When did Russia become Sweden? They seem awfully offended and aghast by our war in Iraq, almost as if they haven't been in some war or another since Josef Dzhugashvili changed his name to Stalin.
Speaking of Stalin, it seems ol' Saddam has modeled not only his system of governing on the old Georgian master, but also his method of conducting war. Turns out the real purpose (or dual purpose) of the Fedayeen Saddam (Saddam's Nutters) is to provide the Iraqi troops with a choice between charging the enemy and a bullet in the back. One can only hope they achieve less with this tactic than the Soviets.
Also of interest in this vein, I'm reminded that among the many works of literature and philosophy forbidden in Soviet Russia was the works of Karl Marx.I begrudge most purposes to which my tax money is put, but for once I feel like I've gotten a bargain. Speaking as one who pays for his share of the tanks and bombs, I have to say that I am very pleased with the performance of my military. Up until now I -- along with many others, including France and Russia for instance -- was somewhat dubious in regard to the seemingly grandiose claims made by the Pentagon and defense establishments concerning the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. Certainly I believed the technological prowess of the military was unparalleled in the world, but technology does not always nor necessarily indicate success on the battlefield; many technologically superior armies have learned this the hard way at the hands of their low-tech foes (*cough* Russia *cough*). What I didn't understand was the unprecedented intelligence and combined arms capabilities this technology grants; or rather, I understood what it could *provide*, but I did not understand the military's capacity to make use of it as well as they have evidenced over the past 2 weeks.
There is a great adjustment that must take place within the human organizational unit -- be that a single individual or anything larger -- when asked to adapt to the use of new and unprecedented tools. It has taken decades for us to really grow accustomed to the integration of computer systems into our lives for instance, and many still have not done so. The larger the organizational unit the more difficult the adaptation. There are entire cultures who have not yet acclimated themselves to the use of technology of any sort. There are businesses, institutions, governments, religious groups who have been unable or unwilling to adapt. Whether this is due to learning curve, sentimentality, or trepidation is unclear and probably bound to each individual case, but what *is* clear, is that once the adjustment takes place, that organizational unit advances. And sometimes it advances a whole lot.
The present US military is nothing like the one that fought in Vietnam (for example). Its simple capacity for *training* its soldiers to make use of its technological advances is staggering. In Vietnam, commanders had trouble preventing soldiers from emptying entire rifle magazines into a clump of trees swayed by a breeze. Now soldiers are targeting air strikes with pinpoint accuracy on enemy positions they have never even seen. Company commanders are able to monitor the position and coordinate the attack of every vehicle and soldier under their command while referencing real-time data on the locations of the enemy. It's almost like reality and computer simulation are dovetailing, with the former -- incredibly! -- moving in the direction of the latter, instead of the other way around.
There are many world rulers and military commanders filling their proverbial pants right now. They had hoped, *prayed* that the claims were all hype. They had almost convinced themselves that the Afghan campaign was a fluke, that the US couldn't possibly duplicate its success in Iraq against a large conventional army. This has been their worst nightmare, one presided over by Moore's Law and executed by men and women raised on computers and video games -- can anyone ever catch up to them now?
Predictions: US Military recruitment goes way up (this has been the most engaging reality television ever); Donald Rumsfeld gets his way at the Pentagon (there has been lots of infighting); 3rd world dictators everywhere demonstrate an almost comical level of politeness; France remains as belligerent as ever; Russia increases military R&D spending (as well as industrial espionage funding); Blair and Bush consider themselves vindicated; lots of new Defense Dept. projects start up surrounding now proven technologies.I'm confused. Why do these Baghdad journalists believe they can stand spectator to a gun battle and remain invulnerable to it? And why does anybody feel they can trust the reportage of people with such a shaky grip on reality?
During the first Gulf war the reporters in the Al-Rashid hotel were ushered into a bomb shelter (or a basement type room anyway) while the city was under bombardment. If it seemed the prudent thing to do back then, why do they now -- with tank artillery and mortar shells and bullets flying all over the place -- stand outside on balconies and point gun-looking cameras down on invading tanks?
There are several possible explanations for what happened at the Palestine Hotel:
1) The tank commander perceived a threat from that building and decided to remove it. In which case, tough for the reporters -- it's a war.2) The tank commander made a mistake and fired in error on the hotel. In which case, tough for the reporters -- it's a war, and mistakes happen in armed combat.
3) The tank commander deliberately fired on the hotel, presumably in an effort to kill journalists. Does this seem a reasonable explanation? It's apparently the one most of these journalists believe. But then, take a look at what most of them have been reporting and it should be less surprising.
