:: Bluestarblog ::

:: Monday, April 07, 2003 ::

Ralph Peters on the intelligence booty that we can expect from Iraq:

The Iraqi regime was a bureaucracy of terror. But it was, above all, a bureaucracy. It kept voluminous files. The secret police, diplomatic and executive archives will hold information on all the region's secret deals, as well as on the private lives and personal corruption of virtually every leader, cabinet member and senior military officer throughout the Middle East.

Syria must be terrified of what we'll find. But Egypt is doubtless plenty worried, too. And the files on Saudi princes are not going to be publishable as family reading.

We are in for some shocks as we learn of unsuspected betrayals. But the states of the region will be in for much greater surprises in the coming years.

It has been noted that the French and Russians did not want this war because they knew we would learn how they cheated on U.N. sanctions against Iraq. But the treasure trove of information we will collect on the Arab world and other Islamic states will be much more important. It will enable us to see into previously opaque issues and to squeeze many a corrupt leader who believed he was safe from external scrutiny.

The Iraqi archives will be a mother lode of information for scholars. But there is much we will choose to keep under lock and key for strategic purposes. The psychological effects of our access to those archives and to former regime officials anxious to tell all will be even greater than the practical information we accumulate.

No Arab leader will know what was or wasn't in those files. Each will have to fear the worst. President-for-life X will always have to wonder what we know as we sit across the negotiating table.

Our immediate goal will be to help the Iraqi people build the first rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East. That will bring its own rewards. But the long-term dividends we will reap from our secret war will keep paying off for decades.

The destruction of Saddam's regime will result in the greatest intelligence coup in history.

:: Scot 1:07 PM [+] :: ::
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Canadian idiocy roundup:

Mark Kingwell:

This war is unjust by any measure considered valid in the long tradition of philosophical and legal argument that stretches from Saint Augustine, through Pufendorf and Grotius, to the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg trials.

I wonder how much the typical liberated Iraqi cares about Western philosophical and legal argument.


Antonia Zerbisias:

It seemed that, every time I flipped between CNN and MSNBC, they were telling and re-telling "Saving Private Lynch," that archetypal, blonde-in-peril, made-for-TV movie coming to a ratings sweeps period near you. (And doesn't Saddam Hussein make the perfect Oil Can Harry, tying the pure-hearted heroine to the railroad tracks?)


Linda McQuaig:

One could have easily gotten the impression last week that the war in Iraq is being fought to liberate pretty young American girls from Iraqi hospitals.

Ever heard of hot-young-blonde envy? McQuaig and Zerbisias are it.

Rick Salutin:

The most intriguing phrase to emerge from this "war," alongside the usual propagandistic bilge (shock and awe etc.), is "the other superpower," as used by The Nation, The New York Times, NDP Leader Jack Layton and others. The other superpower is global public opinion. It has the endearing ring of truth.

Global public opinion as a superpower - that's deep.

Toronto Star editorial:

By invading Iraq without a U.N. mandate, the U.S. may have usurped power from the international community. But in the grab for that power, the Americans damaged their own moral international authority, while leaving the U.N.'s intact.

I have to admit, this is the first time I've seen the phrase moral international authority, and I'm not exactly sure what it means. No matter really. The idea that the U.N. is an authority on anything other than throwing food and water from a back of a cube van at starving peasants is laughable. If you really want to chide the Yanks on this one, the above quote should read 'But in the grab for that power, the Americans damaged their own moral international authority by leaving the U.N. intact.'

A little closer to the truth at least.

:: Scot 12:56 PM [+] :: ::
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After two and a half weeks, allied military bases are springing up throughout Iraq, public and civilian interests have been remarkably tended to (low casualty rate, secure oil wells, aid delivery and distribution), and the cities have been more than successfully engaged. A generous guess would give another three weeks for total control of all the major cities, including Baghdad, and maybe another few weeks to clean out the last of the jihadis and stalinesque yes-men as more intelligence pours in.

At this point, while the most difficult work lies ahead in the implementation of order, structure, and self-rule, it would be entirely apt to declare complete victory (though the formal declaration will probably be made sooner). Nonetheless, that's a total of eight and a half weeks. Afghanistan took six. The fine line of what is or isn't a cakewalk is usually settled by whether you descibe a battle in terms of weeks or months. Two of one, eight and a half of the other - you pick.

:: Scot 12:36 PM [+] :: ::
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Also in the National Review, an excellent piece from Victor Davis Hanson. Amidst another lesson in geopolitics, he nails the Canada-Mexico connection:

There is not much need to speak of the governments of Canada and Mexico. More liberal trade agreements and concessions with Mr. Chretien are about as dead as open borders are with Mr. Fox. It is the singular achievement of the present Canadian government to turn a country — whose armed forces once stormed an entire beach at Normandy and fielded one of the most heroic armies in wars for freedom — into a bastion of anti-Americanism without a military. Both countries are de facto socialist states, and the Anglo-French pique we see in Europe is right across our northern borders in miniature. Anyone who looked at the papers in Mexico City could rightly assume our neighbors’ elite preferred an Iraqi victory.

:: Scot 10:20 PM [+] :: ::
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Jonah Goldberg is thinking ahead:

Iraq has a bad brand name, marketing-wise. The country needs a fresh start. Any new name should be one a people can take pride in, while at the same time sending a positive, Western-oriented message to the world and its citizens alike. Also, we need to make it clear that we will not allow others to henpeck us. It seems to me there is one name which satisfies all of these requirements.

France.

We should rename Iraq, France. If the current "French" object, we can tell them it's a compliment. Already, antiwar Arabs are reportedly naming their kids after Jacques Chirac — we just want to take that principle to the next level. Colin Powell could tell them, "We take you at your word that you are the role model for the Arab world you've always claimed to be! What better way to say so than by naming a country after you?"

If having two countries both called France becomes a logistical or bureaucratic problem, we can follow Don Rumsfeld's lead and call the current "French" Old France and Iraq, "New France." Or, my preferred course would be to call the European France, "Euro-France" — a la Euro-Disney. The country's been turning into a theme park for years anyway.

Regardless, all of this can be worked out. Besides, as we've learned from this war already, there's nothing the French can do to stop us.

:: Scot 10:14 PM [+] :: ::
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What's more interesting - armchair Rumsfelds of armchair generals? Bill Keller has a bit of both.

:: Scot 9:58 PM [+] :: ::
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Margaret MacMillan has a good piece in the National Post on the Arab fixation with Israel.

My working theory of how the Middle East became such a mess goes back another hundred years when the Arabs were usurped of their world power status by the Europeans and East Asians. They have been in a steady state of regression since the early 1800's and have contributed to the progress of world liberalism government practices such as repression, intimidation, torture, rape, murder, misogynism, anti-Semitism, anti-Westernism, private and public censorship, and of course the appropriate levels of corruption you would expect from your typical postmodern thugocracy. Not all the Middle East Islamist nations are guilty of each of these barbarities, but you would need a Venn diagram trying to sort this out. Militant Islamism has written itself into thier history and has spiraled out of control. Bernard Lewis, Steven Den Beste, and Daniel Pipes have written extensively on this.

Like it or not - no room for these types of crackheads in the new global village.

:: Scot 9:46 PM [+] :: ::
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Only Mark Steyn could have linked SARS and the battle in Iraq:

I tuned in to the CBC the other night and saw the pews of a church. No church in particular, just the nearest church to the CBC's Washington office. But, as the lugubrious tones of Senior Correspondent Brian Stewart made clear, that was all they needed:

"Noon today in war time Washington. More churches offer moments of quiet reflection in worrying times. A part of the new American reality. In just days, feelings about the war have swung from barely restrained exhilaration to sombre concern over dead and injured and captured. It is coming home to a population that felt it was sending its youth off to a promised rapid victory and liberators welcome. The war may be much longer and far more painful than most believed ... "

And on and on. For some of us, it's Brian's war reports that are much longer and far more painful than most believed. In the time it took his funereal delivery to complete the script, the Third Infantry Division had advanced another 120 miles. But that's no reason not to predict disaster. After all, that church was pretty sombre, eh?

Maybe it's all conga lines and whoopee cushions at Brian's church, but south of the border churches offering "quiet reflection" is a part of the "new American reality" only if by "new" you mean the best part of half a millennium. Nonetheless, Brian's rent-an-expert was happy to confirm the generally hopeless outlook: "I'm not sure even the military is fully braced for the potential loss of many hundreds of American and British lives ..."

Just for the record, as of yesterday morning fewer British servicemen had died in combat in Iraq than Ontarians had died of SARS. That may be one reason why Her Majesty's Governments in London and Canberra are now advising their citizens not to travel to Toronto. The Brits and Aussies are happy to take their chances in Basra and Mosul, but Hogtown? Forget it.

The bad news is SARS is spread by the ease of modern air travel. The good news is Air Canada's management is doing its best to eliminate that risk for Canadians. My linkage isn't entirely frivolous. Here's a challenge for the CBC. Why not try applying the "skepticism" - i.e., sneering condescension -- you reserve for the Pentagon to SARS and Air Canada?

Here are some other points of comparison between the war and SARS. As Thomas S. Axworthy pointed out yesterday, China has been lying about SARS ever since it got going. No big deal. That's what Communist regimes do: They lie, especially to the outside world, for reasons of pride as much as anything else. (That's why those Russian submariners died: Moscow waited too long before allowing in outside help.)

But the interesting thing is that the WHO continues to accept Beijing's lies, ranking Chinese provinces as high-risk or non-risk according to the info it gets from the government. Given China's pattern of sweeping everything under the carpet until the bulge becomes too big to step over, why is the WHO still taking Beijing's word for it? Meanwhile, according to Taiwan, their pleas to the WHO asking for assistance earlier this year went unanswered, mainly (according to Taiwanese legislators) because of UN politics.

SARS is "sad news" for its victims but for the rest of us it's a useful reminder of the defects of the multilateral networks in which our global statesman Jean Da Proof has put so much stock. A totalitarian state embarked on a cover-up, the relevant UN agency bought the wool-pulling routine, the problem jumped across the world. So much for "containment."

:: Scot 8:30 PM [+] :: ::
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Blogging has been light in the last week and will be for the next few days as I'm in the middle of a downloading frenzy. To date - 19000 songs, a couple thousand thousand videos, a couple thousand music lessons and transcripts, a thousand essays and articles, several hundred books, and about a hundred soundclips.

My name is Scot and I have a problem.

(I only have another 50 or 60 years left to do this)


And if you want to know how well we're doing in the war there's this piece.. ahh nevermind - just go read Reynolds, Sullivan, or Den Beste. As far as I'm concerned, Saddam and his demon offspring are dead and the regime is hanging by a thread.

:: Scot 4:39 PM [+] :: ::
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