Cheering Iraqis.
David Bilek
destroying statues of Saddam is getting lots of air time today. Three
weeks into the war, the US and UK have captured most of Northern,
Western, and Southern Iraq with only pockets of resistance left in
Baghdad.
So far every single one of the predictions of doom we heard from
people opposed to the war have proven to be baseless and, well,
completely wrong. Before it started you couldn't swing a dead cat
without hitting someone in RASFF, the blogosphere, or TV who would be
happy to tell you all the ways that things would go pear shaped if
this horrible, horrible war started.
There were predictions of a "wave of terrorism" from Iraqi or al Qaeda
sleeper cells that would be triggered by an invasion. Nothing like it
has occured. Some people will now backtrack and say they were
predicting terrorism further down the line. If somebody sets a bomb
off 5 years from now, hey, maybe it was because of Iraq! But the
truth is, many of these claims were of an *immediate* wave of
terrorism which has clearly not materialized.
There were predictions that waves of refugees would swamp bordering
countries in an unparalled humanitarian crisis. Guess what? The
refugee camps stand nearly empty. The number of refugees is,
comparatively, tiny. Nothing like the flood that the nay-sayers
thought would occur.
How about those predictions of world war 3 starting and the toppling
of various Middle Eastern regimes due to a wave of Islamist fury?
That the Middle East would turn into a grim wasteland. (Randolph was
big on this one, IIRC). Nothing of the sort. No unintentional
widening of the war. A few angry protests at the start that appear to
have been quelled by scenes of liberated Iraqis cheering. No grim
wasteland.
Or those forecasts that this would turn into an urban nightmare
reminiscent of Stalingrad. Many pundits (some, like Graydon, here in
RASFF) said we'd either have to level Baghdad with carpet bombing and
artillery or lay siege to it until everyone inside starved to death.
Looks kind of laughable now. Half of Baghdad has been captured in 2
days of fighting with extremely minimal allied casualties.
These were all practical arguments against the war, of course, not
moral ones. The moral arguments were based not on the results of the
war but on the wrongness of starting it in the first place Obviously
those arguments still held.
But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
-David
Karen Lofstrom
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
We'll see how those people feel after a year of US occupation and crony
capitalism.
The real test is ahead. If everything works out, it won't be due to Bush
and cronies, it will be due to the rest of the world and the US curbing
them. Fearless media scrutiny is crucial!
I wonder just which friends of Bush will try to acquire the Iraqi oil
industry at fire sale prices ...
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I may not be the president, I may not be the pope
But as long as I have Gritty Kitty, I shall never mope
Joel Rosenberg
> In article <qo299vkir408eh524...@4ax.com>, David Bilek wrote:
>
> > But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> > chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> > obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
> We'll see how those people feel after a year of US occupation and crony
> capitalism.
>
> The real test is ahead.
No. A *next* real test is ahead. The Rumsfeld Doctrine has already
passed the test, and the cries of "millions of people killed by 'Shock
and Awe'" have been tested, and proven false. So has the test of
whether or not the fight to and in Baghdad was a quagmire. So has the
test of whether or not, once it became clear that Saddam was going to
fall, the Iraqi people, as a whole, would be delighted.
The next test is going to be of the antiwar movement, as the man/woman
in the street interviews with Iraqis saying, "What took you so long?"
and "Why did you even listen to those people?" become commonplace.
I expect that the antiwar movement will flunk.
--
------------------------------------------------------------
http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com
Mark Atwood
>
> The next test is going to be of the antiwar movement, as the man/woman
> in the street interviews with Iraqis saying, "What took you so long?"
> and "Why did you even listen to those people?" become commonplace.
>
> I expect that the antiwar movement will flunk.
Their response will be a mix of total unresponsiveness, complaints
that the Iraqis are being propagandized by the occupation forces (a
complaint I am *already* seeing regarding the cities the UK and US
forces have already taken), and "la la la I can't hear you!".
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Steve Taylor
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
Well I'm delighted. It's hard to imagine someone who wouldn't be. Things
have gone better than I had any reason to expect, so why be upset?
I am also nervous as hell. Richard Dawkins talks about how there are so
many more ways of being dead than alive - analogously, there are so many
more ways for this to go wrong than to go right.
> -David
Steve
David Bilek
>In article <qo299vkir408eh524...@4ax.com>, David Bilek wrote:
>
>> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
>We'll see how those people feel after a year of US occupation and crony
>capitalism.
>
>The real test is ahead. If everything works out, it won't be due to Bush
>and cronies, it will be due to the rest of the world and the US curbing
>them. Fearless media scrutiny is crucial!
This is part of my point. No matter how many predictions of doom
prove to be wrong, the real test is always "ahead".
At what point do the naysayers say, "Ok, I was wrong on virtually all
counts."?
-David
David Bilek
>David Bilek wrote:
>
>> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
>Well I'm delighted. It's hard to imagine someone who wouldn't be. Things
>have gone better than I had any reason to expect, so why be upset?
>
Thanks for not commenting about the complete incoherence of my last
sentence. I think a clause is missing in there somewhere.
-David
Lots42 bomb vice president
>But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
>-David
I've seen it in other forums. Basically it goes like this; "Oh...oh yeah? Well,
America is REALLY in for it now! Suicide bombers up the wazoo, terrorist
bombings...they're going to be fucked up bad!"
David Joseph Greenbaum
inscribed in fleeting electrons:
[snip]
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I think you're pulling an I-told-you-so, and I think you can take
whatever holier-than-thou attitude you've got hoarded on your side of
the monitor and you can go to hell.
Do you think that other wars will be easy - and therefore desirable -
because this one looked routine yesterday, and today, after the regime
collapsed?
Cheering crowds in Baghdad yanking down equestrian statues of Saddam -
whatever. It's the close of a campaign and the other side(s) know that
they have lost, and they're under the guns of our Armies - the Armies
that control the Bringing In Of The Food, the Restringing of the Power,
and the Repairs of the Water and Sewage System. Our armies are now
their caretakers.
The cheering crowds. That was yesterday and it is today. But it won't
be tomorrow. Do you honestly think that the manipulative shitheads who
zeroed out aid to Afghanistan in the '03 budget, and left that place
shattered into warlord-ruled cantons, will rise to the challenge of
building a state in Mesopotamia that does justice to today's cheering
crowds in Baghdad?
Also, why the hell are small cheering crowds in Baghdad more important
than much, much larger protesting crowds in New York?
I supported war on Iraq eight months ago. Saddam was a scary dictator
who had nukes, gas, and bugs sitting in rockets pointed at Israel.
Except he didn't. QED. And the stories and justifications mutated day-
by-day. While the case was made that war on Saddam was necessary to
free his groaning people from the yoke of totalitarian slavery, that
case was made on alternate Tuesdays when the polls were dragging badly
anti-war by people who lie because their lips flap.
Being fed a bunch of badly told, poorly coordinated lies buttressed by
shoddy, half-ass forgeries like what I get from my students, well,
being lied to is just about the thing most guaranteed to piss me off.
And this war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people have
happened because of lies, and that, David, that is unforgivable.
And your smuggery is pretty much the last straw for today.
--
Dave G.
--
Siamese twins: one, maddened by
The other's moral bigotry,
Resolved at length to misbehave "Twins" Robert Graves
And drink them both into the grave. ca. 1967
Andrew Plotkin
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I think it's easy to cheer for the army when it's in town.
More in-depth answer, and this was written three weeks ago:
<http://slate.msn.com/id/2080322/>. You'll have seen it back then, if
you were tracking blog punditry.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
David Joseph Greenbaum
inscribed in fleeting electrons:
[gutendanken an der Richtige Recht]
> The next test is going to be of the antiwar movement, as the man/woman
> in the street interviews with Iraqis saying, "What took you so long?"
> and "Why did you even listen to those people?" become commonplace.
>
> I expect that the antiwar movement will flunk.
And so the war movement is passing the test of history with flying
colors?
David Friedman
lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) wrote:
> The real test is ahead. If everything works out, it won't be due to Bush
> and cronies, it will be due to the rest of the world and the US curbing
> them. Fearless media scrutiny is crucial!
It's hard to find out if your view of the world is correct when you set
up your predictions so that they cannot be falsified, whatever happens.
Steve Taylor
> I think it's easy to cheer for the army when it's in town.
>
> More in-depth answer, and this was written three weeks ago:
> <http://slate.msn.com/id/2080322/>. You'll have seen it back then, if
> you were tracking blog punditry.
Yep, read that at the time. It's a goodie.
> --Z
Steve
David Bilek
>In a fit of divine composition, David Bilek (dbi...@attbi.com)
>inscribed in fleeting electrons:
>
>[snip]
>
>> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
>I think you're pulling an I-told-you-so, and I think you can take
>whatever holier-than-thou attitude you've got hoarded on your side of
>the monitor and you can go to hell.
>
Don't be an ass.
>Do you think that other wars will be easy - and therefore desirable -
>because this one looked routine yesterday, and today, after the regime
>collapsed?
>
Nothing in my post suggests so, but feel free to pull things out of
the air if you like.
>Also, why the hell are small cheering crowds in Baghdad more important
>than much, much larger protesting crowds in New York?
>
The protesting crowds don't live in Baghdad. They were wrong about
the results of the war, and the last few weeks are showing it.
>And this war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people have
>happened because of lies, and that, David, that is unforgivable.
>
>And your smuggery is pretty much the last straw for today.
As opposed to your arrogant superiority?
-David
K-Mac
wrote:
>But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I thought the crowds were pretty small, actually. That's a city of
five million people. We see bigger spontaneous demonstrations in
college towns here in the US when teams win (or lose) bowl or
tournament games.
Beyond that, I think: it's not even been three weeks. It's very, very
early, and the hard part is just beginning.
The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating. The only
real question is the ultimate death toll (~200 on our side and ~10000?
on theirs may have been on the low end of predictions, but still does
not cheer me--and there will be more).
So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
--
Michael Kube-McDowell - author of VECTORS, now in stores
David Bilek
>
>Beyond that, I think: it's not even been three weeks. It's very, very
>early, and the hard part is just beginning.
>
>The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
>anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
>were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating. The only
>real question is the ultimate death toll (~200 on our side and ~10000?
>on theirs may have been on the low end of predictions, but still does
>not cheer me--and there will be more).
>
>So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
>statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
>against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
>Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
>-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
Of course. There are undoubtedly hard days to come.
And yet... This is part of the point I was trying to make. I listed
lots of predictions that people (including many RASFF denizens) made.
All of which have clearly and absolutely not come to pass. Yes, there
may be other, different problems down the road. But many of the
reasons that this war was a horrible idea have been shown to be false.
