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]
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Yesterday in the British Press, much was made of the Soviet, sorry, Russian threat to nuke Poland if it hosted American, sorry, NATO defensive missile systems.
THREAT TO NUKE POLAND… well, really? What the Ruskies are saying is not “if you allow these systems on your soil, we will nuke you”, but rather “in the event of a war between NATO and Russia, we will attack military targets in Poland, which is a NATO member”.
Well no shit? This is hardly a revelation. Yet to read many of the article headlines you would think it was a clear and present danger, which it clearly ain’t. Move along, not much to see here.
That said, clearly what the Russian general said is a crude attempt to intimidate Poland, albeit politically and not actually by making a threat of imminent action. Also predictably it has stiffened already deep hostility to Russia across Central Europe. Good, it is probably exactly what Europe needed.
This is brutal but sadly true about Andrew Sullivan:
There was, in fact, hardly a bigger cheerleader for going to war with Iraq than Andrew Sullivan. And it won’t do for him to invoke the defense that he was misled into the war because Saddam did not possess actual WMD. It’s true that Saddam did not have stockpiles of WMD, as the Bush Administration, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jay Rockefeller, John Kerry, and many others believed, along with the intelligence agencies of virtually every nation on earth. In retrospect, we know that Saddam engaged in a massive effort to mislead the world into believing he had WMD. The obligation was on him to comply with U.N. resolutions. He did the opposite, and he paid for his deception (and his cruelties) with his life and the end of his regime.
It is fine for people to change their positions over time, either because of new evidence or because of an evolution in their own views. And almost everyone who has said anything about Iraq has gotten something wrong. But few people have changed their minds as dramatically and emphatically as Sullivan has over the last few years.
Absolutely. And I am not particularly convinced, either, by Sullivan’s reply on his blog today, in which he argues thus:
I simply cannot pretend that what we’ve learned about them these past few years – and what I’ve learned about the Middle East and wider dimensions of the struggle against Jihadism – hasn’t deeply affected my views. Just imagine if the press were to discover a major jail in Gori, occupied by the Russians, where hundreds of Georgians had been dragged in off the streets and tortured and abused? What if we discovered that the orders for this emanated from the Kremlin itself? And what if we had documentary evidence of the ghastliest forms of racist, dehumanizing, abusive practices against the vulnerable as the standard operating procedure of the Russian army – because the prisoners were suspected of resisting the occupying power? Pete Wehner belonged to the administration that did this. It seems to me that, in these circumstances, the question of moral equivalence becomes a live one. When an American president has violated two centuries of civilized norms, how could it not be, for any serious person with a conscience?
First of all, no-one, apart from the most deluded hawk, has or would deny that abuses have occurred, involving not just American but other Coalition forces. The point is that those abuses have in some cases already been punished. One can and should argue that the punishments could have been more severe, but that is a detail. As for the other stuff about “abusive” practices, Sullivan is frankly inviting ridicule to argue that the conditions at Gitmo rank on the sort of scale of horrors that have been inflicted on captured combatants in other campaigns, most notably those involving Soviet forces in the past, for instance. For all that one might be alarmed – as I am – about the willingness of some apologists for torture to argue for it, I certainly do not get the impression that it has been widely used or encouraged by the US and other administrations. Of course if that is the case, I might change my mind.
No. I am afraid that the critics of Sullivan have a strong point. His change of mind has been so dramatic, his use of language so heated, that it is easy to see why people who now are on the receiving end of his ire feel the guy has not been entirely honest about his switcheroo. After all, Bush’s Big Government brand of conservatism that Sullivan finds so obnoxious – as I do -was hardly a secret even before 9/11, such as his flagrant abuse of free trade over steel tariffs, for instance.
As to Iraq, what did Sullivan – who is hardly an expert in military affairs – honestly expect would have happened when the invasion began: a squeaky-clean victory, an easy reconstruction and minimal violence? Hardly. To be sure, he was pretty quick to argue that the post-invasion phase needed larger forces, as McCain had argued at the time. And it is easy to see why those who argued that Saddam’s removal from power was justified – as I did – felt angry about some of the errors made post-invasion. But let’s be honest about this. If you back a war, you have to understand the Law of Unintended Consequences – bad shit can happen that you do not expect. To deny this is frankly to invite contempt.
Earlier this afternoon Perry and I had a lengthy editorial telephone discussion on the subject of Georgia. While we agreed broadly there was one area in which we had intense debate until I finally figured out how we were talking past each other.
The question is, how the hell did US intelligence assets miss the Russian Black Sea fleet movements? How did they miss the massive transport job of the troops and their logistical tail? They did not just materialize in position. It takes time and planning to make such moves. I will leave the detail of that to Perry as he seems to have been thinking about it in great detail.
My take is there is a limited amount of time available on the black satellites. The manpower and resources have been re-targeted on the Middle East. Orbits have been shifted to give maximal coverage in those areas of interest and experienced personnel have moved to ‘where the action is’.
