We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Before the war started I made the comment there might well be more media casualties in this war than are usual. I must admit I did not expect the media guys would be running a close second to the soldiers for death by enemy fire. It must be an historical first.
I’m fairly sure they will soon fall well behind the soldiers in this sad statistic. Even so, the total butchers bill has been incredibly low all around. I would like it to stay that way but the only thing one can say about the fortunes of war is that they are unknowable.
My condolences to all those brave (and sometimes foolhardy) journalists running about an extremely dangerous Iraq.
The US DOD has a web page with reports and a place to leave a thank you to the troops. I’m sure they must have arsehole filters. There are certainly enough of them out there who would attempt to abuse this.
If soldiers were a registered ‘victim class’, half of ‘the left’ would be in prison for ‘hate crimes’ by now.
Fox News is reporting Saddam “might strike first.” This is hardly a surprising idea. I suggested it myself many months ago. I’m sure other bloggers have done the same.
In military terms, what other choice does he have? He can and has dug in defensive positions, but there is no guarantee US troops will oblige him with a frontal assault. If he has any good generals still among the living, they will have told him to expect the enemy everywhere at once. Their hardened positions will be bypassed and beaten into the ground with ordinance. Only in Baghdad itself can his troops hide among the populace and attempt to lure US troops into bloody fighting. It is hopeless if he tries a set piece defense. He must be creative. He must hit first.
He’ll want to hit US/UK troops with chem and bio while they are still marshalling. He will desire a telling blow to take temporary initiative and damage morale. The next most important move is to goad Israel rash action. The current Israeli administration is seen by Arab states as likely to respond reflexively. If Saddam hits an Israeli town with Sarin or VX…
I do not think he would use Smallpox in the Middle East. Israel has a modern health infrastructure and would survive it… but it would spread rapidly into Palestinian and other poor densely populated areas of the third world with an effect too horrible to contemplate.
If I were in his shoes, I would be working my staff into the ground looking for a way to get at the carriers. I don’t think there is one, but I don’t have his resources at my fingertips either. A one man suicide submarine maybe? A missile pre-positioned in the hold of a cargo ship 100 miles from the formation in the Gulf? I’m sure every one is thinking through the contingencies.
The US ships moving through the Suez after the abandonment of the Turkey represents a target rich environment for a pre-emptive strike. If I were a Captain on one of them, I’d have a prickle in the back and an excessively tight arsehold until I sailed into blue water.
A major terrorist attack in America using Smallpox and the kitchen sink are certainly options, but are tactically a bad idea. The last thing he wants is to kill off some anti-war demonstrators and turn the rest into true believers.
He only has two options. Give up now or fight. Saddam is not a personally suicidal type. Nor is he a coward. If he fights he will use everthing at his disposal. His win condition is high allied casualties and long delays in their war plans. He may hope if he holds on long enough:
- Tony Blair will be forced to withdraw.
- The American public will turn on the war due to terrible scenes of carnage and American’s in body bags.
- His French allies will build up global pressure.
- The Israeli’s will trigger an Arab-Israeli war.
- His agent provocateurs, assasins, saboteurs and suicide bombers in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and else here will cause serious harm to enemy Arab leaders.
It is just blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever done wargaming.
According to a poll taken in the last few days, 71% of Americans just want to get the damn thing done and over with.
I took the quizilla test and the results were hardly unexpected:
 Libertarian – You believe that the main use for government is for some people to lord it over others at their expense. You maintain that the government should be as small as possible, and that civil liberties, “victimless crimes”, and gun ownership should be basic rights. You probably are OK with capitalism. Your historical role model is Thomas Jefferson.
Which political sterotype are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
According to Fox News Washington House of Representatives Capitol Hill cafeterias now only serve “freedom fries”.
So why don’t they just call them by their correct name instead?
Chips.
Blix buried a rather critical item deep in his report. He has confirmed Iraq has drone aircraft, probably of the long range stated by Powell.
