Alternate history and context: re-evaluating the A-bomb (and more) on its 62nd anniversary.

The New Neo Posted on by

A year comes round rather quickly, and once again it’s the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nagasaki followed three days later, and Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

To date these two bombs remain—astoundingly enough, considering the nature of our oft-troubled and troubling species—the only nuclear warheads ever detonated over populated areas. (I’ve written at length on the subject of those bombs: see this, this, and this.)

Oliver Kamm has an article today in the Guardian on the subject, in which he writes:

Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire – and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.

This context always needs to be kept in mind when evaluating any “terrible thing”—and there is no question that the dropping of these bombs was a terrible thing.

But critics who are bound and determined to portray the West as evil, marauding, bloodthirsty— whatever the dreadful adjective de jour might be—are bound and determined to either avoid all context, or to change the true context and replace it with fanciful myth. As Kamm writes, those who want to portray Hiroshima and Nagasaki as American crimes cite evidence of an imminent Japanese surrender that would have happened anyway.

Trouble is, there’s no such evidence; available information points strongly to the contrary. It’s difficult to know whether those who argue that the bombs were unnecessary and the deaths that ensued gratuitous are guilty of poor scholarship, wishful thinking, or willful lying—or perhaps some combination of these elements.

Truth in history is not easy to determine (see this), although it helps greatly if conventions of scholarship (sources, citations) are properly followed. Oh, the main events themselves are often not disputed—except for fringe groups such as those who think we didn’t go to the moon—although the details are often the subject of disagreement. But it’s the motivations behind the acts, the hearts and minds of the movers and shakers, the “what-might-have-been’s” and the “but-fors” that are so open to both partisan interpretation and willful distortion, and so deeply meaningful.

It’s hard enough to determine what happened. How many died in Dresden, for example? Do we believe Goebbels’s propaganda as promulgated by David Irving, or do we believe this work of recent exhaustive scholarship? The former “facts” have reigned now in popular opinion for quite a while, and although the latter mounts a far more convincing case, how many have read it or are familiar with the facts in it, compared to those who have been heavily exposed to the former?

There’s what happened, and then there’s why it happened—the meaning and intent behind the policy. A combination of the two is what propaganda is all about. It takes a lot of time and effort to wade through facts, make judgments about the veracity of sources, and be willing to keep an open mind.

Much easier to stand in a public square (as a bunch of nodding, smiling, waving, middle-aged peace-love Boomers regularly do in the town where I live) holding huge banners declaring “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.” Repeat it often enough, and the hope is it will become Truth in people’s eyes.

Especially in the eyes of the young, and of future generations, who don’t have their own memories to go on. It’s much harder to convince a WWII vet that Hiroshima was an unnecessary war crime than it is to convince a young person of same; the former not only has the context, he has own personal memories of the context. But propagandists are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in history and the future.

The Fall of the Left—or the liberals

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not at all sure I agree with the premise of this piece by Rich Lowry (based on a book by Jim Piereson), which is that the Kennedy assassination marked a pivotal point, the beginning of the Left’s turn from an America-loving do-good liberalism to an America-bashing negativity.

Although Lowry briefly mentions the Vietnam War as another turning point for liberals in America, he glosses over its role. But I think Vietnam was actually so much more important that it makes the assassination’s role seem minuscule in comparison. After all, most of the US escalation in Vietnam was accomplished after the assassination, and was approved by a Democratic President (Johnson) with the acquiescence of a Democratic Congress. It was only much later on, when things appeared to be going poorly, that liberals bailed.

Lowry—or whoever gave his piece its title—refers to the Left and its fall. But his article, which uses the word “liberal” more often “Left,” seems to find the two terms interchangeable.

They’re not. As with all such terms, they are inexact and shifting, but that doesn’t mean they are identical. What’s the difference between them? One way I would put it is that “Left” means “to the left of ‘liberal.'”

“Liberal” used to refer to—as Lowry writes—a movement that was “comfortable with the use of American power abroad, unabashedly patriotic, and forward-looking.” Piereson characterizes it as having been “tough and realistic.” This was the liberalism of both Truman and Kennedy, who were not Leftists.

That sort of liberalism hasn’t ended among Democrats. But it’s certainly faded way into the background, to be replaced by the sort of thinking that used to be known as Leftist. Joe Lieberman is probably one of the last holdouts of the earlier liberal point of view, with Hillary Clinton is trying to position herself delicately (or indelicately—it requires something of a straddle) between the two movements (and Obama’s swinging pendulum represents his own awkward efforts to play both sides), whereas much of the Democratic leadership today is rather firmly planted on the other side of the Leftist line without actually going all the way (in the economic sense, that is) to the economic Leftism of socialism.

Bill Clinton, detested though he was by Conservatives, represented an attempt in the 90s to reverse this Leftist trend, although his focus was primarily domestic—which seemed appropriate in those naively optimistic post-Cold War days. His sincerity may be questioned—was he positioning himself that way because he saw it as popular in a post-Reagan world, or was he sincere in holding the views he espoused? But there’s no question he saw the sharp veer to the Left his party had taken as the reason Democrats had spent so many years in the Presidential wilderness.

The same dynamic is playing itself out for the coming (and coming and coming and coming, for what already seems like aeons) 2008 election. The Democrats have to answer to groups like the Kossacks, an influential part of what Byron York refers to, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. And, if Piereson is correct, that conspiracy had its genesis in the conspiracy theories that sprung up after Kennedy’s death.

Will the Left overplay its hand (ignoring the Law of Thirds), and doom itself to electoral defeat in 2008 despite the unpopularity of the present Bush administration? The old liberal wing of the Democratic Party—of which Lieberman is one of the few remaining adherents, hanging on by a feather—seems moribund at the moment. But events have a way of changing things in unpredictable ways. Hillary Clinton retains enough of the hawk (at least in her rhetoric) that if terrorism should successfully rear its ugly head again within the US while she is President, we may find that the old muscular liberalism comes back in play.

When good news is bad news: Rep. Nancy Boyda

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Kansas Rep. Nancy Boyda (D) got some really bad news the other day.

Actually, it was good news—good news about Iraq. But good news about Iraq was bad news to Boyda, who listened just about as long as she could stand it to retired General Jack Keane’s testimony on surge-generated improvements in Baghdad during the last three months:

There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while…after so much frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.

Why? The positive statements of Keane and his ilk—he had been to Iraq before the surge and then again recently, and was reporting that conditions for the people of that country have much improved—challenge the “reality” on which Rep. Boyda has come to rely. She says:

[Keane’s] kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying, here’s the reality of the problem,” Rep. Boyda said. “And people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue.”

Let me translate: Since Keane’s descriptions of what’s actually happening on the ground in Iraq challenge the prevailing MSM and Democratic narrative about that country, they cannot be uttered or disseminated. The antiwar narrative has, in Ms. Boyda’s eyes, become a “reality” that cannot be countered by anything as mundane as observation. It’s a variant of the old saying, “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

And why does Ms. Boyda see no good, hear no good, speak no good about Iraq? It seems that she previously perceived that as a nation we were getting close to “coming together” and voting to end the war by precipitously withdrawing, and this might spoil it all. Drat.

Time out for a little complaining

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hot here. Really hot. Deep South hot.

And humid. Really humid. Sultry tropical heavy humid.

And I don’t like it. Not at all. As a neighbor said to me today when we were discussing the weather, “I moved here because we don’t have this kind of weather.”

We all laughed, because we know that we do; of course we do, and quite regularly. But most of us (myself included) are in such profound denial that we don’t even have air conditioning.

In my childhood in New York, air conditioning was the rare exception, not the rule. When I was about ten years old my parents finally got a bedroom unit, and on the warmest nights my brother and I were allowed to take our mattresses in there to sleep. Otherwise, it was a fan for us, one that hardly managed to stir the leaden air. We threw off all the covers and the sheets, and even the lightest of pajamas felt way too heavy as we waited for sleep to come.

And the cars back then! Don’t get me started on the cars. Those little triangular vent windows did hardly anthing to direct the wind inside the vehicle. And what difference did it make, anyway, when the air outside felt more like the blast from an oven than a refreshing breeze?

We wait for summer with eager anticipation, of course, and we still love it. But we forget from year to year about the mosquitoes and the voracious Japanese beetles and all these way-too-hot-for-comfort days.

But complain? Not me.

Obama’s swinging pendulum

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama’s a newbie, and it shows.

Last week he got into trouble for being too eager to negotiate with the enemy. In the You Tube debate, he acquiesced to the idea of Presidential meetings—no preconditions necessary—with the likes of N. Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. This drew wide criticism—even from Democratics—for naivete.

Perhaps this week’s Obama faux pas was an effort to correct the perception that he’s too wedded to the magical powers of talking. He threatened to use military action along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border if we got actionable intelligence that Osama and his cohorts were there and President Musharaff wouldn’t strike. The tough talk, however, was too tough, and the opposition (both Democratic and Republican) was eager to jump in to criticize.

Obama not only needs to learn a bit about foreign policy, he needs to learn a bit about diplomacy—and campaigning. Insulting Musharaff for an affront that hasn’t yet occurred, in a situation that is purely hypothetical anyway, isn’t a great way to go about impressing anyone. Obama needs to be wary of the error of overcorrection; the pendulum can swing too far.

The media, of course, takes sound bites from Obama’s speech and accentuates the most potentially controversial parts. The speech itself, however, seems more complex.

In it, he doesn’t actually back off from his earlier contention that talking with countries such as Iran and Syria would be good. But he adds the phrase “I will do the careful preparation needed.” Perhaps that was meant to counter the main problem with his previous stance, which was that he was agreeing that no preconditions would be necessary for such talks.

More importantly, Obama’s speech contains an internal contradiction. He attempts to balance a “let’s withdraw quickly from Iraq” position with a “let’s hang tough in Afghanistan” approach. If al Qaeda is in Afghanistan, there’s no doubt it’s in Iraq as well (whether it was there to begin with or not). Why abandon the fight in the second instance and intensify it in the first?

Obama tries to argue that the two situations are very different, but his rhetoric seems unconvincing, and the underlying reason for the distsinction may be that it’s politically expedient. Obama has consistently opposed the war in Iraq and therefore it must go poorly. And yet he can’t seem to be soft on terrorism, so the Afghan terrorists become the ones to beat—in his phrase, the latter is “the right battlefield.”

Why is it so very “right” to fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan and so very “wrong” to fight them in Iraq? Obama says that al Qaeda is not the primary source of violence in Iraq, and that the population there has turned against them.

Although I’ve read Obama’s entire speech, I unfortunately don’t have time at the moment to go over it with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. But I can’t find any statement of his that asserts that al Qaeda, rather than the Taliban, is actually the primary source of violence in Afghanistan (he talks a lot about the Taliban instead), or why an al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan is so much more dangerous to the US than one in Iraq. For that matter, he doesn’t say why it’s so much more important to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan than the non-al-Qaeda “insurgents” in Iraq, or why cleaning up the former country is so much more important (or would be so much easier) than cleaning up the latter.

Whether or not al Qaeda is actually the primary source of violence in Iraq is anybody’s guess, but the US military seems to think it may be. At the very least, it’s a hugely important factor (please read Belmont Club’s post on the matter):

So while taking on al-Qaeda now seems the obvious choice [for the surge], in retrospect there were many other candidates vying for the title of Center of Gravity. Those bad guys still remain, but MNF-I saw al-Qaeda in Iraq as the key to the position and that choice, according to O’Hanlon and Pollack [of the Brookings Institute and the NY Times], appears to be the right one….by attacking al-Qaeda, the US took engaged not only the most fanatical force in Iraq but the one with the most powerful narrative.

As Obama says, the al Qaeda forces in Iraq have alienated the Iraqi people by their attacks on the population. But when Obama declares that our leaving will somehow mysteriously create pressure on the Iraqi government to act against al Qaeda there, it’s a case of wishful thinking. It’s a good guess that Al Qaeda would dearly love to use Iraq as a base for operations, both for the central location and the propaganda value. The Iraqi government simply doesn’t have the forces to combat them right now, and it won’t gain them by default when we leave.

Obama states that his withdrawal plan for Iraq would maintain sufficient forces to target al Qaeda within Iraq. According to the plan, he would have withdrawn US troops already, with all US combat brigades gone by March of 2008. If he thinks this would do the trick, I wonder what he’s smoking these days.

General Petraeus doesn’t seem to agree with Obama; targeting al Qaeda in Iraq is a goodly part of what the surge has been about. But, after all, what does Petraeus know?

[ADDENDUM 8/3: Not too surprisingly, Pakistan isn’t about to hop on the Obama bandwagon.]