Surely there should be some recognition of that? That a good many
things have, in fact, gone not as the anti-war crowd predicted but
instead as the administration did?
No, not "I told you so". But also not "if you just wait, you'll see
the *next* prediction will prove us out!"
That, as David Friedman pointed out, is unfalsifiable. No matter how
many problems don't come to pass, we can always come up with more that
may happen down the road.
-David
Kip Williams
More than five minutes after the first hint of success, perhaps.
--
--Kip (Williams) ...at members.cox.net/kipw
"Why, what a splendid trifle, young man! You and your friends may
travel for free!" "Cor!" "Hooray for Tommy!" --Tommy and his Trifle
Dave O'Neill
"David Bilek" <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:qo299vkir408eh524...@4ax.com...
> There were predictions of a "wave of terrorism" from Iraqi or al Qaeda
> sleeper cells that would be triggered by an invasion. Nothing like it
> has occured. Some people will now backtrack and say they were
> predicting terrorism further down the line. If somebody sets a bomb
> off 5 years from now, hey, maybe it was because of Iraq! But the
> truth is, many of these claims were of an *immediate* wave of
> terrorism which has clearly not materialized.
How about suicide bombs, car bombs and hit and run sniping attacks on forces
in Iraq over the next few years. After all, that's still happening in
Afganistan.
> There were predictions that waves of refugees would swamp bordering
> countries in an unparalled humanitarian crisis. Guess what? The
> refugee camps stand nearly empty. The number of refugees is,
> comparatively, tiny. Nothing like the flood that the nay-sayers
> thought would occur.
Indeed. How about the complete breakdown of law and order in Basra and, it
now seems likely, Baghdad? It may not last long but theres already a
humanitarian disaster in Basra.
> How about those predictions of world war 3 starting and the toppling
> of various Middle Eastern regimes due to a wave of Islamist fury?
> That the Middle East would turn into a grim wasteland. (Randolph was
> big on this one, IIRC). Nothing of the sort. No unintentional
> widening of the war. A few angry protests at the start that appear to
> have been quelled by scenes of liberated Iraqis cheering. No grim
> wasteland.
>
> Or those forecasts that this would turn into an urban nightmare
> reminiscent of Stalingrad. Many pundits (some, like Graydon, here in
> RASFF) said we'd either have to level Baghdad with carpet bombing and
> artillery or lay siege to it until everyone inside starved to death.
> Looks kind of laughable now. Half of Baghdad has been captured in 2
> days of fighting with extremely minimal allied casualties.
We don't know the Iraqi dead yet.
> These were all practical arguments against the war, of course, not
> moral ones. The moral arguments were based not on the results of the
> war but on the wrongness of starting it in the first place Obviously
> those arguments still held.
>
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I think I am currently nauseated by the rhetoric I'm seeing on line and on
the TV, to be honest.
This war "evolved" to being about the poor down trodden Iraqi people when
our glorious leaders ran out of other excuses. It's a good reason, but its
not one to get morally superior about when we have no intention of dealling
with other even more loathsome dictators who haven't threatened the west.
The death toll in the Congo for the civilian population is now higher than
the civilian death toll of the allies in WW2, 6 million people who voted MDC
are being starved in Zimbabwe. These people are not going to be liberated.
Its great that we've done it for Iraq, but can we please stop deluding
ourselves we did it for the people?
Sure they are cheering now - who wouldn't? But lest we forget, a few months
ago they were cheering Saddam and burning British and American flags. You
roll into town having destroyed the army - I'd be wanting to make nice with
the soliders too.
But, 6 months from now when things haven't got a lot better? When the Kurds
realise they are going to be stitched up again and the Shia realise that no,
they aren't going to have revenge on the Shite?
I'm not cheering today. It was remarkable, but so was the fact the airforce
are still running sortes in Afganistan more than a year after we won the
war. And in Iraq we don't have friendly nations to hand the peace keeping
over to.
Dave
Dave O'Neill
> K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
> >
> >Beyond that, I think: it's not even been three weeks. It's very, very
> >early, and the hard part is just beginning.
> >
> >The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
> >anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
> >were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating. The only
> >real question is the ultimate death toll (~200 on our side and ~10000?
> >on theirs may have been on the low end of predictions, but still does
> >not cheer me--and there will be more).
> >
> >So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
> >statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
> >against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
> >Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
> >-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
>
> Of course. There are undoubtedly hard days to come.
>
> And yet... This is part of the point I was trying to make. I listed
> lots of predictions that people (including many RASFF denizens) made.
> All of which have clearly and absolutely not come to pass. Yes, there
> may be other, different problems down the road. But many of the
> reasons that this war was a horrible idea have been shown to be false.
From whose perspective? From the view of the thousands of dead and injured,
its been a riot.
Its not been as bas as it could have been, but the cities are currently no
go zones for aid workers.
> Surely there should be some recognition of that? That a good many
> things have, in fact, gone not as the anti-war crowd predicted but
> instead as the administration did?
Good for the administration.
I can't speak for the "anti-war crowd" generally, but the war went to my
expectations.
I have always been and will always been deeply troubled by the peace.
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> writes:
>>
>> The next test is going to be of the antiwar movement, as the man/woman
>> in the street interviews with Iraqis saying, "What took you so long?"
>> and "Why did you even listen to those people?" become commonplace.
>>
>> I expect that the antiwar movement will flunk.
>
>Their response will be a mix of total unresponsiveness, complaints
>that the Iraqis are being propagandized by the occupation forces (a
>complaint I am *already* seeing regarding the cities the UK and US
>forces have already taken), and "la la la I can't hear you!".
I had (and have) deep reservations about the war, but none of them were about
whether or not Saddam Hussein deserved removal. They were about what happens
next. I'm still worried about what happens next, and after that.
Which of your complete list of possible responses does that fall under?
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
===============================================================================
K-Mac
wrote:
>K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
>>
>>Beyond that, I think: it's not even been three weeks. It's very, very
>>early, and the hard part is just beginning.
>>
>>The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
>>anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
>>were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating. The only
>>real question is the ultimate death toll (~200 on our side and ~10000?
>>on theirs may have been on the low end of predictions, but still does
>>not cheer me--and there will be more).
>>
>>So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
>>statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
>>against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
>>Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
>>-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
>
>Of course. There are undoubtedly hard days to come.
>
>And yet... This is part of the point I was trying to make. I listed
>lots of predictions that people (including many RASFF denizens) made.
>All of which have clearly and absolutely not come to pass. Yes, there
>may be other, different problems down the road. But many of the
>reasons that this war was a horrible idea have been shown to be false.
I don't know about anyone else's reasons, but mine haven't been
touched by events so far.
Beyond that, part of the problem I see with your post is that you're
looking for specific people to recant generalities. I would have to
own my -own- public predictions (if I'd made any--I don't know that I
did), but I'm not responsible for anyone else's, even if they came
from people I'm more or less philosophically or politically aligned
with.
>Surely there should be some recognition of that? That a good many
>things have, in fact, gone not as the anti-war crowd predicted but
>instead as the administration did?
Actually, I think it's a bit of revisonism to say that things have
gone as the administration predicted. I am convinced that Rumsfeld, in
particular, expected us to be able to do it faster with less.
But if this really is what they expected, then they have even more to
answer for than if they thought it would be a walk-over and we would
be welcomed at the border by the cheering masses.
http://electroniciraq.net/news/466.shtml
>No, not "I told you so". But also not "if you just wait, you'll see
>the *next* prediction will prove us out!"
>
>That, as David Friedman pointed out, is unfalsifiable. No matter how
>many problems don't come to pass, we can always come up with more that
>may happen down the road.
You're giving short shrift to a whole world of objection-on-principle
("This is a bad thing"), as opposed to objection-on-consequences ("Bad
things will happen.").
Randolph Fritz
> people opposed to the war have proven to be baseless and, well,
> completely wrong. Before it started you couldn't swing a dead cat
> without hitting someone in RASFF, the blogosphere, or TV who would be
> happy to tell you all the ways that things would go pear shaped if
> this horrible, horrible war started.
>
At least I am much relieved that, so far, casualties (largely Iraqi)
have been, probably, towards the low estimates.
>
> There were predictions that waves of refugees would swamp bordering
> countries in an unparalled humanitarian crisis. Guess what? The
> refugee camps stand nearly empty. The number of refugees is,
> comparatively, tiny. Nothing like the flood that the nay-sayers
> thought would occur.
>
Iraq is a country that cannot feed itself. Cities cannot go
long without water and sanitation, which have likely been damaged.
There is going to have to be careful action now to prevent disaster.
> How about those predictions of world war 3 starting and the toppling
> of various Middle Eastern regimes due to a wave of Islamist fury?
> That the Middle East would turn into a grim wasteland. (Randolph was
> big on this one, IIRC).
In the next generation--I never thought immediately. If the US
conducts itself well in Iraq, maybe never. I am skeptical of the
administration's will to do so, however. The Middle East, yet again,
has been reminded that all that they do is subject to Western approval
and that the West is perfectly willing to express its disapproval with
tanks. That's got to rankle.
>
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
They danced in the streets when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan. They
aren't dancing now, alas. But the grinding awfulness of the
US-installed regime there seldom makes front-page news.
Randolph
David Joseph Greenbaum
inscribed in fleeting electrons:
> >Do you think that other wars will be easy - and therefore desirable -
> >because this one looked routine yesterday, and today, after the regime
> >collapsed?
> >
>
> Nothing in my post suggests so, but feel free to pull things out of
> the air if you like.
Answer the question. Does the ease of this war justify our embarkation
on future wars in the region?
Should easy pre-emptive warmaking be a part of our national security
policy?
> >Also, why the hell are small cheering crowds in Baghdad more important
> >than much, much larger protesting crowds in New York?
> >
>
> The protesting crowds don't live in Baghdad. They were wrong about
> the results of the war, and the last few weeks are showing it.
People in those crowds protested the war not because its sequelae might
be unharmonious, but because war is a pretty sucky, brutal, nasty thing
that ought to be the absolute last thing one does. And, you know, in
the very distinct absence of WMD attacks - or even revelations of WMD
stores in the path of our advancing armies, this war looks like it
wasn't the last ditch option. For all that implies.
And the results of this war aren't yet in, because this war isn't
fucking over yet.
> >And this war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people have
> >happened because of lies, and that, David, that is unforgivable.
> >
> >And your smuggery is pretty much the last straw for today.
>
> As opposed to your arrogant superiority?
My arrogant superiority?! My arrogant superiority?!
I sleep six miles from midtown Manhattan. I work two miles from
midtown Manhattan. Part of my duties, in the case of catastrophe,
involve walking my students seven miles up Northern Boulevard to Shea
Stadium, and waiting to be relieved by parents ignorant of this
brilliant brainwave of a catastrophe plan because they don't need to
know that that's the plan.
