March 31, 2006
This is a test post
This is a test post. Nothing to see here . . . move along . . . go about your business . . . these aren't the droids you're looking for . . .
Written by Chester at 7:41 AM | Link | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
March 24, 2006
So this is how bad my spam problem is . . .
Checking sitemeter just now, I see that someone came here to Adventures via a Google Search for ho chi minh gay sex. This is because I once did a piece about the Ho Chi Minh Trail vs the Euphrates Line of Communications and then at some point some damned spammer came along and comment bombed me with gay sex crap, along, of course, with online poker, and prescription drugs over the internet.
Comments are still closed. [Sigh.]
Fortunately a tech-savvy friend is going to help me with this shortly . . .
Written by Chester at 7:17 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
What happens if Kim kicks the bucket?
A good friend, who is British, but has lived in Japan for years, emails me this:
Thought of you when I picked up the following info. Watched a Japanese TV program on Kim Jong Il and his rapidly declining health the other day. Apparently he has chronic diabetes (would fit with his lifestyle)and some form of heart disease (runs in the family), I had noticed that he looks like hell in recent photos, and is aging rapidly. Seems one of the reasons for his recent trip to China was to get some medical treatment there that he couldn't get in NK. You could tell from the photos etc that his health has declined markedly in the last 3 yrs, he's lost a bunch of weight, has "old" marks on his face, has swelling in his limbs, has lost a lot of hair and his eye sight has declined a lot (you can tell by the thickness and type of his glasses). I'd say the chances of him dying suddenly (like his dad) are pretty good. What would happen then? He has been trying to bring up one of his kids as his successor but the kid is still in his 20s and apparently has no military experience.You heard it here first. Hmmmm . . . There are way too many variables on that little peninsula for me to be of much good here, but my guess is one of the following scenarios if Kim's life is coming to an end:Thought you'd like to know the latest! Hopefully I'll be moving out of Taepong Dong range before the cookie crumbles.
1. Last-ditch gotterdammerung-ish "take them all with me" tactic on his part
2. A coup from within, but whether by reformers or hardliners, who's to know . . .
3. Regime collapse. Rather than "coup"ing, those who might have chosen a coup choose to bail instead and sit on a beach earning 20% for the rest of their lives. Signs of this would be: "dissident" activity begins to go unpunished; internal security forces choose to no longer enforce party doctrine; refugees stream south and into China; mass desertions from the army take place;
What probably won't happen:
1. Pre-emptive US military action; except perhaps on a very limited scale if we suspect they will lose control of their nukes, but I doubt we have the means to make a judgment like that.
2. A "color" revolution of some kind; the NKs are not nearly exposed enough to the rest of the world to have developed the intestinal fortitude to attempt something a la Ukraine or Lebanon.
In a collapse scenario, US and/or South Korean military action is possible for a stability/humanitarian mission. A dark horse candidate might be some sort of humanitarian intervention by the Chinese, who might look to gain goodwill on the peninsula for long term use; this scenario assumes a semi-expeditionary capability on the part of China's military that may not exist; of course they did manage to cross the Yalu just fine 56 years ago . . . they've been basing troops along that border for at least the past year or so . . .
Whatever happens, I think North Korea will still be very poor, and not very free, for a long time, though there may be some moments to give us (and them) encouragement . . . kind of like when the wall came down in Berlin.
Written by Chester at 6:53 PM | Link | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Why didn't Turkey let us open a northern front in 2003?
That's the question Wretchard poses in Belmont Club today. Here is my response:
As to your question, how this debacle occurred . . . My guess, and that is all it is, is that the issue of staging/basing rights in Turkey for the 4th ID is one of those things that falls in between departmental seams in the makeup of our foreign policy apparatus.Was it a State function or a Defense function to convice the Turks to let us have our way? If memory serves, both Powell and Wolfowitz made trips to Turkey in the Jan/Feb/Mar timeframe. Who was ultimately responsible? Was everyone on the same page, making the same kinds of overtures to the Turks? or was it a case of an issue -- everyone who's worked in a large organization has observed this phenomenon -- where both were in charge and therefore neither took the initiative, knowing that they had the other to blame if it went south . . .
I think this is an enduring seam in the execution of our policies: the separate chains of command and institutions between the warmakers and the dealmakers quashes the ability to align the execution of policy except at the highest level -- the President. This seam definitely persisted for the entire lifespan of the CPA as well after the fall of Baghdad . . .
I agree, W, that only in retrospect can we say that 4th ID may have made a difference in the Sunni triangle, but I'm not so sure it would have. When we did the big op-pause about 7 days into the invasion, in order to "clean up the Fedayeen in our rear" (as ordered by LtGen McKiernan of CFLCC), the 1st MarDiv's intelligence section's opinion was that such resistance would collapse upon our seizure of Baghdad, and therefore the best way to clean it up was to press on. But somebody higher up wanted to stop, so we did.
This flies in the face of the assertions in Cobra II that Saddam's regime had two centers of gravity: the regime apparatus in Baghdad, AND the spirited insurgency fighters with a spiritual heart in the Sunni triangle (or some such).
I don't think that's an accurate observation. I think it was true that Baghdad was the center of gravity, and therefore the key node of the entire regime's system of power.
I think the real problem was that we dithered too long after Baghdad fell. That dithering was the result of the same seams between diplomats and generals mentioned above wrt to Turkey. Warfare is about creating opportunities and then exploiting them. For the creating part, I give us an A+. For exploitation, a B-.
One wonders if this performance might not be inherent to democracies. We worry so much about whether to go to war, and why, and why shouldn't we, and how else could we, and is there a precedent like this, and what will the French think, and how will people feel, that in the end, this makes the initial action the source of our mental focus, and not the second and third-order effects which is where exploitation -- and victory -- lies.
Written by Chester at 6:40 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
March 23, 2006
The President's Sergeant Major
A few days ago, the case was made here that the President, if not the Secretary of Defense, needs a "directed telescope" to help him understand ground events in Iraq, and to refute, counter and clarify whatever hash is out in the evening news in the US:
While in Napoleon's time the directed telescope was one of two parts that were reinforcing -- regular reporting being the other -- in our day, there would be three parts: regular reporting, the directed telescope, and the press. The telescopes would be a powerful tool to have in the arsenal of a Defense Secretary or President in need of further independent information on the status of forces or situations. And, in my conception, the telescopes might provide valuable information about the conduct of a given battle or campaign. Such information could be priceless in engaging in the debate with the press described above. They might be composed of a couple of colonels, some independent civilians (West himself, or Robert Kaplan might be good examples, since this is similar to the roles they've fashioned for themselves already, albeit independently), and even a physically fit diplomat or two. Combined with robust archiving, search, image retrieval, and public-speaking capabilities inherent in the combat pundit office (perhaps "office" is the wrong term, as it should be informal, small, and not legislatively created), the National Command Authorities might be much better able to determine the status of all kinds of events, and use that information to refute inaccurate media memes (and be more informed in general as well).