“Recent inspections have also revealed the existence of a drone with a wingspan of 7.45m that has not been declared by Iraq,” the report said. “Officials at the inspection site stated that the drone had been test-flown. Further investigation is required to establish the actual specifications and capabilities of these RPV drones . . . (they) are restricted by the same UN rules as missiles, which limit their range to 150km (92.6 miles).”
They have the ability to use them to spray chemical and bio agents.
In another section of the declassified report, the inspectors give warning that Iraq still has spraying devices and drop tanks that could be used in dispersing chemical and biological agents from aircraft. “A large number of drop tanks of various types, both imported and locally manufactured, are available and could be modified,” it says.
Confirmation of this kit is really bad news even though we suspected it might be true. In the sense we now know they really do exist, it gives credence to worries such might be used for attack against cities inside the US as well as against advancing troops in Iraq.
PS: Here is another one. And yet another.
As you may have noticed from the logo’s at the top of the Samizdata blogroll, we officially support the The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI). There have been a few small news stories on the Women’s Day march there but none gave the detail and context of the full letter. This may well all be available elsewhere. It may well be longer than anything we have ever posted here. I’ve done it anyway. I want to make sure it doesn’t disappear into some digital gulag.
Read it and see what the current generation of young women in Iran are thinking. While it isn’t libertarian, it is certainly liberal and a tremendous breath of fresh air. I sincerely wish them well.
With all that said, I yield to a young Iranian woman.
→ Continue reading: Iran can take care of itself
I have seen many good ideas put forth about why taking on Iraq is a good strategy, and how different approaches to the other members of the “axis of evil” are appropriate. I think there is something more profound happening in the Bush administration, a policy change whose outlines are now appearing and whose scope is breathtaking in its sweep.
Prior to 9/11, Bush was considered an isolationist. There were worries about America disengaging from the rest of the world. Folks, that is exactly where the endgame of the current global strategy is leading. President Bush and his advisors are cutting the Gordian knots which tie the US into permanent global deployment.
We’ve got large numbers of troops pinned down in the Middle East. Steven den Beste has already shown how the conquest of Iraq removes the reason for basing large numbers of forces in the Middle East. Troops can be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Turkey and god knows where else. Remove Saddam and there is suddenly no need for it. True, it will take some years to get Iraq Inc up and running the way we got Japan Inc going 50 years ago, but it will happen.
With Iran moving towards liberalization; with Iraq a capitalist democracy and with the Russians building a huge new oil terminal in Murmansk for sales to America, we not only get cheap oil… we undermine the very tool which allows Saudi’s to support billion dollar terrorist movements.
And then there are the Cold War leftovers in Europe… Another commentator I’ve read recently – where I unfortuneately do not recall – has suggested Rumsfeld wants to return the US to its classical military stance: a sea power. Maritime powers do not need large numbers of troops permanently based around the world. They only need ports for repair and refueling.
Where else are we pinned down? Korea… 37,000 Americans in harms way on that hellish armistice line. It is a no-man’s land of a half century old war that has never ended. Rumsfeld’s latest move in Korea is telling. US troops are to be pulled back. They will no longer be the Korean’s border canary.
SecDef Rumsfeld has stated in a number of recent public appearances South Korea has an economic capacity over thirty times that of North Korea and should be able to defend itself. He has suggestd it would be better for our soldiers and their families if they were based at home rather than in long overseas rotations.
In each area where there are large permanent American troop deployments, we see disengagement. It might take a war in at least one case to get us extricated. We are getting extricated nonetheless.
There is even a bonus prize. The UN is about to self-destruct. Put it all together and project ten years into the future. We see an America with a powerful naval and air force; with relatively few soldiers based outside the nation. An America looking out for its’ own interests and finally rid of most of the “entangling alliances” brought about by World War II and its’ aftermath.
We’re at the start not of Empire, but of the return to Fortress America… with a global reach via naval and air capacity to handle anyone who comes to our shores looking for trouble.
I think I could live with that.