This is the kind of foolish incompetence that is in Washington, D. C.,
directing our domestic and foreign affairs.
Several thousand people were filmed wrecking triumphal images of Saddam
Hussein today. Who cares? It looks cool. Springtime of the peoples.
Is that freedom? Is that government? Is the future in that toppling?
Fifty people were killed in Timisoara, Rumania, in the middle of
December 1989. Within two weeks Nikolai and Elena Ceaucescu were shot
after a show trial. And there were street demonstrations and
celebrations. And Rumania remains a creepy police state, with a veneer
of congenial Westernization.
Belarus. Don't see many people bellyacheing about Lukashenko and the
catstrophic state of authoritarian misrule in Belarus - which borders
on Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine - all present or future
members of NATO. And I remember the images after the August 1991 coup.
I'm glad that more people weren't killed in this awful fiasco. I think
this war is an awful fiasco. It was hastily contrived in a bed of
lies, and today's street celebration scenes in Baghdad notwithstanding,
I think it an myopically evil, cynical, and repugnant exercise. That
Saddam Hussein and Ba'athist Iraq seems to rest on the ash-heap of
history is, at best, a blessing passing insufficient to justify the
lies and brutalities of the fiasco.
Thomas Yan
-snip-
> So far every single one of the predictions of doom we heard from
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You make a good point that a lot of concerns have not materialized,
but I'd replace "predictions of" with "warnings of possible".
> people opposed to the war have proven to be baseless and, well,
> completely wrong.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Some concerns were longer term, so it is too soon to say they are
completely wrong.
> Before it started you couldn't swing a dead cat
> without hitting someone in RASFF, the blogosphere, or TV who would be
> happy to tell you all the ways that things would go pear shaped if
> this horrible, horrible war started.
>
> There were predictions of a "wave of terrorism" from Iraqi or al Qaeda
> sleeper cells that would be triggered by an invasion. Nothing like it
> has occured.
-snip-
I wish you thought to compile a list (or did you? I seem to vaguely
recall seeing such a list) at the start of the war and raised the
question of what horizon / time frame they applied to. I am quite
sure that the warnings of terrorism I paid attention to were in regard
to things down the line, not to events that would happen within a
month of the war's start.
> There were predictions that waves of refugees would swamp bordering
> countries in an unparalled humanitarian crisis. Guess what? The
> refugee camps stand nearly empty. The number of refugees is,
> comparatively, tiny. Nothing like the flood that the nay-sayers
> thought would occur.
Granted. I think there concerns about both an immediate flood and
later flooding during a prolonged war with food distribution
disrupted. I believe aid agencies who tried to prepare for refugees
were indeed surprised at how few refugees there were. If the war does
wrap up quickly, then we hopefully will happily avoid food shortages
or lack of clean drinking water.
> How about those predictions of world war 3 starting and the toppling
> of various Middle Eastern regimes due to a wave of Islamist fury?
> That the Middle East would turn into a grim wasteland. (Randolph was
> big on this one, IIRC). Nothing of the sort. No unintentional
> widening of the war. A few angry protests at the start that appear to
> have been quelled by scenes of liberated Iraqis cheering. No grim
> wasteland.
This is another case where I wish the question of a time frame had
been brought up earlier. There do appear to be people in the Middle
East who view this defeat of Saddam as a humiliating defeat for
*them*. And I believe Bush warned various countries to -"learn the
right lesson"-. I think we have yet to see whether instability /
conflict will spread.
-snip-
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
Well, what I think is, I hope we continue to have smooth sailing. I
am surprised at how well things have apparently worked out for the
U.S. war effort, but am still concerned about the future.
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>How about those predictions of world war 3 starting and the toppling
>of various Middle Eastern regimes due to a wave of Islamist fury?
>That the Middle East would turn into a grim wasteland. (Randolph was
>big on this one, IIRC). Nothing of the sort. No unintentional
>widening of the war. A few angry protests at the start that appear to
>have been quelled by scenes of liberated Iraqis cheering. No grim
>wasteland.
Of course not. Because the folks who might have expanded the war knew
full well the US could defeat them easily. They've seen what the 3rd
Infantry can do, and they want no part of it.
>
>Or those forecasts that this would turn into an urban nightmare
>reminiscent of Stalingrad. Many pundits (some, like Graydon, here in
>RASFF) said we'd either have to level Baghdad with carpet bombing and
>artillery or lay siege to it until everyone inside starved to death.
>Looks kind of laughable now. Half of Baghdad has been captured in 2
>days of fighting with extremely minimal allied casualties.
Don't forget Ulrika, who said she was weeping in anticipation of the
Shock & Awe campaign. She asserted that the plan was to kill
thousands and thousand of Iraqis, to commit a war crime, a monstrous,
hideous bombing raid comparable to Hiroshima, except with conventional
weapons. I contended that she was being overwrought, and that, while
there would undoubtedly be some civilian casualties, the plan would,
if anything, shorten the bombing and reduce civilian casualties.
Having seen "Shock and Awe," I think it's clear that I was right about
both the planners' intent and the result of the plan.
Here are links to her posts, if I did the shorter link thing right:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P17852824
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V28863824
Note that she used the phrase "carpet bomb," which I think is pretty
darn far from what we actually did.
>
>These were all practical arguments against the war, of course, not
>moral ones. The moral arguments were based not on the results of the
>war but on the wrongness of starting it in the first place Obviously
>those arguments still held.
Some may still hold. Those based on the premise that Saddam has
widespread popular support are becoming less and less plausible.
>
>But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I saw one of the "Human Shields" haranguing some Marines, who were
studiously ignoring her. It struck me that if the Marines were the
barbarians she undoubtedly thinks they are, she would probably be too
frightened to yell at armed Marines. I also saw some Iraqis with one
of the the "HUMAN SHIELDS" signs that the shields had apparently put
on targets they were guarding. They'd added the words "Go Home" above
"HUMAN SHIELDS."
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>In article <qo299vkir408eh524...@4ax.com>, David Bilek wrote:
>
>> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
>We'll see how those people feel after a year of US occupation and crony
>capitalism.
Putting the UN or the French and Russians in charge _won't_ reduce the
level of corruption.
>
>The real test is ahead. If everything works out, it won't be due to Bush
>and cronies, it will be due to the rest of the world and the US curbing
>them. Fearless media scrutiny is crucial!
"The rest of the world" -- i.e., the French, Russians, and UN -- want
to loot Iraq. The Arab states want a strongman who won't spread
troublesome ideas. The US and Britain come to this gig with *far*
cleaner intentions than the rest of the world.
>
>I wonder just which friends of Bush will try to acquire the Iraqi oil
>industry at fire sale prices ...
If US or British oil companies end up being the ones who develop
Iraq's oil wealth, they'll treat the Iraqis far more fairly than
TotalFinaElf could even imagine doing.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>At what point do the naysayers say, "Ok, I was wrong on virtually all
>counts."?
David Horowitz is one of the few people whom I've ever heard say that.
the "nuclear freeze" types still deny that they were wrong on the Cold
War.
--
Pete McCutchen
David Bilek
>inscribed in fleeting electrons:
>
>> >Do you think that other wars will be easy - and therefore desirable -
>> >because this one looked routine yesterday, and today, after the regime
>> >collapsed?
>> >
>>
>> Nothing in my post suggests so, but feel free to pull things out of
>> the air if you like.
>
>Answer the question. Does the ease of this war justify our embarkation
>on future wars in the region?
>
No. A war being potentially long and difficult may be a reason
against embarking on it, but the converse isn't true. "Because we
can" isn't a justification.
Let me be clear: The ease of this war doesn't, by itself, justify
future wars. But I'm not saying there are no justifications that
would satisfy me. Simply that the reason you list isn't one of them.
-David
Rebecca Ore
>
> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I hope things work out for them. I'm more concerned with the US
wading into more and more with less and less justification.
Someone earlier posted that the real test of this wouldn't be the war,
which would probably be over quickly, but getting the country moving
in a better direction on a long term basis.
--
Rebecca Ore
http://mysite.verizon.net/rebecca.ore
Heather Jones
>
> K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
> >
> >Beyond that, I think: it's not even been three weeks. It's very, very
> >early, and the hard part is just beginning.
> >
> >The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
> >anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
> >were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating. The only
> >real question is the ultimate death toll (~200 on our side and ~10000?
> >on theirs may have been on the low end of predictions, but still does
> >not cheer me--and there will be more).
> >
> >So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
> >statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
> >against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
> >Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
> >-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
>
> Of course. There are undoubtedly hard days to come.
>
> And yet... This is part of the point I was trying to make. I listed
> lots of predictions that people (including many RASFF denizens) made.
> All of which have clearly and absolutely not come to pass. Yes, there
> may be other, different problems down the road. But many of the
> reasons that this war was a horrible idea have been shown to be false.
My greatest opposition to this war has always focused on things
that were accomplished and evident before the first bomb was
dropped. (Well, the first bomb of the present batch, that is.)
My opposition is to the concept of pre-emptive war (whether or
_not_ our precedent results in other countries deciding to follow
suit), to the practice of arrogantly ignoring the larger
community of nations when they won't dance to our fiddling, to
the notion that "because we can" constitutes moral justification,
and to the myriad of other ways in which Bush has gutted and
trampled the high and noble principles and ideals that, to me,
form the only valid basis for being "proud to be an American".
These are things that _have_ come to pass.
Heather
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
Mark Jones
GMT, did you or did you not state:
>The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
>anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
>were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating.
That's simply not true. I _saw_ the predictions (or if not
predictions, expressed fears) of a "quagmire" in Iraq. Of
Vietnam-style stalemates, of no possibility of taking Baghdad without
either horrific casualties in house-to-house fighting or
carpet-bombing the city like Dresden.
It didn't happen. We can claim (now) that the outcome wasn't in
doubt, but that's not what some people were saying as little as two
weeks ago.
>So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
>statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
>against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
>Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
>-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
I don't think it is. It may be too early to say "I told you so" to
those who think we can't or won't do the right thing now that we've
taken Iraq, but it isn't too early to say "I told you so" to the doom
n' gloom naysayers who told us _that_ couldn't be done.
Just like they told us we couldn't topple the Taliban either.
And the defensiveness I'm seeing from various posters here makes me
think they aren't going to admit they were wrong this time either.
--
"It will let you do things nobody else can do, see things nobody else can see."
"_Real_ things?"
--Egg Shen and Jack Burton
Kathy Gallagher
"Mark Jones" <sin...@pacifier.com> wrote in message
news:ito99v4nqjplofd94...@4ax.com...