Several new stories serve to clarify this idea a bit. First, Peggy Noonan has an excellent piece in today's Opinionjournal about the distance of elites from the masses, and the resulting cause for error in judgment:
The leaders of the day did not know that terrible violence was coming because of what I think is a classic and structural problem of leadership: It distances. Each of these men was to varying degrees detached from facts on the ground. They were by virtue of their position and accomplishments an elite. They no longer knew what was beating within the hearts of those who lived quite literally on the ground. Nehru, Mountbatten, Jinnah--they well knew that Muslims feared living under the rule of the Hindus, that Hindus feared living under Muslims, that Sikhs feared both. But the leaders did not know the fear that was felt was so deep, so constitutional, so passionate. They did not know it would find its expression in a savagery so wild and widespread.So how to correct for this as much as possible? Keeping the idea of a "directed telescope" in mind, now see this exchange between Hugh Hewitt and Michael Yon, warblogger extraordinaire:Each of these leaders had been removed by his own history from facts on the ground. "Elitism" doesn't always speak of where you went to school or what caste, as it were, you came from. You can wind up one of the elites simply by rising. Simply by being separated for a certain amount of time from those you seek to lead.
People who know most intimately, and through most recent experience, what is happening on the ground, and in the hearts of men, are usually not in the inner councils. They have not fought their way or earned their way in yet. Sometimes they're called in and listened to, at least for a moment, but in the end they tend to be ignored. They're nobodies, after all.
This is a problem with government and governing bodies--with the White House, Downing Street, with State Department specialists, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and West Point, too. It is not so much a matter of fault as it is structural. The minute you rise to govern you become another step removed from the lives of those you govern. Which means you become removed from reality.
Hugh Hewitt: . . . Michael Yon, when you do go back, which part of the country are you headed to? Are you going to embed with another unit like the Infantry division you were with a year ago?Now tie it all together. You can see it, yes? What the President needs is his own Sergeant Major - a directed telescope on the battlefield reporting directly to him. Not his staff, not the White House Spokesman or the Press Pool. The chain goes straight to The Man himself.Michael Yon: Well, I've already contacted Sergeant Major Mellinger, who's the top enlisted man in the theater, meaning he is the top enlisted man in Iraq. And he goes everywhere. I've been out with him twice before, and I call him the University of Iraq, because he seems to know everything that's going on. So I'd like to spend a couple of weeks with him, getting in-briefed again about the new state of the country, because he speaks very bluntly. And then after that, I'll go to probably where the action is. I tend to go to where our troops are seeing the most combat, but then I pop out sometimes, and go to the peaceful areas. But I want to know how our troops are doing.
This is not hard to envision. Grab any of a number of Sergeants Major out there who are now retired. They have made careers of making gut calls in all manner of odd situations. Grab a guy who used to be in Delta Force, or the 1st Marine Division SgtMaj. You could grab an officer if you preferred (ahem: my email address is in the sidebar), but if it was me, I'd have a senior enlisted man, the type who's harder than woodpecker lips. Whoever he is, he must be able to communicate very very very well. Then give him an armored four door humvee, a translator, and a couple of shooters to be a mini-brute squad. That's all he'll want if he's the kind I have in mind. He can always hop on a bird if needs to. Get him some nice equipment too -- a camera, a sat phone, etc.
Then set him loose. Tell him to go to whatever is interesting and report whatever he thinks necessary. Give him no format whatsoever. No timeframes whatsoever. Or, if you know of a particular operation that needs checking up on, send him there.
One more thing he needs: a little letter signed by POTUS that says, "This man may go wherever he wishes. Do not impede him." He can laminate that and put it in his vest and that's all he'll need for access.
The cost of all this is miniscule compared to the added channel of insight that the President would have to the events on the ground. He can then make better decisions, question his subordinates a little more pointedly, but most importantly, be very prepared to refute, clarify, and offer counternarratives to the press.
Written by Chester at 12:23 AM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
March 21, 2006
Three Years Ago
A staff officer war story if anyone is interested. I'm sure someone will write in and say, "How dare you do this, when the Division was fighting!" Trust me. If I could have been in the Division I would have been. I had emailed General Mattis' personal account the night the war started and told him if he ever needed any Provisional Rifle Platoon Commanders, I was his man . . . That is not a lie. The Comm-O watched me press the send button . . .
*****
Three years ago today (and I may be off a day or two) I was in a convoy on the way to Jalibah Airfield, soon to be renamed "Landing Support Area Viper." We arrived around 3am, circled the wagons in the area staked out for our battalion, then after a headcount, my three staff officer compadres and I all crashed in our Hummer.
Around 6 we rolled out, with a lot of aches and pains. It was a beautiful day: Sunny and not too hot. You could see for miles.
About one hour later, the sandstorm hit. You know, THE sandstorm. The one that meant "quagmire." What it really meant was, "Oh my god. We can't see anything." And that's the truth. So, being good staff officers, my three compatriots and I went into the battalion CP to see what was to be done. There we found that the storm was wreaking havoc on equipment, since the sand had even seeped into our DRASH tent, supposed to be pretty tightly sealed. Nothing was happening. No radio messages, no missions to plan, no engineering to do. So, the four of us went back and sat in our four-door humvee and watched the desert.
The desert can have an entrancing effect. Wind is an inherently isolating force and lengthens the space between those who are walking right next to you or standing a few feet away, because you can't hear them. And the wind never stops. So in a sense, you are always alone to some degree in the desert.
Back in the humvee we developed a rhythm. We sat inside and bullshitted for awhile. Then the S4, who had thrown a ton of old Seinfeld episodes on the hard-drive of his Toughbook, would crank one up and we'd watch that. Then a couple of us would doze off. I had a copy of Albert Hourani's "History of the Arab Peoples" nearby, so I got that out and plowed through about 50 pages. Every hour or so, one of us would walk the 30 yards back to the battalion command tent, and see if they needed us. "No," was the answer. We were surrounded by a couple of companies of Marines -- who had gotten there earlier than us and had time to dig in -- but they were invisible because the sand had largely covered them. Every couple of hours, someone would step out of the four-door to take a leak, then return promptly splattered with his own urine, as the storm made a miniature tornado out of it, no matter how one tried to shield oneself.
Suddenly, word spread around the perimeter: "There's movement!"
Then, over the radio, "Go to 100% security! There's a dismounted infantry company outside our lines!"
Wow! Something was about to happen! We had prepared for this: the Division's plan had referenced the fact that company-sized elements of enemy forces would be bypassed and we FSSG warriors might have to clean them up.
