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.
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Last Friday, the Mises Institute published a special edition of their daily article containing nothing else but quotes by von Mises on the subject of war.
The quotes are hard to disagree with, apart from their mistaken application to the current situation. No distinction is made between using war as a means of conquest, expanding one’s power and using war as a defensive measure, protecting one’s security, freedom etc. For those who believe the US and the UK are engaged in the former, I shall leave them to their struggle against the neo-imperialists…
For the rest, I retaliate with a small collection of quotes that make such a distinction:
We make war that we may live in peace.
– Aristotle
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
– John Adams
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
– John Stuart Mill
That all war is physically frightful is obvious; but if that were a moral verdict, there would be no difference between a torturer and a surgeon.
– G.K. Chesterton
I cannot see how we can literally end War unless we can end Will. I cannot think that war will ever be utterly impossible; and I say so not because I am what these people call a militarist, but rather because I am a revolutionist. Absolutely to forbid fighting is to forbid what our fathers called “the sacred right of insurrection.” Against some decisions no self-respecting men can be prevented from appealing to fortune and to death.
– G.K. Chesterton
OK, this is not going to win the war, but it will have to do while we are waiting for our logins for The Command Post warblog!
For years now the British soldier-in-the-field has been bitching about the crappy Light Support Weapon version of the bug-ridden SA-80 rifle that they have been saddled with.
So I was delighted to see picture after picture of British Army and Royal Marines using the excellent Fabrique National Minimi Squad Automatic Weapon. British soldiers deserve proper weapons and at last they seem to be getting them.
Soldier of the 1st bn Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in action in Iraq, using the FN Minimi SAW
This is not altogether surprising but, nonetheless, it is a potentially serious complication:
A Turkish military source told Reuters about 1,500 commandos crossed Turkey’s southern border at three points late on Friday, aiming to secure access for subsequent, larger deployments.
“Turkish units have begun crossing into northern Iraq to take security measures at various points,” the official said.
The United States has told Turkey it would not welcome a unilateral incursion into northern Iraq, where local Kurds are suspicious of Turkish motives and have said such a move could lead to conflict.
Fighting between Kurds and Turks in the North of Iraq? Not impossible by any means.
16:30 GMT: If my time-of-flight guestimate is correct, the B-52s which took off earlier from RAF Fairford in Britain will be over Iraq in the next hour.
Stand by for the promised ‘shock and awe’.
More information from the just finished Ministry of Defence briefing suggests the fighting in Umm Qasr was considerably harder that expected as the last section of the town containing some Iraqi die hards has only recently fallen.
Reports are also coming in that suggest forward elements of 7 (UK) Armoured Brigade and US mechanized forces have reached the outskirts of the very important city of Basra, scene of bitter fighting in the Iran-Iraq War and viewed by many Iraqis as their ‘Verdun’. It may prove to be very psychologically important if Basra can be taken quickly by the Allies, but I expect they will first encircle and isolate the city from the north rather than try a risky coup de main today.
Update: 17:20 GMT: …or then again, maybe they are indeed going for a daring coup-de-main against Basra! Reports on SkyNews just in are saying unconfirmed reports indicate the allies (unspecified which units) have already seized part of downtown Basra! Blimey!
Eight Royal Marines and four Americans were killed in a non-combat related helicopter crash last night.
In an interesting Order of Battle snippet, it is also now clear that 3 Commando Brigade (Royal Marines) is fighting with a battalion of US Marines under the control of its HQ. As RM and USMC often train together and have famously cordial relations, I suppose this is not all that surprising.
Also, it is being reported that 3 Commando Brigade (Royal Marines) have secured the strategic Al Faw Oil Facility. I assume the success of this operation on the Al Faw peninsula will lead to a move towards Basra next, which Sky News reported has come under air attack this morning.
Astonishing pictures of some significant fighting in the town of Safwan were coming out live on television this morning (UK time), showing that some elements of the Iraqi army were putting up a fight against USMC forces. A group of USMC vehicles could be seen pouring machinegun and grenade launcher fire into Iraqi positions, and gunship helicopters were seen firing cannon and rocket fire to suppress outgoing Iraqi gunfire.
It now seems that taking the border town of Umm Qasr, reported to have fallen to the allies last night, required more fighting that was initially claimed by US news reports. USMC mechanized infantry was apparently pinned down by Iraqi fire for two hours, requiring Royal Marine artillery support before the advance could resume.
