and his family to the farmers’ market up in Greenville. We were in the market for herbs, particularly cilantro, because of an excellent recipe for three-bean salad my eldest daughter makes. It calls for fresh cilantro, a.k.a. coriander.

But all they had was something very different looking called "Vietnamese cilantro." The vendors said this variety was particularly well suited to our climate. So OK; we bought some, and added it to several other little pots of herbs we had bought in recent days.

Having recently given up on a plant at my office that didn’t seem to respond well to watering only when I felt like it, I decided to stick several of these herbs in a pot (with my wife’s supervision, because what I don’t know about plants would fill a library) and take them to the office.

I’ve been quite attentive to this little herb garden, watering it constantly (the terra cotta soaks up a lot of it) and rearranging my office in order to keep it in the sun. And what has been the result?

The Vietnamese cilantro has taken over. Relentlessly. The other plants — Spicy Globe Basil, Greek oregano, and plain old sweet basil — have seen it coming and just curled up and died in its path, like so many dominoes. Only the tiniest sprigs of the oregano and sweet basil remain, and you can’t see them because the Vietnamese herb has grown to three or four times its original size.

I don’t know what it is. Maybe all that watering has created a rice-paddy-like environment. Maybe it’s my failure to keep significant numbers of ground troops in-country. In any case, I think it’s time to send in a tiny helicopter and get the oregano and basil out.

Vietnam_paddy

Our Joe cup overfloweth

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Y‘all saw where I bragged on Joe for his fine piece in the WSJ the other day. Well, today we have a counterpoint from Joe in that same publication, so our cup overfloweth.

OK, for those of you too lazy to follow links, I’m talking Lieberman and Biden, respectively. Both of them are good guys. We endorsed the first Joe in his presidential bid in 2004, and might well have endorsed the other this time around if he hadn’t dropped out before the S.C. primary (we went with Obama instead, you’ll recall). Both are blessed with essential Joe-ness, as I’ve explained before.

And although these pieces are set against each other, there is much to love in each of them, infused as they are with Joe-ness. In other words, they are written by rational men who are not entirely enslaved by the idiotic partisan extremes of our times. Joe is much more inclined to support his party’s nominee, but that’s because he hasn’t made the radical break that Joe was forced into. But you still don’t find the kind of polarized claptrap that you usually hear from the party faithful on either side.

OK, I’ll start using last names, although it sounds unfriendly…

Here’s one of the best parts of Mr. Biden’s piece. It repeats a point that I’ve praised him for making in the past, which is that President Bush blew a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lead this nation, and the Western alliance, into a far better place than the sad situation that Joe, I mean Tom, Friedman described the other day. Anyway, here’s the Biden excerpt:

    Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush’s reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.
    The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

As with Lieberman, though, there are weak spots. In particular, there’s this contradictory passage:

    Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can’t identify the enemy or describe the war we’re fighting, it’s difficult to see how we will win.
    The results speak for themselves.
    On George Bush’s watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.

The problem is that on the one hand, he feels constrained (since he’s still in the party) to state the party line that terrorism is a means, not an end, or even a coherent enemy — all of which is true, but his litany of all the different contending actors is belied by the truth he later embraces: That through it all, Iran has been on the march, and gaining against us. That would have been an excellent point to make; it’s just too bad he weakened it by making the situation seem less coherent than it is two paragraphs before (this incoherence of the enemy is essential to the modern Democratic ideology that Lieberman abhors — the refusal to clearly see and clearly state the degree to which we face a coherent, albeit complex, enemy).

I refer to another recent Friedman column, which — thanks to the fact that he isn’t carrying anybody‘s political water — states how all of these superficially disparate issues are connected, to our nation’s great disadvantage (largely due to the Bush failures that Biden refers to):

    The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.
    That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”

Anyway, if the link works for you, I recommend you read this one as well as the last one. Between the two of them, you’ll see an intelligent way to debate foreign policy, as opposed to the idiocy of left and right, Democrat and Republican.

