Sic Semper Tyrannis

Happy New Year to Benny Gantz

"Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz marked the three-year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead on Tuesday by hailing it "an excellent operation that achieved deterrence for Israel vis-a-vis Hamas." However, he warned, cracks have emerged in that deterrence over time, and a second round of fighting in the Gaza Strip is not a matter of choice for Israel.

Such a round must be initiated by Israel and must be "swift and painful," he said, adding, "I do not advise Hamas to test our mettle.""  Haaretz

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This famous picture of a child burnt by napalm is known to all.  Less well known is the detail that the napalm was dropped by VNAF fighter bombers trying to keep the NVA from capturing her town just outside Saigon toward the end of the war.  Awful.

In Operation Cast Lead the IDF used shells loaded with white phophorus,  WP may be even worse than napalm.  The phosphorus lights itself and burns at ambient temperature.  It burns underwater.  If you have it on you the only practical thing to do is cut it out.

The ammunition is normally used for creating smoke barriers on a battlefield to obscure the movements of friendly forces.  You may remember that on one occasion the IDF used it on a school for children, a school sponsored by the UN.

"that achieved deterrence for Israel vis-a-vis Hamas."   Did it?  Did it really?  pl

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/idf-chief-gaza-war-against-hamas-was-an-excellent-operation-1.403977

"Egypt police raid U.S.-backed pro-democracy groups" Reuters

"Egyptian prosecutors and police raided offices of 17 pro-democracy and human rights groups on Thursday - drawing criticism from the United States which hinted it could review its $1.3 billion in annual military aid.

The official MENA news agency said the groups had been searched in an investigation into foreign funding.

"The public prosecutor has searched 17 civil society organizations, local and foreign, as part of the foreign funding case," MENA cited the prosecutor's office as saying. "The search is based on evidence showing violation of Egyptian laws including not having permits."

Among groups targeted were the local offices of the U.S.-based International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI), a security source and employees at the organizations said.

The U.S. State Department said the raids were "inconsistent with the bilateral cooperation we have had over many years" and urged Egyptian authorities to immediately halt "harassment" of non-governmental organization staff."  Reuters

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Yes, I know.   The seemingly incomprehensible truth that people are not waiting to be "modern" remains.  I doubt if the Egyptians are much worried about their "dole" from the US.  They know that the Israe;lis will have us give them the money so long as they stay in the treaty.  pl

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/29/us-egypt-groups-idUSTRE7BS0PT20111229

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501713_162-57350122/egypt-rights-groups-blast-raids-on-ngo-offices/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egyptian-security-forces-raid-offices-of-us-other-democracy-groups/2011/12/29/gIQA2jlbOP_story.html

 

Open Thread - 29 December 2011

The Iraq Lie That Needs to Die (Kill it, Kill it Quick, Before Someone Names It...)

*

Adam L. Silverman, PhD**

Even before we left Iraq earlier this month, informed observers had begun to notice the beginnings of a new lie about Iraq: that the Obama Administration, and specifically President Obama, had pulled US troops out, leaving the job undone, and therefore jeopardizing everything we had fought so hard to achieve there.  I have seen this in the press and I have heard otherwise well informed military personnel parrot it (often, for them and for obvious reasons, with a great amount of personal pain coming through).  Now I am not suprised that Ms. Rubin or Ms. Pletka have gotten this wrong, not to mention many other commenters, pundits, and even reporters.  In their cases it is appropriate to quote Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."  Unfortunately their either misinformed or willingly misinforming understanding of what actually happened to lead the US to complete a timely withdrawl from Iraq ending Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn after seven years is being picked up by people who need to have a correct understanding of the situation as they attempt to reach proper understandings of various problem sets and potential problem sets that the US faces in the Middle East, Central Asia, and other parts of the world.

As I have written here at SST, as well as at Foreign Policy's Best Defense (Tom Ricks' site and, like all his guest "correspondents" have NO control over the titles to their posts...), we were leaving, and have now left, Iraq because the Iraqis told us to.  They were able to do this because we transferred sovereignty back to them at the end of 2008 when our UN authorization to occupy Iraq expired and we agreed to a security agreement with the Iraqis that would allow US personnel to remain in place, with continued and increased transfer of control back to the Government of Iraq, with a complete withdrawl to occur no later than 31 December 2011.  The reasons for this are simple to follow:

 

Palestinians never miss a chance.

