I'm really pissed off at all the coverage of Arafat's death, all of which totally glosses over his
terrorist career, the climax of which occurred in the past four years.
Among other things it has been proven that Arafat funded suicide
bombings (sometimes using EU money, by the way), applauded them (he
sent money and congratulations to the father of the guy who blew
himself up at the Dolphinarium), and either refused to arrest the most
notorious Hamas bombers or, having arrested them because of intense
Israeli/US pressure, set them free in 2000 so that they could do their
work. In other words, he's directly responsible for suicide bombings
and connived to ensure that other bombers could murder again. And they
did. Over and over again until finally assassinated by Israel (raising
universal criticism and UN protests!).

Examples:

Rahman Hamad organized the bombing of the No. 5 bus in Tel Aviv in
1994, which killed 24 people. Under Israeli pressure, the Arafat
arrested him but then let him go. He then planned and dispatched the
bomber in the attack on the Dolphinarium disco, and he killed two boys
at a gas station in Neve Yamim in 2001.

Mahmud Abu Hanudeh was the ringleader behind the Mahane Yehudah and
the Ben Yehudah blasts of July and September, 1997. Though on Arafat's
most-wanted list for his actions, he sheltered under Arafat's nose
until 2000, when Israeli troops besieged his village and tried to
arrest him. Three IDF soldiers died in the attempt, and Hanudeh
escaped Israel's net by turning himself in to the PA's police. Arafat
released him soon after.

And then there are the wars he caused in Jordan and Lebanon, and the
countless cross-border raids and reprisals that he instigated...

Read more below

First the Good News: Fallujah will go down in military history as one of the most brilliant urban battles ever. The US military is demonstrating that it has no rivals and cannot be touched. We'll see this proven by lopsided casualty rates and the fact that civilian casualties, though probably high, will be several orders of magnitude lower than in any comparable battle fought in the past. Just think Grozny, what happened to the Russians (die like flies) and what they then had to do to win (kill everyone, blow up everything).

The Bad News: Military commanders have made clear that they think Zarqawi, all the other Bad leaders, and many of the insurgeants themselves left Dodge a long time ago. And they have admitted that because of insufficient numbers they have been unable to prevent their flight. Meaning that the insurgeancy will continue, and it will probably resume in Falluja the moment the USMC pulls out to deal with another city.

The Really Bad News: No one seems to care. Neither the commanders nor the ever-apologetic war bloggers connect the dots between the paucity of soldiers, the strength of the insurgeancy, the strong possibility that the present victory will be pyrrhic, and Bush/Rumsfeld's a) obsession with fighting the war on the cheap and b) pathological unwillingness to aknowledge that they may have done anything wrong. This is Torah Borah all over again. I guess the military commanders can't complain if they wanted to, but I sense, both among them and the war bloggers from whom I get my information, a particular blindness: so enthralled are they by the spectacle of American military prowess that they are incapable of any sort of autocriticism or big-picture thinking. Since ours is the best of all possible militaries fighting the best of all possible battles, everything is beyond reproach, and no apparent mistake is a real mistake. Our own tactical brilliance is blinding us. Here lies the secret to our possible defeat: Hubris.

If we lose this it will be the apologists and not the critics who will have betrayed our troops.

Now that the election's over I'm hoping the nation will turn its attention away from flip-flopping and Swiftvets and back to important matters, like the War. I consider myself a reluctant hawk, meaning that although I think the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea made worse by inept planning and management, I'm also convinced that we have no choice now but to win. In fact, I found Kerry's silence on the future of the war very disturbing. Basically, there was no real link between Iraq and global terrorism except for the money Saddam gave Hamas bombers. But now the link exists. We've created it, by providing the jihadi types with a place to rally, a concrete cause, and easy targets. So defeat or withdraw would constitute a huge victory for them and, I am certain, encourage them like nothing else. That means more troops (why Bush still insists on pretending that the war won't cost us anything is beyond me). And yes, a lot more violence. Which brings me to Fallujah. There's a battle brewing, and it's the sort of thing us liberals are going to need to learn to support. Naomi Klein's ravings about Najaf in the Nation exemplifies why the right thinks us lefties are complete fools. Violence alone won't win the war; we have to worry about hearts and minds, too. But we're going to have to kill a lot more people.