Joe laments loss of the party of FDR, Truman, JFK

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This is why I like Joe Lieberman so much — he’s always writing stuff that sounds like I wrote it myself, always giving me cause to think, Thank God I’m not alone here…

Specifically, he wrote in an op-ed piece in today’s WSJ:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?…

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

He goes on to lament how this unraveled over Vietnam. He writes wistfully of efforts by such Democrats as himself (remember the Third Way?) to pull the party back from a condition in which it blamed America for all its international troubles, as the party became "prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy."

There are flaws in the piece, admittedly. He uses the inaccurate common terminology, referring to this trend toward self-loathing isolationism as a move "to the left" — when I would assert that it is the rejection of the kind of idealistic, internationalist liberalism of FDR, JFK and the rest. Isolationism is, if nothing else, a manifestation of conservatism — and not the better sort of conservatism, either.

But set that aside. He ends strongly, with a quote from "a great Democratic secretary of state," Dean Acheson (who, perhaps not coincidentally, was from Connecticut):

(N)o people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.

The Energy Party Manifesto: Feb. 4, 2007

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Since, I’m on my Energy Party kick again, it occurs to me to provide you with something never previously published on the blog: My original Energy Party column from the paper. Since it was based on a blog post to start with, I didn’t post it here. Consequently, when I do my obligatory "Energy Party" link, it’s always to the incomplete, rough draft version of the party manifesto.

So, if only to give myself something more complete to link to in the future, is the full column version, published in The State on Feb. 4, 2007. Here’s a PDF of the original page, and here’s the column itself:

THE STATE
JOIN MY PARTY, AND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS WILL COME TRUE. REALLY.
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
EVERYBODY talks about the weather, which is as boring and pointless as the cliche suggests. So let’s do something about it.
    And while we’re at it, let’s win the war on terror, undermine tyrants around the globe, repair our trade imbalance, make our air more breathable, drastically reduce highway deaths and just generally make the whole world a safer, cleaner place.
    It’ll be easy, once we make up our minds to do it. But first, you Democrats and Republicans must throw off the ideological chains that bind you, and we independents must get off the sidelines and into the game.
    In other words, join my new party. No, not the Unparty I’ve written about in the past. You might say that one lacked focus.
    This one will be the Energy Party. Or the "Responsible Party," "Pragmatic Party" or "Grownup Party." Any will do as far as I’m concerned, but for the sake of convenience, I’m going with "Energy" for now.
    Like weather, everybody talks about Energy, but nobody proposes a comprehensive, hardnosed plan to git ‘er done. So let’s change that, go all the way, get real, make like we actually know there’s a war going on. Do the stuff that neither the GOP nor the Dems would ever do.
    I’ve made a start on the plan (and mind, I’m not speaking for the editorial board here). Join me, and we’ll refine it as we go along:
— * Jack up CAFE standards. No messing around with Detroit on this one. It’s possible to make cars that go 50 miles to the gallon. OK, so maybe your family won’t fit in a Prius. Let’s play nice and compromise: Set a fleet average of 40 mph within five years.
— * Raise the price of gasoline permanently to $4. When the price of gas is $2, slap on a $2 tax. When demand slacks off and forces the price down to $1.50, jack the tax up to $2.50. If somebody nukes some oil fields we depend upon, raising the price to $3, the tax drops to $1. Sure, you’ll be paying more, but only as long as you keep consuming as much of it as you have been. Which you won’t. Or if you do, we’ll go to $5.
— * You say the poor will have trouble with the tax? So will I. Good thing we’re going to have public transportation for a change (including my favorite, light rail). That’s one thing we’ll spend that new tax money on.
— * Another is a Manhattan project (or Apollo Project, or insert your favorite 20th century Herculean national initiative name) to develop clean, alternative energy. South Carolina can do hydrogen, Iowa can do bio, and the politicians who will freak out about all this can supply the wind power.
— * Reduce speed limits everywhere to no more than 55 mph. (This must be credited to Samuel Tenenbaum, who bends my ear about it almost daily. He apparently does the same to every presidential wannabe who calls his house looking for him or Inez, bless him.) This will drastically reduce our transportation-related fuel consumption, and have the happy side benefit of saving thousands of lives on our highways. And yes, you can drive 55.
— * Enforce the blasted speed limits. If states say they can’t (and right now, given our shortage of troopers, South Carolina can’t), give them the resources out of the gas tax money. No excuses.
— * Build nuclear power plants as fast as we can (safely, of course). It makes me tired to hear people who are stuck in the 1970s talk about all the dangerous waste from nuke plants. Nuclear waste is compact and containable. Coal waste (just to cite one "safe" alternative) disperses into the atmosphere, contaminates all our lungs and melts the polar ice caps. Yeah, I know; it would be keen if everyone went back to the land and stopped using electricity, but give it up — it ain’t happening.
— * Either ban SUVs for everyone who can’t demonstrate a life-ordeath need to drive one, or tax them at 100 percent of the sales price and throw that into the winthe- war kitty.
— * If we don’t ban SUVs outright, aside from taxing them, launch a huge propaganda campaign along the lines of "Loose Lips Sink Ships." Say, "Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps." (OK, hot shot, come to my blog and post your own slogan.) Make wasting fuel the next smoking or DUI — absolutely socially unacceptable.
— * Because it will be a few years before we can be completely free of petrol, drill the ever-lovin’ slush out of the ANWR, explore for oil off Myrtle Beach, and build refinery capacity. But to keep us focused, limit all of these activities to no more than 20 years. Put the limit into the Constitution.
    You get the idea. Respect no one’s sacred cows, left or right. Yeah, I know some of this is, um, provocative. But that’s what we need. We have to wake up, go allout to win the war and, in the long run, save the Earth. Pretty soon, tyrants from Tehran to Moscow to Caracas will be tumbling down without our saying so much as "boo" to them, and global warming will slow within our lifetimes.
    Then, once we’ve done all that, we can start insisting upon some common sense on entitlements, and health care. Whatever works, whatever is practical, whatever solves our problems — no matter whose ox gets gored, or how hard you think it is to do what needs doing. Stop whining and grow up. Leave the ideologues in the dust, while we solve the problems.
    How’s that sound? Can any of y’all get behind that? Let me know, because we need to get going on this stuff.

Join the party at my — I mean, our– Web Headquarters:  http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

We’d KILL a guy for passing intel to Israel?

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Kadish

Somehow I just caught up with this news, and I’ve got to ask, We’re talking about killing a guy for passing intel to the Israelis?

That’s what the NYT reported this morning:

On Wednesday, one day after Mr. Kadish, 84, was charged with slipping secret military documents to the Israeli government during the 1980s, they were trying to square the gruff, kindly man they knew as so honorable as never to cheat at cards with a criminal suspect who could face the death penalty if convicted.

You’re kidding, right?

I mean, look at the sweet old guy (above): So this is James Bond all of a sudden? Or perhaps I should say, Kim Philby (whom we didn’t kill, by the way, even though he was working for the real bad guys)?

For one thing, what secrets do we think we could possibly have that the Mossad didn’t know already?

Second, we’re talking the Israelis here, people! Don’t we tell them stuff anyway? And don’t they tell us stuff? I mean, am I expected to believe that George W. Bush and the boys figured out the whole North Korea-Syria nuke thing all by their lonesome?

Sure, there are certain lines one doesn’t cross (unless invited to) even with your best friends, but come on — this would be like whacking a guy for passing info to the Brits (speaking of Mr. Philby).

And when’s the last time we did that? Major André? Speaking of which — and I hope this isn’t going to get me into a lot of trouble — I recently crossed paths with Major André. Really.