"A man living in a glass home ought not to throw such stones. Cantor's remarks ignored the fact that Americans engaged in genocidal violence and enslavement when establishing the United States of America. He vilifies a Palestinian "culture of resentment and hatred" yet says not a word about his own Richmond neighborhoods that still extol the virtues of Confederate leaders who fought to uphold slavery."  Ahmad Tibi

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It is a truism that Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance or to "screw up."  Does Ahmad Tibi believe that those who hold power in Richmond or Virginia will be charmed by his words and be more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause?  I mean those who really hold power.  Does Tibi think that he will "win" some sort of argument and shame americans and in this case Virginians into supporting his people.  If he thinks that, then he is a fool.  Political warfare is not about winning arguments.  It is about persuasion.  Insults do not persuade.  pl

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/dec/22/tdopin02-tibi-world-beginning-to-understand-palest-ar-1560551/

Egyptian society and women.

"The young woman posted a video on YouTube in which she said that after she was detained on March 9, she was electrically shocked with cattle prods, accused of being a prostitute, forced to strip in front of soldiers and then examined by a man in front of laughing soldiers.

The military doctor who conducted the test faces a Jan. 3 hearing in a military court, according to state television. A separate hearing is scheduled for Jan. 8 for three soldiers accused of running over unarmed protesters in October, when more than 26 mostly Christian demonstrators were killed in clashes with security forces." Washpost

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See, here's the mentality. Women should be subject to "Pharaonic" circumcision or in other words, removal of the clitoris "just to calm them down." If women go out in the street and demonstrate "immodestly" in politics, well, then their husbands are to blame if they did not discipline them.  If such women are unmarried, then they are either "immoral" and "whores" or extremely willful and misguided, and their exact status must be determinied because soldiers might be accused of violating virgins if they forcibly had sex with women prisoners who were not "whores."

These attitudes are widespread in Egypt except among those in the relatvely small westernised class. There are a lot of women who share these attitudes. The same women often encourage their daughters to be circumcised in order to be "respectable."

I have asked Egyptian men why they would want want that her family should "calm down" a woman they might expect to have sex with. They reply that this should be done to decent women only.

I am completely against such attitudes toward women, but can we force a change? No. Only they can change themselves. pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egyptian-court-bans-virginity-tests-on-female-detainees/2011/12/27/gIQAYIzkKP_story.html

Bad Treatment of Women

"Last week, a young Israeli woman caused a nationwide uproar when she refused a religious man's order to move to the back of a bus.

In Beit Shemesh, parents in Naama's school take turns escorting their daughters into school property to protect them. The parents, too, have been cursed and spat upon.

Hadassa Margolese, Naama's 30-year-old Chicago-born mother, an Orthodox Jew who covers her hair and wears long sleeves and a long skirt, says, "It shouldn't matter what I look like. Someone should be allowed to walk around in sleeveless shirts and pants and not be harassed."" USA Today

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There is something in the monotheistic religions that if not restrained leads to madness over sex. In Christianity we have the nuttiness of men like Tertullian and Augustine. Islam and Judaism both contain fringe groups that are driven to distraction by the sight of a little girl's legs. pl

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-12-27/israel-extremists-girl/52240554/1

Congressman Paul Material

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

Since folks in the comments to the last Congressman Paul thread have been asking where to find the material, I've pulled together a HUGE chunk of it below.  Including links to pdfs of his newsletters (these were published together this past week at The New Republic (which highlighted the problematic sections/passages), as well as appeals written on his Congressional letterhead and signed (most likely, I would think, with an autopen) by him.  I am also including Esquire's excellent (as in interesting and informative) articles and interviews on/with him from earlier in the year, as well as the Reason article from several years ago looking into who wrote the (bulk of the) newsletters (Reason's conclusion: former Paul staffer Lew Rockwell).  I'm also including the links to the videos of Congressman Paul speaking to the John Birch Society and some interesting reporting I tripped over while pulling this together for you all about the attitudes of his constituents, as well as remarks about his attitudes made by a former senior staffer.  Read it all, or some of it and make up your own minds.  Or if you've already done so, just ignore it.

