Month: April 2003

I suppose there is something quaint about the idea of deserving victory. After all, the idea of “my strength is as that of ten, because my heart is pure” has been pretty decisively proven not to be the case.

Still, I think it’s a good sentiment. Whether or not you are victorious, there is something of value in striving to be the side that deserves victory — through the justice of your cause, through personal valor, through … whatever.

So I’ve included, up by the yellow ribbon in the sidebar, a copy of the WWII Churchill poster, as a reminder that it’s not enough to simply in Iraq have the bigger guns and the deadlier weapons — we need to be sure that we deserve to win, by our cause, by what we do during the fighting, and by what we do after.

(reminder of the poster via Ad Orientem)

A rhetorical question:

How should the United States and the international community respond to a brutal, despotic regime in an Arab country, one with clear ties to international terrorism? And what if this regime, located in one of the world’s most volatile regions, has honed its ruthlessly survivalist instincts for years, and in the process developed weapons of mass destruction? And what if the regime possesses great oil wealth, rendering its moral character invisible to those bent on further exploitation of promising oil reserves and the pursuit of petrodollars? And if this regime is also a threat to its neighbors, reneges on various internationally brokered commitments, and regularly attacks its own citizens in ways that violate the Geneva conventions, how should we respond?
These questions seem worth asking at the present moment since they have been answered in such starkly different fashion for Iraq and Sudan.

Seems the UN is about to upgrade the Khartoum regime from a “country with special problems” to a place which needs no UN special rapporteur for human rights. No more regular reports for the world press about the slave trade, the denial of humanitarian aid to those pesky 3 million folks inhabiting the oil-rich south of the country, or additions to the the 2 million dead over the last 20 years of civil war.

Certainly the US deserves some blame here. It seems to be pretty badly distracted with Iraq, and neglectful of past condemnations of Sudan.

But the oh-so-humanitarian EU is the active villain here, with France (and those lovable zanies at TotalFinaElf, who have major oil concessions lying fallow in the south) abetted by Libya (an ally of the Khartoum regime) currently chairing the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Sure the UNCHR did vote to cite Sudan for human rights violations — but left out any censure for the slave trade, or the attacks on religious freedoms — including forcible conversions of Christians to Islam and bombings of Christian religious sites. The US condemned the vote, but only to the extent of forcing a counted vote and then abstaining.

Indeed, through the oddities of the way politics work in the UN, the resolution passed with 28 in favor, zero against, 25 abstentions.

The ambassador of Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, claimed that the move by the United States to call for a vote was “a clear politicization and misuse of the commission for obvious foreign policy purposes that have nothing to do with genuine human right concerns.”

Right. And if it were Christians bombing Moslems? I’ll betcha Pakistan would be outraged (and never note that the US got still got involved in such a situation, in Kosovo).

(via Ghost of a Flea, which has a number of other links on the Sudan)

One of the growing bits of entertainment over the past few days has been watching the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (various spellings), give press conference after press conference, in which he progressively continues to describe life in cloud cuckoo land, where American troops are being beaten back with thousands of casualties, are under siege, are hundreds of miles from Baghdad, are …

Well, it makes you wonder why he’s saying all these crazy things. What’s going on in his head?

1. “Dammit, it’s true! All those pictures of American troops with Baghdad in the background? Digital fakery. That’s why the resolution is so crappy! They got those same guys who faked the Moon Landing! Really! I read about it on the Internet!”
2. “I’m nucking futs. I mean, why the hell else would anyone be an information minster for Saddam Hussein?”
3. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
4. “How can you tell when an Iraqi information minister is lying? His lips are moving. Heh. I kill me.”
5. “I wonder if they know there’s a guy off-camera aiming a gun at my wife’s head.”
6. “I hope nobody notices how much I look like Saddam Hussein with my — er, his moustache shaved off.”
7. “Hey, I just read what they put on the cue cards. I’m an actor, fer Allah’s sake! Want some of my head shots? You know anyone in Hollywood? I’m going to be available very soon …”
8. “I’m just waiting to see if anyone’s paying any attention. I keep saying more and more outrageous statements, and nobody says anything. They just tremble a lot. What’s with that?”
9. “April Fools!”

Wow.

This war is an abject and utter failure. What everyone thought would be a quick, decisive victory has turned into an embarrassing series of reversals. The enemy — a ragtag, badly-fed collection of hotheads and fanatics — has failed to be shocked and awed by the most magnificent military machine ever fielded. Their dogged resistance has shown us the futility of the idea that a nation of millions could ever be subjugated and administered, no matter what obscene price we are willing to pay in blood and money.
The President of the United States is a buffoon, an idiot, a man barely able to speak the English language. His vice president is a little-seen, widely despised enigma and his chief military advisor a wild-eyed warmonger. Only his Secretary of State offers any hope of redemption, for he at least is a reasonable, well-educated man, a man most thought would have made a far, far better choice for Chief Executive.
We must face the fact that we had no business forcing this unjust war on a people who simply want to be left alone. It has damaged our international relationships beyond any measure, and has proven to be illegal, immoral and nothing less than a monumental mistake that will take generations to rectify. We can never hope to subdue and remake an entire nation of millions. All we will do is alienate them further. So we must bring this war to an immediate end, and make a solemn promise to history that we will never launch another war of aggression and preemption again, so help us God.
So spoke the American press. The time was the summer of 1864.

Bill Whittle’s essay is long, and it jinks and jags around to touch on a number of points. But it is terribly worth reading.

You can probably debate some of the assumptions, but the University of Chicago study summarized here certainly seems to make a case that not only does this war make more economic sense than continued “containment,” but it makes a lot more sense in human lives, on both sides.

(via InstaPundit)

Just to show I have a sense of humor about things, too.

“We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There’s just one problem — it’s in North Korea.” — Jon Stewart
“War continues in Iraq. They’re calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realized that spells ‘OIL.'” — Jay Leno
“CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts … regular, premium and unleaded.” — Jay Leno

(via Scott)