On the left flank of the allied move into Iraq, forward elements of the US 3rd Infantry Division are reported to be as much as 90 miles in from the Kuwaiti border and although as of now (08:40 GMT) the US division is reported to be stationary whilst it refuels, there does not seem to have been any serious opposition yet to what is probably the main American advance.
18:45 GMT Ministry of Defence sources are reporting that British ground forces are now engaged with the enemy in southern Iraq.
Earlier reports indicate USMC artillery and gunship helicopters were also in action in the 5 km wide demilitarised zone along the Kuwaiti border.
Update: 18:45 GMT: M.O.D. has announced that 3 Commando Brigade (Royal Marines), supported by RAF Harriers & Tornados plus US Navy SEALs, have launched an ‘offensive’ against the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq.
Update: 21:30 GMT: The attack by 3 Commando Brigade (40 & 42 Commando plus artillery, HQ and logistic assets) on the Al-Faw peninsula was initiated with a fast hovercraft mounted amphibious assault which put the Royal Marines assets ashore along with supporting Scimitar light tanks of the Royal Dragoon Guards. The Brigade is said to have now ‘moved inshore and though its initial objectives’.
We have got the war we argued for. Now we who called for it can only pray that the cost is not too terrible for the soldiers of the United States and Britain, nor of course for the long suffering hapless people of Iraq. At this moment of truth for the Anglosphere I have very few words of my own right now that do not stick in my throat, so I will just quote Julia Ward Howe’s famous song (large file) that was also sung at the funeral of Winston Churchill.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
l can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish’d rows of steel,
“As ye deal with my contemners, So with you my grace shall deal;”
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
God speed, Gentlemen.
I’ve had half an eye on British TV all evening, and you might be quite surprised how gung-ho it has rather suddenly become. Finally, we are getting all the stuff about what a total bastard Saddam Hussain is, from fearsome looking guys with towels on their heads. On Newsnight they’re now discussing the nuances of the fighting that might happen, with an elderly military guy who sounds confident and expert and who I’ve never seen before. Funny how war seems to cause all manner of total strangers suddenly to pop up in TV studios.
All this makes me remember that there is just one more guess about this “war” that I want now to get on the samizdata record before events overtake me and leave me having to say: “I said that! Didn’t I say that?!” So now let me say it.
There’s been a lot of grumbling in the blogosphere, and from the likes of Mark Steyn and many others, about how absurdly delayed this “war” has been, and what a “rush to war” there hasn’t been.
The dominant explanation of this now is that Dumbo the Elephant alias George W. Bush has been standing like a greyhound in the slips (Henry V – please pardon the mixing of the animal metaphors) and that Tranzi Tony Blair has been restraining Dumbo with a lot of flummery about the UN, World Opinion, and other such foolishnesses not held in very high regard in our corner of the blogosphere.
But what if the reason the “war” has been so delayed is that it has taken a long time to get it ready? If I understand the Americans correctly they’ve been planning this war since 9/12. And one of the things they have been most concerned to achieve is low casualties, on both sides. And one of the most important ways they’ve been setting about how to get that result is by throwing technology at the problem. → Continue reading: What if the wait turns out to be worth it?
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.
The British commander of troops in the Gulf admitted yesterday that he had been forced to borrow a pair of American desert boots because of a foot injury. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, asked how he had come by the injury, replied: “Kicking a journalist.”
Ernest Young has an interesting idea that surely no person who has been forced to flee their homeland in fear of their life could disagree with…
I have just seen an item on a cable news channel in the USA, concerning the return of asylum seekers from Iraq.
The UN has asked host countries not to return Iraqi asylum seekers to Iraq.
All fair and reasonable.
During WWII Britain was host to many asylum seekers from invaded countries, such as France and Poland. With very little encouragement, these folk formed regiments and joined forces with the Allies, and were keen to see service in the liberation of their native countries. They were among the most dedicated soldiers, and earned many honours for bravery, after all, they had the best reasons for fighting against the invader.
As we have some 150,000 ‘asylum seekers’ from Iraq, in the UK, would it not be a reasonable idea to form an Iraqi Regiment, so that these Hussein haters could take an active part in liberating their own country?
Maybe they could join forces with ‘asylum seekers’ from other countries, who must all surely have good reason to oppose tyranny, to form maybe an Iraqi Division. I am sure that the skills that they have, with just the language alone, would help during the fighting, and also be of great help in ‘democratizing’ Iraq after the conflict.
Maybe I am expecting too much…
Ernest Young
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.
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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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