This is not to say Russia is being ignored. It is however a very big place and I am going to guess that the time between scanning particular areas has greatly lengthened. Russian troop movements are mainly rail based and with enough eyeballs and Cold War era periodic coverage one might hope to pick up changes in traffic patterns and notice “something is going on”. But… this requires a certain periodicity in coverage. Changes in static positions like silos and strategic air bases are much easier to pick up even with occasional coverage. Dynamic changes, such as train and road movements are a different story. You have to have a satellite taking pictures at just the right time or often enough to pick up a signal just by chance.
This is what took Perry and I awhile to meet minds on: I have been thinking of this issue as a communications/information theory problem. How often do you have to sample an area to notice a change in the density of train traffic? I would posit it would have to be several times a week at the very least if the spike in traffic was huge and extended; if the spike were smaller and flatter you would need to sample daily or multiple times daily. You would have to do it at night and through clouds as well if you were to get a statistical value high enough to ring alarm bells. It is an issue of sampling rate versus the highest detectable signal frequency, pure and simple.
I doubt they have even been scanning large areas of Russia more than a few times a week (I suspect much less often) except in areas of nuclear strategic interest. They could easily miss large troop movements in a part of Russia which is not of great national interest to the United States.
Let the discussion begin. There is a lot of meat on this bone!
Since we are talking about South Africans (see my post below about cricket), ex-South African-now-American Kim du Toit, occasional commenter in these parts, says he dreams about getting one of these.
Kim’s dreams are pretty scary.
The conduct of the British Army and the Ministry of Defence begins to crumble under the information leaked from the United States and Iraq. Unwilling to deal with the problems of security in Basra (and the potential damage of soldiers forced to patrol with inadequate equipment), British forces on the ground are alleged to have sought an accommodation with the Mahdi army militias in Basra and forsaken the city. They left the citizens of Basra at the mercy of fundamentalist thugs, whose torture and murder of innocent civilians was publicised in the following months.
The motives behind this accommodation are unclear. Justificatory references to success with the IRA and domesticating paramilitaries in a political process are evasive arguments for the accommodation. Equipment shortages are left unmentioned. More astonishing is the role of Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence, whose permission was required before any British soldier could enter Basra. Whilst the Iraqi Army and US support staff put down the militias, the British authorities waited an unconscionable six days before they were willing to allow soldiers to enter the city. This was partially caused by the commander, Major-General Barney White-Spunner, who was away on a skiing holiday. This may be unfortunate timing but it does not lessen the air of ineptitude and scuttle that surrounds this whole affair.
The Guardian publicised the Ministry of Defence’s rebuttal from unnamed officials, who stated that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Al-Maliki, used the Basra campaign to shore up his credibility at the expense of co-operation with the British. They did concede that they had come to an accommodation with the militias and that,
British defence officials today denied reports that a secret deal between Britain and the Shia militia the Mahdi army prevented UK forces from taking part in a major offensive in Basra earlier this year.
Under the terms of last year’s accommodation, UK troops released suspected members of the militia in return for militia leaders ending their attacks.
Maliki was determined to weed out rebel units of the Mahdi army and criminal gangs. Local Iraqi forces and British troops had failed to do this, annoying the US and the Baghdad government, British officials now concede.
The level of political control that Labour politicians hold over individual deployments is difficult to gauge. Yet the delay and dithering over Basra, smells more of the Brown stuff than Browne’s sauce.
Lasers for shooting down mortars bombs and missiles… sounds great and has potential to change battlefield quite fundamentally… if it actually works in practice out in the messy real world. Remember Patriot? Much cheered at the time but it turned out to be a wildly expensive but only occasionally effective weapon system designed to shoot down rather cheap and only occasionally effective Scuds.
I suppose it all comes down to it is this another a vastly costly to operate system designed to shoot down various cheap-as-chips weapon systems? I suppose time will tell because potentially this is revolutionary as battlefield lasers could eventually mean the end of a great many forms of indirect weapons. Potentially.
A new movie about the doings of special agents and local French Resistance folk in the days leading up to, and beyond, D-Day is out. I might go and see it – the reviews look quite good and the cast looks impressive. Lots of delicious French actresses – hardly difficult to turn down, really.
At the Imperial War Museum – always worth a visit if you have not been there – there is a section about the special forces that have operated before, during, and after WW2, such as the Long Range Desert Group, M16, the SAS, The Chindits (Burma), other forces in Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Aden, France, former Yugoslavia, Greece, etc. The displays are well done and there is loads of fascinating information about the ordeals of those involved, their lives, methods, equipment and roles in various campaigns. For all that I quite enjoyed the Ian Fleming exhibition in the same place, the real-life displays of derring-do by people who are often totally unknown to the broader public was in some ways far more impressive and actually rather moving. It was also, just to make a “point”, clear that many of these operatives did not need the full benefits of a surveillance state to do their jobs. What was clear that the prime qualities of getting good intelligence are commonsense and a lot of guts.
A British court has ruled that there is a ‘right to life’ even under combat conditions and therefore the families of soldiers killed in action can sue the government for not providing suitable equipment.
