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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Another bracing dose of perspective from Victor Davis Hanson:
[A]fter September 11 we will either accept defeat and stay within our borders to fight a defensive war of hosing down fires, bulldozing rubble, arresting terrorist cells, and hoping to appease or buy off our enemies abroad — or we will eventually have to confront Syria, Lebanon’s Bekka Valley, Saudi Arabia, and Iran with a clear request to change and come over to civilization, or join the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
[B]y any historical measure, what strikes students of this war so far in its first two years is the amazing degree to which the United States has hurt its enemies without incurring enormous casualties and costs.
As always with VDH, it pays to read the whole thing.
The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can America’s Gender-Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars?
Stephanie Gutmann
Scribner, 2000
First published in 2000, nothing could better illustrate the subordination of the military to the civil power than this account, by a woman journalist, of the submission of the male-oriented former to the feminist-dominated latter. Since it is modern political dogma that men and women are equal, the recruitment of women into the fighting forces becomes obligatory. This book is a description of how this is done, and what happens afterwards. As yet, the result has barely been tested in battle conditions, so the problems are being confronted in peacetime.
There is ample evidence that if physical equality was the criterion, few women would qualify – after training intensively, a batch of women, in it for the experiment (not recruits), reached the standard of the weakest males (p. 251). At the same time as trying to pretend that females could be the equivalent of males in tough fighting with enemies out to kill them, they were presumed so vulnerable that they needed protection from all forms of harassment by their comrades, which meant that the sexes couldn’t really interact – and when harassment changed into acceptable behaviour, that was just as bad – the pregnancy rate soared.
There is a long account and analysis of the notorious “Tailhook” party in 1991, post-Gulf (pp. 156-188) “when we had finally gotten over Vietnam” which led to numerous dismissals of top airforce brass and a greatly lowered morale of the rest, resulting in a haemorrhaging of disgusted qualified pilots, at a cost of $lm each for training. This was ostensibly about harassment, though most of the women present could either take care of themselves, expected what they got or went there to get it. Even during a rowdy “gauntlet”, when someone shouted “I’ve lost my pager”, everything stopped until it was found. The woman who led the complaints benefited to the tune of $5+m – and left the service. After Tailhook, everything was about gender, … [it was] the worst event for the Navy since Pearl Harbor.”
Of course, the whole burden of the book is that the US armed forces are not being treated by Congress and the media as a fighting force whose efficiency is paramount, but as a section of society which can be moulded into something with quite a different agenda from fighting and killing, though what that is is difficult to define – that men and women are basically equal and if it doesn’t always work out that way, it’s the men’s fault.
The book ends with a series of recommendations, granted that the forces should remain open to women:
- Eliminate recruiting quotas for women;
- Have separate-sex “boot camp” training;
- Have high and equal standards there;
- Restore “openness” and be frank about the problems, not just put them down to “sexism”;
- Exonerate the personnel victimised after Tailhook (“Witchook”);
- Separate the social service personnel from the fighting forces;
- Copy the practice of Marines, who seem to have fought through the “gender” nonsense largely unscathed.
Interesting legal development – a group of Gulf War veterans are suing the banks and chemical companies that facilitated Hussein’s procurement or manufacture of chemical weapons to which the troops were exposed during the first phase of the Gulf War.
“Sixteen veterans from the Persian Gulf War filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., against 11 chemical companies and 33 banks from throughout the world that allegedly helped Iraq construct and support its extensive chemical warfare program.
The banks named in the suit include Deutsche Bank AG of Germany, Lloyds Bank of the United Kingdom, Credit Lyonnais of France, State Bank of India, Banca Roma of Italy, National Bank of Pakistan, Arab Bank of Jordan, Bank of Tokyo and Kuwait Commercial bank. The companies that the suit claims have sold chemicals or materials to Iraq are headquartered in France, Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and the United States – ABB Lummus Global Inc. in Delaware.”
The companies all do business in New York, where the suit was filed, so there is no issue of extraterritorial jurisdiction (the fatal flaw to date of that pet tranzi project, international courts).
The lawsuit will have to clear some very difficult legal hurdles before any recovery can be had. If these hurdles are cleared and the veterans receive damages, then the end result could be extreme reluctance on the part of any private business to sell anything, or provide any services, with a military application to any government. After all, liability for the damages, or even collateral or unintended damages, caused by weapons sold to a government, would probably shut down or impede the sale of weapons by the private sector to governments. Attempts to force governments to indemnify their suppliers would be, interesting, to say the least. Depending on exactly how the case goes off, it could clear the way for lawsuits against gun manufacturers for shootings and other crimes. Second order effects could will include the nationalization of defense industries and weapons manufacturers to bring them under the umbrella of sovereign immunity, or other special treatment for these firms.