So here are some links to good info about what's going on. The first is The Adventures of Chester written, so he says, by an ex-USMC officer and Iraq veteran. Lately he's been laying out, in detail, the order of battle and predicting how it's going to unfold. If he really is USMC, he knows a thing or two about Marine battle tactics and can provide a far better assessment of the situation than you'll find in the mainstream press, whose knowledge of things military is limited. For some background, try the ever-amusing and generally informative War Nerd, who describes Fallujah as a Gaza strip snap-on kit and later condemns Bush for chickening out and preventing the Marines from levelling the place last April. His description really sums up Iraq in a nutshell: we bungled the job so badly that we've boxed ourselves in. The only way out now is with guns blazing.

90% of my fellow citizens of the District of Columbia voted for John Kerry. I don't have the numbers for NYC, but I suspect the percentage is similarly high. Which makes me wonder: if we, the targets of 9/11 and the most likely targets of future attacks, are not impressed by the fear-mongering of the GOP, what's with all the Red Staters?

I went to vote just now in my lovely neighborhood in Washington, DC, a city rife with rumor of terrorist alerts, where everyone knows someone with the "inside scoop" about this or that credible threat, and where we have some reason to be concerned that perhaps OBL et Cie. might pull off an election-day caper at a poll. So I was relieved to see a police car parked next to the polling place.

But what were the two cops doing in the car? Reading the latest alerts?
Checking us out on some IR camera display or x-ray vision thing to see if we were packing bombs or weapons?

I couldn't tell until I got close enough to their open window to hear noise coming from inside the car.

They were watching a movie on DVD.

In my never ending quest to kill more time by web surfing, I found some interesting war blogs I wish to share. Something about war, live on the web. Interesting cultural innovation.

My War: Fear and Loathing in Iraq: This is written by a soldier serving in the "Stryker" brigade in Mosul. Strykers are new-fangled armored car things. Like Bradleys but faster and lighter. The Strykers have their own brigade-level blog, The Stryker News. I recommend the photo galleries on the Stryker News site.

iraq calling: life of a soldier in Iraq:A bit less interesting, but still good. This guy's in the South, somewhere.

91Ghost: A new blog, but promising. It's really about Gulf War I.

I'm now 3/4 of the way through the DVD set of the one and only one season of Fox's sci-fi show Firefly. Watching it I understand why it was cancelled: It's too good. Great writing. Complex characters. Excellent acting. Excellent cinematography. Cool special effects. Pure Joss Whedon. Much of what I loved about Buffy plus all the best elements from other classic sci-fi like Star Trek. I'm really in love with this show. Highly recommended.

Here's the idea: you lose "hit points" by hitting things and people, but you can recharge by hitting people with your whip. Wholesome fun.

href="http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/chariotrace/game/game.html" class="menutext">Chariot Racing on the Web

Always the trend setter, the USMC has invented kevlar shorts to be worn over one's fatigues for the sake of keeping shrapnel out of one's sensitive bits and upper thighs. I sense a new fashion craze just on the horizon:

Click here for pictures:
Kevlar Shorts

CAMP RAMADI, Iraq(July 5, 2004) -- Marines here from 3rd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment are currently testing lower body armor developed by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va.

The Kevlar shorts were designed to repel razor-sharp shrapnel from improvised explosive devices detonated by anti-Iraqi fighters along transportation routes throughout the country.

According to Lt. Col. Lance A. McDaniel, battalion executive officer, the artillery unit received ten pairs of the shorts from the Warfighting Lab. The shorts arrived nearly a week ago and were distributed amongst the battalion's batteries.

"The gunners in our vehicles seem to be the most exposed to shrapnel," McDaniel said.
"We've had a lot of Marines receive injuries to their buttocks and upper thighs."

He said these shorts make the gunners, who man crew-served weapons on top of the vehicles, less vulnerable to serious injury during IED attacks.

"The Marines wear flak jackets which protect their backs and chests," McDaniel said. "It only makes sense to have protection for the legs,"

The one-size-fits-all shorts are worn over a Marine's uniform and are held up with built in suspenders. Each pair of shorts weighs close to 5 pounds.

Lance Cpl. Mike C. Suchevich and Pvt. Luis R. Mejia have both tried the shorts a few times.

