Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
December 22, 2004
Stalingrad

Yesterday anti-US-forces in Iraq reported the attack in Mosul killing some 24 and wounding some 60 within a US base was done by a suicide bomber.
The news until this morning reported about a rocket or mortar attack. Now ABCnews says suicide bomber.

Citing unnamed sources, ABC reported that investigators at the U.S. base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul found remnants of a torso and a suicide vest – probably a backpack – meant to carry explosives.

Meanwhile the revenge has started:

U.S. forces sealed off entire districts of the Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday, blocking bridges and raiding homes in a hunt for suspects after an attack that killed 18 Americans and four other people.



Witnesses said U.S. forces, backed by Iraqi National Guards, sealed off neighborhoods in western and southeastern Mosul and raided homes. "They’re looking in the areas that are known hotspots," one resident in the west of the city said.

William Lind sees Fallujah as a Little Stalingrad:

Operationally, Fallujah, like Stalingrad, proved to be a trap. It led us to concentrate so many of our few combat troops in one place that the insurgency was able to make major gains in other, more important places. It again drew a glaring contrast between how America fights – by pouring in firepower – and the stated aim of the American invasion of Iraq, liberating the Iraqi people. You cannot liberate people by destroying their homes, their jobs and their cities. If operational art is the art of linking tactical actions to strategic goals, American generals have once again shown the world that they have no operational skill – a situation that is typical of a Second Generation military.

Will Mosul now become a bigger Stalingrad?
 

Comments

Very significant Citing security costs, U.S. contractor pulls out of Iraq

Posted by: b | Dec 22 2004 19:24 utc | 1

Everything requires careful consideration if one is to understand it. In ancient times as I recollect, people
often ate human beings,  but I am rather hazy about it. I tried to look this up, but my history has no chronology and
scrawled all over each page are the words:
“Confucian Virtue and Morality.” Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently half the night until I began to
see words between the lines. The whole book was filled with the two words -“Eat people.”
All these words written in the book, all the words spoken by our tenant, eye me quizzically with an enigmatic smile.
I too am a man, and they want to eat me!

–Lu Xun– Diary of a Madman
It is written: Eat Iraqis. Eat enlisted men. Eat enlisted women too. Black and white and re(a)d all over – that joke seemed funnier once.

Posted by: citizen | Dec 22 2004 19:25 utc | 2

b
perhaps a reposting of cloned poster’s – india online post – which coverges well with yours

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 22 2004 19:26 utc | 3

Diary of a Madman
a good read, from April 2, 1918 but still written to us today.

Posted by: citizen | Dec 22 2004 19:30 utc | 4

citizen
i am an old china hand but i’ve been a bad boy re – perhaps i’m just a post colonial prick – but lu xun – is that lu hsun
in my profound imbecility

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 22 2004 19:36 utc | 5

Sure is. Lu Hsun (Wade-Giles) becomes Lu Xun (pinyin).
Transition of usage ca. mid to late 1980s

Posted by: citizen | Dec 22 2004 19:46 utc | 6

The whole Iraq fiasco reminded me of this thought(I sure ain’t no poet):
“Notice in a farmer’s field:
THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE , BUT THE BULL CHARGES.”
There are a couple of interesting thoughts in this Yahoo link on Iraq: LINK

Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 22 2004 20:00 utc | 7

I won’t eat people!
What a lot of rubbish.
I won’t eat people!
What’s the matter with the lad?
I won’t eat people
(he keeps on repeating)
Eating people is bad!
But people have always eaten people.
What else is there to eat?
If the Good Lord hadn’t meant us to eat people
He wouldn’t have made us of meat!
I won’t eat people!
Oh no here we go again…
I won’t eat people!
All the day long…
I won’t eat people
(he keeps on repeating)
Eating people is wrong!
–Flanders and Swann, from memory, with apologies for inevitable scribal error

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 22 2004 20:06 utc | 8

some city maps & satellite images of mosul

Posted by: b real | Dec 22 2004 20:07 utc | 9

citizen
as pat would no doubt attest – i’m stuck in the middle of the great proletarian cultural revolution – knowing that sailing the sea depends on the helmsman – revolution depends on mao tste tung thought

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 22 2004 20:17 utc | 10

Only the flags and mustache have been changed to protect the ‘innocent’:
Coalition of the willing
Good Stalingrad history site:
here

Posted by: biklett | Dec 22 2004 20:42 utc | 11

I cannot wait for the Harrison Ford version of the genocide that is Fallujah.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 22 2004 21:44 utc | 12

The only solution for I raq now is to do a Afgan/Soviet style pullout. Let the civil war begin and then the winners float to the top of the food chain.
If the US is still intent on turning Iraq into a democracy, the US can then go in Afgan style because the leaders of the movement will be in open sight defending their turf. Remember Mulah Omar.
I looks like this may be the way out for now. In the mean time, economic embargos would keep the country poor and oil would leak out only to the most underhanded that are willing to deal with an Islamic state.

