Category: National Security
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FIRST BRONX, NOW BAGHDAD
Interesting: Dean Esmay reports that Bernard Kerik, “the guy Rudy Giuliani hired to help him clean up the streets of New York . . . [and] who was in charge of police matters during 9/11” is going to be the primary advisor on police affairs for Iraq.
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FRANK ADVICE
IMAO offers Frank Advice for Democrats to Win the Presidency. A couple of examples: * Murder the Clintons: The Clintons are going to try and suck all the oxygen out of the room so that no other Democrats can be popular. They want you to lose in 2004 so Hillary can run in 2008. Kill…
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BREAK UP IRAQ
That’s Ralph Peters’ prescription for avoiding a third Iraq war down the road. Speaking of Iraq as a single, integrated country is a form of lying. Its borders were drawn by grasping European diplomats almost a century ago, with no regard for the wishes – or rivalries – of the local populations. Today, the Iraq…
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JUDICIAL DEFERENCE
Brett Marston has some interesting thoughts on what he sees as the norm of judicial deference to the Justice Department in the war on terrorism. He has lots of links, too.
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DUNNIGAN’S ROUNDUP
Some interesting news and analysis from Jim Dunnigan’s StrategyPage: Thousands of Iraqi policemen have finished their training, received their new blue uniforms (the old ones were green) and gone to work. Most of these men worked as police for Saddam. All of those police were screened to remove the most corrupt and abusive. Under Saddam,…
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SHOOTING LOOTERS
Markos Zúniga links, shockingly, a Guardian report of a lady who takes her work seriously: An American archaeologist yesterday urged her compatriots to kill the looters who are pillaging archaeological sites in Iraq. “I would like to see some helicopters flying over these sites, and some bullets fired at the looters,” Elizabeth Stone, head of…
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LIBERIA VS. IRAQ
John Hawkins has some interesting views on why many on the left support using troops in Liberia even though they opposed going into Iraq: . . .the American left has a very different approach to using the military than the American right. Liberals believe that using America’s military to further American interests is immoral. Moreover,…
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DANGEROUS DISSERTATION
Markos Zúniga reports on a George Mason PhD candidate whose dissertation project is apparently interesting to everyone but his chairman: Sean Gorman’s professor called his dissertation “tedious and unimportant.” Gorman didn’t talk about it when he went on dates because “it was so boring they’d start staring up at the ceiling.” But since the Sept.…
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PEACE DEMOCRATS
Lawrence Kaplan thinks the Democrats are making a grave error this campaign season. Rather than claim the mantle of Truman, John F. Kennedy or even Bill Clinton, the Democratic presidential field lately seems to be taking its foreign policy cues from the New York Review of Books. There is, to begin with, Sen. John Kerry,…
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RESURRECTING ANGELL
Brad DeLong has a long, interesting post on the writings of Norman Angell, a British writer who thought that the terrible nature of modern war, as evidenced by the Great War, would result in permanent peace. The Great War is, of course, now popularly known as World War I because, alas, it had a much…
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FOLLOWING FRANKS
AP has an interesting profile on John Abizaid who today was promoted to four-star rank and the leadership of CENTCOM from Tommy Franks. Abizaid, grandson of Lebanese immigrants and a West Point graduate, led Army Rangers in the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and commanded a battalion that provided humanitarian relief in northern Iraq after…
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CIVIL LIBERTIES AFTER 9/11
Robert Bork addresses this topic in the latest issue of Commentary. His argument boils down to saying that there have been worse abuses from time-to-time in our history, operating within the constraints of the Constitution might mean some criminals go free, and that therefore the Republic will surive and everyone should quit their whining. This…
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IS HE DEAD OR IS IT MEMOREX?
Kevin Drum wants to know why it’s so “hard to get good recordings of deposed dictators” given the ubiquity of really cheap, high quality recording devices. Good question, indeed.
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BRING ‘EM ON
Kevin Drum has some reasonable, indeed “moderate,” comments on President Bush’s controversial statement.
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INTELLIGENCE INTERPRETATION
Ralph Peters has a thoughtful piece on how presidents use intelligence data and analysis: The fundamental difference between the Clinton and Bush administrations’ use of intelligence is that Clinton consistently refused to acknowledge the threats we faced, while Bush sometimes sees threats as more immediate than they may be. The classic Type I vs. Type…
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CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY
Charles Krauthammer has a superb column on the issue of judicial activism in today’s WaPo. Recently we have gone to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and a few other places, at least in part to advance democracy and promote our kind of constitutionalism. A foreigner might then ask: What exactly is your Constitution? Now we know…
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PERSPECTIVE
Bryan challenges michele‘s assertion that 9/11 was “the worst thing that has happened to America” noting that slavery and the treatment of American Indians was far worse. Dean Esmay joins in in the comments section and mentions the Civil War, polio, and other epidemics. Michele has also weighed in and offered clarification.