I think I've decided it's MSNBC I hate the most. They just played yet another collage clip, this one comprised of video from the Palestine Hotel incident, complete with solemn Band of Brothers type music and slow motion effects. Muchos Nachos, the self-aggrandizement is beginning to rival that of Hollywood!
Promptly after that they ran a story about how a couple of soldiers stuck their hands in "unmentionable" places before greeting Geraldo. This is their idea of news. While a war is happening. (Enough with the jihad against Geraldo already; the guy is a putz but he's also hilarious and therefore 10 times more entertaining than anything happening on MSNBC.)"We blocked them inside the city" --Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraqi "Information" Minister
I'm wearying of how dumbed-down the broadcast media has been during this war coverage: exhaustive explanations of elementary details and a general lack of in-depth analysis, naïve conjecture and foolish questions, plainly wrong information. I can't tell if it's a result of the networks' opinion of its target audience or because the news anchors are so dumb. Granted, most viewers aren't going to know that the Iraqi Information Ministry is on the other side of the river from the Palestine Hotel, or be able to recognize the silhouette of an A-10 Warthog in the sky -- but the news anchors should! This is their project space after all; they should know it intimately by now. I could never last in my job if I were so ignorant of its details.
I suppose what I really want is a sort of Wall Street Journal of television news networks. Surely there's a market for such a thing? It exists more or less for financial information with Bloomberg and (I suppose) CNBC, but what about for all news? What about a news channel that doesn't feel obliged to explain to its audience the difference between an Abrams Tank and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, staffed by anchors who can tell the difference between the two for themselves? (I'm not kidding: they were running video of a Bradley on a low ridge, the rear hatch of which was open with troops moving in and out, and the anchor said they couldn't tell if it was a tank or a Bradley they were looking at!)
Furthermore! I respect the bravery of and the coverage provided by the embedded reporters, but I'm perplexed by their apparent inconsideration for the troops. It seems every time there's a firefight in progress the reporter has to shove a microphone in some poor soldier's face and ask him some pointless question. This guy is in combat! People are shooting at him and his friends! The worst of these has been Bob Arnot from MSNBC. Last night he asked a marine how he felt about taking casualties. I wanted the marine to bitch-slap him! And it's become obvious that the soldiers are annoyed with this guy too now, mostly providing him with curt replies or outrightly ignoring his officious pestering.
And enough with the dead journalists! Yeah it sucks that some great guy got killed, but he knew the risks when he accepted the assignment -- stop the barrage of wailing, tributes, memorials, and photo collages, it's ridiculous. I don't want to seem unsympathetic, but here's a whole-ass list of great guys who have been killed. What about them?One of the most irritating things sports broadcasters sometimes do is attribute the victory of one side to the failings of the other. If a football team wins a game 47-3, surely the winning team has *some* offensive skill? If a tennis player shuts out her opponent in straight sets, surely it's not wholly due to an inadequate defense?
That said, the defense of Iraq was little short of woeful. Yes, woeful. And given this basically ridiculous attempt at defending their country on the part of Saddam and his goons, I've been wondering how the Saddamites *should* have gone about it. Classical military doctrine would suggest giving up as little ground as possible as slowly as possible (think German-Russian Front). The invading army should have been slowed and made to work for every meter of ground taken, fortifying the Medina RG Division in the south, reinforcing it from the regular army, then scorching earth all the way north during the inevitable retreat: blow the bridges, pre-fortify the far side; mine and crater the roads to slow the progress of the armor and supply convoys; blow the dam to swamp out the valley and loose megatons of artillery on the bogged down passage.
A disciple of Stalin, one would have expected Saddam to follow this strategy, so why didn't he?
The Turks did Saddam no favor with their vacillations -- presumably the open question of a northern attack hampered planning to some extent, and faced with the possibility of a larger additional front on that side he may have been reluctant to commit strong troops to positions so far from the capital. Could it be he expected treachery from the Saudis, the Jordanians, even the Syrians? The Iranians? Certainly an unexpected attack from a vast exposed flank on the west or east would have been catastrophic; so was it simple paranoia that crippled his planning? Or could it have been painful memories of the rout in 1991 that made him keep his troops away from the open desert, knowing full well they would not survive there for long?
