Obsidian Wings

Not to make them American

In outlining the "plan" for the transfer of "sovereignty" to Iraq last night, President Bush made the following declaration:

I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free not to make them American.

However, Juan Cole's Guest Editorial by Keith Watenpaugh, Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History at Le Moyne College, argues that we've already laid the groundwork for a very American Iraq, essentially having implemented a "concerted plan to turn Iraq into a dependent and docile American client." Writing at length about John Agresto, who was appointed by the CPA as senior advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education, Watenpaugh notes that Agresto is a good example of the "politically loyal agents, rather than those most objectively qualified to assist Iraq" who have been laying the groundwork for the transition. Describing Agresto as someone with "no training in Middle Eastern society or culture and no experience in the region," he adds that he "was one of the leading right-wing figures in the “culture wars” of the 1980s."

But, you may ask what does it matter if the man who has been restructuring Iraq's education system (and as Watenpaugh explains "exert[ing] a tremendous amount of power over Iraqi institutions and agencies through the control of budgets, security and as gatekeepers to the upper echelons of the Department of Defense"), was ignorant of Iraqi culture and a staunch right-wing ideologue? We're turning the country back over in a few weeks.

While the CPA is supposed to go out of business on June 30, what elements of it will persist in the next iteration of the American role in the civil administration of Iraq is unclear. Dan Senor recently used the euphemistic construction “close partnership” to describe that relationship as he dismissed the possibility that an independent Iraqi government might ask us to leave.

Watenpaugh suggests the following steps be taken to ensure the President's promise is workable:

While US diplomats will in all likelihood occupy a role similar to that played by current administrators, what I suspect will also be the case is that a significant portion of American policy in Iraq will be implemented by contractors. At this juncture, Congress should exercise due diligence and mount an independent audit and investigation of the CPA; it should also introduce legislation that would hold contractors liable to US and Iraqi law and moreover give the FBI enforcement powers and responsibilities. In other words, US citizens should enjoy no extraterritorial rights in Iraq, nor should the contractors simply be allowed to police themselves.

Excuse: The High-Stakes Game of Invasion Justification

In my spare time (which generally means while in the shower or elevator) I've been developing an idea for a board game. It's far enough along to invite some constructive criticism (and Lord knows you can count on the blogosphere for criticism), so here's the rough draft for your perusal:

Excuse
The High-Stakes Game of Invasion Justification

Overview: Stealing heavily from the game Clue, "Excuse" is played on a grided board. Instead of moving a square at a time into different rooms, however, players move along into various countries. As with Clue, the game revolves around three sets of cards, and the game begins when one card from each of the three categories is secretly selected and placed in a Top Secret envelope. The first player who moves to the appropriate country and correctly guesses which three cards are in the envelope wins.

The card categories include Country, Main Rationale, and Back-up Rationale.

Country: These include the usual suspects: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, etc. However, there are plans for a Deluxe Edition that will include other countries, like France, Germany, Spain, etc.

Main Rationale: Again, usual suspects to include Imminent Threat, Suspected Cache of WMD, Direct Link to Terrorism, Humanitarian Intervention, Social Engineering, Liberate from Tyranny, Ideological Total War, etc.

Back-up Rationale: These are the filler rationales and they are used to help fill in the holes of the Main Rationale; they include Containment Wasn't Working, Strategically Important (i.e., Has Oil), Broke a UN Resolution, Pre-Emptive Doctrine, Ongoing War Never Really Ended, etc.

Moving around the board: As with Clue, this will be done primarily by rolling two dice and moving one square per number roled, but in addition there will be Transference Cards. Before rolling the dice each turn, a player takes one Transference Card from the stack and follows its instructions. A sampling of the Transference cards includes:

Cronyism: "Your Vice President has close ties with War Contractors. Add 4 extra spaces to your dice roll."
Infighting: "Your Departments of Defense and State are bickering. Substract 3 spaces from your dice roll."
You've Been Had! "An exiled leader you back is found to be passing intel to your enemies. Lose a turn."
Personal Vendetta: "An attempt was made on your father's life. Move immediately to the country of your choice."