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MONEY FOR THE TROOPS
Bob Harris (a/k/a “Tom Tomorrow”) uses an editorial in the Army Times to criticize President Bush. The relevant editorial passage: In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the…
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THAT’S ONE SOLUTION
Taking a page from Ayn Rand, Stephen Green blogs in favor of mandatory miscegenation (by lottery, of course) and gay work days. It wouldn’t surprise me if that isn’t required in the Constitution somewhere.
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PEACEKEEPING FORCE
Phil Carter has an interesting post about a rumored proposal to create a permanent peacekeeping force within the US military. He ends by asking, Why doesn’t the Army just do this on its own? Why not realign part of the force structure to build brigade-sized task forces of MPs, Civil Affairs, Engineers, Medical and other…
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WOMEN IN THE MILITARY
Rowan Scarborough notes that, unlike 1991, there has been no call to expand the role of women in the armed forces after this war with Iraq. Mainly, it’s because the roles that could reasonably be opened to women already have. While I long felt having women in anything but combat service support roles (i.e., nurses,…
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PULLING RANK
WaPo’s Reliable Source nails a politician for using the perks of office: when populist Democrat Tom Harkin jumped a snaking security line of less exalted passengers at Reagan National Airport on Friday to make his flight home to Iowa, it was only a matter of minutes before someone dropped a dime. In this case, that…
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THE ACLU
Reason’s Ron Bailey explains why, after years of routinely throwing their solicitations in the trash, he has finally joined the ACLU: Why now? I still disagree with the ACLU’s official positions on the death penalty and freedom of association, so perhaps this column can be regarded as a kind of personal “side letter” similar to…
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PARTIES
No, not that kind. Political ones. Steven Taylor has a long post responding to Brett Marston’s post that I have also commented on. Steven argues that the Founding Fathers’ aversion to political parties was simply foolish, given that “factions” are a natural outgrowth of representative democracy. This is certainly true. I think, however, that what…
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HATCH FOLLIES
Wired News has a lengthy story of a copyright violation on the site of Senator Orrin Hatch, recently castigated here and elsewhere for his idiotic idea that those who download copyrighted music should have their computers remotely destroyed. The story credits Laurence Simon, an unemployed system administrator from Houston, (known better to us as the…
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NO PEACEKEEPING
Ralph Peters argues that sending US troops as peacekeepers in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is a horrible idea: That just may be the worst idea raised by any Americans since our public-housing authorities proposed building high-rise ghettoes for the poor. All men and women of common sense and conscience should resist sending our…
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GREAT HEADLINE
The MSNBC Breaking News story of the capture of the “Ace of Diamonds,” Saddam’s security chief Adid Hamid Mahmud, is great news. But I’m more amused by the tagline on the link, “Saddam’s #2 could be gold mine for US intelligence.” A crappy job, but someone has to do it.
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THIS COMPUTER WILL SELF-DESTRUCT. . .
Stephen Green, back from his long exile–not, apparently, in Utah–explains he doesn’t vote straight Republican because of Orrin Hatch and his ilk who seem not overly concerned about civil liberties and the due process of law: The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers…
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TOO SOON TO TELL
So says Thomas Friedman in assessing whether the Iraq mission has been a success. This is, as all faithful readers know, a blatant rip-off of Steven Taylor’s latest column in the Birmingham News. These danged NYT columnists. . . . Actually, Friedman does come up with some material of his own. This sounds about right:…
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GUNS AND TYRANNY
Kevin disputes Den Beste’s argument that the 1st and 2nd Amendments are the most important, saying the 6th Amendment is more important than the 2nd: . . . no matter how fond you are of your guns, I hope that everyone recognizes that the right to a speedy and public trial is far more fundamental…
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CONSENSUS NOMINEES
Sen. Patrick Leahy is warning President Bush not to appoint conservatives to the Court and, indeed, wants to have a say in choosing the nominee. While having the president get tacit approval from the Senate–including the minority party–before announcing a nominee turns the traditional process on its head, it strikes me as being within the…
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SPECOPS
Time Magazine has an interesting feature article on US special operations forces. U.S. special forces, a fabled but mostly misunderstood arm of the U.S. military, didn’t win the war in Iraq. But America’s secret army, deployed in greater numbers than ever before and working for the first time with the support of the entire chain…
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MILITARY CULTURE
Anthony Beevor has some interesting observations but no discernable point. He notes that many view the US as a decadent culture, claims that many in the US military share that view of US civilian society, and that the US military isn’t comfortable with peacekeeping. All of these points have merit. But his conclusion is rather…
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HEROES AND VICTIMS
The American Mind links and comments on a piece by Peggy Noonan, who notes that 9/11 didn’t change everything: Three hundred forty-three of them died that day, but to commemorate their sacrifice would be “hierarchical.” They want it clear that no one was better than anyone else, that all alike were helpless, victims. But that…
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IRAQ AFTERMATH
Oh, the limitations of dead tree punditry. Charles Krauthammer deals with the Iraqi museum looting hoax and the WMD imbroglio in his latest column. And does it well. But, alas, this was covered on the blogosphere ages ago.