Or maybe... perhaps... the defense of Iraq wasn't designed by Saddam at all, perhaps it was designed by... $USD?France/Germany/Russia -- It may be important now for them to demonstrate that diplomacy can be as effective means of change as military force. They may really want to resuscitate the UN, and my bet is they stack their chips on N. Korea. Already the Russians have hypothesized they may reconsider their opposition to imposing sanctions on the DPR, which Pyongyang has repeatedly stated it would consider casus belli (or did that not include nations other than the US?). What form that threat would assume remains to be seen, but that wacko Kim Jong-Il imagines great waves of flame engulfing the entire world. (The problem most wacko dictators have is they imagine the rest of the world operates in similar fashion to their own insular kingdom, and that tactics proven domestically must scale well to an international level -- c.f. Saddam Hussein.) What the new Not-America Troika will be able to accomplish remains to be seen (or missed).
Strange BedfellowsHere's a memo to France and Russia: didn't the Germans sort of... um I don't know... well... once or twice... um.... Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. And didn't the Russians occupy half of Germany for what, like 40 years? And didn't the French once invade Russia and march all the way to Moscow, slaughtering everything in their path?
Known only as Muscles, this man was first to ring the sledgehammer of freedom upon the pedestal of repression and led the (albeit incomplete) Iraqi effort to topple the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Fardus Square. He also climbed to the top of the pedestal (which could not have been an easy task for one with such girth), then slid down the rope like Errol Flynn, probably incurring some terrible rope burns in the process. Later, Muscles was caught on film attacking a large reinforced poster bearing Saddam's smiling visage. When the poster proved impervious to axe and knife assaults, Muscles produced a can of gasoline and set the thing ablaze. Go Muscles! Iraq belongs to you now!
I've been wondering: in U.S. history, where is the border between a British culture and an American one? Was it Americans who won their independence from King George? Or was that a kind of British civil war? Who spoke with the first authentic American voice? Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine? Or were those guys British?
It is the opinion of many scholars that it was the conclusion of the War of 1812, and not the War for American Independence, that gave birth to a country peopled by Americans. In that year, the U.S. fought their second war with Great Britain known as the War of 1812 (which is also a name for Russia's war with France, part of the Napoleonic Wars).
The germ of this conflict started with a British naval blockade that American ships kept running; the British kept seizing merchant vessels and their cargoes and impressing their crews into service against France. (Not a bad idea for *this* century imo, but unpalatable back then.) Also, there was widespread belief that the British were running a proxy-war against the Americans through the Indians in a hope to retard westward expansion (frontiersmen would routinely claim to have found British munitions in the possession of their Indian adversaries).
Some interesting factoids about this war (since nobody seems to know anything about it):
* It was also more or less a war with Canada, since the Canadians were still more or less British-ruled and the Americans thought maybe some of that land should be state-ified (goals which were also expressed during the Revolutionary War in Arnold's campaign for Montreal and Quebec). In fact, the primary strategic objective of the Americans was the invasion of Canada (along with some guerilla naval operations intended primarily to disrupt British trade and interfere with their war with France). This front proved a stalemate (again), and no new territory was gained.
* It was also more or less a war with Spain, since some of the southern territories took the opportunity of conflict (any conflict) to invade Spanish-owned Florida. (Spain didn't cede the territory to the U.S. until 1821 however.)
* In 1814, during a raid on Washington, the British burned down the first White House and Capitol buildings. It was an ill act on an ill day.
* Although the rifle did not play a key role, the Americans at that time were widely considered the world's greatest riflemen. What was surprising was the effectiveness with which the Americans employed artillery and engineering, especially at the Battle of New Orleans (where Andrew Jackson kicked some serious ass).
* The militia saw the last of their glory, performing as well as or better than the Regular Army
* A group in Congress (including Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun) most favorably disposed toward declaring this war on the British were known as the "War Hawks". Indeed, history does rhyme....I wish I could inform my breaking news email alerts servers and my broadcast media providers that contrary to their assumptions, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN SCOTT AND LACI PETERSON! I could have sworn there were important events still going on in the world...?
God, I miss the war already....Just one example of something found through the Virtual Reference Desk: The DOD Dictionary of Military Terms, wherein one is treated to definitions like the following:
shock front
(DOD, NATO) The boundary between the pressure disturbance created by an explosion (in air, water, or earth) and the ambient atmosphere, water, or earth.
or
transit zone
(DOD) The path taken by either airborne or seaborne smugglers. Zone can include transfer operations to another carrier (airdrop, at-sea transfer, etc.). See also arrival zone.
As if more were needed, here's ample evidence that Nicholas Kristof is a moron and a pansy-ass. His inspired strategy for the future of American warfare is for troops to use female shields since "even the most bloodthirsty fighters [are] squeamish about shooting female soldiers or blowing them up at checkpoints." He admits to asking a woman to sit next to him while driving through Iraq for just this reason. Pansy-ass!