Here you go:

The Esquire Coverage:

http://www.esquire.com/features/ron-paul-profile-0511

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ron-paul-quotes-5593289

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ron-paul-on-the-fed-5593602

The Reason article:

http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter

Statement from a former Paul staffer on the Congressman's actual beliefs and attitudes:

http://rightwingnews.com/election-2012/statement-from-fmr-ron-paul-staffer-on-newsletters-anti-semitism/

"What Iraq Tells Us About Ourselves" W. Patrick Lang

 

 
 

Remember this guy?  You will see him quoted (more or less) in the article which I published today in "Foreign Policy."  pat lang

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"In the four years since the United States invaded Iraq, it’s become clear that our campaign there has gone terribly awry. We invaded Iraq with too few troops; we destroyed the Iraqi civil administration and military without having a suitable instrument of government ready in the wings; we expelled from public employment anyone with a connection, no matter how tenuous, to the Baath Party—which included most people who could be described as human infrastructure for Iraq. The list of errors goes on and on. Even the vice president acknowledges that “mistakes were made” (although, presumably, not by him)."  W. Patrick Lang

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3734

"Half Devil and Half Child" ?

"Odierno’s theme with Maliki was that the United States and Iraq have come a long way — and spilled a lot of blood — and that cooperation between the two countries must continue. He warned that Iraq was in danger of becoming a country like Lebanon, where powerful neighbors wage proxy wars and exacerbate sectarian tensions. Unless Maliki pulled the country together, Iraq would be exploited by regional powers Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia."  Ignatius

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"Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child."  Rudyard Kipling

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Yes.  Yes.  I understand that this can be read several ways.  pl

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Kipling is much disdained by the overly-clever and the politically correct.   Surely the world is not as he described it.  Surely?

Raymond Odierno does not know that Iraq was always inherently a country like Lebanon?

Odierno now sits in George Marshall's chair.   Is this further evidence of entropy in the universe?  It took this man years to comprehend that the insurgency in Iraq could not be defeated by night raids against Iraqi homes.  It was not such as he who befriended the "Sons of Iraq."  He merely climbed on that bandwagon when he saw that it was rolling towards success. 

They sent him to "jawbone" Maliki into "better" behavior?  Wow!  Maliki must have laughed his a-s off at that.  After all, Odierno is the man Maliki succeffully BSed for years. 

Is it not clear by now that Maliki has won in the game of Iraq?  He bided his time and built the structures of coercion needed to stage a coup against the Sunni leaders as soon as the Americans left.  Some 24/7 idiot bleated on the tube today that the Iraqis cannot stray very far from the US because they need to buy military equipment from us.  Wrong!  Have these people never heard of China, Russia, etc.?  In the Iran-Iraq War the Iraqi armed forces were largely (90%)  supplied and armed  by the Warsaw Pact countries and China.  France provided about a hundred fighter bombers that were used in maritime attacks in the Gulf.  The US "contribution" to their equipment was negligeable.  Don't bother to argue with me about this.  I was there.  Do we imagine that the memory of alternate sources of military supply has disappeared from Iraq?

The ineptitude of the US government in dealing with phenomena like Iraq continues to stupify observers. 

The attutdes described in Kipling's poem quoted above remain firmly in place in the general public and the wizards of Washington.

1-  We firmly believe that the poor benighted brown people of the world are simple folk and that inside each is an American/European waiting to be liberated so that he/she can abandon their own ways in favor of ours.  That's the "child" part.  A corollary of that notion is the belief that if "Uncle Ray" or the equivalent shows up to chide against naughtiness, all will be well.   Nuri al-Maliki is so much cleverer than Ray Odierno that the very idea amuses.

2- We are incapable of appreciating alien people on their own terms.  We are sure that their ways are the wrong ways .  We blather endlessly that "they must do it their way."  We don't believe that for a second.  What we believe is that they have to do and think our way and if they don't then they are evil and "crazy."  Mailiki is doing it his way.  We created the pre-conditions for "his way" in the destruction of the previous social order in Iraq.  Do we really imagine that Maliki and the Shia Arabs do not "know" and feel in their bones that they will return to an inferior status if the Sunni Arabs regain power?  How naive we are.

We lost our hat, a-s and overcoat in Iraq.  We gained nothing and the source of our defeat lies deep in the collective soul of the dominant culture in the United States.  pl 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/from-iraqs-guardian-to-its-counselor/2011/12/23/gIQAtiIkHP_story.html?hpid=z5