Posted by: jdp | Dec 22 2004 22:13 utc | 13

jdp……….. Isreal will arm the Kurds…………. Turkey Syria will arm the Sunni……….. Iran will arm the Shi’ite
Wasn’t this what the antiwar were screaming about the scenario post invasion?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 22 2004 22:56 utc | 14

cloned poster
the india com thang & the interview radiophonique with the baghdad bureau chief of time – very very good links this week – you get an elephant stamp
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 22 2004 23:03 utc | 15

Two Very Good Books on Stalingrad:
LINK
LINK
@RGiap:
What you need, IMHPO, is several historical-chiropractic treatment sessions, with the likes of Queen Frederika of Greece or Madame Chiang.
They’d have you walking the right, straight, and narrow in no time.
And at the double-quick!

Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 22 2004 23:15 utc | 16

RGiap………. may I wish you all my good wishes.
You’re the steel foundation here.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 22 2004 23:16 utc | 17

cloned poster
thank you & i meant it – the indian thing such a tough piece unrelenting in its savagery & the time radio thing from clearinghouse – he is an australian & i could hear that when he spoke of catastrophe he really meant it – wonder if he keeps his job
& flasharry for you a little joke
not so long ago. just as yeltsin was taking over. a few members of the central committee went to bolivia where joseph stalin alive & well was keeping catfish on his farm with his young a beautiful bride who was also latin americas expert on derrida & everything to do with dickens.
well the central committee chaps, worried & obviouslly in great pain – sd joseph please please come back & put things in order – we beg you from the bottom of our proletarian hearts – we want you back with us – steering the ship of state
joseph replied – no no, i like it here with my farm my catfish & my beautiful bride who speaks of nothing other than derrida & dickens – we have such a good time – here & i – no i don’t want to go back ? no not at all!
the comrades from the central committee completely concerned cried long & hard – weeping word even joseph had never heard. they wept for three nights & three days. & they came to him at the end of their weeping & they sd – joseph ô joseph you are the soviet union – we cannot do without you – we are forever lost without you. come back
this time stalin relented. saying yes. yes i’ll come back. but on condition. on only one condition.
yes yes yes of course comrade yes yes yes. whatver the condition is we fraternally say yes yes yes
but what is the condition
the condition sd joseph stalin – this time – no more mr nice guy
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 22 2004 23:27 utc | 18

You all have a good Christmas!
Talkin’ about catfish made me hungry.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 22 2004 23:43 utc | 19

More thoughts on the depth of US failure in Iraq and its contributing sources:

A great deal has been written about the failure of military strategy in Iraq, but an even more important reason for the failure of the occupation has barely been discussed: the coalition’s economic strategy. Following the Second World War, the Allied forces understood that fascism arose in conditions of unemployment, poverty and desperation. That’s why there was a massive effort to reflate the German economy; by early 1947, unemployment was down to 10 per cent. In Iraq today, unemployment stands at an incredible 60 per cent. For young Sunni men – the main recruiting pool for the insurgency – it has soared to 80 per cent. This is a recipe for rage and rebellion.
It would be bad enough if the coalition had simply done nothing to reflate and re-energize the Iraqi economy. Incredibly, the truth is even worse: they have imposed on Iraq a program of ultra-neoliberal reforms that have brought economic collapse to every country they have been inflicted upon. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist and dissident former chief economist at the World Bank, describes the economic policies of the coalition as “a proven and predictable catastrophe”. They imposed a form of capitalism more extreme than anything tried in a democratic country: immediate privatization of almost all services (without any debate), non-competitive contracts, and a 15 per cent flat tax. This is not democracy. It is market fundamentalism.

From the Independent/UK Dec 22 — whole article worth a read. The test of any theory is in its practise. The track record of 20 years of neoliberal tinkering (and bullying) is well below Edsel-level in the Failed Design Sweepstakes — if you accept the premise that the intention is to sow democracy and prosperity with a generous hand. OTOH systems theory suggests that when a system repeatedly produces the same result, eventually after N trials we should entertain the suspicion that this is exactly the result it was designed to produce.
By their fruits shall ye know them.
My take: one of the most dangerous religious fundamentalist cults on Earth at this time is the one that worships Mammon.

Posted by: DeAnander | Dec 23 2004 2:23 utc | 20

Stiglitz should be required reading, although the word discredited can mean whatever you want it to mean at this end of the rabbit-hole.

Posted by: DM | Dec 23 2004 2:51 utc | 21

General Richard Myers, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff in yesterdays Defense Department Operational Update Briefing

This attack [in Mosul], of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11, the same type of insurgents who attacked in Beirut, the same insurgents who — type of insurgents who attacked the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the list goes on.