Then Kristof proclaims that women help soften the image of military units, making them "appear less menacing". As if combat soldiers shouldn't appear menacing! For some reason! As if soldiers should appear soft and gentle to the enemy! Maybe the soldiers scared poor Kristof during his brief time in Iraq.
Then -- then! -- his *third* and penultimate reason for having women in the front lines is so they can search female civilians. "American leathernecks," he says, "simply can't pat down Afghan or Iraqi women." I'm sorry Kristof, I didn't realize THEY COULDN'T DO THAT! I guess the marines NEED MORE TRAINING!
Kristof lists some reasons people have offered for keeping women away from front lines: that removing them from their homes disrupts families more than removing men; and that women are more susceptible to being raped as POWs.
He glosses over the former, but in response to the latter argument, Kristof bravely submits, "Call me postmodern, but I side with Rhonda Cornum" who doesn't think that's a big deal: "'...in the hierarchy of things that were going wrong, that was pretty low on my list'," Cornum is quoted as saying. Kristof thinks this should be the last word for all women.
What he fails to mention is that fellow POWs, fellow *male* POWs, may be far more susceptible to enemy interrogations when faced with the prospect of their fellow female soldiers being raped or tortured. This follows the argument that Kristof, alpha-male of the century, seems blissfully unaware of: that men behave differently toward women than they do toward other men, the reason in fact that most military commanders will offer for keeping women away from combat.
Men tend to want to protect women -- it's a part of their upbringing (the best of them especially), it's bred into them -- and it risks a compromise to battlefield discipline. When a soldier is spending an inordinate amount of his time and attention concerned over the welfare of a fellow soldier, he's not performing his job correctly and he's increasing the risk to his own life and that of other soldiers.
I would also add that for most soldiers, the idea -- the ideal -- of a woman is what he considers himself to be fighting for, what he considers himself to be protecting from the enemy, making it easier to kill that enemy, making it easier to endure the nightmare of combat. If a woman is fighting there beside him, the ideal is disrupted, the image he's developed in his head distorted.
Furthermore, and a bit less idealistically, men -- especially twenty-two year old soldiers -- also tend to WANT TO HAVE SEX with women! Is Kristof unable to appreciate how this might cause some difficulties?
And then there's the issue of physical capability -- many soldiers are reasonably concerned over being deployed with troops made to pass less stringent physical tests than others, and fear the state of mind or the actual situation that might develop when fighting next to a soldier who is not strong enough to carry them off the battlefield should they be injured.
All of which Kristof either ignores in order to preserve his argument or is too much of a pansy-ass to be aware of. But to be fair, he does offer two other token reasons for not having women in front-line combat: pregnancy and peeing. These "legitimate concerns" (as he calls them) "are mostly just in our own minds." Oh well, I guess you can't argue with platitudes.About once a year I dump about a hundred music tracks on my hard-drive and see if there's anything new-and-good in the world (to me anyway). Here's what hasn't sucked so far:
The Notwist - Neon Golden (2003): I guess this is some kind of "emo" music? I read a reviewer who compared this to Radiohead's Kid A, which I kind of get, but it's less ethereal, a bit less pretentious.
Clinic - Walking With Thee (2002): Another Radiohead thing, this band seems to have toured with them or something. It starts out sounding like a cross between a John Carpenter soundtrack and something by Ennio Morricone (it's the mournful harmonica I guess), but it's pretty cool. Kind of boppy, like they're dancing around in there, but with an ominous layer too.
Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica (2000): Some of these are weak or annoying, but mostly they're interesting. They remind me of about 5 other bands but never enough to cause me to remember the names of those bands. I don't know if that's good or not.
Grandaddy - Sumday (2003): Catchy, popish and polished indy music. I was walking somewhere and found myself singing "I'm... I'm on staaaaandby...", which I suppose is something. I wasn't snapping my fingers though -- you can't make me do that.
Early Day Miners - Let Us Garlands Bring (2002): Obviously influenced by that whole 4AD thing (they remind me of Red House Painters and there's some Low in here too), it has that Something Really Bad Happened to This Guy feeling, which appeals to me of course, but only sometimes.
The Swirlies - They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons (1996): Another older one, but new to me. The guitar edge of this kind of reminds me of Juno, but with lighter vocals sort of floating around.
The Postal Service - Give Up (2003): A side project by Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie and Jimmy Tamborello from Dntel -- plaintive vocals over clean electronica-type music. Slightly odd sounding, but I like it, mainly for Gibbard's vocal part.