In a blow to Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, a senior judge said troops in combat zones have a “right to life” at all times, even while under fire on the battlefield. The ground-breaking decision could lead to a flood of cases against the Ministry of Defence from relatives who believe the deaths of their loved ones were caused by poor quality kit.
As I have written before, it is deplorable that British soldiers are sent into action so poorly equipped when the state manages to find money for idiotic sports and ‘cultural’ expenditures. Yet I think this ruling is very dangerous unless it is very tightly defined to only cover equipment issues, and even then, I can hear the sound of cans opening and worms escaping. Inevitably this ‘right to life at all times’ means relatives will sue on the basis of operational military decisions if a decision causes the death of British soldiers.
Were I the government I would do whatever it takes to overturn such a notion and made sure this judgement does not lead to ever wider ‘interpretation’, as such things are wont to do. I am all for properly equipping Britain’s soldiers but this is a potentially disastrous way to ensure that. Wars are, by their very nature, messy and imprecise things and the idea of having civil courts sticking their beaks in is a giant step towards making the military unable to function at all. Even from the perspective of rights and liberty, in a volunteer military clearly prior consent is present to be put in harm’s way within the military context. This ruling has ‘horrendous unintended consequences’ written all over it.
The Royal Air Force marks its 90th birthday today. There will be a flypast over central London at 1pm, so if readers have a digital camera, keep it nearby.
… this guy needs to buy a cat and take some well deserved ‘chill time’ for, oh, the rest of his life maybe?
“So I got down with my back to the grenade and used my body as a shield. It was a case of either having four of us as fatalities or badly wounded – or one. I brought my legs up to my chest in the brace position and waited for the explosion.”
The short version: he set off a booby-trap (the old tripwire/grenade shtick) in the middle of his patrol, jumped on the grenade and his body armour and the stuff in his backpack took the brunt of the explosion. Other than getting blown through the air, this Royal Marine walked away pretty much in one piece. Fortitude and insane luck are a very cool combination.
Let me offer the Lance Corporal a career suggestion: head back to civilian life and get a job doing endorsements for a certain backpack manufacturer.
Raising issues like non-intervenionist foreign policy on a site like this is a bit like poking a bear with a stick: potentially hazardous. In my recent item on WW2, the issue surfaced again of whether a viable foreign policy for a nation is the “Swiss model” (no, not that kind). I personally doubt it works for all nations, certainly not the largest ones with long, porous borders. But as I have praised tax havens recently, I am reminded of how the Swiss seem to cope very well thankyou outside a surpranational organisation like the EU or a military alliance like NATO. But is that country what economists call a “free rider” – taking advantage of the fact that other, bigger nations have done the heavy lifting in standing up to tyrants, etc?
I came across this temperately argued but brutal demolition of one of those books purporting to claim that we’d all be a jolly sight better off by letting that misunderstood Adolf H. chap do what he wanted in Europe and Russia and that Britain and those other warmongering Anglos should have minded their own business. The book in question is called Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, and written by Nicholson Baker. The reviewer is Andy Ross.
Excerpt from the review:
“Mr. Baker seeks to rehabilitate the interpretation of World War II advanced by isolationists and appeasers in the 1930s. That interpretation was refuted by history itself. If it was necessary for the survival of civilization to stop Nazi Germany from dominating Europe – from replacing freedom with tyranny, suffocating culture and thought, inculcating racism and cruelty in future generations, depopulating Eastern Europe and turning it into German lebensraum, enslaving tens of millions of Poles and Russians, and exterminating European Jewry – then it was necessary to fight the war.”
And:
“A book that can adduce Goebbels as an authority in order to vilify Churchill has clearly lost touch with all moral and intellectual bearings. No one who knows about World War II will take Human Smoke at all seriously”.
Now, there are good books worth reading that debunk some of the myths of the war, such as that Churchill was a great strategist (he was not and made loads of mistakes), or that Roosevelt was the same (he was not, and unbelievably naive about Stalin), or that things should and could have been handled far better. There might even be a case for selling the “appeasement” line that we should have kept out of the war, at least early on, or bided our time. The trouble is, that most books I have come across selling the isolationist case, such as by John Charmley, for instance, fall down because they fail really to address how America and Britain could have realistically coped with a massive Russo-German fascist empire stretching from Vladivostok to Brest, murdering millions of non-Aryans, dominating international supply routes, and so on. Now of course, we have the benefit of hindsight. Churchill may not have known that Hitler was embarking on mass murder of European Jewry, although he was more alive to this threat than most politicians at the time. But Churchill had a pretty good idea that very ugly developments would accompany a Nazi empire, and of course had no illusions whatever about what would happen to Europe if Stalin’s Russia conquered all of it.
It is just about possible, I suppose, that Britain could have struggled on a bit as an independent nation next to such a monstrous empire – assuming we could have lived with an ounce of self-respect by leaving France and the rest in the lurch. As for America, it could, I suppose, have traded on with its southern neighbours, bits of Africa, Australasia and those scattered nations not under communist/fascist rule, but huge parts of the globe would be hostile, poor, nightmarish places. And I very much doubt that we would now be enjoying those fruits of a globalised trading environment that we unashamedly champion today on this blog.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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