Like Clue, I'm sure this game grows old after a few rounds...but, then again, that most likely depends on your disposition.

Gotta stop morningblogging...

...after I post this link to a guy in Warsaw attacked by thugs, and the aftermath. Funny stuff. No, really.

(Also via Dean)

Sgt. Stryker has a pretty clear idea...

...about the coolness factor of political conventions, and it ain't pretty*:

In the hierarchy of coolness, politics sits at the absolute rock-bottom. I would rather be caught wearing a hooded brown robe and casting a 10th Level Spell of Enchantment against a chaotic good half-elven Ranger, than be standing in a sea of uptight dorks and declaring to the world, "Mr. Chairman, the Great State of Nebraska, home of the Cornhuskers and latent sexual frustration, nominates John Kerry to be the next President of the United States!" And the crowd goes wild! No, no one actually says, "And the crowd goes wild!" because there's no decent color commentary for political conventions. It can't be that hard. If a couple of schmoes from ESPN can make the NFL draft seem exciting, surely hiring the likes of John Madden and Pat Summerall could make any political convention more appealing than a local Shriner's gathering at the airport Hilton.

Also, I don't want to over-quote, but non-Republicans please note: what he says about Republicans and the American flag is damn funny (the phrase 'like a star-spangled burrito' was used). Read the whole thing, as we Reynolds zombis say.

(Via Dean)

Moe

Cold War Lessons Part II

This is a follow up to my previous post about lessons Kevin Drum of WashingtonMonthly thinks we should learn from the Cold War as applied to the War on Terrorism. This is not a stand alone post.

The thrust of Kevin's "Lessons from the Cold War" seems to be that containment works, so why not apply it to the War on Terrorism. I have already suggested that containment was merely the least bad option in the Cold War and I have also suggested as opposed to the Soviets our current enemies have proven to be much more willing to use whatever force they can get their hands on when attacking us. This makes the long time window needed for a successful containment action less appealing.

But another problem with the idea of containment in this context is that many of the people who support the use of the word 'containment' aren't actually that interested in following through with the actions needed for successful containment. They talk about containment only because they must appear to have an alternative to war. This is why Kerry's vote against the First Gulf War is so troubling. Saddam's Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Kerry voted against turning Iraq back. Saddam decided to expand, and Kerry voted against containing him.

But that is the least of containment's problems. One of the major weapons of containment is found in economic sanctions. But the fact is that economic sanctions are not tremendously effective, and also tend to hurt the lower economic class of civilians more than they hurt tyrants and their friends. Are you willing to potentially harden your heart when the tyrant parades people whom he is intentionally starving for propaganda benefit? Or will you give in and strengthen the tyrant's position? Or will you pretend that you can separate the two while ignoring the Food-for-Oil scam which took advantage of your sympathy in the very recent past to provide billions of dollars for palaces and bribes?

Containment is about preventing the spread of ideologies to nearby countries. Are you going to be willing to support indigineous resistance movements like the Contras were in Nicaragua? Are you willing to accept that these movements might not be as savory as you might like but grit your teeth and support them because there is no one else?

Are you willing to befriend dictators who are unfriendly to your enemy's cause but not as moral as you might like?

Since a prolonged 'cold war' against Islamism involves terrorists who have proven their interest in destroying such institutions as the 40,000 person occupied World Trade Center towers, a long term containment regime will include much stricter policing of America. Are you willing to soften civil rights protections in order to police America?

Will you support democratic movements in your 'contained' countries with weapons? If not, what will you do when the 'contained' countries slaughter the members of said movement? Will you treat them like we treat Cuba's dissidents--as people to be interviewed by Oliver Stone while he suggests that Castro really tries to give them a fair trial?

If your answer to most of these questions is 'no', what does a containment policy entail other than telling the not nice people that they aren't nice and letting them take over any place where they can bully people?