Old news! Bush was saber rattling to go to war against Iraq since the day
after he got into office.
KG
Randolph Fritz
> K-Mac <alter...@att.net>, on or about Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:45:41
> GMT, did you or did you not state:
>
>>The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
>>anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
>>were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating.
>
> That's simply not true. I _saw_ the predictions (or if not
> predictions, expressed fears) of a "quagmire" in Iraq. Of
> Vietnam-style stalemates, of no possibility of taking Baghdad without
> either horrific casualties in house-to-house fighting or
> carpet-bombing the city like Dresden.
I wonder why it didn't go house-to-house, really--was it superior
coalition tactics or did the Iraqi decide not to fight a losing
battle?
Randolph
Kris Hasson-Jones
<rand...@panix.com> submitted the following for your consideration:
Or could it be that they didn't want to fight, that they were glad to
welcome the US once the guns of the torturers were pointed another way
than at their families?
--
Kris Hasson-Jones sni...@pacifier.com
What Would Aragorn Do?
K-Mac
wrote:
>K-Mac <alter...@att.net>, on or about Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:45:41
>GMT, did you or did you not state:
>
>>The outcome of the fighting has never been in doubt--anyone who knew
>>anything about US warfighting capability knew that our guys with guns
>>were going to give their guys with guns an awful beating.
>
>That's simply not true. I _saw_ the predictions (or if not
>predictions, expressed fears) of a "quagmire" in Iraq. Of
>Vietnam-style stalemates, of no possibility of taking Baghdad without
>either horrific casualties in house-to-house fighting or
>carpet-bombing the city like Dresden.
I do think it's useful to distinguish between a prediction and an
apprehension.
In any case, I stand by my statement above. Please note the important
qualifier: "anyone who knew anything about US warfighting capability."
Militarily, this was a mismatch from the word go--no amount of blather
about how 'dangerous' Hussein's regime was because it hadn't
'disarmed' can alter the fact that Iraq didn't even have air
superiority over its own territory in -peacetime-, and had no prayer
of even carrying out a war of attrition on the ground while the US/UK
enjoyed 'air domination' (the new term of art). The threat of Iraq
having/using bio or chem weapons appears to have been much exaggerated
(I suspect knowingly so). Even when it comes to urban combat, the
outcome wasn't in question--only the casualty count, as a function of
the intensity of the resistance. The occasional RPG hit
notwithstanding, the Iraqi forces have no answer for a modern MBT, and
the fire discipline of even the Iraqi regulars is mediocre at best.
The contemporary US military is second to none in technology and
training, and they're no slouches tactically, either. This was George
Foreman vs. Vic Scott, Miami Hurricanes vs. the Sisters of Mercy
Junior Day School, Bill Russell's Celtics vs. the Penn State Lady
Lions. Anyone who couldn't see that beforehand surely must understand
it now. Iraq had no chance to win, and very little chance to hurt us.
>It didn't happen. We can claim (now) that the outcome wasn't in
>doubt, but that's not what some people were saying as little as two
>weeks ago.
>
>>So--we have toppled the regime, and in doing so have brought more than
>>statues crashing down. Balance the celebrations against the looting,
>>against the destruction of the social and legal and economic order.
>>Rebuilding is always harder than destroying. It's much too early for
>>-us- to celebrate--or to play the game of "I told you so."
>
>I don't think it is. It may be too early to say "I told you so" to
>those who think we can't or won't do the right thing now that we've
>taken Iraq, but it isn't too early to say "I told you so" to the doom
>n' gloom naysayers who told us _that_ couldn't be done.
I don't know who you were talking to or where you were reading, but I
saw a great deal more "shouldn't be done" than "couldn't be done" in
the opposition to the war.
>Just like they told us we couldn't topple the Taliban either.
>
>And the defensiveness I'm seeing from various posters here makes me
>think they aren't going to admit they were wrong this time either.
FWIW, I don't feel the least bit defensive. Since I always expected us
to 'win' the fight handily, events so far are proceeding according to
form. I'm glad the casualty count isn't any higher, but I don't think
we should congratulate ourselves overly much if 'only' five to ten
thousand are dead to this point.
--
No "is" implies an "ought." - David Hume
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
I wonder how the Iraqis will feel about us when they're not really
liberated, they become a chattel-state of the US.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Handmade Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Joel Rosenberg
> On Wed, 09 Apr 2003 21:50:54 -0000, lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom)
> wrote:
>
> >In article <qo299vkir408eh524...@4ax.com>, David Bilek wrote:
> >
> >> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> >> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> >> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
> >
> >We'll see how those people feel after a year of US occupation and crony
> >capitalism.
>
> Putting the UN or the French and Russians in charge _won't_ reduce the
> level of corruption.
Many Afghanis are complaining that the main thing that they've seen
out of the money spent on Afghanistan are new buildings for the aid
bureaucracies -- including those of the UN.
--
------------------------------------------------------------
http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com
Kris Hasson-Jones
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> submitted the following for your
consideration:
>I saw one of the "Human Shields" haranguing some Marines, who were
>studiously ignoring her. It struck me that if the Marines were the
>barbarians she undoubtedly thinks they are, she would probably be too
>frightened to yell at armed Marines. I also saw some Iraqis with one
>of the the "HUMAN SHIELDS" signs that the shields had apparently put
>on targets they were guarding. They'd added the words "Go Home" above
>"HUMAN SHIELDS."
Is that the one with an additional line: "you US wankers"?
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>The protesting crowds don't live in Baghdad. They were wrong about
>the results of the war, and the last few weeks are showing it.
What makes you think they were wrong? For many of them, having
started this war at all was bad. It'll be good if it really ends this
quickly, but it was bad to start with.
Dale Farmer
Randolph Fritz wrote:
My guess, because that bomb two nights ago ( or was it three? ) got
Saddam and one of his sons. When he got taken out of the picture,
word spread fast, and the fear of reprisals that was holding the bulk
of the Iraqi armed forces on the lines evaporated. They took their
uniforms off and went home to grab what they can, while they can.
I predict that there will be an awful lot of probably rather brutal
murders over the next couple of days to weeks as years of pent up
fear and hatred get vented on the low to mid-level folks in the
Baath party and internal security forces. And the investigations,
if they happen at all, will be pro forma. Those folks, who don't
have the wealth to buy their way out of the country, will bear the
brunt of the hatreds, not that many of them probably deserve it.
The generals and high level Baathists generally have the wealth
and connections to flee the country to someplace that won't
ask questions.
--Dale
Forrest
When they woke up and stared around?
Saddam Hussein in a heap or mound,
As if he had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How he went to pieces all at once,
-- All at once, and nothing first,
-- Just as bubbles do when they burst.
Somebody do the rest. (If it hasn't been done already. Google
suggests not, as of this moment.)
Randolph Fritz
Kris Hasson-Jones wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 03:48:25 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz
><rand...@panix.com> submitted the following for your consideration:
>>
>>coalition tactics or did the Iraqi decide not to fight a losing
>>battle?
>
> Or could it be that they didn't want to fight, that they were glad to
> welcome the US once the guns of the torturers were pointed another way
> than at their families?
Some were, some weren't, if the initial reports are correct. But it
still begs the question of why the Iraqi troops didn't fight. They
could have made it an expensive battle, if they'd wanted to.
Randolph
David Bilek
>On Wed, 09 Apr 2003 20:29:40 -0700, Mark Jones <sin...@pacifier.com>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>those who think we can't or won't do the right thing now that we've
>>taken Iraq, but it isn't too early to say "I told you so" to the doom
>>n' gloom naysayers who told us _that_ couldn't be done.
>
>I don't know who you were talking to or where you were reading, but I
>saw a great deal more "shouldn't be done" than "couldn't be done" in
>the opposition to the war.
>
I started the thread and I (mostly) didn't single out specific people
to try and avoid things getting overly personal.
But, ok, here's an example:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=m2n0m8jo9i.fsf%40gw.dd-b.net&oe=UTF-8
David Dyer-Bennet (dd...@dd-b.net) wrote:
>David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> writes:
>>
>> I think you grossly over-estimate the resistance even the "elite"
>> Republican guard could put up.
>>
>> Do you predict many, many casualties for when we take Baghdad this
>> time around?
>
>I predict many orders of magnitude more combat enemy-fire casualties
>than last time, if we take Baghdad this time. If we just flatten it,
>then no.
Hell, David even uses the phrase "I predict".
This prediction has been shown to be wrong on every level.
-David
David Bilek
>On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:37:32 GMT, David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com>
>wrote:
>
>>The protesting crowds don't live in Baghdad. They were wrong about
>>the results of the war, and the last few weeks are showing it.
>
>What makes you think they were wrong? For many of them, having
>started this war at all was bad. It'll be good if it really ends this
>quickly, but it was bad to start with.
I made a nod towards this idea in my original post.
The arguments about the morality of starting this war based upon
Bush's motives, etc, still hold. I disagree with most of them, but
they are certainly legitimate points.
It's the arguments based on practicalities ("quagmires", etc) or
humanitarian grounds that I refer to in the bit you quote. Those
arguments have been demolished.
-David
Forrest
> the cries of "millions of people killed by 'Shock
> and Awe'" have been tested, and proven false.
Who said that? Google is not being helpful on this.
David Bilek
Ulrika O'Brien. She was talking about the intentional murder of 4
million (!) civilians.
-David
Kevin J. Maroney
<dj...@cornell.edu> wrote:
>I'm glad that more people weren't killed in this awful fiasco. I think
>this war is an awful fiasco. It was hastily contrived in a bed of
>lies, and today's street celebration scenes in Baghdad notwithstanding,
>I think it an myopically evil, cynical, and repugnant exercise. That
>Saddam Hussein and Ba'athist Iraq seems to rest on the ash-heap of
>history is, at best, a blessing passing insufficient to justify the
>lies and brutalities of the fiasco.
As I said before the fighting began, I am no more grateful to the
Rumsfeld Doctrine for managing not to fuck up the invasion than I am
to someone who clears the chamber of a loaded gun by firing it in my
general direction but manages to miss me.
It was never in doubt that the US would defeat Iraq militarily,
eventually. The campaign so far has gone much better than I thought it
would, and worse than Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz thought it would.
(Remember, Rumsfeld's original plan called for less than half this
many troops, and Wolfowitz predicted that the regular army troops
would throw down their weapons at the sound of gunfire.)
I am going to follow up a different post with the real questions.
--
Kevin J. Maroney | k...@panix.com
Games are my entire waking life.
Kevin J. Maroney
wrote:
>Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>> I think it's easy to cheer for the army when it's in town.
>> More in-depth answer, and this was written three weeks ago:
>> <http://slate.msn.com/id/2080322/>. You'll have seen it back then, if
>> you were tracking blog punditry.