"The other Marines made fun of me the first I put them on," Mejia said. "I guess they thought it was a joke. They are really funny looking."

The shorts have already acquired a few nicknames from the battalion. One Marine referred to them as "lederhosen," and others call them "fishing shorts."

Still, the two Marines said they are grateful to have the new gear.

"They're not very comfortable and they're hard to move in," Suchevich explained. "But
I do feel a lot more protected than before and that's definitely more important than comfort."

So far, the shorts have not been put to the test during any attacks, but the Marines believe it's just a matter of time.

"I think all gunners should have a pair," Mejia added. "I feel safer wearing them. They can't stop bullets, but they can stop shrapnel."

I foolishly got into a debate with someone at one of the right-wing blogs I've been frequenting in hopes of getting the skinny on the present wars. Foolishly because, after making a bunch of statements about how Kerry is not going to hurt the military, I realized that I actually don't know the first thing about his voting record or his intentions. The main Kerry website doesn't help, for it only talks about Homeland Defense and completely skirts Iraq and the military. Can anyone point me to good sources on this? Does anyone have any opinions at all on the matter? The right-wingers appear to have more "facts" at their finger tips that I, because of my ignorance, can neither evaluate nor counter.

The "Belmont Club" has been trying to piece together the truth of the "Wedding Party" massacre. Although he clearly wants to prove that Kimmet isn't lying, he's demonstrating serious intellectual honesty. He's carefully comparing competing stories and finding that there's a bit of truth in both. The dissonance is astonishing. This is reminding me more and more of a graduate history seminar, only this is no intellectual exercise.

Wedding Party Massacre

A fascinating read: Le Monde has published a compilation of the emails and letters sent by one of the MPs involved in the prison scandal to his family from Iraq. The docs are together as a pdf, and although the first page is a French introduction, all the rest is in English. Le Monde says that the soldier's father provided this stuff to them. Note the dates.

Letters from an MP

Thanks to Mike's Private Chance link to BlackFive, I've spent dozens of hours exploring the strange world of right-wing and militarist bloggers. Basically I went through all the BlackFive links. Most of what I found just frightened me and reminded me of why I am a Democrat. However, I wish to report two finds, sites that are unusually informative and open-minded. And they draw on a military knowledge seldom found among us Dukakis types.

The first is Iraq Now, run by a journalist who has apparently just served a tour in Iraq as a Guard lieutenant. His assessment of the prison abuse scandal is particularly valuable. And damning. A taste of it is in the extended entry.

The second is "The Belmont Club". I have no idea who runs it, but at the moment it's almost entirely dedicated to teasing out what's going on in Falluja. Fascinating stuff.

Both seem to reveal two huge problems: 1. total disconnect between Washington and Baghdad and what's happening in the field, leaving local commanders to improvise, for better or for worse. 2. Shinseki was right, lots more troops were needed. Thanks to Rumsfeld's theories lots of people there now are doing things they're not trained for, and to a large extent many had left most of their equipment behind in the rush to go to war.

I've been wondering what it would take to politicize America and get people to think a little. It occured to me that perhaps a draft might be best for all of us, but then I saw this in today's Times. Of course, it's easy for me to agree with this now that I'm too old to be conscripted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/opinion/04BROY.html

I'm generally utterly contemptuous of TV news, especially when it comes to their apparent fear of showing us anything but the most sanitized, Pentagon-approved version of the war, but it seems that ths Friday Ted Koppel will read the names and show pictures of every GI killed since 2003.

Recommended viewing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3666461.stm

I've been looking high and low for great art in my adopted city, Washington, DC. Notwithstanding the Smithsonian's fabulous collections I have seen little in Washington's galleries and theaters that is new, exciting, or provocative. New York has a monopoly on all that. But there is art here. Indeed, there is art so great that it reveals the high art of the New York scene for what it really is: narcissistic and irrelevant child's play for the decadent and self-absorbed. The art that goes on in Washington, DC, the art that this city produces countless times every single day, is an art of power. More specifically, it is a representation and affirmation of American hegemony. In function it is akin to monumental government architecture everywhere, or to David's tableaux of the Revolution and Napoleon, or, better still, the court ritual of Louis XIV. Yet in form it is distinctly modern and eminently American. It is the government press conference.

Read more at Zeek.

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