From the Humvee, one of us went back into the command tent to see what was up. The other three of us dusted off our weapons, checked our magazines, and sat tight. We were all 1st Lieutenants or Captains, and we did NOT want to be in the Command Center if something went down. How boring! We watched as Staff NCOs went from fighting hole to fighting hole, rousing their Marines, and putting them in a rough defensive posture. It's tough to know what to do as a staff officer in that case. You want to go out there and get down with them and dig your own hole. But that of course is impinging on the freedom of the younger guys whose turn it is to lead the Marines. Plus, just jumping out there and hopping in the lines at that point would have been very dumb because no one would have known who exactly you were. We could have organized our own Marines into a defense of sorts but, well, we were staff officers. We had no Marines. For these purposes, our clerks and intel analysts were given to the H&S company staff, who were organizing them. Digging in would have been a pretty pointless affair too, due to the sand . . . I would have liked it though. Others laughed at me because I carried an entrenching tool on my buttpack. "This is an engineer battalion! We have bulldozers, sir!" they'd say. But I was only following Rommel's advice. Always be prepared to dig. You never know when the artillery willl come.
There the Marines sat, for some time, weapons pointed outboard, 2 full companies in a very tight perimeter (given the terrain) because the wind was such an isolating factor. Too far apart and we could easily have a firefight break out on one end and the other not even know about it.
Half an hour passed. Then another half hour. My friend came back from the Command Center.
"It was a false alarm. There's a shepherd moving a flock out there." Given that this base had been bombed with cluster munitions from Gulf War One through the present, the locals were probably surprised to see it now practically sprouting with Marines . . .
The companies stood down and the Marines hunkered back into their holes. We did the same in our Humvee.
It had been dark all day, but now it got darker. Time to find a place to lay down for the night. Most of the Marines just stayed right in their holes. In the Division, General Mattis had emphasized that every man, from PFC to General, would have no better than the Lance Corporal's standard of living. That meant nothing more than sleeping bags all around.
The FSSG had had no such directive. So every Marine's arrangements were different. Our battalion had two-man tents for all the enlisted Marines, but had run out.
I despised this whole affair: if we didn't have enough of something, let's just do without it and all use sleep systems and isothermal mattresses only. Oh well, our leaders didn't see it that way, I suppose. The government had paid for two-man tents and cots, and so we were going to use them.
But nobody was going to set up a tent in the storm. We staff officers had cots, but no tents. Our plan had been to just set up our cots immediately outside the command center and sleep under the stars (and this is what we later did, though for a few days we commandeered an empty ISO container and lived in that).
But no way were we going to sleep outside on cots this night. So two of us decided to stay in the humvee. Not me though. After 36 straight hours in the damn thing, I had to move.
As it got dark, I grabbed my pack off the back of the truck and started poking around the area for somewhere reasonably shielded from the sand. A few minutes later, I discovered an empty trailer, next to the command tent. Looking inside, I saw that it was pretty clear and nobody had claimed it. I threw my stuff in and trotted back to tell the guys where I was. Then I went back, got in my bag, and tried to sleep.
A few minutes later, someone threw a helmet into the trailer and it landed on my groin. I cursed and threw it back at them. Whoever it was apologized and moved on.
Not long after that, I began to feel wetness on my face. It was now completely dark. I sat up and felt around my head. Wetness everywhere. Looking up I saw the problem, which was twofold: there was a hole in the top of the trailer and the canvas was flapping back and forth. And, it was now raining in addition to sanding (I don't know if that's a word, but it should be). So my head was in a puddle under the flap. I readjusted out of the water and fell back asleep. Not long later I felt things pelleting my body. Sitting up again, I saw that the sand was now mixing with the rain and large gobs of mud were flying through the hole in the canvas. I shifted again and tried to sleep again. It was a series of false starts and such all night.
In the morning, we awoke to a nice day again. Marines were wiping sand from each other. Star Wars sand people jokes were prominent everywhere one could hear.
I found the guys and we headed into the Command Tent. Soon the whole battalion was engaged in building Viper into an enormous logistics throughput point.
Such was the nature of the war for me: lots of time in the command tent, punctuated by bizarre encounters with the environment, and all the while a forlorn and diminishing hope to somehow get in the fight . . .
Well, that's what all this three-year anniversary stuff reminds me of. Not exactly the "is it worth it" crap is it?
Written by Chester at 10:41 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Three Years Ago
A staff officer war story if anyone is interested. I'm sure someone will write in and say, "How dare you do this, when the Division was fighting!" Trust me. If I could have been in the Division I would have been. I had emailed General Mattis' personal account the night the war started and told him if he ever needed any Provisional Rifle Platoon Commanders, I was his man . . . That is not a lie. The Comm-O watched me press the send button . . .
*****
Three years ago today (and I may be off a day or two) I was in a convoy on the way to Jalibah Airfield, soon to be renamed "Landing Support Area Viper." We arrived around 3am, circled the wagons in the area staked out for our battalion, then after a headcount, my three staff officer compadres and me all crashed in our Hummer.
Around 6 we rolled out, with a lot of aches and pains. It was a beautiful day: Sunny and not too hot. You could see for miles.
About one hour later, the sandstorm hit. You know, THE sandstorm. The one that meant "quagmire." What it really meant was, "Oh my god. We can't see anything." And that's the truth. So, being good staff officers, my three compatriots and I went into the battalion CP to see what was to be done. There we found that the storm was wreaking havoc on equipment, since the sand had even seeped into our DRASH tent, supposed to be pretty tightly sealed. Nothing was happening. No radio messages, no missions to plan, no engineering to do. So, the four of us went back and sat in our four-door humvee and watched the desert.
The desert can have an entrancing effect. Wind is an inherently isolating force and lengthens the space between those who are walking right next to you or standing a few feet away, because you can't hear them. And the wind never stops. So in a sense, you are always alone to some degree in the desert.
Back in the humvee we developed a rhythm. We sat inside and bullshitted for awhile. Then the S4, who had thrown a ton of old Seinfeld episodes on the hard-drive of his Toughbook, would crank one up and we'd watch that. Then a couple of us would doze off. I had a copy of Albert Hourani's "History of the Arab-Speaking Peoples" nearby, so I got that out and plowed through about 50 pages. Every hour or so, one of us would walk the 30 yards back to the battalion command tent, and see if they needed us. "No," was the answer. We were surrounded by a couple of companies of Marines -- who had gotten there earlier than us and had time to dig in -- but they were invisible because the sand had largely covered them. Every couple of hours, someone would step out of the four-door to take a leak, then return promptly splattered with his own urine, as the storm made a miniature tornado out of it, no matter how one tried to shield oneself.
Suddenly, word spread around the perimeter: "There's movement!"
Then, over the radio, "Go to 100% security! There's a dismounted infantry company outside our lines!"
Wow! Something was about to happen! We had prepared for this: the Division's plan had referenced the fact that company-sized elements of enemy forces would be bypassed and we FSSG warriors might have to clean them up.