If the firms were violating the law when they made the sales, then I can see holding them liable for the foreseeable effects of their illegal activity. If the sales were legal when made, then I begin to have a problem with this lawsuit, on both jurisprudential and policy grounds. The jurisprudence of imposing liability for actions that were legal when done is very troubling, of course. The policy implications, a few of which are noted above, are also troubling, although the notion of governments being pariahs in the marketplace for things that hurt people has a certain very definite attraction.
One doesn’t have to look far to find all manner of carping about the current occupation of Iraq. Much of the carping lacks any broader perspective, and this lack of perspective leaves one at a loss as to how seriously to take, for example, anonymous reports of Iraqi citizens being abused by US soldiers. Setting aside the morally obtuse, who think we should have just left the Iraqis to the continued ministrations of Saddam and the Baathists, those critiques worth listening to at all generally boil down to a complaint about the competence of the occupying forces.
I think that we are seeing is an entirely predictable result of the fact that the American, and to a somewhat lesser degree the British, military forces are designed and operated as war-fighting forces. This is in sharp contrast to most other military forces in the world, which serve as a combination of welfare jobs programs and, in effect, domestic occupation forces. The US army, at least, does not prepare much for occupation work, perhaps because they find their time fully occupied preparing for their primary function of kicking the living crap out of the opposition force. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
War-fighting and occupation are famously incompatible with each other – one demands the rapid application of lethal force, the other the modulated escalation of minimum necessary force, etc. A war-fighting army cannot transition, on the fly, from war-fighting to occupation, at least not with the speed and efficacy now demanded of the US and British forces in Iraq.
See what conclusion you derive from the following assumptions:
- The West, as a matter of self-defense, will need to occasionally go in and change the regime of a foreign nation. Unless you retreat into pacifist fantasizing, I think that 9/11, not to mention WWII, demonstrates that, from time to time, militarily expedited regime change of hostile nations will occasionally be a necessity for the continued survival of even the most libertarian country.
- The occupation forces need to be operating at near pitch-perfect levels within a few days of the Dear Leader statues coming down. It is apparently now the case that, once the old regime is out the door, the victorious forces must have the place running at least as good as before, in jig time.
- The war-fighting forces cannot operate as an occupation force at satisfactory levels. The current conventional wisdom seems to be that successful post-war occupation requires administrators and enforcers that speak the language and are conversant with local customs spread throughout the country within a manner of weeks, if not days, and no heavy-handed policing or otherwise excessive uses of force allowed.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the US, and possibly other Western nations, need to diversify their armed forces to include specialist occupation and civil administration units. Since many of the complaints about the occupation have to do with the lack of intimate familiarity with the Iraqi situation, we will need to have units training up to take over and run specific foreign nations years before hostilities actually break out.
Imagine the diplomatic possibilities! Will the French be offended because we don’t deem them enough of a threat to spin up a French occupation army group? Or will they be offended because we are planning to run France, for a bit, anyway?
The logic of sky-high expectations seems inescapable to me – self-defense requires regime change, which requires expert military occupiers and nation builders, which in turn requires detailed advance training in the language and customs of the nation to be uplifted.
The strategic and diplomatic consequences of going this route are, of course, disastrous. Even worse are the potential domestic effects – having a prefab military junta sitting around with nothing but time on its hands does not bode well for the domestic tranquility, does it?
Of course, in my view, this is all unnecessary if realistic expectations are maintained. Occupation is a tough business, one that will satisfy virtually no one no matter how well it is done. The Iraqis have complained, for example, that we don’t shoot looters on sight, and undoubtedly many of the ongoing problems with electricity and the oil industry have to do with the coalition trying to rule with a relatively light hand. But for every step we take toward greater enforcement and protection (more troops, more aggressive patrolling, shoot on sight policies, etc.), howls of protest will go up from both within and without Iraq.
The key, I think, is to keep your eye on progress towards the long-term goal and to maintain some minimal perspective on events. Sadly, in today’s partisan world of 24 hour news cycles, long-term thinking and perspective always run a poor second to political cheap shots and sensationalist video clips.
Our Man in Basra has sent us a few quotes from locals before his next dispatch about Basra society.
Words from the streets of Basra:
For over 30 years we suffered under Saddam. No Arab, no Muslim country came to help us. Then America and Britain made political decision to get rid of Saddam. Now we should help the British.