Here’s a story we didn’t see in 1975:
“The Screen Actors Guild is raising the specter of “McCarthyism” and lashing out at people who urge boycotts of pro-South African wine and krugerand importers. “SAG said suggestions that ‘well-known individuals who express “unacceptable” views should be punished by losing their right to work’ was a ‘shocking development’ which recalled the 1950s House Committee on Un-American Activities,” Variety reports. SAG is especially upset that “hate-mail critics” have demanded the cancellation of wine purchases from South Africa.”
→ Continue reading: The one that got away
As long term readers have no doubt noticed, I follow the DOD press transcripts on a regular basis. Through the wonders of 21st Century technology I can be virtually present at all the DOD press briefings and media appearances.
One of the stories I have been following for the last few months is the arrangement between media and military for coverage of the coming end of Saddam. You may not know it, but there are going to be reporters and even TV crews embedded with virtually every unit from the first wave front line troops to the division headquarters forces.
The DOD has decided the best way to fight back against the expected disinformation campaign Saddam will wage is to have reporters right in the face of the battle and in literally every corner of it. Perhaps not embedded with special forces, but certainly almost everywhere else. We are going to get battles live on TV this time around. I also suspect we are going to see more dead journalists than usual given their location in the thick of it.
The reporting will be more open than in previous wars but with critical restrictions on the release of information which would compromise a mission, or the showing or naming of dead and maimed soldiers before families have been notified. I can’t imagine any decent human being not understanding the latter. As to the former, if a reporter gives away operational information on their unit their own arse is on the line.
It seems like a good plan to me. We’ll get a perspective never before seen outside of the front line. The military gets a lot of protection against what Saddam is going to try to pull off 1. The media get a freer reign than they have had in decades and must only follow rules which would require either stupidity or inhumanity to violate.
There have been many briefings on this topic, but you may find this NPR discussion a good introduction to the pro’s and con’s. While you are reading, note the comments of the New York Times correspondent.
He’s everything you’d expect from them.
1 =There have been recent reports some elite Iraqi troops have been issued uniforms made to look exactly like the american ones and have been ordered to commit atrocities to stir up trouble. The troops in question are the same ones who have been responsible for beheading women in public places and who are seen in TV footage with faces covered in white masks. There are also reports explosives have been purchased, wells mined and that some oil wells have already been blown up. Trenches of fuel oil for smoke barriers have been filled and tested. Saddam might also order the intentional release of millions of gallons of crude per day into the Persian Gulf in an attempt to destroy the water desalinization plants and water tables of Kuwait and other water poor Arab countries.
Student Amy Keel in the Harvard Crimson explains why she destroyed a phallic sculpture:
“As a student of Harvard University, neither I, nor any other woman, should have to see this obscene and grossly inappropriate thing on my way to class. No one should have to be subjected to an erect penis without his or her express permission or consent.
Many women and men, including myself, are the victims of sexual assault, child sexual abuse and rape. The unwanted image of an erect penis is an implied threat; it means that we, as women, must be subject to erect penises whether we like it or not. There was nothing “challenging” or “subversive” about the penis. The only thing it did was create an uncomfortable environment for the women of Harvard University.”
Presumably she would not have enjoyed the parties at the very countercultural communal flat of my CMU grad school days. We had wild ones. If you are a true conservative rather than a libertarian, they were everything you feared was going on some where… and more.
There was one Halloween party where a large chunk of the Fine Arts department ended up in our flat. It was a night Fellini could have been proud of.
Some of the costumes were so creative I remember them to this day. There was a gay friend of the household from Globe Players, our Shakespeare company, who came as “The Dope Fairy”. He wore a pink tutu, ballet tights and a Santa’s bag. He moved about the party spreading happiness where ever he went… and then there were the four fellows from Painting and Sculpture. They really put effort into it. It must have taken days to build the chicken wire frames, paper mache them and do the painting. They came as organs. Male and Female.
Have you ever had a 6 foot breast bump into you at the punch bowl? Or seen a face staring out at you from the middle of a hairy…
Perhaps I’ll skip that one.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