From the Humvee, one of us went back into the command tent to see what was up. The other three of us dusted off our weapons, checked our magazines, and sat tight. We were all 1st Lieutenants or Captains, and we did NOT want to be in the Command Center if something went down. How boring! We watched as Staff NCOs went from fighting hole to fighting hole, rousing their Marines, and putting them in a rough defensive posture. It's tough to know what to do as a staff officer in that case. You want to go out there and get down with them and dig your own hole. But that of course is impinging on the freedom of the younger guys whose turn it is to lead the Marines. Plus, just jumping out there and hopping in the lines at that point would have been very dumb because no one would have known who exactly you were. We could have organized our own Marines into a defense of sorts but, well, we were staff officers. We had no Marines. For these purposes, our clerks and intel analysts were given to the H&S company staff, who were organizing them. Digging in would have been a pretty pointless affair too, due to the sand . . . I would have liked it though. Others laughed at me because I carried an entrenching tool on my buttpack. "This is an engineer battalion! We have bulldozers, sir!" they'd say. But I was only following Rommel's advice. Always be prepared to dig. You never know when the artillery willl come.
There the Marines sat, for some time, weapons pointed outboard, 2 full companies in a very tight perimeter (given the terrain) because the wind was such an isolating factor. Too far apart and we could easily have a firefight break out on one end and the other not even know about it.
Half an hour passed. Then another half hour. My friend came back from the Command Center.
"It was a false alarm. There's a shepherd moving a flock out there." Given that this base had been bombed with cluster munitions from Gulf War One through the present, the locals were probably surprised to see it now practically sprouting with Marines . . .
The companies stood down and the Marines hunkered back into their holes. We did the same in our Humvee.
It had been dark all day, but now it got darker. Time to find a place to lay down for the night. Most of the Marines just stayed right in their holes. In the Division, General Mattis had emphasized that every man, from PFC to General, would have no better than the Lance Corporal's standard of living. That meant nothing more than sleeping bags all around.
The FSSG had had no such directive. So every Marine's arrangements were different. Our battalion had two-man tents for all the enlisted Marines, but had run out.
I despised this whole affair: if we didn't have enough of something, let's just do without it and all use sleep systems and isothermal mattresses only. Oh well, our leaders didn't see it that way, I suppose. The government had paid for two-man tents and cots, and so we were going to use them.
But nobody was going to set up a tent in the storm. We staff officers had cots, but no tents. Our plan had been to just set up our cots immediately outside the command center and sleep under the stars (and this is what we later did, though for a few days we commandeered an empty ISO container and lived in that).
But no way were going to sleep outside on cots this night. So two of us decided to stay in the humvee. Not me though. After 36 straight hours in the damn thing, I had to move.
As it got dark, I grabbed my pack off the back of the truck and started poking around the area for somewhere reasonably shielded from the sand. A few minutes later, I discovered an empty trailer, next to the command tent. Looking inside, I saw that it was pretty clear and nobody had claimed it. I threw my stuff in and trotted back to tell the guys where I was. Then I went back, got in my bag, and tried to sleep.
A few minutes later, someone threw a helmet into the trailer and it landed on my groin. I cursed and threw it back at them. Whoever it was apologized and moved on.
Not long after that, I began to feel wetness on my face. It was now completely dark. I sat up and felt around my head. Wetness everywhere. Looking up I saw the problem, which was twofold: there was a hole in the top of the trailer and the canvas was flapping back and forth. And, it was now raining in addition to sanding (I don't know if that's a word, but it should be). So my head was in a puddle under the flap. I readjusted out of the water and fell back asleep. Not long later I felt things pelleting my body. Sitting up again, I saw that the sand was now mixing with the rain and large gobs of mud were flying through the hole in the canvas. I shifted again and tried to sleep again. It was a series of false starts and such all night.
In the morning, we awoke to a nice day again. Marines were wiping sand from each other. Star Wars sand people jokes were prominent everywhere one could hear.
I found the guys and we headed into the Command Tent. Soon the whole battalion was engaged in building Viper into an enormous logistics throughput point.
Such was the nature of the war for me: lots of time in the command tent, punctuated by bizarre encounters with the environment, and all the while a forlorn and diminishing hope to somehow get in the fight . . .
Well, that's what all this three-year anniversary stuff reminds me of. Not exactly the "is it worth it" crap is it?
Written by Chester at 10:41 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
Good News From Iraq
Regimental Combat Team 7 has sent me the following story:
Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division - one of two Iraqi Army brigades in western Al Anbar Province - have spent months now learning the administrative and decision-making processes they’ll need to function as a military headquarters element to the three Iraqi infantry battalions which will eventually be under their charge.The article states that the Iraqis have made tremendous progress and lists several operations in which they've participated with Americans.Partnered with a Military Transition Team - groups of Marines assigned to track and guide each Iraqi military unit’s transition to full control - the Iraqi soldiers here are learning the skills required to operate as a command staff, such as administration, logistical procurement, command and staff relations and tactical decision making.
My understanding is that the Iraqi system of unit sizes is on the British system: a battalion is similar to two of our companies, a regiment is like one of our battalions, and a division is the size of one of our regiments. I think that's right, and perhaps they'll correct me if I'm wrong.
Comments are still closed, but feel free to email.
Written by Chester at 10:32 PM | Link | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Print Article
March 17, 2006
Fallujah, media memes, and public debate
Today, Belmont Club has a post mentioning the problems Bing West describes in No True Glory
I knew Wretchard was reading this book, so I decided to read it too and finished it earlier in the week.
The thing that struck me, but which West does not explicitly state, is that media perceptions were the driving factor in two key decisions made by the Bush Administration: first, to order the assault on the city in April of 2004, and second to halt it a few days later.
First, US popular revulsion to the images of the four dead military contractors in Fallujah caused the Administration to seek vengeance solely for its own sake.
For a gleeful mob to hang Americans like pieces of charred meat mocked the rationale that the war had liberated grateful Iraqis. The mutilation was both a stinging rebuke and a challenge. National pride and honor were involved. The president's envoy to Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, went on television in Baghdad to denounce the atrocity, vowing that the "deaths will not go unpunished." The spokesman for the JTF, Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, followed up by saying the attack on Fallujah would be "overwhelming." Write an order for the Marines to attack, General Sanchez told his staff, and I don't mean any fucking knock-before-search, touchy-feely stuff.The Marines, namely the 1st Marine Division, then still under General Mattis, and his immediate field commander, LtGen Conway of the First MEF, had intended to slowly take over various portions of the city over months, not invade it in one decisive action. But they had their orders (apparently very poorly written ones, according to West) and they carried them out.
But then media coverage and perceptions of the attack were once again integral in operational decisionmaking. The CPA
had prepared a public affairs plan in support of the offensive, although it didn't address the Arab press.That left Arab media to shape perceptions of the battle with no American influence at all.
On April 4, Fallujah was dominating international headlines because all major news outlets had rushed reporters and video crews there after the administration's vow of an overwhelming response.West's chapter entitled "Faint Echoes of Tet" is priceless. Here's an extended excerpt:
The CPA and all Iraqis were relying on the press to inform them about the military situation. Reports about the fighting came from two major sources -- Western journalists, principally American, and the Arab press. The two dominant Arab satellite networks were Al Arabiya, based in Dubai, and Al Jazeera, based in Qatar. In addition to reaching hundreds of millions of Arabs, their reportage was more trused by Iraqis than was the US-funded channel called Al Iraqiya, based in Baghdad. About 25% of Iraqis -- the more wealthy and influential -- had access to satellite reception, and by a five-to-one margin they preferred Jazeera to Iraqiya . . .West offers what might have been a palliative for this spin.Both networks had learned how not to bite the hands that fed them. Criticism of the autocracies in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere had resulted in the closure of offices and the withdrawal of advertising revenues. Diatribes about the Israeli occupation of Iraq were the two staples of their coverage that received wide approval among Arab governments . . .
In April the insurgents invited a reporter from Al Jazeera, Ahmed Mansour, and his crew into Fallujah, where they filmed scenes from the hospital. Hour after hour, day after day after day in the first week in April, the airwaves were filled with pictures of the dead, the bleeding, and the maimed. The Arab media were calling the resistance an Initifada, linking the insurgent fighting against the Americans to the Palestinian uprising against the Israelis. The sound bites featured the wails of the mourners, the sobs and screams of mothers, and the frenzied shouts and harried faces of blood bespotted doctors and nurses. No one with a breath of compassion could watch Arab TV and not feel anguish. Most poignant were the pictures Jazeera ran of babies, one after another after another, all calm, frail, and pitiful in the repose of death. Where how or when they died was not attributed. The viewer assumed all the infants wwere killed by the Marines in Fallujah. The baby pictures would bring tears from a rock . . .
A Jazeera and Al Arabiya were unrelenting in broadcasting the plight of the civilians in Fallujah, while the internet amplified the message of Marine callousness and sped protests around the world on a minute-by-minute basis. On the Google search engine, during the month of April, the word Fallujah leaped from 700 to 175,000 stories, many highly critical of the Marines. Quantity had a spurious quality of its own, resulting in an erroneous certitude based on the sheer volume of repetition.
The reports filed by Western journalists embedded with the Marines did not support the allegations of widespread, indiscriminate carnage. Senior US government officials, though, didn't have the time to peruse tactical reporting. Instead, in their offices they turned on cable news, where video clips from Fallujah were shown over and over again. The images, obtained from a pool that included the Jazeera cameramen inside the city affected viewers in Iraq, in Washington, and in Crawford, Texas.
In the face of this press onslaught, the White House, the Pentagon, the CPA, and CentCom were passive. Partially this was a military reflex to avoid any comparison to the 'body count' debacle of Vietnam. none of those at the top of the chains of command, though, requested from the Marine units in daily contact any systematic estimates that distinguished between civilian and enemy casualties. Given the video recorded the the unmanned aerial vehicles and the imagery required of every air strike and AC-130 gun run, records of the damage would have been easy enough to collect and verify had anyone thought of doing so.In the absence of countervailing visual evidence presented by authoritative sources, Al Jazeera shaped the world's understanding of Fallujah without having to counter the scrutiny of informed skeptics. The resulting political pressures constrained military actions both against Fallujah and against Sadr.
The Cluetrain Manifesto, which in the 1990s was so influential at describing the nature of the emerging connected world, made two observations that are relevant here:
1. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. In the case of Fallujah, the CNN and other western outlets frequently used footage from Jazeera, subverting to some extent the hierarchy of national boundaries as being determinative of press coverage. The same is true with the Google News aspect that West mentions. And finally, the hierarchy of the chain of command was subverted as well. Presumably the President himself had Fallujah brought into his living room, and its coverage shaped his perceptions of the battle. West implies that he did not seek out other opinions, notably that of the ground commanders, Mattis and Conway.
2. Markets are conversations. Cluetrain asserted that the information technology revolution allowed mass markets to revert to their conversational origins: the haggling, debate, and spirited nature of the traditional market or bazaar, rather than the stilted interaction between monolithic institutions and underdog individual customers that came to characterize relationships in the age of the industrial society.
West's solution to the whole conundrum, as mentioned in the last two paragraphs above, is very interesting. Traditional public relations methodology has attempted to generate enough contrary content such that the good might offer an alternative to the negative for the public to choose what to believe themselves. But what West advocates is something more like a public debate, in which some viewpoints, spin, or memes, are publicly refuted in some meaningful way. The only member of the Bush Administration who does anything like this on any kind of regular basis is the Defense Secretary. Occasionally when asked a leading or insinuating question for example, he responds with another question that attempts to refashion the dialogue. But even he doesn't do this that often. Keeping track of what memes are proliferating, where they come from, how they contradict each other, and finding concrete and believable evidence to refute them is a big job. Few military or policy organizations do this well. Not even corporations excel at this: usually they stumble along with PR as a sort of arm of the Marketing department. How many times has a corporation been accused of something and responded with deft explanations and a robust defense? Only about a tenth of the time or so would be my guess . . .
In fact, the only kind of organization I can think of that has an inherent stake in immediately and strongly responding to charges made by the press -- or by an opponent, with the press as its proxy -- is the political campaign. Attack ad is met by attack ad, and spin meets spin. But even those organizations are in search of the ever-memorable sound bite, not some public consensus on "truth."
Perhaps then, one thing that the Defense Department needs is a rapid response combat punditry team. Since this would essentially be a political function, it should be staffed with appointed civilians, but preferably those who are not too closely tied to the reigning administration, if that's possible. The office would work to refute, debate, clarify and offer counter-narratives in any case deemed necessary. This would be something different from "propaganda" creation, at least as I envision it. Propaganda nowadays is smelled as such by the public immediately and if there ever was value to it, it would certainly be counterproductive today. But to publicly enter into a debate with the memes, or individuals in the press -- to begin a conversation, rather than the traditionally conceived shouting match or corporate institutional-speak-- might be very effective. It would be a difficult job, but it seems to be a necessary one these days. The key would be to be forceful, but not necessarily adversarial. Public debate is about winning people over to one's side after all, and the ultimate coup would be to win the press themselves.
Notably though, one key to good conversation is when each side is willing to admit previous mistakes, or misjudgments. A candid combat pundit would do so. And if the press failed to do so, it would lessen it morally in the eyes of the independent observer. Or, miracle of miracles, perhaps some would admit mischaracterizations from time to time. In that case, would not public debate be more enlightened than it is now?
The blogosphere already performs the function I've described to some degree, but with much more limited effectiveness. Someone based within the DoD would have the authority of office to go with that of the megaphone.
