Someone please define what exactly a smoking gun is, and what will actually constitute material breach of UN Resolution 1441. I want to discuss this issue in good faith, but it is clear to me that I simply do not understand the terms of the debate.
All Clear?
Josh Marshall ‘clarifies’ his position on the war.
The UN
Josh Marshall (via Matt Yglesias) describes an intelligence officer that he knows stating his biggest fear:
His greatest worry was not in the neighborhood, but the world: the costs — unreckonable to some degree — of wrecking the international state system to get this done. The pros and cons of handling Iraq have never been separable from how you do it, the costs you rack up in the doing of it, calculated against the gains you’ll get in having accomplished it. At this point, we have truly the worst case scenario on the international stage. And I think the those costs now outweigh those gains.
I do not understand how it can be stated that we are wrecking the international system, when the international system is already so broken that we have gotten to this point.
Imagine this: You are a doctor with a dying patient, the conditions as such:
Kidney Failure (Iraq chairing the Committee on Disarmament)
Liver Failure (Libya chairing the Human Rights Commission)
Internal Hemmoraging (the cold war era make-up of the permanent votes on the security council)
Memory Failure (Hitler, Srebencia, the previous 16 Security Resolutions)
and worst of all, the 10,000 paper cuts (Why can a sensible foreign policy be hamstrung by Chile, Cameroon, and Mexico? Why do the French have any say in anything? Why are we pretending that because China sits on the Security council they are somehow a moral authority?).
At any rate, you are a doctor, and that is your patient. Does it make sense for you to be worrying about saving this patient, or should you just look forward to the other patients you can help?
If the UN dies, it was not murder. It was suicide- more accurately, if you consider the cynical French behavior- assisted suicide.
More thoughts on the UN, from a liberal perspective. (Via Michael Totten).
Psychological Operations
Ted Barlow wonders whether Psychological Operations, leaflet drops in particular, are successful. The answer, of course, is yes. Here is a link to some information on psyops usage by the military and here is a link to some of the leaflets dropped during Desert Storm. And here is my absolute favorite leaflet they used:
“Flee and preserve your life, or stay here and meet your death.”
“You have suffered horrendous losses as a result of us using the strongest conventional bomb in this war. It has more explosive power than 20 scud missles. BEWARE! You will be bombed again soon. Kuwait will be liberated from Iraq
Recruiting Suicide Bombers
I have been very outspoken in my defense of Israel, but this, if reported accurately, is absolutely unacceptable:
Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians, including some torn apart by a tank shell, in a major raid into a militant stronghold in the Gaza Strip after a suicide bomber killed 15 people in Israel.
The tank round crashed into a crowd trying to hose down a commercial building set ablaze during the incursion into Jabalya refugee camp which triggered hours of pitched fighting, witnesses and medics said.
Even if this was a tragic accident, it is unacceptable. Period. End of Story.
If it was intentional, it was murder and a war crime of the most despicable order.
Either way, it is a damn fine tool for recruiting suicide bombers.
Calm Down, Everyone
Level-headed Jeralynn at Talk Left (who is, IMHO, quite appropriately waiting for more information) and the more flame-throwing Atrios link to this story:
Military coroners have determined that the deaths of two detainees while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan were homicides, CNN has confirmed.
Some readers have commented in TalkLeft’s comments section:
Are we to sink as low as the perpetrators of 9/11? Are we losing our humanity?
and
Smells like Nazi Spirit. There should be a registry of torturers.
Some of the comments from Atrios’s readers include:
My Lai
and
Mourning in Amerika. (say you love Jesus – SAY IT!!)
and
NOW we know what all this talk about torture that’s been in the media over the past few days was really all about. These prisoners were obviously tortured to death by the U.S. military.
Those are our soldiers and our boys who you are flippantly comparing to the bastards who killed 3,000 people on 9/11. To the bastards who killed 6 million Jews and I don’t know how many other people before and during WWII.
Breathe deep. Calm down. The investigation needs to run its course before we start hopping to conclusions, and if something evil has happened, the hopefully the military (and I believe they will) will do the right thing.
Regardless, this knee-jerk response about the military does raise what I perceive to be an interesting contradiction within the left. When the left protests war, they are quick to invoke the names of our young who might die over there. Charlie Rangel’s reason for his draft proposal (which is just a hideous and cynical idea) was to protect our boys, because perhaps Congress and the country will re-think what they are doing. Yet when there is the slightest suggestion of malfeasance by anyone in the military, the rhetoric immediately paints the military, as an institution and to the individual, as evil.
Look folks- the military doesn’t change ranks from issue to issue. These are still our boys you are smearing here- the same ones you were nobly concerned about in the anti-war protests, and I would prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt, and I will wait for the investigation to be concluded before I start screaming murder and dust of the Viet Nam era “My Lai” rhetoric.
There are bad eggs in the military, just as there are bad eggs in every group of people. I remember being told that “there is a thief in your Sunday School class.” But calling my troops Nazi’s without any sort of investigation, any opportunity for charges to be filed, any opportunity for justice to be done is just a bit much for me, thank you very much.
Maybe this is why many incorrectly and flippantly state that the left just hates America?
And don’t go accusing people of that, nor should you confuse Atrios and Jeralynn’s comments with the people who commented on their sites. I just don’t know why people are always so quick to assume the worst of our military.
*** Edited slightly to make some sense of my intial post ***
Must Read
An interesting read in the Washington Monthly about the military and troop strength. Some of this appears needlessly breathless, and I am not sure about the figures regarding those who are deployed are presented in a fair light- yes- we have deployed more since 2000, but Afghanistan was necessary. Likewise, when you calculate those forces who are in Bosnia and Kosovo for the long haul because of previous administrations, it might not be fair to characterize this over-deployment as a fault of Bush policy (this is not Clinton bashing- I think he did the right thing in the region). At the same time, that would be as pointless as criticizing the fact that troops are STILL stationed on the DMZ.
At any rate, an interesting read.