From local Sheikh.
You should be more like the Americans and kill more Ba’athists.
After US killed Uday and Quasay and first time I heard anyone say we should be more like the Americans!
I am very happy that Uday and Quasay were killed but it is a pity they were not captured so they could be put on trial and tortured and then killed. Being killed like this was good for them.
The people here really hate Saddam and all his family and friends. It’s about the one thing everyone agrees on. When the news was confirmed that the evil sons were dead, the whole place was like 4th July in South L.A. In fact it was like watching TV footage of the nights Baghdad was bombed, there was tracer arching up into the sky from every direction you looked. Quite pretty to watch it sailing overhead, but a little worrying to see how many places all around us have automatic weapons to fire off, as well as all kinds of flares. And no shortage of ammo either. On the other hand these people must like us really, because we don’t get all that fired at us, and there’s a lot more civilians with guns here than there are soldiers. But basically, Saddam’s sons dead – party time. The only down notes I heard from anyone was “let’s get the rest”, and “pity they didn’t suffer more”. A lot of people wanted them put on trial but I don’t think a few years in prison and early parole for good behaviour was ever an option. Incidentally, one 12 year old boy sleeping on a roof seems to have been killed by falling fire, though we can’t be certain that was the reason – we had a few near misses. This prompts the thought that one of the first things Iraq really needs is some decent fireworks for celebrations. And don’t worry too much about the safety regs, just make them loud.
You British built Basra, you built the sewers, you taught us how to dress, how to eat, how to run the oil industry. We do not know the Americans, we think they are against the Muslims because of what they do, but we know you. Why do you not do now what you did in 1920 and 1941 and control this place and get rid of the bad men? Then Basra will be very rich for everyone.
By bad men this man meant Ba’athists, anti-CF, sheikhs, criminals and religious fundamentalists. There are quite a lot of anglophiles in Basra from the last time my Regiment was here in WW2 but of course you have to allow for them telling you what they think you want to hear…
After a short hiatus due to snail mail from Basra involving wrong addresses and the usual off-line world confusions I give you the forth letter written by our illustrious ‘Man in Basra’. The following has been written partially as a response to
The always interesting Victor Davis Hanson chimes in this morning with a warning about the ongoing conflict with Islamist barbarians. His message: it is highly unlikely that the barbarians can win this war, unless we hand them a victory:
Western societies from ancient Athens to imperial Rome to the French republic rarely collapsed because of a shortage of resources or because foreign enemies proved too numerous or formidable in arms — even when those enemies were grim Macedonians or Germans. Rather, in times of peace and prosperity there arose an unreal view of the world beyond their borders, one that was the product of insularity brought about by success, and an intellectual arrogance that for some can be the unfortunate byproduct of an enlightened society.
Such smug dispensation — as profoundly amoral as it is — provides us, on the cheap and at a safe distance, with a sense of moral worth. Or perhaps censuring from the bleachers enables us to feel superior to those less fortunate who are still captive to their primordial appetites. We prefer to cringe at the thought that others like to see proof of their killers’ deaths, prefer to shoot rather than die capturing a mass murderer, and welcome a generic profile of those who wish to kill them en masse.
We should take stock of this dangerous and growing mindset — and remember that wealthy, sophisticated societies like our own are rarely overrun. They simply implode — whining and debating still to the end, even as they pass away.
Like Mr. Hanson, I believe that it is a conceit, a fatal mistake, to treat a war as a court proceeding, and to try to apply peacetime norms in a wartime environment. The danger with the new era of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ is that the threat is much more nebulous, making it that much more difficult to confine the wartime dispensation. We have already seen plenty of ‘slop’ in the US, as the Justice Department is already using its ‘anti-terrorism’ powers to go after pornographers, drug dealers, and so forth.
The dilemma is quite real, and I don’t see any easy answers other than eternal vigilance combined with bloody-minded realism. In other words, pretty much what has preserved the spirit of liberty through past crises.
Steve Sailer is a name I hear now and again, every few weeks, but I know very little about the guy. Someone commented on this, which I wrote last night (about men wearing their shirts outside their trousers), to the effect that Sailer had something to say about this, about a week ago, that was relevant. I couldn’t find it, but I did find this 1995 piece about the nuances of why race relations in the US army are so much better than race relations in US colleges.