A second technique for offering evidence to counter inaccuracies that enter public discourse would be the use of a small number of "directed telescopes", perhaps working out of the same combat pundit office mentioned above. The directed telescope was an innovation of Napoleon. Each was a pretty senior colonel or general officer, held by Napoleon in exceptionally high esteem, and trusted implicitly. He would use them to survey terrain, deliver important communications, gather intelligence, make judgments of enemy dispositions, and occasionally they would jump in to correct units that were not following Napoleon's intent. Martin Van Creveld describes this technique in Command in War
Climbing through the chain of command, however, such reports tend to become less and less specific; the more numerous the stages through which they pass and the more standardized the form in which they are presented, the greater the danger that they will become so heavily profiled (and possibly sugar-coated or merely distorted by the many summaries) as to become almost meaningless. To guard against this danger, and keep subordinates on their toes, a commander needs to have in addition a kind of directed telescope -- the metaphor is an apt one -- which he can direct, at will, at any part of the enemy's forces, the terrain, or his own army in order to bring in information that is not only less structured than that passed on by the normal channels but also tailored to meet his momentary (and specific) needs. Ideally, the regular reporting system should tell the commander which questions to ask, and the directed telescope should enable him to answer those questions. It was the two systems together, cutting across each other and wielded by Napoleon's masterful hand, which made the evolution in command possible.While in Napoleon's time the directed telescope was one of two parts that were reinforcing -- regular reporting being the other -- in our day, there would be three parts: regular reporting, the directed telescope, and the press. The telescopes would be a powerful tool to have in the arsenal of a Defense Secretary or President in need of further independent information on the status of forces or situations. And, in my conception, the telescopes might provide valuable information about the conduct of a given battle or campaign. Such information could be priceless in engaging in the debate with the press described above. They might be composed of a couple of colonels, some independent civilians (West himself, or Robert Kaplan might be good examples, since this is similar to the roles they've fashioned for themselves already, albeit independently), and even a physically fit diplomat or two. Combined with robust archiving, search, image retrieval, and public-speaking capabilities inherent in the combat pundit office (perhaps "office" is the wrong term, as it should be informal, small, and not legislatively created), the National Command Authorities might be much better able to determine the status of all kinds of events, and use that information to refute inaccurate media memes (and be more informed in general as well).As organized from 1805 on, Napoleon's system for cutting through established channels and for directly gathering the information he needed consisted of two separate parts. The first was a group of between eight and twelve adjutant generals; these were men selected unsystematically from among colonels and generals who caught the emperor's eye, usually carried the rank of brigadier or major general, and were between ages thirty and forty and thus in the full flower of their mental and physical powers. Their duties varied enormously, from reconnoitering entire countries (Savary in 1805) to negotiating a surrender (Rapp in the same year) to spying out enemy headquarters under the cover of a truce (Rapp again, on the eve of Austerlitz) to commanding the cavalry of the artillery reserve in battle (Druot, Lauriston) to governing a province and commanding a garrison far from the main theater of operations. Such responsibilities called for practical savoir faire as well as diplomatic ability, the knowledge and talents of a military commander, and, last, but not least, sheer physical stamina.
PS: Comments are currently closed. Feel free to email me any thoughts or responses you have. I may include them here, but no promises.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention: in case there's any doubt to the role the press played in the Fallujah Battle, remember that when the city was finally assaulted in November of 04, the first objective was seizure of the hospital so that he images mentioned above would not be used so spuriously.
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Match Day
A bit of personal news: after much stress, a lot of ridiculous hard work, and four years of medical school, my wife has matched today into the anesthesia program at Duke University Medical Center. We'll be leaving San Antonio and heading to North Carolina later this spring where Dr. Manchester (how cool is that?) will begin her intern year.
Tomorrow I have to tell my boss . . .
Then figure out what the heck to do next myself . . . anybody with ideas on what I should do with my life is welcome to email . . .
And I have a lovely three bedroom house for sale here in San Antonio if anyone is interested!
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March 16, 2006
I fully intend to rub the AP's faces in this one day
Allow me a small rant:
Iran Offers to Enter Iraq Talks With U.S. - Yahoo! News:
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran offered Thursday to enter into talks with the United States aimed at stabilizing Iraq, the first time the Islamic republic has agreed to negotiate with the superpower it calls the "Great Satan."I'm so sick of this crap. Civil war is in no faction's interest whatsoever. Not the Kurds, not the Sunnis, who will be annihilated, not the Shi'ites. If it happens it will be largely provoked and prosecuted by the militias -- the Sopranos of the country.The offer appears to reflect the desire of at least some top Iranian officials to relieve Western pressure over Tehran's nuclear program in return for help on Iraq, which is sliding ominously toward civil war.
We shall see, my friends in the press, we shall see.
This story was written by, "ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writers". Three years from now Iraq will be a peaceful, prosperous democracy, Ali. We'll see what shinola you're peddling then, and for whom . . .
Why must we all put up with this? This stuff really pisses me off.
You know, I'd really love to form a small private organization dedicated to tracing the links between al Qaeda's media committees and reporting like this . . . how many bombing photos are the result of pre-strike tips, for example? how many stories are ghost-written by local stringers? The insurgency pays on average $200 for detonating an IED. I bet the press probably pays much better for pictures of the aftermath.
We are witnessing the death of the Fourth Estate my friends, let there be no doubt about it. Spin like this might have worked back in the day, but we're all meme-wise now.
I'd love to hear Hugh Hewitt interview one of these yahoos.
Thus endeth my rant. Sorry for the interruption.
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March 13, 2006
Comments and Trackbacks
I've temporarily disabled comments and trackbacks in order to do a little housecleaning. Trying to end my spam problem once and for all.
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March 5, 2006
Discussion Topic: Media Memes and the War on Terror
Of all the memes disseminated by our media with regard to the war on terror in general, and Iraq in particular, how can they be categorized or classified? My thought is:
-the US is disrespectful of Islam (the Newsweek story)
-the US routinely violates human rights (Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib)
-the Iraq war is analogous to the Vietnam war
-Iraq is perpetually on the brink of civil war
-extreme Islam should be tolerated (the refusal to publish cartoons)
-Iraq grows more violent by the day
Are there more? If all of these might be categorized in some way, what would they be? Aside from mere opposition to US efforts, can more distinct categories be discerned?
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March 2, 2006
"Strike?"
Jim Geraghty wonders how else the fallout from the port deal will affect our politics: [hat-tip: Instapundit]
Welcome to Post-Tipping Point politics. There is no upside to doing the right thing – which is to emphasize, as one blogger put it, that there is a difference between Dubai and Damascus. There is tremendous political upside to doing the wrong thing, boldly declaring, “I don’t care what the Muslim world thinks, I’m not allowing any Arab country running ports here in America! I don’t care how much President Bush claims these guys are our allies, I don’t trust them, and I’m not going to hand them the keys to the vital entries to our country!”Geraghty points to this New Republic piece, in which Peter Beinart asks,Courting these voters will mean supporting proposals that are supported by wide swaths of the American people, but are largely considered nonstarters in Washington circles: much tougher immigration restrictions, including patrolling the Mexican border; racial profiling of airline passengers instead of confiscating grandma’s tweezers; drastically reducing or eliminating entry visas to residents of Muslim or Arab countries; and taking a much tougher line with Saudi Arabia and coping with the consequences of that stance. Since 9/11, the Bush administration, and most leaders on Capitol Hill in both parties have dismissed those ideas as unrealistic, counterproductive, or not in accordance to American values.
If you listen to Democratic criticism of the port deal, the Jacksonian themes are clear. In the words of California Senator Barbara Boxer, "We have to have American companies running our own ports." But nationalism tinged with xenophobia makes Democrats uncomfortable.For Democrats, stealing the Bush administration's populist, unilateralist thunder would be a remarkable coup. And it would be a remarkable historical irony, since Jacksonianism in Jeffersonian clothes--civil libertarian, anti-globalization, uninterested in transforming the world--inverts the foreign policy of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.
Politically, the opportunity is clear. There's just one catch: Is this really what Democrats believe?
*********
I'm convinced this is all a remake of Naked Gun. You remember the scene: in his zealous pursuit of the Queen's would-be assassin, Lt. Frank Drebin finds himself at an Angels game, suddenly taking the place of the umpire behind home plate. A pitch is thrown. The crowd goes silent. Drebin is quiet. The pitcher stares at him. The batter turns and looks at him. Drebin looks back at him. Then he mumbles, "Strike?"
The crowd goes wild. Drebin smiles. He's got em now! He's forgotten all about the assassin for the moment. The next pitch is thrown. It's obviously way outside. Drebin calls another strike. The crowd goes nuts! Drebin does a little dance behind the plate, with two fingers up in the air, repeating, "Two! Two! Two! Strike Two!" On the next pitch, Drebin calls a strike before the ball even hits the catcher's mitt. Then he polishes it off with a moonwalk and a bit of breakdancing.
This is where the Democratic party finds itself. With their friends in the press, they've thrown out all manner of arguments in their zealous quest to wrest power from George W. Bush. Then, all of a sudden, they find themselves in a position to umpire a large commercial transaction. Everyone waits to see what they're going to say.
"Arabs?"
The country goes wild! They reinforce their success and continue on this meme. But as Beinart notes above, are they really ready to deal with the underlying reasoning that leads the nation to cheer at their calls?
We all know how that segment of the movie ends. Drebin is having so much fun that he forgets about the sleeper in his midst. Then, when he's reminded, he starts a riot on the field. Of course, it's Hollywood and in the end he's a hero. But is this the kind of national security that we want? Ask a Democrat what kinds of actions he's prepared to take in the war, and he'll say he'll withdraw troops from Iraq. Then he'll list a litany of things he would have done differently. But does he really have a plan of any substance? In the midst of discrediting the Bush Administration, he sees an opening on Bush's right. Finally! But is he really ready to go there and do the things that those constituencies want done? All of a sudden, the pre-9/11 Democrats have gone on a blind date with 2006 voters. I have a feeling that before it is all over, the Democrats will be as terrified of the voters as they are of Arabs.
This all goes back to my post of yesterday: How will our society answer the question: Is Islam compatible with a free society? The Democrats may be about to side with those who say, No. SInce this violates some of their most fundamental principles, and those of multiculturalism, can they even make this journey? Or are we witnessing a transformation of the Democratic party?
Interestingly enough, Naked Gun opens with Drebin "on vacation" in Beirut, if memory serves, where he takes out Ayatollah Khomeini, Gorbachev, Idi Amin, and Qaddafi all at one time.
[Frank has beaten a horde of America's most-feared world leaders in a conference room and heads for a door]This was supposed to be funny back in 1988: a witless American taking the fight to the enemy: basically what the American people would have loved to see done to any of those world leaders. But it's meant to be a farce!
Muammar al-Qaddafi: Hey, who are you?
Frank: I'm Lt. Frank Drebin! Police Squad! And don't ever let me catch you guys in America!
[the door hits Frank in the face and he loses his balance]
Who knew it was prophetic of the possible electoral machinations of the Democratic party in 2006?
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The Key Strategic Question
Is Islam compatible with a free society?
This is the key strategic question of our day.
In October, William Buckley wrote:
The moment has not come, but it is around the corner, when non-Muslims will reasonably demand to have evidence that the Muslim faith can operate within boundaries in which Christians and Jews (and many non-believers) live and work without unconstitutional distraction.[h-t to a Belmont Club commenter]
Buckley is correct that this is a question demanding an answer, but he misjudges the timing of its asking and answering. The truth is that assumed answers to this question have been fundamental in developing our strategies in the war on terror, and that we have yet to answer it definitively.
Is Islam compatible with a free society? A 'yes' answer offers a far different set of strategic imperatives than a 'no' answer.
In his book The Universal Hunger for Liberty
"Surely," the proposition was put forward, by many Islamic voices as well as by the president, "a modern and faithful Islam is consistent with nonrepressive, open, economically vital societies."To say yes to our question, one assumes that there are aspects of being Muslim and faithful to Islam, that can coexist peacefully with liberty, tolerance, and equality. The strategy that follows is one of identifying the groups and sects within Islam that adhere to these notions of their religion, and then encouraging them, favoring them, propagating them, and splitting them off from the elements of Islamic practice that are all too incompatible with the portions of modernity that invigorate men's souls: free inquiry, free association, free commerce, free worship, or even the freedom to be left alone.
To answer no, one states that Islam itself is fundamentally irreconcilable with freedom. This leads to a wholly different set of tactical moves to isolate free societies from Islam. They might include:
-detention of Muslims, or an abrogation of certain of their rights;
-forced deportation of Muslims from free societies;
-rather than transformative invasions, punitive expeditions and punitive strikes;
-extreme racial profiling;
-limits on the practice and study of Islam in its entirety
And even some extreme measures if free societies find the above moves to be failing:
-forced conversion from Islam, or renunciation;
-colonization;
-extermination of Muslims wherever they are found.
These last are especially ghastly measures. But a society that thought Islam incompatible with freedom might in the long term slip towards them.
Since 9/11, the assumption of our government has been that Islam can be compatible with freedom. The Bush administration has been exploiting all manner of divides within the Muslim world, not to conquer it, but to transform it such that a type of Islam compatible with freedom -- and therefore the West and the US, the wellspring and birthplace of modern individual liberty -- will come to the front at the expense of a type of Islam that is irreconcilable. Every institution of government answers our key question with a resounding yes. The Pentagon, in its Quadrennial Defense Review, makes a distinction between "bin Ladenism" and moderate Muslims, our would-be allies. Bush makes speeches in praise of freedom in general and especially in the Muslim world. The defense establishment is addressing what it calls a 'war of ideas':
The U.S. government is also focusing more attention on the intangible but vital dimension of the "war of ideas" between radical Islam and moderate Western and Islamic thought. The Pentagon's September 2004 National Defense Strategy stressed the need to counter ideological support for terrorism to secure permanent gains in the war against terrorism.A yes answer to the question requires Red State Christians in the US to tolerate an Islam that tolerates them. A no answer to the question requires an abandonment of belief in the universality of ideas originating in the west, because it becomes clear that a large portion of humanity -- a fifth perhaps -- follows an incompatible religion. A yes answer forces one to attack totalitarian elements within Islam. A no answer forces a clash of civilizations, a Great Islamic War, as it assumes that all Islam is totalitarian.It stated the importance of negating the image of a U.S. war against Islam, and instead, developing the image of a civil war within Islam, fought between moderate states and radical terrorists. This kind of imagery will feed into the broader debate beginning in the U.S. on how to win such a war of ideas and how to cultivate moderate democratic Islamic states.
A yes answer might lead to the establishment of something like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, as discussed in a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
The idea of the congress, however, grew out of a feeling among independent intellectuals on the non-Communist left, as well as American officials, that the West after World War II faced a huge Soviet commitment to propagandizing and imposing Communism, and might lose the battle for European minds to Stalinism.One principle of the CCF's founding document was, "Freedom is based on the toleration of divergent opinions. The principle of toleration does not logically permit the practice of intolerance."So the congress — established at a 1950 Berlin meeting at which the writer Arthur Koestler declared to a crowd of 15,000, "Friends, freedom has seized the offensive!" — launched magazines, held conferences, mounted exhibitions, and generally sought to expose Stalinist falsehoods from its liberal position. At its height, according to Coleman, the CCF "had offices or representatives in 35 countries, employing a total of 280 staff members."
A no answer might disparage the notion that Westerners can say anything of import to those practicing Islam. I'm not sure if Bruce Thornton would answer no to the key question, but he doesn't seem to like the idea of Westerners trying to convince Muslims of anything new about their religion:
If, then, you are in possession of this truth that you are absolutely certain holds the key to universal happiness in this world and the next, why would you be tolerant of alternatives? Why should you tolerate a dangerous lie? Why should you “live and let live,” the credo of the spiritually moribund who stand for everything because they stand for nothing? And why wouldn’t you kill in the name of this vision, when the infidel nations work against God’s will and his beneficent intentions for the human race?A yes answer to our question might force us to reexamine the religious roots of our own conceptions of freedom, in order to figure best a way to help Muslims look for such roots in their faith. This might resemble the efforts of David Gelernter in his recent Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, "A Religious Idea Called 'America'"This is precisely what the jihadists tell us, what fourteen centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence tell us, what the Koran and Hadith tell us. Yet we smug Westerners, so certain of our own superior knowledge that human life is really about genes or neuroses or politics or nutrition, condescendingly look down on the true believer. Patronizing him like a child, we tell him that he doesn’t know that his own faith has been “hijacked” by “fundamentalists” who manipulate his ignorance, that what he thinks he knows about his faith is a delusion, and that the true explanation is one that we advanced, sophisticated Westerners understand while the believer remains mired in superstition and neurotic fantasy.
The most important story in and for American history is the biblical Exodus; the verse “let my people go” became the subtext of the Puritan emigration to America in the seventeenth century, the American revolution in the eighteenth, and--in significant part by Lincoln’s own efforts--of the Civil War in the nineteenth. It became important, also, to the twentieth century Americanism of Wilson and Truman and Reagan and W. Bush--Americanism as an outward-looking religion with global responsibilities.A yes answer might say that if God gave Biblical antecedents for the freedom of all mankind, He might have put some in the Koran as well . . . A yes answer would try to figure how to play our own religion-based beliefs into a conversation with Islam, as Henry Jaffa seems to argue in the Claremont Review:In the end we do need to know the real character of Americanism. The secular version is a flat, gray rendition--no color and no fizz--of this extraordinary work of religious imagination: the idea that liberty, equality, and democracy belong to all mankind because God wants them to.
We [are], in short, engaged in telling others to accept the forms of our own political institutions, without reference to the principles or convictions that give rise to those institutions.A no answer, on the other hand, might first start with Islam as anathema to free society, then move to other religious creeds, seeing them through a lens of general suspicion.Unless we as a political community can by reasoned discourse re-establish in our own minds the authority of the constitutionalism of the Founding Fathers and of Lincoln, of government devoted to securing the God-given equal rights of every individual human being, we will remain ill equipped to bring the fruits of freedom to others.
Is Islam compatible with a free society? Like a Zen koan, this is the question that vexes us.
Our answer of course, might change. The Bush administration has been answering yes for five years. But, inhabiting a democracy, it is of course reflective of and responsive to public sentiment. Several commentators believe that sentiment may be shifting. A piece by Jim Geraghty on his National Review blog wonders if Americans' answer to the key question is changing:
This strikes me as the fallout of the Tipping Point™ - my sense that in recent weeks, a large chunk of Americans just decided that they no longer have any faith in the good sense or non-hostile nature of the Muslim world. If subsequent polls find similar results, the port deal is dead.Perhaps the people's answer to the question is changing.
And what to make of the Manifesto from a dozen European intellectuals, Muslims or former Muslims many of them? How are they answering the key strategic question?
It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats . . .In Glenn Reynolds' podcast interview with Claire Berlinkski, author of Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's TooIslamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others.
, she relates this story: Reynolds: You have this wonderful scene in your book where you talk about this, this Englishman of Bengali descent, and he said that when he traveled to the United States, he saw all these immigrants who were US citizens being welcomed by the INS and told, "Welcome home!" And he said, you know, if I ever got that kind of treatment you know when I returned to England, I'd happily lay down my life for England right there . . .In a dissenting statement to the above-mentioned manifesto, Paul Belien in Brussels Journal quotes Dr. Jos Verhulst:Berlinski: I would have died for England on the spot, that's what he told me. If ever once, someone had said "welcome home" when I showed them my passport at customs and immigration, I would have died for England on the spot.
And now he stands at the dawn of the 21st century: the maligned individual, unsteady on his own feet after executing the inner breach with every form of imposed authority, uncertain, blinking in the brightness of the only god he is willing to recognise – Truth itself, stretching out before him unfathomably deep – full of doubt but aware that he, called to non-submission, must seek the road to the transcendent, carrying as his only property, his most valuable heirloom from his turbulent past, that one gold piece that means the utmost to him, his precious ideal of complete freedom of thought, of speech and of scientific inquiry. That is the unique advance that he received to help him in his long and difficult quest.When I was in Iraq, one Iraqi told me he wished Iraq could be the 51st state in the union. Our experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan seems to indicate that there are many Muslims who would prefer that we answer the key question with a yes, saying to those Muslims who can find Islam compatible with freedom, "Have courage!" and once they've achieved their freedom, "Welcome home!"Meanwhile he is being beleaguered and threatened on all sides; from out of the darkness voices call him to submit and retreat; they shout that the gold in his hands is worthless, while the brightness ahead of him still makes it almost impossible for him to see what lies in store. In short: what this contemporary individual needs most of all is courage, great courage. And the will to be free and to see, which is tantamount to the will to live.
To what fate are we assigning them if we answer no?
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers! Even though I had no direct quote above, this piece, like most that I do, had a lot of influence from Belmont Club, especially Blowback.
UPDATE2: There seems to be some problem posting comments. The server must be a little slow. It took me several tries to post last night. Thanks for your patience.
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