You know that column I had Sunday about my conversation with the Pennsylvania waitress? ImmediatelyAndre
after that conversation, I walked up the street and ran into the historical marker at right (which tells you which diner, if you’re really, really good at central PA geography).

In fact, I took the picture on my phone — and then promptly forgot about it, until I happened to read about Mr. Kadish, and got to thinking about executing spies, and the Israelis, and the British, which led to Major André, which led to "Hey, I think I shot a picture of that."

And now that I think further about it, it occurs to me that the compact device I used to capture that image would probably have been described as a "spy camera" back in the early ’80s, which is when Mr. Kadish was allegedly letting an Israeli "diplomat" take pictures in his basement of stuff he brought home from work. Makes ya think, huh?

Danger is my middle name.

Canadian snipers in Afghanistan?

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Don’t know whether this is legit or not, but it is interesting. A friend sent me (without comment) the above video, along with the forwarded text below:

Before you click on the attachment, scroll down on this series of e-mails to read the narrative about what is going on in he attachment.  It is incredible.                                    

Scroll down and read the narrative before you watch the video…

Canadian Snipers in Afghanistan

This footage is pretty graphic and is the antithesis of the "Global
Hawk"; one on one, enemy in sight, one at a time, etc. I guess the
"technology" is in the weapon and the ammo and the "wonder" is in the
personnel who use it.

They never saw, or heard it coming.

Canadian Sniper wiping out Taliban Snipers. In Afghanistan . These
video shots are not made through the shooter’s telescopic sight… they
are made looking through the spotter’s scope. The spotter lies right
next to the sniper and helps the sniper to find and home in on thetarget.

The sniper is using a 50 caliber rifle. A 50 cal. round is about 7-8
inches long and the casing is about an inch in diameter. The bullet
itself is one-half inch in diameter and roughly one and one-half inches long..

Pay close attention to the beginning of the video. A Taliban is laying
on top of the peak in front of you… when you hear the shot fired….
watch what happens. The sniper is also about a half mile away… or
more. A Canadian sniper in Afghanistan has been confirmed as hitting an
enemy soldier at a range of 2,310 meters, the longest recorded and
confirmed sniper shot in history. The previous record of 2,250 meters
was set by US Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock in Vietnam in 1967. The
Canadian sniper was at an altitude of 8,500 feet and the target, across
a valley, was at 9,000 feet. Canadian sniper units often operated in
support of US infantry units, which were grateful for their help.

The record lasted only one day, until a second Canadian sniper hit an
enemy soldier at 2,400 meters (8000 feet).

The Canadian snipers fire special.50-calibre McMillan tactical rifles,
which are bolt-action weapons with five-round magazines. The Canadian
snipers were the only Canadian troops operating without helmets or flak
jackets as they had too much other equipment to carry. Each three-man
team has one sniper rifle, three standard rifles (Canadian C7s), one of
them with a 203mm grenade launcher.

When you watch what appears to be debris see if it isn’t a body flying after being hit.

There’s no original source cited, so I don’t know that clip’s provenance. Nor do I know whether my friend who sent it thought it was horrible, or cool, or what.

But I did have some questions watching it, such as:

  • I knew that a .50-cal. sniper round packed a lot of energy, but can it really throw a human body that far?
  • If this is really through a spotter’s scope, why are the bodies or debris or whatever being thrown sharply to the left? Wouldn’t the spotter be close to the shooter? The sound of the shot (assuming that’s not dubbed) occurs far before the impact is seen, which suggests the shooter is right next to the camera. The movement of the target after impact makes it look like the shooter is far off to the right, maybe at the third angle of an equilateral triangle, which would mean we’d hear the sound AFTER seeing the impact.

And now you might have a question for ME, which is, if I have so many questions, why pass it on? Why, because it’s interesting, and intriguing. Also, who knows — y’all might have some answers to my questions.

FYI, here’s another clip that purports to be about Canadian snipers: