By Any Means

It’s only in the movies that the good guys get to blow a bunch of stuff up with no consequence to themselves, and then everybody goes home feeling satisfied.

The long-awaited report from the Iraq Study Group has been released, and the art of not answering questions has been raised to a new level by Tony Snow (to say nothing of his boss).   But there is, perhaps, a small amount of progress here:  at least some people are asking what in the world victory would look like, as well as what a path to victory might really look like.

According to the famous dictum of Carl von Clausewitz, “war is a continuation of politics by other means.”   Face it.   The “other means” have failed, and victory, however defined, must be pursued by means other than those “other means.”

Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. Let him forsake evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it (1 Peter 3:10-11).

Act Two, Scene Two

Or maybe it’s just a staging of the same one-act play.

Scene one: Unsubstantiated rhetoric about a major Middle Eastern country secretly harboring weapons of mass destruction.

Scene two: The CIA presents findings to the White House that undermines this idea. The findings are rejected, and the rhetoric continues unabated.

Scene Three: Major media campaign in favor of doing something before it’s too late.

Scene Four: Military action initiated.  When it eventually turns out that there was no good reason for it, everyone blames the CIA for bad intelligence.

Next: Curtains (for hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of human beings).

A simple question

Regarding the war in Iraq, someone needs to ask George Bush, Tony Snow, and Donald Rumsfeld the following very simple question, and not take a dissertation on what the meaning of “is” is for an answer:

What, exactly, is the win condition?

What is the measurement by which we will able to know that we have won?

When the war was about finding weapons of mass destruction, one would have thought that victory might have been found in the happy discovery that there were none in the first place. When it was about toppling Saddam Hussein, surely we won on the day, shortly after the sweetly satisfying deaths of his sons, that we pulled him out of what was gleefully described as a spider hole. Perhaps victory is only a few days away, when two days before the election the big news will be his guilty verdict and death sentence. When it was about pushing back against the importation of Al Quaeda into the country, surely the death of the leader of that organization’s Iraq operations might have done the trick. When it was about bringing in democracy and establishing an elected Iraqi government with a home-grown constitution, surely we won when the elections were held. If it was about standing down when the Iraqis stand up, perhaps we can now cheer about the civilian Iraqi leader ordering our troops away from checkpoints in Baghdad a few days ago.

Maybe there’s another new, um, “benchmark” that might be set. Please, whatever it is, set it publicly. Give us an actual goal, a well defined mission, so that the rest of the country —starting with the troops themselves— can know when the mission is accomplished.

If, for example, the victory condition will be met when a relatively stable Iraq government formally invites the United States to establish a permanent military presence with U. S. bases within the country, this would be a piece of information that it might be good for the employers of the commander-in-chief, the people of the United States, to know.

Just don’t tell me that victory will only be sure when the commander-in-chief, for ever-changing undefined reasons of his own, says so. I don’t want the entire country held hostage to one man’s state of mind.

Otherwise, I’ll just go re-read George Orwell’s 1984, to remind myself what life is supposed to be like under a policy of permanent warfare.

Verses for the day

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

- Matthew 5:3-12

Shamelessly lifted from the God’s Politics Blog.

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel – washingtonpost.com

Here’s the article from today’s paper:
U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel – washingtonpost.com
It appears that a report released by a House committee chairman is so riddled with inaccuracies that it has drawn a public rebuke from the international agency in the best position to know.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report “took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire — and the Intelligence Community’s assessments as more certain — than they are.”

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate.

How strange does it get?

In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, it seems one middle school administrator was not brave enough to let his teacher teach freely.  Browsing neighbor blogs, I ran across these from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

Flagging Enthusiasm In Colorado tells a strange story, and Colorado flag flap update gives us the followup.
This would be uber-silly if it weren’t real. More proof that in the U.S. of A., a flag is a sacred, that is to say, holy object in the great religion of Hooray For People Like Us Who Live Here And Speak English, And Down With Everyone Who Lives Anywhere Else And All Those Traitors Who Don’t Hate Them. God forbid that our children should learn that there are Other Places in the world where people salute Other Flags. No, in the name of Public Education, let’s not corrupt the minds of the young that places like Mexico and China also contain human beings, cultures, values, and even – gasp – flags of their own.

How To Lose the “War On Terra”

I woke up today wiith this thought ringing in my brain:

If we say: “Because the terrorists hate our freedoms, we must deny ourselves those freedoms,” we have raised a flag of surrender.

Just a thought.

Tinsel Wing: How the Brits pinched the plotters

Once again, our esteemed friend nicteis has succinctly outlined some pertinent facts about the recent bust by British police authorities of a terrorist-wannabe conspiracy. And again, you won’t hear the official spin machine or its news-cycle proxies talking about the efficacy of old fashioned police work.

Words are important

Mayor Bloomberg of New York today referred to the foiled plot to blow up multiple airplanes as a “criminal conspiracy” and emphasized the the central role of the NYPD (“the best police force in the world”) in keeping New Yorkers safe from future attacks. The intelligence and the disruption operation, resulting in the arrest of 21 at least 24 suspects, was carried out by Scotland Yard.

To the extent that terrorist acts are being prevented or pre-empted, worldwide, it is thanks to the work of law enforcement, and the cooperation of law enforcement agencies internationally. Plots have been disrupted in a number of European countries, who are not at war with anyone, as well as in Canada, in addition to (one presumes) the US. But hizzoner was off-message; the rhetoric you will soon hear from the US talking heads, starting with heads of government agencies and the head of government himself, will quickly turn the conversation away from the effectiveness of law enforcement and back to the concept of “war.” [Edit: As predicted, George W. Bush lost no time in getting in front of TV cameras to say that this event is a reminder that we are at "war" with "Islamic fascists."] But it was not an act of war that disrupted these terrorists. No armies, navies, marines, bombs, explosives, commandos even, were involved. It was good police work.

Wars happen between nations and involve armies and air forces and things getting blown up, and, inevitably, the deaths of many people. Wars also have beginnings and endings that are more or less identifiable. Police work, however, is never finished, even on days when no one commits a crime.

But the war rhetoricians will tell you that to think of terrorism as criminality and the efforts against them as police work is to be soft on terror and an act of surrender. They are wrong. When even a good nation begins to act lawlessly, then terror has already won.

A quote for today

[War] is instinctive.  But the instinct can be fought.  We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands!  But we can stop it.  We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today.  That’s all it takes!  Knowing that we’re not going to kill today!

                — Kirk, “A Taste of Armageddon”, stardate 3193.0