It’s no surprise to me that treating people in a totally meritocratic way, regardless of race, makes for better inter-ethnic relations, or that armies can’t allow inter-ethnic rivalries to build up in the ranks, so they don’t. So it was another less than completely obvious idea that I found striking in this piece, which is that the way for an unpopular racial or ethnic group to make an admired impact on the wider society is for it to concentrate and conquer niches rather than disperse and try to do well across the board. Sailer’s point is that academic racial preference policies undermine (to name but one of their many drawbacks) this benign process, by over-dispersing the group supposedly being helped. → Continue reading: Niche achievement versus dispersed failure – Steve Sailer (and me) on race relations
Reports are coming in that both of Saddam Hussein’s mass murderous sons may have been killed during an attack by US Forces on a house in Mosul in Northern Iraq. Early reports said ‘seized’ but SkyNews is currently (17:40 GMT) reporting live from Mosul saying US reinforcements are “pouring into the area” and bodies at the house “have a strong resemblence to Uday and Qusay”.
Let’s hope the reports are confirmed soon!
 Yes! it is being confirmed that Uday and Qusay are dead. Good riddance to two of the most evil psychopaths to walk the earth in recent times…
…and to the US forces who did it: way to go, guys! 
On this day, nearly two hundred years ago, the artillery, cavalry and red coated infantry of Britain, along with their Dutch and Prussian allies, finally put an end to the tyrannical rule of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Belgian wheat fields of Waterloo, near Brussels. It was the Duke of Wellington’s greatest triumph.
Given that this blog is of course, such a great fan of the French political class (heh), I trust no readers of this publication would be so vulgar and unsophisticated to point out this salient historical anniversary to their friends and colleagues today.
I just thought you would like to have this titbit of historical information, gentle reader.
“Up Guards, and at ’em!”
– Wellington, June 18th 1815
British troops injured in war are being forced to pay for private medical treatment or join the long patient lists waiting for operations on the National Health Service. A staffing crisis in the Defence Medical Services (DMS) means that more than 10,000 soldiers – the equivalent of 15 infantry battalions – are currently not fit for frontline duty.
Large sections of the Army will be declared un-operational because of the number of troops waiting for surgery unless there is an emergency injection of cash. Commanding officers have been rationing the private treatment but the amount of money available to each unit for private healthcare is not enough to reduce the number of servicemen and women waiting for operations.
The Telegraph reports:
One soldier, who was injured on active duty in Afghanistan, has now been told that he faces a 12-month wait for a knee operation unless he is prepared to pay £2,000 for private treatment.
Another soldier who recently returned from Afghanistan after serving with the International Stabilisation and Assistance Force (Isaf) has been told that he will have to wait six months before he can see a specialist about his damaged ankle. He may then face a further year’s wait for an operation. He has, however, been advised that if he were to go private, he could see a specialist immediately and have the operation within three weeks.
In addition to the pain and inconvenience caused by the injuries, service personnel are “medically downgraded”, if the injury prevents them from carrying out their duties. They are unlikely to be able to undertake courses which are physically demanding and cannot be deployed on military operations. Their pay can decrease and they may be passed over for promotion until fully fit.
This is just one example of how Blair’s government is treating the armed forces. The undermining of the British military is a result of a profound distrust of it by the New Labour establishment, despite the fact that the armed forces are the only state entity that has consistently bailed the government out of its botched policies (foot and mouth crisis) and allowed Tony to play a world statesman (Afghanistan, Iraq).
Blair achieved a measure of uncritical popularity with the American public, due to his support of Bush’s determination to depose Saddam. He risked his job and support of his voters at home in order to do that. It may be commendable and we wholeheartedly supported his efforts that resulted in the liberation of Iraq. We did so without any delusions as to his statist convictions, in which near messianic zeal mixes with autocratic tendencies.
However, those on the other side of the Atlantic harbouring inflated opinions about Blair, and occassionally making preposterous comparisons of Blair to Winston Churchill or other great British statesmen, should examine the way their pet foreign leader behaves on the domestic scene. Let the Telegraph article be an eye opener to the true nature of the valiant Prime Minister Blair and his tightly led pack of ministers.
We at Samizdata.net do not trust the man further than we can throw him. So watch this space, we will be reporting on the latest development in Blair’s successful dismantling of other worthwhile British institutions.
 
Churchill Not Churchill
The Ministry of Defence is leaving no stone unturned in its investigations of the allegations against Colonel Tim Collins:
The Ministry of Defence said an inquiry into the death raised issues about the “wider military culture” within the unit which demanded further investigation.
Say it isn’t so!! A ‘military culture’ in the British Army? Has the world gone stark raving mad? ‘Military culture’ has no place in our armed forces and it must be rooted out forthwith.
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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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