>
>Yep, read that at the time. It's a goodie.
Thirded. In fact, I posted about it two weeks ago. It says better than
I did what I was trying to say in my "When the War Comes" post from 13
March.
Kevin J. Maroney
wrote:
>No. A *next* real test is ahead. The Rumsfeld Doctrine has already
>passed the test,
If by "passed the test" you mean "was not followed by the Army," who
forced Rumsfeld to use more than twice as many troops as his initial
plan, you are most correct.
>and the cries of "millions of people killed by 'Shock
>and Awe'" have been tested, and proven false.
"Shock and Awe" appears to have failed. There is no evidence that the
initial Shock and Awe bombing had any substanital effect on the morale
of the Iraqi troops. The *continuing* bombing with precision bombs had
a tremendous military effect, but the much-heralded two-day barrage of
precision bombs--the "if you have to ask if it's 'Shock and Awe', it's
not 'Shock and Awe'" bombing--didn't result in the "Hiroshima effect",
which is to say, nearly immediate capitulation in the face of
overwhelming force.
In 2003, the US military did not follow in the pattern of the 1991 war
of targeting civilian infrastructure in a manner which would lead to
humanitarian catastrophe on an unprescedented scale. I did not believe
the claims that they would not; I was wrong, and I'm not chagrined to
say that. I can think of few times when I have been as glad to be
wrong as when I thought that my country's army would target a civilian
population to create a humanitarian disaster.
However, that mercy might actually have worked against the "Hiroshima
effect": Baghdad *wasn't* leveled, only certain buildings. People were
climbing to their rooftops to watch the bombing. It had military
effect, unmistakably, but not the morale effect that was sought.
On the issue of the civilian infrastructure, it remains to be seen
whether the US can manage to keep the people of Baghdad, and the UK
the people of Basra, from starvation and death by thirst; right now,
both cities are without civilization--no power, no water, no rule of
law. I predict that both cities will come through with relatively
little death but a lot of privation after a lot of hard work from the
US army, and that this lack of death will be used by some people as an
argument that humanitarian considerations were not important.
Kevin J. Maroney
<da...@NOSPAMatomicrazor.com> wrote:
>The death toll in the Congo for the civilian population is now higher than
>the civilian death toll of the allies in WW2,
As long as you don't count the Soviets among the Allies, anyway.
But yes, the Congo War is a humanitarian disaster happening now.
Zimbabwe is a humanitarian disaster just around the corner. But they
don't have active oil fields.
Kevin J. Maroney
<rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>They danced in the streets when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan.
Let's repeat that, and then elaborate:
They danced in the streets in Afghanistan when the Taliban fell.
And a year later, the Taliban are the strongest rebel force against
the US puppet government, because the US puppet government is propped
up by the thugs who so brutalized the Afghan people that they welcomed
the Taliban in the mid-1990s.
Kevin J. Maroney
wrote:
> My guess, because that bomb two nights ago ( or was it three? ) got
>Saddam and one of his sons. When he got taken out of the picture,
>word spread fast, and the fear of reprisals that was holding the bulk
>of the Iraqi armed forces on the lines evaporated.
I think that if that were the case, the US would be proclaiming it
from every mountaintop.
The *rumor* that Saddam is dead is probably spreading.
Kevin J. Maroney
>This was George Foreman vs. Vic Scott,
More like George Foreman vs. Stephen Hawking after the UN had shut off
Hawking's respirator....
David Friedman
David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote:
> That, as David Friedman pointed out, is unfalsifiable. No matter how
> many problems don't come to pass, we can always come up with more that
> may happen down the road.
Let me describe the potential problem that worries me, a fair way down
the road.
It seems almost certain now that we will finish the war without losing
many more people. Suppose we are reasonably successful in the next stage
too, and end up with a stable regime not hostile to us--perhaps even a
democratic one, although that's on the optimistic side.
On those assumptions, the consequences for Iraq are positive. But a
broader consequence is that the U.S. will have established that it is
dangerous to follow policies that we strongly dislike--at least if you
aren't a European country or a very powerful asian country. In some ways
that too is an attractive outcome--it means that third world countries
will be less willing to provide active or tacit support to terrorism
against the U.S., which may well be part of the Administration's motive
for this war.
But it also means a world that has shifted closer to a U.S. hegemony. I
regard that as an unfortunate development, not because I think the U.S.
government is worse than average--I don't--but because I think
competition is more likely than monopoly to produce an attractive
future. In a changing world, there are always pressures to prevent or
control change--whether it's human cloning, new recreational drugs,
genetically engineered crops, or whatever. I think such attempts at
control are typically a mistake (for a much longer discussion, see
either Virginia Postrel's _The Future and its Enemies_ or the draft of
my _Future Imperfect_ on my web page). And I hope we will be protected
from such attempts to freeze us into the status quo by living in a
multi-nation world, where even if the conservative majority--Europe and
the U.S.--want to slow change, someone will fail to go along.
Hence I am afraid that what the administration, not unreasonably,
regards as a long run feature of victory, I regard as a bug.
On the other hand, there's always China--shifting towards capitalism,
growing rapidly, and big enough so that the U.S. has very limited
ability to push it around.
David Friedman
Heather Jones <hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
...
> My opposition is to the concept of pre-emptive war (whether or
> _not_ our precedent results in other countries deciding to follow
> suit), to the practice of arrogantly ignoring the larger
> community of nations when they won't dance to our fiddling, to
> the notion that "because we can" constitutes moral justification,
> and to the myriad of other ways in which Bush has gutted and
> trampled the high and noble principles and ideals that, to me,
> form the only valid basis for being "proud to be an American".
> These are things that _have_ come to pass.
I don't follow that. Why does agreement of other nations give moral
sanction, or its failure withhold it? Quite a lot of the nations of the
world, after all, are murderous dictatorships--are we more virtuous if
they agree with us? And even the relatively free and democratic nations
have their own agendas, which have more to do with their self interest
than with principled arguments. The French, so far as I can judge, have
successfully kept their subsaharan African colonies--by converting them
into "independent" nations whose rulers depend on French military
backing.
And I don't think anyone has been arguing that "we can" constitutes
moral justification. The argument has been some combination of arguments
about terrorism, arguments about weapons of mass destruction, and
arguments about the oppressive nature of the Iraqi regime. None of that
would be necessary if might made right.
I'm curious about how you would apply your principles to past
circumstances. As you may know, at the time of Pearl Harbor the U.S.
administration was doing its best to get the U.S. into war--to the point
of sending a considerable force of fighter planes, paid for by the U.S.
government (although we weren't admitting it then), into China to fight
the Japanese.
Suppose the Japanese hadn't attacked at Pearl. Further suppose FDR had
somehow gotten enough domestic political support to make possible a
declaration of war against them (and perhaps against the Germans too).
Would you have been opposed? It would have been a pre-emptive war--they
weren't fighting us.
David Friedman
K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
> Actually, I think it's a bit of revisonism to say that things have
> gone as the administration predicted. I am convinced that Rumsfeld, in
> particular, expected us to be able to do it faster with less.
What's your evidence for that?
Various people, a week or so back, were arguing that the Iraqis had
somehow suckered the U.S. into attacking with insufficient force, and
blaming Rumsfeld for falling into their trap--I remember in particular a
post by Rebecca Ore suggesting that. But it's now clear that the force
wasn't insufficient. So why, other than a desire to think badly of
Rumsfeld, do you believe in the view you state above?
Lots42 bomb vice president
>and left that place
>shattered into warlord-ruled cantons, will rise to the challenge of
>building a state in Mesopotamia that does justice to today's cheering
>crowds in Baghdad?
We're liberators, not conquerers. Christ!
>Also, why the hell are small cheering crowds in Baghdad more important
>than much, much larger protesting crowds in New York?
I don't know. Might be that the cheering crowds can -now- cheer without being
shot to death. Something to celebrate, eh?
> While the case was made that war on Saddam was necessary to
>free his groaning people from the yoke of totalitarian slavery, that
>case was made on alternate Tuesdays when the polls were dragging badly
>anti-war by people who lie because their lips flap.
That still doesn't invalidate that fact that Saddam led a murderious regime.
>
>And this war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people have
>happened because of lies,
Tens of thousands of people died because of the liberation of Iraq?
Cite?
I'll be generous and just demand proof of twenty thousand dead because of the
liberation of Iraq.
>
>And your smuggery is pretty much the last straw for today.
>
Pot, kettle? Email.
Mark Jones
01:37:47 -0400, did you or did you not state:
>"Shock and Awe" appears to have failed. There is no evidence that the
>initial Shock and Awe bombing had any substanital effect on the morale
>of the Iraqi troops. The *continuing* bombing with precision bombs had
>a tremendous military effect, but the much-heralded two-day barrage of
>precision bombs--the "if you have to ask if it's 'Shock and Awe', it's
>not 'Shock and Awe'" bombing--didn't result in the "Hiroshima effect",
>which is to say, nearly immediate capitulation in the face of
>overwhelming force.
Nor did it result in tens or hundreds of thousands (or millions!) of
dead Iraqis, though some here proclaimed that it would (or their fear
that it would).
--
"It will let you do things nobody else can do, see things nobody else can see."
"_Real_ things?"
--Egg Shen and Jack Burton
Lots42 bomb vice president
>I thought the crowds were pretty small, actually. That's a city of
>five million people. We see bigger spontaneous demonstrations in
>college towns here in the US when teams win (or lose) bowl or
>tournament games.
Not every Iraqi is convinced they won't be shot or fed into a shredder for
cheering the Americans.
Lots42 bomb vice president
>Some were, some weren't, if the initial reports are correct. But it
>still begs the question of why the Iraqi troops didn't fight. They
>could have made it an expensive battle, if they'd wanted to.
>
>Randolph
Maybe all the ones (most of them) willing to fight got blowed up already by the
time we got to Baghdad
Avram Grumer
David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> In article <X%3la.391564$3D1.212288@sccrnsc01>,
> K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
>
> > Actually, I think it's a bit of revisonism to say that things have
> > gone as the administration predicted. I am convinced that Rumsfeld,
> > in particular, expected us to be able to do it faster with less.
>
> What's your evidence for that?
>
> Various people, a week or so back, were arguing that the Iraqis had
> somehow suckered the U.S. into attacking with insufficient force, and
> blaming Rumsfeld for falling into their trap--I remember in
> particular a post by Rebecca Ore suggesting that.
I don't remember that, but I don't read all of everything here, and I
disagree with Rebecca a whole lot. It is clear to me that the force
Rumsfeld originally allocated was insufficient, and that the force that
he later added -- covering up the mistake by calling it a "rolling
start" -- turned out to be sufficient.