Bush and Brown: not joined at the hip, but still…

The New Neo Posted on by

Take a look at this video. I was struck by the similarity of the two men’s strides and posture. Look particularly at the part where Bush crosses over to the right of the screen (Brown’s left) and they separate a bit (it begins at around 00:53 and lasts till they start speaking).

As an ex-dancer, I tend to notice body language more than most people. When I first saw this clip it seemed to me that the two men were walking with such a similar gait, and are of such similar size and stature, that from afar they would be nearly indistinguishable.

What are they conveying? Resolve and energy, and a certain arm-swinging—and, in the case of Bush, ever-so-slightly bowlegged—athleticism (or ex-athleticism), as well as that vaunted Anglo-American togetherness that seems to still have currency. As Bush says in his address, men who “really want to get something done.”

You may or may not agree, of course, with that “something,” or how it was defined by Bush: “an obligation to work for freedom and justice around the world.” But I think you can see in the way they walk that they believe they want to get something done.

Not joined at the hip, it’s true. But perhaps not so far apart after all.

Up on the roof: mosques and the rules of engagement

The New Neo Posted on by

The intrepid Michael Totten has some of the best reporting out of Iraq these days. Read his riveting eyewitness (minus night goggles, but armed with camera) account of a night raid in Baghdad with the 82nd Airborne on the lookout for curfew violators, both dangerous and not so dangerous.

Problem is, it’s hard to tell at the outset which variety of unidentified night wanderer you’re dealing with. Sometimes it’s hard to tell even at the endpoint of the encounter. But Totten will help you understand what it’s like for the troops these days patrolling the darkened streets of Baghdad.

Note the following exchange between Totten and a soldier concerning the rules of engagement under which our military must currently operate:

“They have a little bunker up [on the mosque roof],” he continued. “You can’t see it from here, but it has sand bags and sniper netting around it.”

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s a mosque.”

“They’re violating curfew,” I said, “and stalking us in the dark from a militarized mosque. And you aren’t going to do anything?”

“Our rules of engagement say we can’t interfere in any way with a mosque unless they are shooting at us,” he said.

You could say that this is what PC considerations run amok have led to: killers know they can set up shop with impunity as long as they do so in a mosque. On the other hand, they also know that as soon as they start shooting from there, they are fair game.

It’s a situation in which our forces can only react after the fact, not before, although we all know the truth of the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In this case, however, respecting mosques and their sanctity has the (supposed) added benefit of not inflaming the locals over what might be seen as random, poorly motivated attacks on Muslim places of worship.

It seems to me that when troops go into a mosque that’s been equipped with sandbags and sniper positions it ought to be understood as a necessary defensive action taking place in a mosque that’s already been “militarized,” in Totten’s phrase, by the insurgents/terrorists. The locals are not dummies; they’d get why this is being done, and that they themselves are ultimately also the targets of those taking refuge in that mosque.

But I’m not in Iraq (and unlike Totten, I’m not planning a trip any time soon). I truly don’t know which approach is best. I wish I knew whether these rules of engagement are in place because the military experts on the subject of fighting insurgencies have decided they are best in the long run, or whether it’s just a result of lawyers being ultra-careful and tying the hands of the military unduly.

I do know that the situation is a good example of the complexities of fighting this sort of war, which has to occur on so many levels—military, cultural, and psychological. That, unfortunately, includes the necessity to traverse the metaphorical minefield of Muslim religious sensitivities as well as the actual minefields of insurgent and terrorist explosives.

[ADDENDUM: Think about contributing to the tip jar if you so desire. And Michael, please stay safe.]

[ADDENDUM II: Oh, and I almost forget: here’s the inspiration for the title of this post.]

Arab perceptions of suicide bombers: depends on the target?

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Barone has written a RealClearPolitics column about a series of worldwide Pew polls. Trends indicate that majorities in most countries express satisfaction with the quality of their personal and economic lives and dissatisfaction with the way their countries are headed.

One small and somewhat tangential detail of Barone’s column caught my eye, and that was this:

…the Pew Global survey showed sharply reduced numbers of Muslims saying that suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified as compared with 2002. That’s still the view of 70 percent in the Palestinian territories. But that percentage has declined from 74 percent to 34 percent in Lebanon, from 43 percent to 23 percent in Jordan, and from 33 percent to 9 percent in Pakistan.

That’s quite a trend. What does it represent?

My theory is quite simple: the targets of suicide bombings have changed since 2002. Back then, during the height of the Second Intifada, suicide bombings were mainly directed against Israel. Now their victims are mostly Arabs.

I’m unable to find a website detailing the exact figures comparing the demography of suicide bombing targets, then and now. And, of course, it depends on how one defends “suicide bombings.”

In a certain sense, 9/11 was a suicide bombing (or at least a suicide attack), but it’s not usually conceptualized that way. The term, and the public perception of it, is usually limited to the sort of modus operandi that was popularized by the Palestinians vis a vis the Israelis: explosives in a backpack or strapped to the body, or an explosion-laden car with driver still in it, detonated in a crowd of innocent people in a public or semi-public place, destroying both the victims and the perpetrator in one horrific moment of carnage designed to strike fear and trembling into the heart and mind.

Back in 2002 we were treated to statements by public figures such as Egyptian psychiatrist Dr. ”˜Adel Sadeq, chairman of the Arab Psychiatrists Association and head of the Department of Psychiatry at ”˜Ein Shams University in Cairo, who glorified the “ecstasy” of suicide bombers and praised them as a tool of the defeat of Israel (watch the video here to view Sadeq’s peculiar affect, and see my previous post about him here, containing a fuller transcript of his words).

That was then; this is now. Israel’s security fence is in place and has had its intended effect: a tremendous drop in the number of suicide bombings in Israel in the last few years.

But suicide bombings haven’t died out, to coin a phrase. Strangely enough, in a move that most did not predict back in 2002, their targets have shifted—not to Western nations such as the US or Britain, nor to Bali or Australia or other countries that have had isolated but well-publicized and horrific incidents—but to the Arab world itself.

In particular, Iraq has become the home of the suicide bomber, with Pakistan coming up behind. Apparently, old habits die hard—plus, of course, the logistics are easier. The intended targets are Arabs and Muslims, as are the perpetrators. This is Arab on Arab (and/or Muslim on Muslim) violence (not an unusual occurrence, historically speaking), and designed to further the political aims of factions in that world who don’t see their actions as a cause of possible Arab/Muslim backlash.

I have no way of knowing whether I’m correct, but I hope the results of this poll represents that backlash. It would be even better if the backlash extends to the use of suicide bombers as a tool against Israel and the US, although I very much doubt it.

[ADDENDUM: See also my post on suicide bombing: explanations vs. excuses.]

Schumer: Bush’s future Supreme Court nominations are guilty until proven innocent

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems the gloves are off—not that they ever were really on.

Senator Schumer has flung down the gauntlet (can’t resist those glove metaphors) and said that the Democrats need to oppose all of President Bush’s future Supreme Court nominations, “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

This, of course, is a reversal of the Constitutional charge concerning the Senate’s participation in these matters. And this is despite the fact that Schumer made the speech at a meeting of a group that calls itself “The American Constitution Society.” Of course, since it also describes itself as “one of the nation’s leading progressive legal organization,” we can assume this is a very liberal organization.

According to Article II Section 2 of the Constitution, which enumerates Presidential powers, the executive branch appoints Supreme Court justices with the “advice and consent” of the Senate. This, of course, doesn’t mean that Senators must consent to presidential Supreme Court appointees. But it has meant—at least till certain relatively recent, more consistently obstructionist, decades—that traditionally it was only under extraordinary circumstances that the Senate would fail to confirm appointments, considered to be a prerogative of the executive branch. And, of course, it stands to reason that a President would be appointing Justices aligned with his/her own point of view. The balance of powers put into place by our foresighted founding fathers clearly placed this power with the President, with Congress occupying a very subsidiary role.

Shumer knows how to read a legal document; after all, he’s a lawyer, although he’s never practiced. But Schumer is a political animal through and through—he entered politics right after graduating from Harvard Law as a twenty-three year old, and never looked back. In fact, he has never held a job outside of politics.

Unfortunately, it shows. Not that such a history is necessary to flex Congressional muscles unduly. Nor is that practice limited to liberal Democrats—in the past, Newt Gingrich did some (unsuccessful) bullying himself when he tried to shut down Congress in a showdown with President Clinton.

But Schumer is certainly shameless in his partisanship, and in his contempt for the Constitution. He considers, strangely enough, that the “progressive” Senators who voted for Justice Roberts’s confirmation (he was not among them; Schumer held firm at “nay”) were “hoodwinked” during the hearings when Roberts said, among other things, that he thought judicial precedent was important and would respect it.

Schumer quickly brushes aside the fact that it is hardly unheard of for Justices to end up surprising the public when they actually get on the bench. Although he mentions Earl Warren—who became a tremendous liberal in one such reversal—as one of the prime examples, Schumer says, “Those days are over, as people have come to understand the central importance of the Court and the need to not take chances.”

The need not to take chances—an odd way to put it. Supreme Court Justices are nominated for life in order to free them from political considerations, or having to answer to anyone. Their character and their intellect are their qualifications, and they are presumed to rule on the merits of each decision as they see fit, which includes the possibility of growth and change. Precedent—as Schumer well knows—is not sacrosanct, even to conservatives.

Is Schumer really as in love with following precedent as his speech would indicate? Of course not; the Warren Court, one of the most liberal ever, repeatedly smashed precedent in its rulings, and no doubt Schumer applauds that Court’s iconoclasm—or, rather, what he might call its “progressivism.”

Is Schumer upset because Roberts and Alito misled the Senate when they said they would respect precedent? Doubtful indeed. If their decisions had been in line with Schumer’s politics he would almost certainly have considered any divergence with whatever they said at Senate hearings, or with precedent, to be evidence of change and growth.

No, what it boils down to is that Schumer is hopping mad they turned out to be more conservative than he’d thought. And even in this he can hardly consider himself “hoodwinked.” As he himself points out, Bush indicated he wanted to appoint Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. He also admits that the judicial records of Roberts and Alito were quite conservative. He’s just surprised that they’ve continued that way after making nicey-nicey to the Senate. He shouldn’t be.

Schumer indicates that if President Bush gets any more chances to appoint future Supreme Court nominees, they should be considered to be something like defendents in a trial with the burden of proof against them—guilty, as it were, until proven innocent. Guilty of what? Of being the sort of Justice President Bush wants:

The burden of proof lies with the nominee to prove that he is something other than what the President chose him for.

Schumer seems to think that his words will not come back to bite him if a Democrat becomes President and tries to nominate Supreme Court Justices of his/her own. Either he believes that Republicans will take the high road and be less obstructionist than he and his fellow “progressives,” or he thinks Republicans will do so poorly in 2008 and 2012 that Democrats will have the Senate numbers to override any Republican attempts to similarly block virtually all Court nominations.

I suggest that Schumer should rely on his experience as a political animal, and think again.

Winning in Iraq: ah, but what does the military know?

The New Neo Posted on by

There are various mantras about the Iraq war that have become popular these days. One of them is that there is no military solution, only a political one. Another is that the surge isn’t working, sometimes modified lately to read: the surge isn’t working enough, or the surge is only working temporarily, or the surge is working militarily but not politically. And so on and so forth.

There’s no question that many proponents of these mantras are invested in the surge not working; after all, they’ve staked their political lives on that fact. Others are just following what they read in their favorite media outlet of choice. Still others no doubt have made considered judgments after weighing whatever evidence is out there; I don’t know what percentage of the whole this latter group represents, but I’m afraid it’s rather miniscule.

We in this country have a civilian, not a military, government. There’s a division of labor between the two, with the Defense Secretary and Commander in Chief ordinarily being civilians (unless, of course, the President is an ex-General such as Eisenhower; a rare exception to this rule). Most voters, of course, don’t have a military background either, since women seldom do and most men young enough to have only known the volunteer armed forces (which would be most men today) have not served.

Obviously, I’m not a proponent of the idea that only those who’ve served in the military can have an opinion on war (a variant of the “chickenhawk” argument). Nor do I think that only police can have an opinion on crime, or only doctors on health care, or any one of a zillion variations on that theme. To be responsible voters we all must come to conclusions on these and a host of other issues.

Some of those topics are complex, however, and expert opinion by those with experience in the field should have a certain weight. This is certainly true of military matters. Of course, as with all topics, it’s not difficult to find an expert on either side of an issue, and to cite the expert who agrees with the opinion you’ve already formed. That’s why so many people toe the party line; it takes quite a bit of time and effort to evaluate the often complicated technical information involved—and, of course, “a mind is a difficult thing to change.”

But we do need to take cognizance of what experts say on a topic, and the experts on war are the military. And in the main, what they say can be summarized as, “The surge is working somewhat; give it a chance. A premature withdrawl would be far worse, both for us, the military, and the Iraqis.”

Yes, they have their own agenda and their own biases. But they’re the best we have. I’ve read a great many articles and blogs written by those in the military, or with a military background (hi, Austin!), and overall I’ve been extremely impressed by their knowledge, insight, intelligence, attention to detail, and efforts to be evenhanded and fair.

I can’t say the same for most members of Congress who are pressing for withdrawal, or most discussion of the war in the press by non-military journalists, which tends to be the opposite: simplistic and nakedly partisan, often inaccurate about simple facts, and with a tendency to ignore consequences.

Some might say that those in the military know only about killing people, not the all-important winning of hearts and minds in a place such as Iraq.

The evidence points to the contrary. General Petraeus is an expert on exactly the type of war we are fighting in Iraq. It’s often said that “he wrote the book.” But what is this book of his, exactly? Take a look at the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, written to provide guidance for this new type of war we increasingly face.

No, I haven’t read Petraeus’s book myself, but I’ve heard it praised highly and I can only assume he’s attempting to follow its recommendations in Iraq—after all, they are his own recommendations. But to get an idea of the sort of things that Petraeus and the army think about nowadays, here’s a list of the book’s chapters.:

Aspects of Insurgency; Aspects of Counterinsurgency; Integrating Civilian And Military Activities; Key Counterinsurgency Participants and Their Likely Roles; Civilian and Military Integration Mechanisms; Tactical-Level Interagency Considerations; Intelligence Characteristics in Counterinsurgency; Predeployment Planning and Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Operations; counterintelligence and Counterreconnaissance; Intelligence Cells and Working Groups; Protecting Sources; Host-Nation Integration; Designing Counterinsurgency Campaigns And Operations; The Nature of Counterinsurgency Operations; Logical Lines of Operations; Targeting; Learning and Adapting; Developing Host-Nation Security Forces; Police; Leadership and Ethics; Warfighting Versus Policing; Proportionality and Discrimination; Detention and Interrogation; Sustainment; Logistic Support to Logical Lines of Operations; Employing Linguists; Establishing Rapport; Authority to Assist a Foreign Government; Authorization to Use Military Force; Rules of Engagement; Internal Armed Conflict; Airpower In Counterinsurgency; Air and Space Information Operations; High-Technology Assets; Low-Technology Assets.

I think you’ll agree that the depth and breadth of thought there compares rather favorably with that of Congress, or the average journalist (or even the above-average journalist). I think you’ll also agree this doesn’t seem to be a purely military solution, but one that emphasizes integration with the politics and the people of the country involved.

Civilians can, do, and must try to evaluate the military situation in Iraq and form an opinion, and of course military experience is not necessary to do that. But it would be hard to do it responsibly by discounting what the military experts say. And, in general, it would be easier to do it if one has some sort of military knowledge already, a context in which to place the present facts.

As a member of the Boomer generation, and one who had personal experience of the Vietnam draft years (including a boyfriend who served there in combat), I’m grateful the draft is over. I think the military’s capabilities have improved tremendously since those years, and I have no interest in going back. But the one advantage I can see that the old draft system had was that it gave most men (not women, but that’s another story) some sort of military training and knowledge.

Right now, only about 55% of eligible voters are estimated to have actually cast ballots in the 2004 Presidential election. The total number of votes cast was about 122 million, so by my calculations there are about 221 million potential voters in the US today.

How many are veterans? There are about 24.5 million veterans in the US today, and since I assume they are all of voting age that would represent about 12% of the total. Forty percent of them are age 65 and over, and so one can deduce that the majority of the vets are on the older side, and that percentages of voters who’ve served in the armed forces will decrease as time goes on.

What of Congress? According to this Boston Globe article, less than 30% of members of Congress are veterans (and here are some more details about the Congress that served from 2003 to 2005; you’ll see that most of those veterans were Vietnam-era or older). The Globe article also states that this percentage is way down from previous times—for example, in 1974 nearly 80% of Congress had served in uniform. That’s quite a difference—although it certainly didn’t lead to support of the Vietnam War in that case (some of that lack of support was the result of the perception that the military commanders had lied about the war in the late Sixities: see this).

Some of this decline in the number of veterans in Congress probably represents the greater prevalence of women there these days, and of course much is the result of the demise of the draft. But whatever the cause, the result is that far fewer members of Congress at present have military experience and knowledge of any sort, compared to the past.

Again, I must be careful to state that this does not mean they can’t have valid opinions. But it does make it easier for them to ignore the complicated facts as they are reported, and merely go with their own biases and preconceptions, which is something Congress—and most people—do quite well, anyway.

Waiting for September and Petraeus’s report, and then actually giving it a fair hearing, may be beyond the powers of Congress. And, of course, military expertise is no guarantee of lack of bias. But I, for one, would like to see members of Congress who demonstrate a higher level of analysis of and knowledge of the actual military facts being reported so far, and who are willing to withhold judgment (and hold their tongues), at least until that September day of reckoning.

I can dream, can’t I?

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a piece by an ex-military man on what’s happening with the surge to date.]

A short review course on how to write for the media about Israel and Palestine

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, class, I know it’s been said before, including by me. But I promise I’ll be (relatively) brief this time.

Here’s how you write about Israel and Palestine if you’re a journalist today—even, apparently, if you work for the Voice of America.

Oops, my bad. It seems the Voice of America doesn’t write its own copy anymore. Scroll down to the bottom of the article and you’ll see, “Some information for this report was provided by AFP [Agence France-Presse], AP and Reuters.”

‘Nuff said.

Well, not quite enough. The problem begins with the headline, “Israeli airstrike kills three Palestinians.” There so many different ways to properly convey the idea contained in the story, but this really isn’t one of them. The advantage it has, though, is that the person who merely glances at the headline and fails to read the story—a practice that’s not at all unusual—might be left with the impression that it may have involved the killing of innocent civilians. Or even that it probably involved the killing of innocent civilians—perhaps even the wanton and knowing and purposeful killing of innocent civilians.

Those people (what percentage of the whole?) who soldier on to read the entire text discover something different. The dead in this case were actually members of a “militant” group known as “Islamic Jihad,” and include its commander (and please see this for my earlier in-depth discussion of the use of the word “militant” in this and similar contexts).

Wonder what those “militants” promote, and what philosophy might motivate them? Can’t imagine, can we, despite the title they give their group?

Since the article is short, I’ll present the entire text for those who didn’t feel like following my link:

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza strip has killed three of its members, including a top commander.

The Israeli army confirmed the strike on a vehicle carrying the militants Thursday in Gaza City.

Earlier Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials said Israeli forces killed a Hamas militant during a military operation.

The Israeli army said the operation was aimed at preventing terrorist threats. The area is a source for rocket fire into Israel.

In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said a Palestinian man tried to stab a soldier near a Jewish settlement. It said another soldier hit the attacker in the head, seriously injuring him.

Palestinian witnesses say that during a scuffle an Israeli soldier shot the man, who later died of his wounds.

The only use of the word “terrorist” is in the fourth paragraph, preceded by the words “The Israeli army said.” So these guys are just militants—unless we take the Israeli government’s word for it.

In an alternate universe, the article might have been headlined, “Palestinian terrorists killed by Israeli airstrike.” Or perhaps even, “Israeli airstrike kills Islamic Jihad commander and two confederates.” Or…

Fill in the blanks yourself. And don’t be surprised if this post draws trolls; have you ever noticed that anything about Israel nearly always does?

Ode to Jet Blue

The New Neo Posted on by

I took the redeye last night from San Francisco, and I’m pleased to report it was a textbook flight. However, what’s the deal when the plane takes about five and a half hours to traverse the entire country and the ride home from Boston (waiting at airport, plus bus, a trip that should not be more than two) takes about the same?

But I love Jet Blue. Not only were we on time taking off, we were on time arriving, and I adore those little maps on the TV that track your flight (Nebraska=big state). Jet Blue seems to have responded to the problem with peanut allergies by offering cashews—a much tastier nut, IMHO. The flight wasn’t totally full, and so the man next to me had an extra seat to stretch out his approximately 6’7″ frame. And no crying babies; they all slept like—well, like babies.

Security rules included the fact that a young woman attempting to take a photo of her grandfather boarding the bus was stopped and told no pictures were allowed. And although the burly driver loads all suitcases on and off the bus, he is not allowed to take the bags off the little rent-a-carts—that’s the responsibility of the passengers.

It’s hot and humid here, and a far cry from Muir Woods. But the garden’s looking pretty fine:

garden-july.jpg

astilbe-july.jpg

Back to more weighty matters tomorrow.