The Soviet Union fell not because of its pathetic economy, but because the Soviet government was not willing to murder millions of people as they had in the past. Do you believe that Islamists are close to that point?

P.S. Isn't it also interesting that the containment policy now lauded by many on the left may have directly led to many of the conditions in the Middle East that we are now fighting? Is that a problem?

Fanservice.

What the hell: everybody else seems to be linking to the Axis of Eve, so I might as well. There's a lot of sadness going around with this one.

First, we have these activists themselves, who are indeed demonstrating all the maturity, sophistication and good taste one normally associates with high school manga. Also, while I have a certain sympathy for the more mainstream demonstrators - I'd imagine that it's excruciatingly annoying to get your earnest talking points upstaged by some exhibitionist with bad pun panties - they don't have to let these people march, so my sympathy is not boundless. And let us not forget many of the aforementioned linkers (many to most of whom are on my side of the spectrum) who have been treating this with a certain salaciousness that ranges from eyebrow-raising to lame to just a little skeezy. At any rate, you're just encouraging them, guys.

But most of all I blame Andy Kaufman, because I think that he would have wanted it that way - but he's probably still dead, alas, so I have to blame street theater in general, especially if I can link this somehow to mimes.

(pause)

I am so sorry for that combination of mental images.

Moe

RIAA rides again...

Record Industry Sues 493 More U.S. Music Swappers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. music industry group said Monday it had sued 493 more people for copyright infringement as part of its campaign to stop consumers from copying music over the Internet.

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) has now sued nearly 3,000 individuals since last September in an attempt to discourage people from copying songs through "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa and LimeWire.

I don't precisely have a dog in this fight - or more accurately, I have theoretical sympathies towards both positions. First off, I don't download nonfree stuff without paying for it. Not my bag. Not that I'm trying to claim sainthood or anything; I just tend to not indulge in that sort of sin. So, I have a bit of general sympathy for people getting ripped off...

...which promptly shrivels up and dies, because by and large the entities getting shafted are record companies, a group that I hold in quite justified loathing for the overpriced, lowest-denominator crap that they keep trying to shove into my ears. I haven't bought an album from a mainstream company in about three years; I much prefer to make sure that my twenty bucks all goes to an actual artist, rather than to mostly the Regional Vice President for East Coast Marketing's cocaine dealer*. But that shouldn't mean that I should support letting them get ripped off, either.

It's a puzzler.

Moe

*I should note that while I would deplore the artist blowing (pardon the pun) said twenty bucks on his own cocaine dealer, I am not a police officer and unless the drug deal goes on in front of me there's not much I could do about it anyway. Besides, once I get my CD it became his twenty bucks to spend, not mine.

OK, chapter done, up for air.

Tonight's Moe forecast is for heavy bookishness with scattered blogging (that's what my girlfriend called it): I finally acquired the new Neal Stephenson this evening and the sooner I read it the sooner I can stop lugging it around. Great books, but they're blessed heavy.

Need something to cheer you up?

And, no, I'm not talking about the President's overdue speech tonight with (hopefully) details about the transition to a sovereign Iraq. (Names! Mr. President...we want names!)

I'm talking about something a bit more sublime:

Gallery Finishes Restoration of 'David'

And, for the curious, some details about the (suspected) rationale behind David's infamously surrealistic proportions and anomolies. The most obvious and widely known, of course, being that:

One thing is certain: The David was meant to be viewed from a distance and from below. It was originally placed on a pedestal the surface height of which reached a man's head. If we assume this pedestal to have stood 5 feet tall, and the statue is 17 feet tall, David's head would be 23 feet in the air. Michelangelo knew this and so adjusted the anomalies to appear in proper proportion to those who would view the statue from a distance and from below.

Heartsickness and anger

This display of left-wing idiocy is indefensible. The article says a "lack of tolerance" is to blame. Malarky. It's a lack of basic intelligence. (Via Eugene Volokh; David Bernstein follows up with a well done discussion of "Zionism," which I commend to you.)