> But it's now clear that the force wasn't insufficient. So why, other
> than a desire to think badly of Rumsfeld, do you believe in the view
> you state above?
I don't know about K-Mac, but I think the fact that our forces had so
much trouble protecting their supply lines early in the war lends
credence to the claims, made by both the ground commanders in the field
and by folks like retired military officer Ralph Peters[1] (who says
that Rumsfeld's civilian advisors claimed that fewer than 10,000 combat
troops would be needed) that Rumsfeld let wishful thinking dominate his
planning.
[1] http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/33580.htm
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
Millions for defense, not a penny for the House of Saud.
Lots42 bomb vice president
>Sure they are cheering now - who wouldn't? But lest we forget, a few months
>ago they were cheering Saddam and burning British and American flags.
The Iraqi army, such as it was, literally took hostages to force men to fight.
How can we trust the anti-American demonstrations?
>You
>roll into town having destroyed the army - I'd be wanting to make nice with
>the soliders too.
I'd be cheering an Army that just freed me from a homcidal nutcase running the
country
Dave O'Neill
"Kevin J. Maroney" <k...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:cp0a9vg60sc2j11dq...@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 01:21:35 GMT, "Dave O'Neill"
> <da...@NOSPAMatomicrazor.com> wrote:
> >The death toll in the Congo for the civilian population is now higher
than
> >the civilian death toll of the allies in WW2,
>
> As long as you don't count the Soviets among the Allies, anyway.
Agreed. I should have said western allies.
> But yes, the Congo War is a humanitarian disaster happening now.
> Zimbabwe is a humanitarian disaster just around the corner. But they
> don't have active oil fields.
Yes.
Dave O'Neill
"Lots42 bomb vice president" <lot...@aol.comaol.com> wrote in message
news:20030410024153...@mb-cf.aol.com...
> >From: David Joseph Greenbaum dj...@cornell.edu
>
> >and left that place
> >shattered into warlord-ruled cantons, will rise to the challenge of
> >building a state in Mesopotamia that does justice to today's cheering
> >crowds in Baghdad?
>
> We're liberators, not conquerers. Christ!
Heh.
> >Also, why the hell are small cheering crowds in Baghdad more important
> >than much, much larger protesting crowds in New York?
>
> I don't know. Might be that the cheering crowds can -now- cheer without
being
> shot to death. Something to celebrate, eh?
>
> > While the case was made that war on Saddam was necessary to
> >free his groaning people from the yoke of totalitarian slavery, that
> >case was made on alternate Tuesdays when the polls were dragging badly
> >anti-war by people who lie because their lips flap.
>
> That still doesn't invalidate that fact that Saddam led a murderious
regime.
No, but don't pretend we did this because of that fact.
The downtrodden people of dictators are not involved in these decisions,
otherwise we'd have armour trundling into places like Zimbabwe.
> >And this war and the deaths of tens of thousands of people have
> >happened because of lies,
>
> Tens of thousands of people died because of the liberation of Iraq?
>
> Cite?
>
> I'll be generous and just demand proof of twenty thousand dead because of
the
> liberation of Iraq.
It's a number between 1000 and 10000 even based on published figures. We
haven't dealt with the aftermath yet of the looting etc...
David Friedman
Avram Grumer <av...@grumer.org> wrote:
> > But it's now clear that the force wasn't insufficient. So why, other
> > than a desire to think badly of Rumsfeld, do you believe in the view
> > you state above?
>
> I don't know about K-Mac, but I think the fact that our forces had so
> much trouble protecting their supply lines early in the war lends
> credence to the claims, made by both the ground commanders in the field
> and by folks like retired military officer Ralph Peters[1] (who says
> that Rumsfeld's civilian advisors claimed that fewer than 10,000 combat
> troops would be needed) that Rumsfeld let wishful thinking dominate his
> planning.
They didn't have "so much trouble"--judged by the fact that they never
ran out of supplies, and were able to effectively win the war quite
fast. And they did so in spite of lacking a division in the North, which
they had reason (not, as it turned out, adequate reason) to think the
Turks would let through.
It seems to come down to "some people say that Rumsfeld thought a small
force would do it, but there isn't any evidence." Would you find that
kind of argument convincing if it were for a conclusiion you didn't want
to believe?
Mark Atwood
>
> The real test is ahead. If everything works out, it won't be due to Bush
> and cronies, it will be due to the rest of the world
The rest of the world can learn the lesson taught by the little red hen.
They didn't want to come to the planting, the sowing, the reaping, the
threshing, the grinding, the mixing, or the baking.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Mark Atwood
> word spread fast, and the fear of reprisals that was holding the bulk
> uniforms off and went home to grab what they can, while they can.
And from what I saw on today's The Daily Show, it looked like most of
what they grabbed (out of local government buildings) were clerical
chairs and office supplies.
Which, as the host pointed out, means that we've won. :)
Mark Atwood
> brunt of the hatreds, not that many of them probably deserve it.
> The generals and high level Baathists generally have the wealth
> and connections to flee the country to someplace that won't
> ask questions.
The really rich ones will go to France, and the not as rich ones to
Saudi Arabia, probably.
Mark Atwood
>
> I had (and have) deep reservations about the war, but none of them were about
> whether or not Saddam Hussein deserved removal. They were about what happens
> next. I'm still worried about what happens next, and after that.
All the sorts of "what happens next" that are to be worried about,
still would be "what happens next" things to worry about whether the
war went off or not.
Therefore, the happening or not of the war has little to nothing to do
with worrying about "what happens next".
Mark Atwood
> On Wed, 09 Apr 2003 21:27:12 GMT, David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com>
> wrote:
>
> >But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> >chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> >obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
> I wonder how the Iraqis will feel about us when they're not really
> liberated, they become a chattel-state of the US.
There are far far worse fates then coming under the strong influence
of the US.
Having your sons disappeared, your daughters raped, and your husband
broken, because someone suspected you of not being "loyal" are amoung
them.
Mark Atwood
> >
> >Who said that? Google is not being helpful on this.
>
> Ulrika O'Brien. She was talking about the intentional murder of 4
> million (!) civilians.
I await her response.
Karen Lofstrom
David Friedman wrote:
> It's hard to find out if your view of the world is correct when you set
> up your predictions so that they cannot be falsified, whatever happens.
I see what you mean.
Attempts to steer Iraqi government positions and business opportunities to
cronies, if exposed and blocked, would be public. So if there's a string
of these things, one would be justified, I think, in saying that the
Bushistas are trying to get rich off the war they started.
We've already had two such attempts, AFAIK.
1) Rumsfeld's buddy Chalebi being put forward as a possible Fearless
Leader. Publicity about his Jordanian conviction may have scotched that.
2) Hasn't a construction contract already been awarded to Halliburton,
Cheney's old firm?
There's always the possibility of the corruption being *successfully*
hidden -- but if I dwell on that too much, I suppose it's tinfoil hat
time. (The Masons really control everything, but they're so powerful that
no one knows it!). More likely that a few people will ferret it out, and
then be ignored by the mainstream press.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------
Um, mee too, add me to the list, please send me the n3kk1d
jp3gs of the 5hr0ud 0v tur1n. -- wednsday
David Bilek
>In article <ddfr-00937C.2...@sea-read.news.verio.net>,
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <X%3la.391564$3D1.212288@sccrnsc01>,
>> K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
>>
>> > Actually, I think it's a bit of revisonism to say that things have
>> > gone as the administration predicted. I am convinced that Rumsfeld,
>> > in particular, expected us to be able to do it faster with less.
>>
>> What's your evidence for that?
>>
>> Various people, a week or so back, were arguing that the Iraqis had
>> somehow suckered the U.S. into attacking with insufficient force, and
>> blaming Rumsfeld for falling into their trap--I remember in
>> particular a post by Rebecca Ore suggesting that.
>
>I don't remember that, but I don't read all of everything here, and I
>disagree with Rebecca a whole lot. It is clear to me that the force
>Rumsfeld originally allocated was insufficient, and that the force that
>he later added -- covering up the mistake by calling it a "rolling
>start" -- turned out to be sufficient.
>
Um. The follow-on forces aren't in Iraq yet. So far as I am aware,
virtually all of the forces presently in Iraq we're in theater before
the start of hostilities.
The 4th ID is still being unloaded in Kuwait and probably won't even
partially cross into Iraq for at least 2 weeks.
So I'm not sure what force you think Rumsfeld later added unless
you're referring to the initial battle plan that was debated and
rejected months and months ago.
-David
David Bilek
>David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> writes:
>> >
>> >Who said that? Google is not being helpful on this.
>>
>> Ulrika O'Brien. She was talking about the intentional murder of 4
>> million (!) civilians.
>
>I await her response.
I don't think Ulrika reads RASFF much these days.
-David
K-Mac
You might try asking an even-handed question--you know, the kind that
doesn't have a Swipe or a Gotcha built into it--if you're really
seeking calm and thoughtful dialogue.
I don't have a "desire to think badly of Rumsfeld," but the prejudice
in the question tells me a lot about how you would hear any answer I
might offer. So I'm going to go to bed, instead.
Daniel R. Reitman
wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 01:53:24 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz
><rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>They danced in the streets when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan.
>Let's repeat that, and then elaborate:
>They danced in the streets in Afghanistan when the Taliban fell.
>And a year later, the Taliban are the strongest rebel force against
>the US puppet government, because the US puppet government is propped
>up by the thugs who so brutalized the Afghan people that they welcomed
>the Taliban in the mid-1990s.
And the aid that the world promised went undelivered.
Dan, ad nauseam
Daniel R. Reitman
wrote:
>. . . .
>We've already had two such attempts, AFAIK.
>1) Rumsfeld's buddy Chalebi being put forward as a possible Fearless
>Leader. Publicity about his Jordanian conviction may have scotched that.
The fact that he's been out of the country for 40+ years and probably
has no poiltical legitimacy in Iraq is a more significant issue.
>2) Hasn't a construction contract already been awarded to Halliburton,
>Cheney's old firm?
>. . . .
One of its subsidiaries has the contract for cleaning up well fires.
Halliburton itself is officially out of the running for general
contracts, but not subcontracts, and it is not clear whether that
disqualification was voluntary or involuntary.
Dan, ad nauseam
Johan Anglemark
Mgr") san airteagal <00A1E24F...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>:
>Mark Atwood ><m...@pobox.com> writes:
>>Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> writes:
>>>
>>> The next test is going to be of the antiwar movement, as the
>>> man/woman in the street interviews with Iraqis saying, "What took
>>> you so long?" and "Why did you even listen to those people?" become
>>> commonplace.
>>>
>>> I expect that the antiwar movement will flunk.
>>
>>Their response will be a mix of total unresponsiveness, complaints
>>that the Iraqis are being propagandized by the occupation forces (a
>>complaint I am *already* seeing regarding the cities the UK and US
>>forces have already taken), and "la la la I can't hear you!".
>
>I had (and have) deep reservations about the war, but none of them were
>about whether or not Saddam Hussein deserved removal. They were about
>what happens next. I'm still worried about what happens next, and
>after that.
My worst fears about the number of dead during the fighting were wrong. I
am immensely grateful for that. My fears that the outcome of this will be
an increased long-term level of Islamistic terrorism with a corresponding
number of dead Americans/Westerners and decreased civil liberties in the
USA cannot be properly assessed before another five or ten years have
passed.
I dearly hope I'm wrong there as well.
-j
--
Kom och träffa Alastair Reynolds och Ken MacLeod!
Swecon 2003 - Upsala SF-möte X
Uppsala Sweden, 15-17/Aug/2003
http://sfweb.dang.se/2003.html
Niall McAuley
> I _saw_ the predictions (or if not
> predictions, expressed fears) of a "quagmire" in Iraq. Of
> Vietnam-style stalemates, of no possibility of taking Baghdad without
> either horrific casualties in house-to-house fighting or
> carpet-bombing the city like Dresden.
For example:
Niall McAuley wrote:
>"Graydon" <o...@uniserve.com> wrote in message news:slrnb1v6l...@hunding.localdomain...
>> I don't think you're going to take Baghdad this time around. I think
>> you're going to cut it off logistically and wait for everyone in it to
>> die.
>I'd guess that by the time US troops reach Baghdad there will be no sign
>of resistance: Saddam and Co. will be absent and folks will dance in the
>streets.
I am quite prepared to admit that I was wrong, in that some stiff militia
resistance remains.
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es.invalid]
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU ("Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr") writes:
>>
>> I had (and have) deep reservations about the war, but none of them were about
>> whether or not Saddam Hussein deserved removal. They were about what happens
>> next. I'm still worried about what happens next, and after that.
>
>All the sorts of "what happens next" that are to be worried about,
>still would be "what happens next" things to worry about whether the
>war went off or not.
>
>Therefore, the happening or not of the war has little to nothing to do
>with worrying about "what happens next".
Uh, no. I mean "what happens next" in the senses of: will this encourage
Wolfowitz and other New American Century people in their expressed desire
for a US that runs the world and prevents competitors from arising? Will
we do a better job of reconstruction than we did in Afghanistan? (We
wouldn't have bought that job without having the war, and we're entirely
capable of screwing it up. We apparently both want to change Iraq into a
representative democracy and get out in three months. MacArthur's amazing
job on Japan took seven years, didn't it?) Will our actually making a
preemptive invasion (instead of just talking about it) (a) serve as
precedent for other countries to do it (b) serve as precedent for us to
keep doing it even if the WMD justification for this one doesn't emerge?
Will our smashing a sovereign Arab government make us more implacable
enemies in the Arab world?
Those are all questions that would be moot if the war had not happened.
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
===============================================================================
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>In article <ddfr-C1E23C.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>,
>David Friedman wrote:
>
>> It's hard to find out if your view of the world is correct when you set
>> up your predictions so that they cannot be falsified, whatever happens.
>
>I see what you mean.
>
>Attempts to steer Iraqi government positions and business opportunities to
>cronies, if exposed and blocked, would be public. So if there's a string
>of these things, one would be justified, I think, in saying that the
>Bushistas are trying to get rich off the war they started.
>
>We've already had two such attempts, AFAIK.
>
>1) Rumsfeld's buddy Chalebi being put forward as a possible Fearless
>Leader. Publicity about his Jordanian conviction may have scotched that.
>
>2) Hasn't a construction contract already been awarded to Halliburton,
>Cheney's old firm?
My understanding is that what they got (without going through a bidding
process) was a contract to put out the oil fires. While that looked darn bad
to me, it's at least colourable that this was an emergency measure, that it was
something that would appropriately go to a big oil services company, and that
there just aren't that many big oil services companies, and considering that
this is an administration full of oilmen, whichever one you used would be
connected to _somebody_. [I don't believe that for a minute, if you must know,
but it's at least a colourable argument and I don't have a rejoinder for it.]
For whatever reason, a US-AID spokesman announced that Halliburton wouldn't
be considered for construction contracts in rebuilding Iraq. (This might be
because of the general "ah-ha gotcha!" response to the first contract, or
it might not.) In any case, I think Bechtel is already putting on its napkin
and sharpening its knife and fork.
>There's always the possibility of the corruption being *successfully*
>hidden -- but if I dwell on that too much, I suppose it's tinfoil hat
>time. (The Masons really control everything, but they're so powerful that
>no one knows it!). More likely that a few people will ferret it out, and
>then be ignored by the mainstream press.
Yeah. And people who read the well-documented story in _Mother Jones_ and
believe it will have their believing it taken as evidence of their own
crackpottery and proof that nothing they say should be taken seriously.
Kip Williams
> David Joseph Greenbaum <dj...@cornell.edu> wrote:
>>Do you think that other wars will be easy - and therefore desirable -
>>because this one looked routine yesterday, and today, after the regime
>>collapsed?
>
> Nothing in my post suggests so, but feel free to pull things out of
> the air if you like.
Looks like he asked you a question. Feel free to answer it, or not.
--
--Kip (Williams) ...at members.cox.net/kipw
"Why, what a splendid trifle, young man! You and your friends may
travel for free!" "Cor!" "Hooray for Tommy!" --Tommy and his Trifle
Rob Hansen
wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 01:53:24 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz
><rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>They danced in the streets when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan.
>
>Let's repeat that, and then elaborate:
>
>They danced in the streets in Afghanistan when the Taliban fell.
>
>And a year later, the Taliban are the strongest rebel force against
>the US puppet government, because the US puppet government is propped
>up by the thugs who so brutalized the Afghan people that they welcomed
>the Taliban in the mid-1990s.
Yep. I don't think a return to power by the Taliban is at all
implausible, actually. I really, really, hope this doesn't happen.
--
Rob Hansen
=============================================
Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
Bernard Peek
<dbi...@attbi.com> writes
>>I don't remember that, but I don't read all of everything here, and I
>>disagree with Rebecca a whole lot. It is clear to me that the force
>>Rumsfeld originally allocated was insufficient, and that the force that
>>he later added -- covering up the mistake by calling it a "rolling
>>start" -- turned out to be sufficient.
>>
>
>Um. The follow-on forces aren't in Iraq yet. So far as I am aware,
>virtually all of the forces presently in Iraq we're in theater before
>the start of hostilities.
>
>The 4th ID is still being unloaded in Kuwait and probably won't even
>partially cross into Iraq for at least 2 weeks.
>
>So I'm not sure what force you think Rumsfeld later added unless
>you're referring to the initial battle plan that was debated and
>rejected months and months ago.
There were press reports in the UK that the US had revised its plans and
decided to double the number of troops required. Personally I don't see
anything contentious in that. It seems perfectly reasonable to revise
military strategy once you get some feedback from the field.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
www.diversebooks.com: SF & Computing book reviews and more.....
In search of cognoscenti
Manny Olds
> I think this war is an awful fiasco.
> It was hastily contrived in a bed of lies,
Just in case you are planning to recycle any of this, I think that
"hastily conceived" would work better with the "bed of lies" metaphor.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
No nit too small
Bjørn Vermo
> lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) wrote:
>> In article <qo299vkir408eh524...@4ax.com>, David Bilek
>> wrote:
>>
>>> But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
>>> chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
>>> obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>>
>> We'll see how those people feel after a year of US occupation and crony
>> capitalism.
>>
>> The real test is ahead. If everything works out, it won't be due to Bush
>> and cronies, it will be due to the rest of the world and the US curbing
>> them. Fearless media scrutiny is crucial!
>
> This is part of my point. No matter how many predictions of doom
> prove to be wrong, the real test is always "ahead".
>
Declaring the war over may seem a bit premature. Your posting was earlier
than this, it seems:
Baghdad :: Paul Wood :: 1105GMT
The situation in the city generally is not quite secure yet. We heard only
a few seconds ago, the sound of a large explosion.
We've been hearing the sound of artillery this morning and there has been
continuous engagement at the mosque.
We've seen the Americans blocking off certain roads with vehicles so
obviously they don't feel entirely secure here.
I do not think there is all that much quagmire to get stuck in in Iraq, the
terrain does not favour a protracted Asian-style jungle-based insurgence.
There may be pockets of quicksand to get stuck in, though, and it is
noteworthy that people who had fled from Saddam were talking of going home
from their safe haven to fight.
Not because they were not extremely eager to get rid of Saddam, but because
nobody likes to see their country invaded by foreigners no matter what
lofty reasons they have.
The real effects will not become apparent until the end of the decade, when
the children who saw their relatives blown up have turned into trained
avengers. That looks like the recurring pattern in terrorism - it usually
peaks around a decade after the event which inspired hatred in the
terrorists.
It is also likely that the US economy will be able to plod on for many
years as long as there is nobody else in the world ready to step up as the
new financial superpower.
Still, it is quite possible that the war is going to do as much long-term
damage to the US economy as it has already done to the US reputation.
When the world stops buying CocaCola and Big Macs, that is the
international opinion voting with their wallet. Never mind that it probably
hurts the local companies first, they will eventually find another and more
popular franchise.
Time will show if the downturn in sales of high-profile US brands is a fad
or going to last.
It is unlikely that we will know which side was most wrong in their
predictions about this war before at least five years have passed.
--
Bjørn Vermo
O Deus
> This is part of my point. No matter how many predictions of doom
> prove to be wrong, the real test is always "ahead".
>
> At what point do the naysayers say, "Ok, I was wrong on virtually all
> counts."?
Never. Never ever. In fact look for the anti-war crowd to start taking
responsibility for the war by citing their political pressure as the
reason for low civilian casualty races and the failure of any of their
doomsaying to materialize.
This is a great piece of circular logic since it essentially allows
the people who were claiming that X would happen that X didn't happen
only because of their protests and petitions. It's the same mechanism
as the cult leaders who predict the end of the world a month from now
and when it doesn't happen, claim that their spirtual intervention is
the only thing that saved the world.
O Deus
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:37:32 GMT, David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com>
> wrote:
>
> >The protesting crowds don't live in Baghdad. They were wrong about
> >the results of the war, and the last few weeks are showing it.
>
> What makes you think they were wrong? For many of them, having
> started this war at all was bad. It'll be good if it really ends this
> quickly, but it was bad to start with.
No surprise there, considering that significant portions of America
think that WW2 and the Civil War were terrible mistakes too. But if we
lived in their world, Europe would still be part of the Third Reich,
America would be OBSF Abe Lincoln in McDonald's and Saddam would be
slaughtering anyone his thugs suspected of being disloyal to him on a
daily basis.
Isn't it nice that we don't live in their world?
O Deus
> On Wed, 09 Apr 2003 21:27:12 GMT, David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com>
> wrote:
>
> >But I wonder what those people think as the the crowds of people
> >chanting anti-Saddam, pro-US, and Pro-George Dubya Bush slogans,
> >obviously jubilant to finally be free of Saddam Hussein.
>
> liberated, they become a chattel-state of the US.
All in all it would still be an improvement over the way anti-war
activists would have had them living under Saddam. But since we're
living in the real world and not Noam Chomsky's alternate universe,
fortunately they won't have to live as anybody's chattel now.
Nancy Lebovitz
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr <win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>
>I had (and have) deep reservations about the war, but none of them were about
>whether or not Saddam Hussein deserved removal. They were about what happens
>next. I'm still worried about what happens next, and after that.
>
guy (not everyone thought he should be forcibly removed, but a fair
number thought it was ok if the UN did it), but that the Iraqis were
so anti-American that an American removal would be unwelcome. This
has not been born out.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>In article <00A1E24F...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>,
>Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr <win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>I had (and have) deep reservations about the war, but none of them were about
>>whether or not Saddam Hussein deserved removal. They were about what happens
>>next. I'm still worried about what happens next, and after that.
>>
>The usual anti-war opinions that I heard were that Hussein was a very bad
>guy (not everyone thought he should be forcibly removed, but a fair
>number thought it was ok if the UN did it), but that the Iraqis were
>so anti-American that an American removal would be unwelcome. This
>has not been born out.
Apparently I didn't have the usual anti-war opinions, although I certainly
heard a bunch of other people who shared at least some of the ones I did hold.
-- Alan
--
Nancy Lebovitz
>wrote:
>
>>and the cries of "millions of people killed by 'Shock
>>and Awe'" have been tested, and proven false.
>
>"Shock and Awe" appears to have failed. There is no evidence that the
>initial Shock and Awe bombing had any substanital effect on the morale
>of the Iraqi troops. The *continuing* bombing with precision bombs had
Did it significantly damage the Iraqi command and control system?
Is there any way to distinguish the effects of Shock and Awe [1]
from the effects of later bombing?
>a tremendous military effect, but the much-heralded two-day barrage of
>precision bombs--the "if you have to ask if it's 'Shock and Awe', it's
>not 'Shock and Awe'" bombing--didn't result in the "Hiroshima effect",
>which is to say, nearly immediate capitulation in the face of
>overwhelming force.
>
>In 2003, the US military did not follow in the pattern of the 1991 war
>of targeting civilian infrastructure in a manner which would lead to
>humanitarian catastrophe on an unprescedented scale. I did not believe
>the claims that they would not; I was wrong, and I'm not chagrined to
>say that. I can think of few times when I have been as glad to be
>wrong as when I thought that my country's army would target a civilian
>population to create a humanitarian disaster.
Why did you think it would be a humanitarian disaster?
>However, that mercy might actually have worked against the "Hiroshima
>effect": Baghdad *wasn't* leveled, only certain buildings. People were
>climbing to their rooftops to watch the bombing. It had military
>effect, unmistakably, but not the morale effect that was sought.
>
>On the issue of the civilian infrastructure, it remains to be seen
>whether the US can manage to keep the people of Baghdad, and the UK
>the people of Basra, from starvation and death by thirst; right now,
>both cities are without civilization--no power, no water, no rule of
I get the impression that the power and water weren't targeted or
destroyed. It's a repair job, not anything like total rebuilding.
It's urgent, but describing the people in those cities as being
without civilization is way too strong.
>law. I predict that both cities will come through with relatively
They don't have rule of law, but I'm impressed with how well rule
of custom has worked so far--apparently there's been looting of
government offices, but very little of stores (I haven't heard
of houses being looted at all), and there's been talk of revenge
killings, but no reported revenge killings. (Source: NPR). They
will need a more established system, but things aren't desperate.
I'm wondering how long it will take for the stuff looted from
the government offices to start showing up in the markets.
>little death but a lot of privation after a lot of hard work from the
>US army, and that this lack of death will be used by some people as an
>argument that humanitarian considerations were not important.
Nancy Lebovitz
=?iso-8859-15?Q?Bj=F8rn_Vermo?= <b...@bigblue.no> wrote:
>David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>I do not think there is all that much quagmire to get stuck in in Iraq, the
>terrain does not favour a protracted Asian-style jungle-based insurgence.
>There may be pockets of quicksand to get stuck in, though, and it is
>noteworthy that people who had fled from Saddam were talking of going home
>from their safe haven to fight.
>Not because they were not extremely eager to get rid of Saddam, but because
>nobody likes to see their country invaded by foreigners no matter what
>lofty reasons they have.
Actually, it would seem that quite a few Iraqis are pleased that their
country was invaded by foreigners. The issue isn's exactly idealism,
but that the Iraqis had a really conspicuously bad government and
the invaders have shown considerable care to do relatively little
damage.
>The real effects will not become apparent until the end of the decade, when
>the children who saw their relatives blown up have turned into trained
>avengers. That looks like the recurring pattern in terrorism - it usually
>peaks around a decade after the event which inspired hatred in the
>terrorists.
>
>It is also likely that the US economy will be able to plod on for many
>years as long as there is nobody else in the world ready to step up as the
>new financial superpower.
>Still, it is quite possible that the war is going to do as much long-term
>damage to the US economy as it has already done to the US reputation.
>When the world stops buying CocaCola and Big Macs, that is the
>international opinion voting with their wallet. Never mind that it probably
>hurts the local companies first, they will eventually find another and more
>popular franchise.
I really think that a lot depends on how things work out in Iraq. If
Iraq becomes a reasonably good place to live, I don't think huge numbers
of people are going to hate the US more than they already did.
One of the costs that concerns me a lot is that one of the consequences
of the war on terrorism is that the US has become a much less safe
place for foreigners--and foreigners are good for us, both economically
and culturally.
>Time will show if the downturn in sales of high-profile US brands is a fad
>or going to last.
>It is unlikely that we will know which side was most wrong in their
>predictions about this war before at least five years have passed.
>
>--
>Bjørn Vermo
Nancy Lebovitz
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>In article <ddfr-C1E23C.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>,
>David Friedman wrote:
>
>> It's hard to find out if your view of the world is correct when you set
>> up your predictions so that they cannot be falsified, whatever happens.
>
>I see what you mean.
>
>Attempts to steer Iraqi government positions and business opportunities to
>cronies, if exposed and blocked, would be public. So if there's a string
>of these things, one would be justified, I think, in saying that the
>Bushistas are trying to get rich off the war they started.
>
>We've already had two such attempts, AFAIK.
On the other hand, if the attempts are successfully blocked and
Iraq isn't looted, then I think we're looking at something much
less than a disaster.
One good thing that I think the US will get too much credit for
is that the sanctions are getting lifted--if there's no governmental
or military disaster in Iraq, then life should get much better there
just from access to trade.
Nancy Lebovitz
Dave O'Neill <da...@NOSPAMatomicrazor.com> wrote:
>
>This war "evolved" to being about the poor down trodden Iraqi people when
>our glorious leaders ran out of other excuses. It's a good reason, but its
>not one to get morally superior about when we have no intention of dealling
>with other even more loathsome dictators who haven't threatened the west.
>The death toll in the Congo for the civilian population is now higher than
Presumably, the Congo would be a lot more difficult, perhaps unmanagably
so. Not only is it a jungle, but I should think it's much harder to
pacify a many-sided war zone than to conquer a dictatorship.
>the civilian death toll of the allies in WW2, 6 million people who voted MDC
>are being starved in Zimbabwe. These people are not going to be liberated.
Rebecca Ore
> In article <X%3la.391564$3D1.212288@sccrnsc01>,
> K-Mac <alter...@att.net> wrote:
>
> > Actually, I think it's a bit of revisonism to say that things have
> > gone as the administration predicted. I am convinced that Rumsfeld, in
> > particular, expected us to be able to do it faster with less.
>
> What's your evidence for that?
>
> Various people, a week or so back, were arguing that the Iraqis had
> somehow suckered the U.S. into attacking with insufficient force, and
> blaming Rumsfeld for falling into their trap--I remember in particular a
> post by Rebecca Ore suggesting that. But it's now clear that the force
> wasn't insufficient. So why, other than a desire to think badly of
> Rumsfeld, do you believe in the view you state above?
I think the Iraqis trolled about surrendering en masse the first days
of the fighting because they knew their only chance was to get the US
into the country. The "surrender" of the brigade got prominent
mention early. I think there was considerable trolling done by
Iraqis.
The fighting before the collapse of Bagdad was possibly to give cover
for Baathists getting their families and themselves to safety.
My further guess is that Saddam had hoped that more suicidal
terrorists from other parts would show up so his troops could be
spared. Didn't happen in the numbers he expected.
--
Rebecca Ore
http://mysite.verizon.net/rebecca.ore
John Lorentz
wrote:
>Predictably, video of cheering Iraqis dancing in the streets and
>destroying statues of Saddam is getting lots of air time today. Three
>weeks into the war, the US and UK have captured most of Northern,
>Western, and Southern Iraq with only pockets of resistance left in
>Baghdad.
>
>So far every single one of the predictions of doom we heard from
>people opposed to the war have proven to be baseless and, well,
>completely wrong.
And those of us who said the fighting would end with dozens, if not
hundreds, of dead civilians?
Even Fox News admits that happened, let alone any unbiased news
source.
And where's all the evidence of massive stores of "weapons of mass
destruction" that Shrub and his people said they'd find?
--
John
Lucy Kemnitzer
<r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 01:38:04 -0400, Kevin J. Maroney <k...@panix.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 01:53:24 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz
>><rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>They danced in the streets when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan.
>>
>>Let's repeat that, and then elaborate:
>>
>>They danced in the streets in Afghanistan when the Taliban fell.
>>
>>And a year later, the Taliban are the strongest rebel force against
>>the US puppet government, because the US puppet government is propped
>>up by the thugs who so brutalized the Afghan people that they welcomed
>>the Taliban in the mid-1990s.
>
>Yep. I don't think a return to power by the Taliban is at all
>implausible, actually. I really, really, hope this doesn't happen.
Hamid Karzai's brother has been quoted to say that when people demand
that he explain how his government is better than the Taliban, he can
only say that they're not taking their sons away to fight in the front
lines.
In large parts of Afghanistan, daily life is even worse than it was
two years ago, including more violent.
Lucy Kemnitzer