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BLOGGING TIP #2
Courtesy Invisible Adjunct: back up your templates and style sheets.
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DO IT TOGETHER
This Administration is sounding a hell of a lot like the last one on the Israel-Palestine war. While Bush and Company have been smart in trying to get Arafat out of the picture, this pretense that the side that’s deliberately murdering innocents is equivalent to the side that attacks the head murderers is getting a…
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SCHMUMERWHACKING
PoliBlog fisks Chuckie Schumer’s arguments on Bush’s “extreme” judicial nominees. It’s hard to excerpt a fisking, so just go read it yourself.
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FIGHTING IN IRAQ
WaPo reports renewed activity: Iraqi forces shot down a U.S. helicopter gunship in western Iraq on Thursday, just hours after U.S. fighter jets bombed what they said was “a terrorist training camp” in central Iraq. The incidents came as U.S. ground troops wound up a massive sweep in a Sunni Muslim enclave north of Baghdad,…
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AN ARMY OF ONE
MSNBC reports on an 18th Airborne Corps colonel who became engaged to 50 Afghani women. Jay finds it pretty damned amusing, as do I, although I disagree with his conclusion that it’s none of the Army’s business. It sounds like he’s violated several articles of the UCMJ, not least of which is Article 133 “conduct…
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DUMB RICH PEOPLE
Is the title of a column by Scott Adams in the latest Dilbert Newsletter (not yet online but the archives are here). I recently read an article by an economist who said that poverty causes people to become terrorists. He used big words and was very convincing. Then I watched TV coverage of a high…
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RUMMY REVOLUTION CONTINUES
Phil Carter reports that Don Rumsfeld is getting an SOF general out of retirement and appointing him Army Chief of Staff. A very unusual move, but, heck, that’s how Rummy got his job and it’s worked out fine so far. (Hat tip: InstaPundit)
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BAGHDAD BLIX BLASTS BASTARDS
Is the amusing title of a post on Blogs of War.
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DOJ GAY PRIDE
WaPo reports that the Dept. of Justice, in an apparent reversal, is allowing its employees to have a Gay Pride Day celebration on its property. One suspects John Ashcroft will not be able to make it to the event. This mini-controversy is getting some strange reactions: . . . Marina Colby, president of DOJ Pride.…
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TREATIES RECAP
Brett Marston recaps and wraps up our discussion of treaties, filibusters, and the merits of strict construction.
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ISRAEL TARGETS HAMAS LEADER
Yahoo! News reports a detour on the roadmap to peace: Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying a senior Hamas leader Tuesday, wounding him, killing two others and jeopardizing the U.S.-backed road map to Mideast peace. President Bush criticized Israel, saying he was “deeply troubled” by the strike. Hamas vowed revenge and threatened to…
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TREATIES AND SUCH
My earlier post has now gotten Steven involved. I’ve done some more research into the Executive Agreement and treaty processes. The Senate‘s home page gives quite a bit of information on this issue: Executive Agreements In addition to treaties, which may not enter into force and become binding on the United States without the advice…
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FILIBUSTERS REDUX
Brett Marston has a couple of interesting posts, here and here, arguing that it is hypocritical for Republicans to simultaneously oppose requiring an extraconstitutional supermajority (overriding a filibuster) on judicial nominees while supporting Trade Promotion Authority and thus allowing a simple majority vote on treaties rather than the Constitutionally-required 2/3 supermajority. Update: Here. I have…
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DUNNIGAN’S TAKE
StrategyPage has some interesting analysis of the tribal-religious nature of the Iraq rebuilding process: The coalition strategy appears to be working out deals with the many self-serving leaders who have always been out to make a deal with whomever is in power. Among these are the many tribal chiefs. *** The Kurds are still very…
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SENATE SHENANIGANS
It is really time to reform Senate rules. Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho is blocking the promotions of more than 850 Air Force officers, including young pilots who fought in Iraq and the general nominated to bail out the scandal-plagued United States Air Force Academy, in a rare clash between the Pentagon and a…