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July 22, 2006
OT 06-66
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Pat Lang with a more extended view on supply lines. As Riverbend once said, ther are now 140,000 hostages in Iraq … Bush says “Screw them.”
The vulnerable line of supply to US troops in Iraq
American forces in Iraq are in danger of having their line of supply cut by guerrillas. Napoleon once said that “an army travels on its stomach.” By that he meant that the problem of keeping an army supplied is the prerequisite for the very existence of the force.
A 21st-century military force “burns up” a tremendous volume of expendable supplies and continuously needs repairs to equipment as well as medical treatment. Without a plentiful and dependable source of fuel, food, and ammunition, a military force falters. First it stops moving, then it begins to starve, and eventually it becomes unable to resist the enemy.
…
Hostilities between Iran and the United States or a change in attitude toward US forces on the part of the Baghdad government could quickly turn the supply roads into a “shooting gallery” 400 to 800 miles long.
At present, the convoys of trucks supplying our forces in Iraq are driven by civilians – either South Asians or Turks. If the route is indeed turned into a shooting gallery, these civilian truck drivers would not persist or would require a heavier escort by the US military.
It might then be necessary to “fight” the trucks through ambushes on the roads. This is a daunting possibility. Trucks loaded with supplies are defenseless against many armaments, such as rocket-propelled grenades, small arms, and improvised explosive devices. A long, linear target such as a convoy of trucks is very hard to defend against irregulars operating in and around their own towns.
…
Potential adversaries along the line of supply include many combat-experienced and well-schooled officers and former officers. We can be sure that they are acutely aware of this weakness in our situation.
The precarious nature of our supply line is well-known to our military leadership. Unfortunately, this is one of the many problems in Iraq that has not been adequately addressed because of a shortage of troops. We should start building ourselves another line of supply as a backup, and we should do it soon.
Pat forgets to say there is no way to build another supply line. Those troops are screwed. They are now suckered into Baghdad to fight within the civil war there and they may end there.
The only way out is by plane as long as no heavy mortars are used on the airports by the insurgents. They have them, they will use them. This is a 4GW killbox, not an empty 2/3GW killbox like the Israeli are trying to establish south of the Lebanon river.
RIP folks.
Nobody could have anticipated the supply lines would be cut – GWB (to be announced)
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 22 2006 20:13 utc | 2
A WaPo Sunday feature, clip to the one above. In Iraq, Military Forgot the Lessons of Vietnam
There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government knew it couldn’t win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation.
…
But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.
…
“When you’re facing a counterinsurgency war, if you get the strategy right, you can get the tactics wrong, and eventually you’ll get the tactics right,” said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a veteran of Special Forces in the Vietnam War. “If you get the strategy wrong and the tactics right at the start, you can refine the tactics forever, but you still lose the war. That’s basically what we did in Vietnam.”
…
“Casualties are mounting and we need to start gathering info to help protect our fellow soldiers from any further attacks,” Ponce wrote. He told them, “Provide interrogation techniques ‘wish list’ by 17 AUG 03.”
…
In improvising a response to the insurgency, the U.S. forces worked hard and had some successes. Yet they frequently were led poorly by commanders unprepared for their mission by an institution that took away from the Vietnam War only the lesson that it shouldn’t get involved in messy counterinsurgencies. The advice of those who had studied the American experience there was ignored.
…
Again and again, in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, U.S. forces launched major new operations to assert and reassert control in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Samarra, in Mosul.
“Scholars are virtually unanimous in their judgment that conventional forces often lose unconventional wars because they lack a conceptual understanding of the war they are fighting,” Lt. Col. Matthew Moten, chief of military history at West Point, would comment in 2004.
…
By the academic year that ended last month, 31 of 78 student monographs at the School of Advanced Military Studies next door, were devoted to counterinsurgency or stability operations, compared with only a couple two years earlier.
Too little, too late.
Discussing about Hummer tails will not save that lazy stupit US force.
Just a thought I have to work on: Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld are doing to the US Iarq army what Hitler did to to Paulus’ army at Stalingrad.
Funny – those folks are plain crazy: U.S. Plan Seeks to Wedge Syria From Iran
The effort risks allowing Syria to regain a foothold inside Lebanon, after its troops were forced to withdraw last year. It is not clear how forcefully Arab countries would push a cause seen to benefit the United States and Israel. And many Middle Eastern analysts are skeptical that a lasting settlement can be achieved without direct talks between Syria and the United States.
The strategic decisions are being forced from the top down, from the Cheney Rumsfeld circle — not from the experienced warriors at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon understands 4GW well enough to understand that this Iraq thing is lost, lost, lost. They’ve said so — there is no military solution to the situation.
The Cheney Rumsfeld crew cannot think in 4GW terms. They have to have a Manichaen enemy, a monolithic and eternal evil enemy to smite.
If our supply lines from Kuwait to Baghdad are threatened, Iran is the only enemy they can perceive to smite, and the only way they can smite Iran is with mini-nukes.
They will explain to the American people afterwards that they simply “had no other options.”
And everything will be all right . . .
Posted by: Antifa | Jul 22 2006 21:16 utc | 7
from Giap’s link.
A senior US defence official said the Pentagon was moving ahead with scheduled deployments to Iraq next month and was moving one battalion to Baghdad from Kuwait, where it was in reserve.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 22 2006 21:18 utc | 8
The commanders of the 4GW war machine in Iraq, South Lebanon and elsewhere must be laughing in their comfortable beds tonight, when if ever did tanks and guns defeat an insurgency?
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 22 2006 21:22 utc | 9
b
they’re looking for their manstein(?)the general – tank commander who claimed he could save the sixth army from the cauldron but perhaps that was also post war heroics)
what is similar however is that alll the general staff were comprimised either by their own incompetence or their slavishness to the party line – goerring lied continually about the luftwaffens ability to resupply the 6th for example but their are multiple examples
the general staff of the armed forces of the united states are in the same bind also complicated by their interdependant relationship with the industry of arms who have nver let lies get in the way of a ‘good war’
if the maericans folled in the tradion of the wehrmacht there would be many, many generals alone in their rooms with their revolvers
but today they prefer to lay the blame on their ordinary soldiers
(i remember something uncle, or cloned or perhaps even outraged posted about the officer/theorist from westpoint who was highly critical of the interdependances on halliburton & on death squads – who was suicided – there was a long post on this fellow
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 22 2006 21:28 utc | 10
Some good thoughts b, in order to rectify the situation in Iraq the U.S. would have to do things that would be antithetical to the underlying intents. The U.S. could of course, institute the immediate re-nationalization of all Iraqi assets and start cutting proportional checks to the population, it could use the remaining reconstruction funds (and solicit and allocate more) and contract only indeginious firms for the work, it could form an inter-sectarian board to approve, and prioritize such allocations, it could give a definitive timeline for withdrawl of all foreign nationals (contractors), unless approved by the board, it could give a definitive timeline for U.S. military withdrawl that would re-allocate the heavy weapons necessary to police & defend the country, and until such time U.S. military would not participate in any military operations, without prior knowledge and approval from the Iraqi government, it could fund heavily all grass-roots political movements that provide social welfare programs, that encourage employment, education, and health delivery,,,,,,
It could….etc, etc, etc. But it wont and never will. The U.S. defines every decision made in Iraq according to its own overt and long term (imagined) benifits to its self. This pre-determines the U.S. expenditure of efforts to a purgitory of successive self imposed, self defeating, self emasculating, inescapable vortex of failure. And they would rather fail utterly and completely, rather than to fess up and change their fundamental belief in the power of brute force.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 22 2006 21:29 utc | 11
there is much conflicting evidence about the desires of iraqi people to see the americans withdraw. this snippet is from nir rosen’s book:
I asked the sheikh [Sheikh Imad Muhamad Ali] if he wanted an immediate American withdrawal. “The occupation should not end today,” he said. “They should leave with a schedule. Before they withdraw they should reestablish the original Iraqi Army. The new army is just militias and should return to their parties. The American Army should leave the cities and move to bases outside the cities, and during this period the Iraqi army should be given new arms and equipment and an agreement should be made for gradual withdrawal. It should take a year and a half. This depends on the presence of a strong government with full sovereignty, not a government whose members have to enter the Green Zone with IDs from the Americans granting them permission. If this does not happen, then there must be negotiations between the resistance and the Americans.”
I asked him how the Americans could find resistance leaders to negotiate with. “The resistance is here,” he said with a smile. [238] “They are not ghosts. They are Iraqi and they are heroes. My advice to the resistance is that they should consider negotiating with the Americans.” I pressed him again on who the Americans should negotiate with. “They have representatives,” he said. “Who? You?” I asked. He smiled and laughed, nearly winking at me. “Do you want me to have trouble? I’ll have to run away if I say that!” I asked if he thought the resistance would consent to negotiations. “I hope the resistance will agree,” he said and then smiled. “If I was aresister, I would agree.” He added, “The Iraqi resistance wants a free Iraq and to return security to Iraq, but there must be a day that the Americans plan on leaving Iraq and the resistance should consider negotiations.” Before he walked me to my car and warned my driver to take care of me, because these were dangerous times, Sheikh Imad again asked me not to write that he was the resistance’s representative, because he feared the Americans would come and get him to “negotiate.”
I returned to Sadr City to see just who was still influential there. A few days before an Irish journalist writing for the British newspaper The Guardian was kidnapped in Sadr City by members of Mogatada’s Mahdi Army militia who hoped to trade him for the release of their militiamen held in the south by the British. I arranged to meet Fatah Abu Yaqin al-Sheikh, editor of the Sadrist newspaper Ishraqat al-Sadr and a member of the National Assembly representing Sadr City, in his office in the entrance to the Shia bastion. …
Fatah showed up with two pickup trucks full of militiamen [239] protecting him. Some had little swords hanging from their guns, representing Dhulfiqar, the fabled sword of Ali. Fatah was widely rumored in Sadr City to be a former Baathist agent himself. He had owned a haberdashery before the war and remained fastidiously shaved and groomed. After the war he had established a newspaper that spoke for Moqtada, and by 2004 he had become the strongman for Sadr City, charging journalists entry fees and intimidating those who refused. Fatah had run as an unofficial candidate in the January elections that Moqtada had refused to boycott or support, and the seat he won represented thirty thousand Iraqis. …
Soon after his election Fatah had gotten into a scuffle with American soldiers guarding the Green Zone, and he had used it for its publicity value. Still, he too did not want an immediate U.S. withdrawal. “I reject their military presence, but we need their expertise,” he said. “We have to end the occupation, but they have to leave gradually, not all at once. When the Iraqis build a battalion the Americans should withdraw a battalion. If they leave all at once we will be back to April ninth [i.e., postwar chaos and looting].” Fatah was proud of the anti-American stance the Sadriyun had taken. “People expected Shias to welcome the Americans,” he said, but the “two famous intifadas,” as he referred to the Sadr uprisings of the spring and summer of 2004, proved them wrong.
Like all Sadrists, Fatah was suspicious of Iran. “Iran is a threat to the whole area, not only Iraq. Iran and America are now fighting over Iraq. If America leaves, then Iran will occupy Iraq.” …
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 22 2006 21:33 utc | 12
Iraq is fucked, move on to Condi’s Lebanon fuck-up/attack Iran. I try hard to think of how the ME oil resource is going to be captured.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 22 2006 21:43 utc | 13
A. thanks again for the Amit Ghosh rec.
Uncle. Thanks for the Graeber ref.
Razor – good luck and thanks for understanding so well
RG – stop watching CNN, it’s even worse than Althousser
Well it’s back to LGF for me as for all of us followers of
Moses
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 22 2006 21:47 utc | 14
r’giap was the bloke you were talking about Col. Ted Westhusing, described by Wayne Masden as “the Army’s top military ethicist and professor at West Point”?
Masden and the conspiracists are fond of ascribing his death to murder by crooked contractors.
I don’t see it tho. In a way that theory lessens the impact of what did happen.
Although Westhusing did uncover corruption, the real story was that even though he had a lot of documentary proof of that corruption he was powerless to put a stop to it. such is the culture of greed and mendacity within amerika’s power structure.
But the big reason (amerikans appear to accept their military contracting and procurement is about as stright as a corkscrew) that the murder story detracts from the reality of this peverted empire is that it goes to the heart of the fucking honour thru blood, heroism of killing the enemy be they civilians or children bullshit most amerikans still subscribe to as they fly their banner of shame in their front yard.
Westhusing was a true believer. He openly spoke about the honour thru sacrifice crap that empire’s have been using to get their armies killing since there has been empire, but his tears of pride were real because although intelligent he was about as smart as the long dead tree stump the kids lean their bikes against.
Then the penny finally dropped. He had been had.
All those ‘great men’ who he had taught sincere but desperately gullible overgrown school-boy killers to believe in, were laughing up their sleeves at him.
When Westhusing couldn’t cope the truth withdrew into his air-conditioned trailer rousing himslef only to post long rambling letters full of vituperation for his ‘betrayers’ and self-justification for himself.
Eventually he summoned the courage to do what he had believed to be’the honourable thing” according to the “Boys Own Paper” style yarns he had allowed himself to be seduced by. In a final act of supreme selfishness, abandoning his family to the vagaries and misfortunes of his making Westhusing committed suicide.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 22 2006 22:21 utc | 18
Anyone notice that when we’re very angry & frightened ‘cuz xUS elites are unleashing their fury on yet more innocent victims, fighting breaks out here in the bar? Any suggestions?
Posted by: jj | Jul 22 2006 22:32 utc | 19
yes, thanks debs, that was the ‘soldier’ i was thinking of
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 22 2006 22:35 utc | 20
Berhard:
It has been a pleasure in the past to be here but that time is long gone.
When psychopathic, hate-filled pieces of shit like Debs are harbored, abetted, and encouraged here, it’s time to go.
Take Care, B.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 22 2006 23:21 utc | 21
what i’ve learnt from cnn today
birth pang problems :
in somalia
in ethiopia
in afghanistan – “the bloodiest year”
& i’ve learnt that a british foreign minister must have received a phone call from blair between his press conference at the port of beirut & on the boat going to israel
i have also learnt that jerry lewis – chef of israeli radio thanked sky television for their coverage of ‘events’ & told us the israeli public were turning off bbc & cnn
but yes yr right what you learn fromm wall to wall coverage is that you become a wall
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 22 2006 23:22 utc | 22
I think Bush will bring the world down around his ears before he suffers, in full sight of it, such a humiliation.
Posted by: Cass | Jul 22 2006 23:56 utc | 23
Karen Kwiatkowski deconstructs the present Republicrat party:
The Lame Duck of Destruction
Bush, unlike the American Founders, believes that the state owns life – yours, mine, a frozen embryo’s potentiality, a criminal’s continued existence, lives of youthful American soldiers and Marines, and lives of Iraqis of all ages. One may extend this sense of ownership to the lives disrupted and destroyed by the American “business’ in Afghanistan, also launched by this president, and the current evacuation crisis that has placed in extremis nearly 25,000 Americans in Lebanon.
Strangely, Bush also seems to be saying that the state, in accordance with its morals and ethics, must act to preserve life. What a concept!
Sadly, illogically and wickedly, Bush means to preserve only the lives of those Americans who cannot speak, cannot move, and cannot think. This intent is evidenced by federal legislation Bush supported that was passed to preserve the comatose life of a single individual in a single state – one of 300 million Americans, as well as in his recent veto to preserve several hundred embryos stored in freezers across the country.
If you can speak and move, as can Iraqis and Afghans, and you oppose the puppet governments and occupation armies the American military have imposed, then your lives are not worth preserving, or protecting.
And lays it out in terms that youngsters of a libertarian, xtian bent can understand :
The Threat of Militarism
Democracy is about people, and the nature of man is not improved through his public exercise of government. This is why Plato was critical of democracies, seeing them as the immediate precursor of tyrannies, initially led by populist demagogues, and later by unpopular, but feared and brutal tyrants.
Ike advised us to be citizens who rise above our slothful, greedy, prideful, and angry tendencies. He also named a part of government and society – the military industrial complex – that would need to be watched for these same tendencies.
These same sins afflict the military industrial complex – after all, it is still just people.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 0:02 utc | 24
I don’t know if it matters much but I would like to make a mark here just to say how profoundly the events of the last two weeks will be looked back upon in the coming years, if not decades. Present company excepted, the numbness of the media, blogosphere and general American public to the calvalcade of carnage has erased any hope I had for lessons learned from the past six years. The silence of Kos, et al., will be their shame for a long time. But hey, how ’bout that Ned Lamont?
Posted by: biklett | Jul 23 2006 0:38 utc | 26
U.S. Arming of Israel: How U.S. Weapons Manufacturers Profit From Middle East Conflict
FRIDA BERRIGAN: We’re looking at incredible increases in U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel. Military aid stands at about $3 billion a year. That’s about $500 for every Israeli citizen that the United States provides on an annual basis. And then, weapons sales, most recently, since the Bush administration came into power, we’re looking at $6.3 billion worth of weaponry sold to Israel.
Israel’s relationship with the United States is unique in a number of ways. And one of those ways is that essentially the United States provides 20% of the Israeli military budget on an annual basis, and then about 70% of that money that is given from the United States, from U.S. taxpayers, to Israel is then spent on weapons from Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Raytheon. Most other countries don’t have that sort of cash relationship, where they go straight to U.S. corporations with U.S. money to buy weapons that are then used in the Occupied Territories and against Lebanon.
AMY GOODMAN: What kind of leverage does the U.S. money, the U.S. aid for Israel provide?
FRIDA BERRIGAN: Well, when you’re talking about 20% of the Israeli military budget, you’re talking about a huge fulcrum of leverage, right? The United States could today say, you know, “This incursion into Lebanon, the killing of civilians, the bombing in Gaza, all of this is not internal security, all of this is not self-defense, and we’re cutting it off.” And they could cut it off tomorrow. And that would essentially not only send an incredibly strong message to the Israeli military, but it would remove the tools of the occupation, the tools of the bloodshed and the suffering that’s happening in Lebanon and in Gaza.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 0:45 utc | 27
biklett :
How about that Jonathan Tasini, the non-bilionaire challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in NY :
“We must mourn all the lives lost in this horrible spasm of violence,” Tasini said. “The violence must stop. As a Jew, as a person whose family has deep roots in Israel, as someone who spent seven years living in Israel working for peace and as someone who still has significant family ties there, I call for an end to the violence on both sides. We must oppose the Hezbollah attacks in violation of a de-facto cease-fire agreement and international law. We must also oppose Israel’s widespread, relentless, disproportionate bombing attack that has killed more than 200 civilians, many of them children, in Lebanon.”
“People who are screaming for more bombs to drop and praising military action—some of the same people who urged our country to war in Iraq—they are not friends to anyone in the Middle East,” Tasini continued. “They have not seen the death and destruction, they have not lost family members because of the violence of war. I have. There has been too much bloodletting, too much killing, too much sorrow, too many parents burying their children.”
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 0:51 utc | 28
The Shame of Being An American
Does it make you a Proud American that “your” president gave Israel the green light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on which civilized life depends? Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?
On July 20, “your” House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel’s massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American complicit in war crimes, “your” House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press, also “condemns enemies of the Jewish state.”
Who are the “enemies of the Jewish state”?
They are the Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state. They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist “settlers” under the protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli “settlers.”
Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin Laden’s propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim world.
Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world’s largest per capita incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. Many believe that much of this “aid” comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to elect “our” representatives in Congress.
The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money, is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It shows that America is, indeed, Israel’s puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says, and as a majority of Muslims believe.
With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth and claw. The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed, insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents, moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shia majority.
Rumsfeld’s neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.
Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, “Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world,” thus equating war criminals with civilized men.
Neocon Larry Kudlow says that “Israel is doing the Lord’s work” by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel’s Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, “go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands”?
The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 1:17 utc | 29
@John Francis Lee:
Is that the same Tasini as in the Tasini vs. New York Times case? If it is, be very skeptical about his motivations. The Tasini case sounds good on paper — it was where electronic distribution rights were established as a distinct entity outside of the printing rights — but thanks to the way the Jonathan Tasini presented his case, he made a bundle off the New York Times while simultaneously screwing over most freelancers (by allowing publishers to renegotiate for lower rates, since suddenly they weren’t paying for electronic distribution rights) AND ruining electronic resources as research tools (publishers would prefer to put out incomplete electronic versions of archives than to have to pay freelancers, so suddenly all the electronic editions of things are incomplete). And, what’s more, I’ve heard that the Jonathan Tasini in question knew that would happen and was urged not to proceed by the largest association of freelancers in the U.S., but saw the potential to make money and didn’t hesitate for a moment.
Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Jul 23 2006 1:18 utc | 30
Thanks JFL, I’d feel better though if it were seen beyond his website.
Posted by: biklett | Jul 23 2006 1:21 utc | 31
@TGVWYCI:
Hell, I’d vote for Himmler if he was running againt St. Hilary.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 23 2006 1:24 utc | 32
Bad choice above:
Should have chosen Ghenghis Khan.
Wouldn’t want to be viewed as antisemitic.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 23 2006 1:26 utc | 33
The British should have never transported criminals to Australia.
Should have just hung them at Tyburn, thrown lye on a common paupers grave, and been done with it. Would have settled a lot of problems here.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 23 2006 1:38 utc | 35
The Mainstream media is still reporting approx. 300 Lebanese dead. How can anyone look at the pictures of Beruit and believe this nonsense?
To use mats’ words from the previous thread – rage and hoplessness.
Add to that tears and fright. Such propaganda by our own media scares the hell out of me.
Posted by: Rick Happ | Jul 23 2006 1:46 utc | 36
The Mainstream media is still reporting approx. 300 Lebanese dead.
Was thinking about this earlier as well. It should read 300 known bodies recovered. Who the hell knows how many unrecovered. Prolly thousands.
Posted by: jj | Jul 23 2006 2:01 utc | 38
@Rowan:
If I remember correctly the Mongol General Staff were the ones who developed Power Point.
Gates just bought up an obsolete program.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 23 2006 2:16 utc | 39
‘Civilian Casualty’? It Depends
We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: “the continuum of civilianality.” Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished.
Turning specifically to the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas, the line between Israeli soldiers and civilians is relatively clear. Hezbollah missiles and Hamas rockets target and hit Israeli restaurants, apartment buildings and schools. They are loaded with anti-personnel ball-bearings designed specifically to maximize civilian casualties.
Hezbollah and Hamas militants, on the other hand, are difficult to distinguish from those “civilians” who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.
The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims.
If the media were to adopt this “continuum,” it would be informative to learn how many of the “civilian casualties” fall closer to the line of complicity and how many fall closer to the line of innocence.
Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others.
Alan Dershowitz is one of the most vocal of the American Jews who regularly use the charge of anti-Semitism against those who criticize Israeli policies and American support of Israeli policies.
Many people expend time and energy in fending off these charges once levelled. Who wants to be labelled a prejudiced bigot, especially against a people who have suffered so much from the prejudiced and bigotted for so long?
But it occurs to be that the charge of anti-Semitism as made by those who would defend Israeli policies, right or wrong, is made not primarily to ellicit this response, although it may be helpful to “the cause”. The charge is levelled primarily to kindle or to reinforce the idea among Jews themselves that, as the timeless victims of the world’s larger population, they are entitled to use extraordinary measures to fight back against “the other” which uniformly oppresses them. That rules of decency and justice which apply within the group itself may be suspended against “the other”. It is a sort of fatwa from the self-appointed pseudo-rabbinate.
As “god’s chosen people” the Jews are constantly at risk, as are the Xtians and Americans in general for that matter, as the exemplars of “democracy” to the world’s benighted masses, of ranking the world’s human population according to “essential qualities”. This is virtual racism, and it is consciously being played upon to forge a consensus among these three groups that will enable the horrific plans of the neocons to go forward.
Politics is all about actions. Actions are legal or illegal, helpful or harmful to the fostering of amity among the world’s populations.
Religion, concerned as it is with “essences” rather than with actions, is not at all helpful in this regard. It does and has justified the killing of the infidel on many, many occasions, past and present.
This passage by Dershowitz seems to highlight this problem.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 2:21 utc | 40
the town of sidon has been targeted this night by israeli bombers
al jazeera spoke yesterday of this town as a centre, a large centre of refugees
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 23 2006 2:23 utc | 41
TGVWYCI :
It’s the same Jonathan Tasini.
I am unaware of the legal ramifications of his settlement of the case.
I was born in NYC but haven’t lived there in years. If I could I would register Demoplican and vote for Tasini in the September primary, provided his 30,000+ signatures hold up.
Check out his site, check him out. I am astounded that he is unknown even here!
There ought to be a groundswell building under his candidacy in my opinion.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 2:36 utc | 42
The silence of Kos, et al., will be their shame for a long time. But hey, how ’bout that Ned Lamont
Think about it. Kos and friends have a good chance of removing one of the prime Iraq war collaborators from power and they have already sent a wave a fear through the ruling parties. Meanwhile here we have Debs celebrating 40 years of political action that has had only negative results, a bunch of self-righteous signifying. and a lot of powerless alienating jargon.
Someone should be ashamed, that is true.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 23 2006 3:04 utc | 43
Anti-semitism is used as the Scarlet “A” of today. That is, like its predecessor, it’s meant to ostracize & shame into silence those who act contrary to the wishes of powerful (Jewish) Patriarchs.
Posted by: jj | Jul 23 2006 3:36 utc | 44
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Dershowitz just define all American citizens as collaborators in every US military action?
Did he not also just valorize the techniques of every gangster real estate developer in the world? (Hey, we warned them to leave.)
May justice impale Dershowitz on his own points, this comfortable afflicter.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 3:37 utc | 45
@John Francis Lee:
It’s like this: before the Tasini case, as it is usually called, it was assumed that electronic publication rights were identical with paper publication rights. For staff writers, the question is irrelevant, since publishers have them bound to give over all rights of publication. Freelancers are the ones for whom this was an issue.
Once Tasini (and his fellow defendents) won the suit, publishers discovered that (1) they could rely on staff writers to a greater extent, cutting down on freelancers to reduce licensing fees, and (2) this was a terrific chance to renegotiate contracts, adjusting fees downward, since they were now getting “less”. I have been told by a member of the writers’ union (of which Tasini is the president) that the freelance writing business is only just now recovering, economically, from the blows dealt to it by the Tasini case. I don’t know if that’s true or not. My source also mentioned that a disproportionate amount of the money which has been collected as a settlement for union freelancers does not seem to be forthcoming to the members. I have no way of knowing whether that’s true or not, either. But then, it may be significant that Tasini was not reelected as president of the union, and that the money to run his congressional campaign must come from somewhere.
But there is another negative side effect to the trial, which is not in question: anyone attempting to do research has run into articles which were definitely published, but which cannot be found using online services like Lexis-Nexis. These were removed by publishers to avoid further litigation. (For one article on that subject — there are hundreds of them — see http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i20/20a02901.htm.)
Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Jul 23 2006 4:11 utc | 46
of course, Dershowitz may have a point about collaborating by financing…
but not very edifying to hear this from a citizen of the world’s richest, powerful-est country addressing the population currently being bombed by a military, a military that claims the right to kill hundreds and thousands of civilians to get back a soldier taken in what Dershowitz clearly considers a military fight.
Does he not realize that he is dirting on his own team by abusing a much weaker opposition?
As a kid, I knew a bully who expected me to take a beating quietly because everyone knew he was the toughest guy at school. My property, he said, was rightfully his. I disagreed with his logic as a child. So after he and a friend ambushed me, I caught him alone but also in front of the whole school, and I hurt both his body and his reputation.
This is the kind of history that awaits those nodding along with Dershowitz. I would not call him a friend of Israel, but a Rasputin.
Dershowitz doubtless cares little if he gets a lot of Israelis killed – an outcome he and his gangster team will certainly cause to happen – because he is now just a sick bully.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 4:11 utc | 47
File this under:
Signs of incipient sanity in the States
Charles Barkley told a local reporter, “I was a Republican – until they lost their minds.”
not a very nourishing barsnack, but links must be provided.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 4:44 utc | 48
Digby does it better – showing how Dershowitz has just made some kind of weird peace with Ward Churchill
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 23 2006 4:54 utc | 50
@Anon:
Just a whore and her pimp and an old, old dance.
Posted by: Ms. Manners | Jul 23 2006 5:26 utc | 51
Is the bar closed for renovation ? Man, I need a whiskey bad..After an overdose of CNN today !
The site(Billmon) has been down since evening..
Posted by: Chamed Ahlabi | Jul 23 2006 6:01 utc | 52
TTGVIYCI:
From your link
The debate made headlines last summer when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Tasini case. In the suit, Mr. Tasini and other freelance writers said that, under the copyright law of 1978, traditional publishers did not have the right to republish freelance work in online databases; such use was infringement because it significantly altered the original work, the writers said, and thus the publications owed them money. Lawyers for the publications, in turn, argued that producing and selling online versions did not constitute infringement. They said that if the court ruled against them, the public would lose access to many online articles, as the publishers would begin taking material offline.
Sounds like “insist on your rights and we’ll hurt you and your customers”. Is it reasonable to blame the writers for sticking up for their rights because the the publishers exercised collective punishment on the reading world for their having lost the case brought against their expropriation?
Even if you do think so Tasini is guilty of more htan having unleashed unintended consequences?
I’d still vote for him in primary battle against Hillary Clinton. Harry Truman was a failed haberdasher, but I’m glad he beat that other NY play-it-safe Republican.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 23 2006 6:07 utc | 53
Anyone else notice “that” dark unmarked sedan — with a black woman in shades, leather, and (way too) expensive black pumps sitting in the shadows of the back seat — pull up to the whiskey bar tonight?
Probably just a heat mirage, or at least I hope so.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 23 2006 6:21 utc | 54
@John Francis Lee:
Seeing as how Tasini and co. went after various publishers for a bundle, but ignored most of the ones who dropped freelance content from their online collections, I’d say it’s pretty much Tasini’s fault, yes. Please keep in mind that my source says that Tasini (and some of his friends in the organization) did all this against the will of the people they were representing. There has also been a suggestion that, once the case was settled in Tasini’s favor, negotiations were refused in favor of lawsuits.
My point is that if this is true, Tasini’s track record on hypocracy is roughly equal to that of Hillary, so you should take his “we gotta clean everything up” with a truckload or two of salt.
Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Jul 23 2006 6:32 utc | 55
“Meanwhile here we have Debs celebrating 40 years of political action that has had only negative results, a bunch of self-righteous signifying. and a lot of powerless alienating jargon.”
You have absolutely nothing apart from you’re own prejudices and paranoia to base that piece of charmless cowardice upon.
For fucks sake citizen k what exactly is it with you? What sort of gutless wonder makes silly little junior high girls locker room digs like that? Are you a drunk or just looney?
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 23 2006 8:13 utc | 56
@anna missed #54
I saw her too, anna, it was cupcake condi, or a double, which is what I’m having tonight. Did she have skulls and severed heads hanging around her neck? Man, I gotta up my re-uptake Inhibitors, or buy an air conditioner.
It was hot as a fox in a forrest fire today. And looks like it’s gonna be that way for days…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2006 9:32 utc | 57
As I said in a previous open thread, “It’s hard to know with trolls”.
Sometimes, it’s even hard to know which of your longtime colleagues is doing it. But we can make some educated guesses.
As Bernhard wisely advises, one should never feed a troll. I’ll take it a step further… it’s probably best not to contribute to (and thereby extend) any fights amongst comrades when the arguments are obviously digressing from a larger topic or contain unproductive, ad misericordian elements. Not always easy, we being emotional critters and all, but there’s a lot to be said for picking our battles. You can bet the other side isn’t taking their eyes off the prize; neither should we.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 23 2006 11:08 utc | 59
@Monolyous
I am so greatful you post here, most times when ever I see your moniker, I go directly to your posts. I resonate with damn near everything you bring.
For that I thank-you. I have more to say on that, but for now, I’m tired and it will have to wait. Just wanted you to know that though.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2006 12:10 utc | 60
Aw, shucks, Unca. Thanks kindly for your support… most of the time I wonder if I’m bringing anything useful here at all or if I’m just making a noisy idiot of myself.
I certainly feel that my contributions pale in comparison to those of most here, not least of which being your own. Just so you know, I follow most of the links you provide and have been consistently impressed with your tireless investigative work and your ability to integrate things into a larger schema for the benefit of we slower students. Keep up the good work, friend.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 23 2006 12:34 utc | 61
ISRAELI LEBENSRAUM: Israel Using DU, Chemical Weapons, and Poison Gas in Eugenics Warfare
Take w/ salt, but do take…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2006 12:59 utc | 62
As to #s 60 and 61. Agree. And time to thank Bernhard. Again.
Posted by: beq | Jul 23 2006 13:00 utc | 63
Sarah Posner, in the American Prospect, has a frightening expose of the influential Texas pastor John Hagee, who is pushing for a joint U.S.-Israel war on Iran. “Dr.” Hagee, as he styles himself, claims that the book of Esther predicted this battle. (Esther is a prophetic work? News to me…)
Hagee has ties to the powerful, both in the United States and in Israel. . . . Hagee hopes to establish a Christian pro-Israel PAC, more powerful than AIPAC itself.
Money also seems to play a huge role in Hagee’s theocratic politics. He counsels his flock to give endlessly, since donations to his ministry constitute “the only proof you have that the cancer of greed has not consumed your soul.” This, from a guy who is worth millions.
If investigations of the current Washington scandals run deep enough, Hagee’s name may show up. He broadcasts on the TBN network run by Pat Crouch, the close friend of the corrupt congressman Duke Cunningham. (Incidentally, gay rumors have swirled around both Crouch and Cunningham, who have both displayed an affection for ornate, effeminate furnishings.) Not only that. Hagee is a close associate of Tom Delay.
Hagee sends millions to Israel. DeLay, we now know, has involved himself with money laundering. The previous two sentences may have a connection.
And if that conspiratorial insinuation strikes you as over-the-top, I would counter that Hagee deserves to receive what he dishes out. He happens to be quite the conspiratorialist in his own right — in fact, this page claims him as a proponent of the Illuminati conspiracy theory. I’d like to see some confirmation of this, since the Illuminati-spotters tend to be thinly-disguised anti-Semites (their cited sources usually head in the direction of Nesta Webster and William Guy Carr) — while Hagee is the most ardent supporter of Israel on the Christian right.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2006 13:22 utc | 64
a little too overwhelmed to write much these days. not being able to stop this train has me feeling reclusive. i do not know what else to do. haven’t felt this defeated ever. took a moment to call clinton, schumer, and my rep to urge them to put a stop to this madness, but to what effect? even my rep, nadler, did not sign onto kucinich’s resolution for a ceasefire. i have no representation. and where is the morality in this society? i have friends who are israeli and applaud ohlmert and the idf. i don’t want to see them. i am boycotting israeli products, and, now it seems israeli friends too. three were supposed to come for brunch next sunday. is it wrong that i can’t do it, can’t cook for three people who think they can excuse israel by telling me that the israelis don’t target civilians and if they kill them by mistake they apologize. i know it will turn into an ugly argument because i feel bound to express my disgust and despair, would feel like a fraud if i don’t. i feel shame when i visit the corner deli run by arabs. never have i felt so helpless, as if things are so out of control there is nothing i can do to make change. and to whom do we turn – clinton, schumer, and the demopublicans who voted to support the carnage? never have i felt so devoid of hope. so i read, but i can’t write and theorize, feels pointless. thanks to all for doing it for me.
Posted by: conchita | Jul 23 2006 15:34 utc | 66
conchita, my voice is so often full of rage these days but i just wanted to say we need your cooler voice
you offer much here
the despair i think is a normal response
the empire is telling us that all is well except for a few problems here that can be sorted out by von ribbentrop rice, & gestapo muller bolton & what we see not only in lebanon, daily in iraq, daily in occupied palestine, afghanistant is so devastatingly destructive not only of those people & countries – but in essence the hope of our world
the empire is ruling the roost & they are completely untroubled by their murderous acts
wall to wall information from the murdererss representatives wants to turn us into a wall – that we will bear all this
but even if we did – which i hope is not the case – the arab world, the people of the book – the muslims will quite naturally take revenge for the indgnities they are suffering from brutal, criminal & careless enemies who see in an arab’s life, absolutely nothing, abssolutely nothing at all
as monolycus & uncle affirm – we have to find our hearts, refuse to be a wall , & inform & inform & inform
& you inform us here all the time
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 23 2006 16:14 utc | 67
Monolycus,
Thanks for those links at #59. That’s exactly the sort of reading that helps empowers us as online communities. Definitely recommended.
I dug up a link to a powerpoint presentation that catalogs logical fallacies and explains how to counter them. For me, the problem is that there are so many ways to lie and mislead that I can give up on trying to recognize and combat them. But this shows that the main ways to lie with logic are few enough that it’s worth it to study on them.
Also, one of my alltime favorites in thinking for oneself, Darrell Huff’s How to Lie with Statistics. I laughed. I cried.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 16:15 utc | 68
Conchita,
If reading is a solace for you – if not, please disregard this – perhaps you would be interested in reading Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle.
I’ve often taken sustenance from your reports here. May you sustain not only our hearts, but yours as well.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 16:36 utc | 69
Watching this horrific slide into mass murder and mayhem I wonder why Chirac does not seize the opportunity to become a world leader. If France were to sail an aircraft carrier into the port of Beirut and fly Combat Air Patrol missions over the city they could stop so much destruction of the city. Would Israel attack French airplanes? If they did would France simply accept it?
I think France really is the only country in the world that could pull it off.
Does anyone care to explore this? Perhaps a call to the French to take their “rightful place” in world affairs could throw a big ass spanner in the gears of war.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 23 2006 17:27 utc | 70
bitchphd analyzes Dershowitz pithily:
And Dershowitz? Who’s currently arguing that there is a difference between civilians who are held hostage against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human shields, and civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm’s way in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire.
Place themselves in harm’s way by living where Israel is bombing? Isn’t that a pretty disgusting argument to be making?
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 17:46 utc | 73
And now Billmon puts Dershowitz in context.
this is how things fall apart on tyrants – people stop holding their noses at the vile stench of hypocrisy, at the stink of men who have become what they claim to hate.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 23 2006 18:17 utc | 74
Balkinization cites Scott Horton’s case for why it was obvious that the U.S. invasion would break down Iraqi society – and it mentions Hobbes so even people with degrees can understand it.
Saddam was a nightmare. But our country had a strong state with secular traditions. That needed to be preserved at all costs. Instead the Americans smashed that state. What did they expect Iraqis would do? It sent people scurrying back to the basic building blocks of our society, which are the clans and tribes.
(snip)
Surely political scientists already know this. The first chapters of Thomas Hobbes Leviathan reflect exactly the points that the Iraqi judge was making. With the collapse of the state and with no new order to replace it, Iraq fell into the war of all against all. Hobbes wrote,
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. (ch. 13).
Put differently, the occupation heralded by the capture of Baghdad lacked the essential characteristic of an occupation – namely a new order. Hence, in Hobbesian terms, it was that form of war which encompasses the natural state of man.
Looks like all the critiques are starting to come out of the woodwork – but how do we pink slip a Unitary Executive?
Posted by: citizen | Jul 24 2006 0:25 utc | 76
My thoughts echo Conchita’s #66 upthread as of late. As I turn to my friends in search of similarities to myself, I’m increasingly finding only echoes of the mainstream. You people really are one of the few bright shiny things. Please keep on searching and sharing, for you provide light far beyond your perceived horizons.
Please keep on searching and sharing, for you provide light far beyond your perceived horizons.
Your not the only one to suggest that, and at the risk of being grandiose, I concur. I also, worry that our little bar will one day soon be the target of saboteurs. And ask b, does he have any back up plans, such as mirroring in such a case. I would be willing to suggest that many here including my self, will pitch in and buy the bar some mirroing software, time and effort to do so etc…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 24 2006 0:48 utc | 78
CALLING DIOGENES****ARE YOU AROUND??
Would you do a rap on when Christendom degenerated into routinely using torture to maintain its power? As a student I was so relieved to live post-Enlightenment when reason had banished such barbarism…Now it seems like merely the last resort of dying systems…
Posted by: jj | Jul 24 2006 1:20 utc | 79
I have nothing to add substantively to the discussion, but count me as another one extremely dismayed by the mass murders which the leaders of the U.S. (of which I am a citizen, and which I hope will some day live up to its ideals, instead of acting out its insanity) and Israel command and endorse. Last Friday I heard White House correspondent Helen Thomas speak (and got an autographed copy of her latest book) – she was horrified that Bush and Rice wouldn’t even call for a ceasefire in Lebanon. As am I. Nowadays I can’t endure listening to NPR – the distortions are just too obvious – even ABC TV news seems more balanced. (As I have no cable, I am spared from the temptation to watch most of the propaganda channels).
May the Creative Forces of the Universe have mercy on our souls, if any.
Posted by: mistah charley | Jul 24 2006 2:15 utc | 80