Posted by: b | Dec 23 2004 8:12 utc | 22

@b,
Shit, William Lind? From Paul Weyrich’s (heart of the ultra fanatical religious right) think tank?
Watchu talkin about Willis?

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 23 2004 8:30 utc | 23

Tom Friedman, OpEd commentator in the New York Times is looking for scapegoats and makes new friends:

We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible.
We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and – with some honorable exceptions – the whole Republican right have tolerated it. …
We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.

Posted by: b | Dec 23 2004 8:33 utc | 24

b, well that is just bollocks from Friedman.
WMD

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 23 2004 8:41 utc | 25

DeAnander,
I learn from both the content and the approach of all your longer postings, but your short game is dynamite!
My take: one of the most dangerous religious fundamentalist cults on Earth at this time is the one that worships Mammon.
I have been looking for a way to critique our new religious cults but recognize that they are essentially reactive, driven by larger social forces. You distilled the idea beautifully; its poetry.
Thank you.

Posted by: citizen | Dec 23 2004 8:59 utc | 26

WaPo: Soldiers in Sunni Town Run Into Wall of Silence

The lack of interpreters also increases the difficulty. Hired locals have repeatedly quit after receiving threats, and Samarra is currently without a single interpreter. The one U.S. forces sometimes use is on vacation for a few days.

It is impossible to police a country without any means of talking to the people. Indeed a wall of silence.

Posted by: b | Dec 23 2004 9:14 utc | 27

If it was a suicide attack, it was one followed by mortar fire. I came upon the link to a US chaplain’s blog at Belmont Club, where wretchard has his own commentary on the attack.
The chaplain writes:
I stepped outside and found the situation to be only slightly less chaotic. The number of body bags had grown considerably since I first went inside. I saw a fellow chaplain who was obviously in need of care himself. I stopped him and put my arm around him and asked how he was doing. A rhetorical question if ever I asked one. He just shook his head so I pulled him in close and prayed for his strength, endurance, a thick skin, and a soft heart. Then I just stood and breathed for a few minutes.
Regardless of what some may say, these are not stupid people. Any attack with casualties will naturally mean that eventually a very large number of care givers will be concentrated in one location. They took full advantage of that. In the middle of the mayhem the first mortar round hit about 100 to 200 meters away. Everyone started shouting to get the wounded into the hospital which is solid concrete and much safer than being in the open. Soon, the next mortar hit quite a bit closer than the first as they “walked” their rounds toward their intended target…us. Everyone began to rush toward the building. I stood at the door shoving as many people inside as I could. Just before heading in myself, the last one hit directly on top of the hospital. I was standing next to the building so was shielded from any flying shrapnel. In fact, the building, being built as a bunker took the hit with little effect. However, I couldn’t have been more than 10 to 15 meters from the point of impact and brother did I feel the shock. That’ll wake you up! I rushed inside to find doctors and nurses draped over patients, others on the floor or under something. I ducked low and quickly moved as far inside as I could.

Posted by: Pat | Dec 23 2004 9:36 utc | 28

The Amazing World Wide Web
Web video teaches terrorists to make bomb vest
Chilling video offers step-by-step suicide vest instructions
By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit
Updated: 7:28 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2004
Posted in a militant Islamic chat room three days ago, a stunningly detailed 26-minute video on how to make a sophisticated suicide bomb vest, along with a demonstration of its kill range, using a mannequin.
Titled “The Explosive Belt for Martyrdom Operations,” the video obtained by NBC News demonstrates how to make an explosive vest that would be tough to detect, mostly from common off-the-shelf materials.
“The most disturbing thing about this video is that it exists,” says NBC analyst and retired military intelligence officer Lt. Col. Rick Francona.
He says the video would be extremely valuable to any terrorist.
“Every military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan should be aware of this,” says Francona. “This video shows someone how to more effectively attack American troops.”
Experts believe the video was made by a Palestinian group.
“The video was accompanied by a note that explained it was there for the purposes of aiding the brothers, the fighting brothers, in cities in central Iraq,” says NBC terror analyst Evan Kohlmann.
Specifically, the note mentioned wanting to help fighters in Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, though there’s nothing to tie this to Tuesday’s attack. The person who posted the note and video on the Internet called himself “terrorist007.”

Posted by: Pat | Dec 23 2004 10:11 utc | 29

@ Cloned Poster
“Bollocks” is much more genteel than the American vernacular “horseshit”, but either characterization is
perfectly apt. The “crackpot realists” continue to plague us.
@ Pat A very interesting posting. By the way, although no one seems to have picked up on it I found your Hayek quote from an earlier thread to be excellent.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 23 2004 10:15 utc | 30

Fighting erupts in Falluja stronghold

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Dec 23 2004 13:06 utc | 31

I Guess Christmas came early for some…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 23 2004 18:02 utc | 32

Three U.S. Marines killed in Falluja

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Dec 23 2004 18:29 utc | 33

@Sic transit gloria USA
If you are whom I think you are. They miss you over here

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 23 2004 18:50 utc | 34

@Giap
I was 100% sincere in my comments last night.
You, Bernhard, DM, DeAnander, Pat, anna missed, Uncle S$am, HKOL, Alabama, CluelessJoe, jdp, annie, citizen, dan of steele, Swedish Death, FlashHarry, teuton, Biklett, Sic Transit, Rapt, jj, Slothorp, Jerome, Harrow, Colman, lonesomeG and the other noteable members here are my Newspaper and my Reading Material.
I wish all of you peace, health and happiness for 2005.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 23 2004 19:08 utc | 35

cloned poster
no i was serious too
i thank you deeply
& whatevr quarrel we had with each other
was simply a quarrel with ourselves
wishing you & others a combatative new year
respectfully

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 23 2004 19:21 utc | 36

rgiap
true.
this is a total digression, and I won’t waste more bandwidth, but I’ll share this because it’s just so nice:

Suburbs. The farther we emerge from the inner city, the more political the atmosphere becomes. We reach the docks, the inland harbors, the warehouses, the poor neighborhoods, the scattered refuges of wretchedness: the outskirts. Outskirts are the state of emergency of a city, the terrain on which incessantly rages the great decisive battle between town and country. It is nowhere more bitter than between Marseilles and the Provengal landscape. It is the hand-to-hand fight of telegraph poles against agaves, barbed wire against thorny palms, the miasmas of stinking corridors against the damp gloom under the plane trees in brooding squares, short-winded outside staircases against the mighty hills. The long rue de Lyon is the powder conduit which Marseilles has dug in the landscape so that in Saint-Lazare, Saint-Antoine, Arenc, Septemes it can blow up this terrain, burying it in the shrapnel of every national and commercial language. Alimentation Modern’, rue de Jama*fque, Comptoir de la Limit’, Savon Abat-Jour, Minoterie de la Campagne, Bar du Gaz, Bar Facultatif-and over all this lies the dust that here conglomerates out of sea salt, chalk, and mica, and whose bitterness persists longer in the mouths of those who have pitted themselves against the city than the splendor of sun and sea in the eyes of its admirers.

Benjamin 1929 on Marseilles.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 23 2004 20:03 utc | 37

Sorry….meant that to go in I am a… thread.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 23 2004 20:10 utc | 38

slothrop
it is beautiful
in french translation – there is an eerie similarity between walter & james agee – especially in let us now praise famous men – i’m sure agee would not have known of benjamin – but some of those beautiful riffs of agee are informed with same steel as benjamin
something very tender but tough as guts at the same time

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 23 2004 20:11 utc | 39

The Indian Ocean region contains a third of the world’s population, 25% of its landmass, and 40% of the world’s oil and gas reserves.
Link

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 23 2004 21:37 utc | 40

Then September 11 happened.
Link to ACLU “>Link

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 23 2004 21:44 utc | 41

Fuck it and goodnight.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 23 2004 21:48 utc | 42

Ho ho ho… Merry Christmas!
U.S. Tightens Budgetary Belt by Cutting Food Aid
WASHINGTON In one of the first signs of the effects of the tightening U.S. budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.
With the federal budget deficit expanding and President George W. Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it is unable to honor some promises.
Groups have been told they will have money for food only in emergencies like that in Darfur, in western Sudan.
The cuts to charities, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched. [more]

Now I would be just a little more okay with the above if it meant that they were just shifting it for domestic use (such as our hungry) but of course…
But…
Hey! The millionaires are suffering, too! They need their tax breaks!
And at the other end of the humanity spectrum, you have The Millennium Project , which plans to “significantly improve the human condition by 2015.” What a lofty, noble goal! I guess just not as lofty to Bush and his friends as invading a sovereign country to plunder their resources and giving all his millionaire friends tax cuts. But hey, if you can’t make the marvelous new global free market work for you–then you deserve to starve, right? Leo Strauss rules!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 23 2004 23:42 utc | 43

addendum: But, but… Hey! I Guess Christmas came early for some…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 23 2004 23:51 utc | 44

@ Cloned Poster
I’m honored to be mentioned in such distinguished company.
Merry Xmas to you and all the “Moonies”

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 24 2004 6:26 utc | 45

@HKOL
I’m glad you liked the Hayek quote.

Posted by: Pat | Dec 24 2004 11:09 utc | 46

@HKOL
You’ll like this one too from the old whig:

But wile the uses of liberty are many, liberty is one. Liberties appear only when liberty is lacking; they are the special privelages and exemptions that groups and individuals may acquire while the rest are more or less unfree.” F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1960, 19.

“unfree”

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 24 2004 15:51 utc | 47