Back to the Future

Just some quick thoughts on Andrew Sullivan's belief that Iraq is now the new Algeria. He says in the "Daily Dish" that:

The reason I believe things are dire in Iraq is pretty simple. The evidence is accumulating that the insurgency -- fostered by Baathist thugs, al Qaeda murderers, and other Jihadists - is gaining traction. That would be a manageable problem if the population despised them and saw a way through to a better society. But the disorder and mayhem continues to delegitimize the Iraqi government and, by inference, the coalition occupation. ... And once the general population turns against an occupying power, then things get really ... Algerian. The key moment was probably when George W. Bush blinked in Fallujah. That was when the general population inferred that we were not prepared to win. It's amazing, really. This president has a reputation for toughness and resolution. Yet at arguably the most critical moment in this war, he gave in. He was for taking Fallujah before he was against it. I cannot believe the situation is beyond rescue. But this president's policies have made it much much more difficult than it might have been.

During the April, 2004 fighting three things were critically different from today. There was the threat in April of a combined Sunni-Shi'ite uprising. The fear was that hitting Fallujah would stoke a Shi'ite insurgency. Since the Sunnis were considered secondary Fallujah was spared. This is not to justify the decision, but simply to point out the considerations at the time. Today, data provided the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc (used by the New York Times to argue that fighting is spreading in Iraq) seems to show that the Shi'ite insurgency is a spent force, the result of a military campaign against Sadr which culminated in August, 2004 combined with efforts to isolate Sadr politically. There were seven attacks in an Najaf province out of a total of 2,429 in the month studied.

Second, there were only 5,000 "trained" men in the Iraqi Army in April 2004. Today the numbers are moving towards and past 70,000. A link to General Sharp's briefing on September 20 has many of the details of the state of training and increased numbers. What is strategically different about the Sunni strongholds today is not only the loss of allied Shi'ite insurgent support but the growing availability of Iraqi troops to crush them. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers said in an interview today that Coalition forces are planning a 'solution' to the Sunni lawlessness in conjunction with the Iraqi government. To the legitimate question of 'why only now?' one can reply 'because there were no Iraqi forces then' -- barely a year after the fighting and on the heels of the capture of the principal Ba'athists. Fallujah could have been taken in an all-American assault and be occupied to this day by an all-American force; but rightly or wrongly, the President chose not to.

This brings us to the third and often ignored point. There was no interim Iraqi government in April, 2004. There is one today. It's establishment was decried as premature by everyone on the other side of the droit and practically over the dead body of Kofi Annan. Even today, as Mark Steyn points out, the press can hardly bring themselves to ask Iyad Allawi a question, as if he didn't exist. Describing a press conference in the Rose Garden at which both Allawi and Bush were present, Steyn writes:

On Thursday, President Bush held a press conference at the Rose Garden with Mr. Allawi. You know how these things go. The Norwegian Prime Minister happens to be visiting Washington and they hold a joint press conference and Norwegian issues aren't terribly pressing at the moment so the press guys ask Mr. Bush about prescription drug plans for seniors and increased education funding while the visitor from Oslo stands there like a wallflower at the prom. But Iraq is the No. 1 issue in American right now, and they've got the go-to guy right in front of them, and what do the blowdried poseurs of the networks ask? ... They're 6 feet from Iraq's head of government and they have no question for him.

So perhaps it really isn't important whether "disorder and mayhem continues to delegitimize the Iraqi government"; or that Sadr is gone or a new Iraqi army is building. After all, these are events in a future that never should have happened, because according to a certain point of view, the Iraq operation should never have occurred. No matter: according to that point of view it will fail. At least, that is what Saddam and Sadr told themselves and what Zarqawi is telling himself now.

The Candyman

Forty one people, 34 of them children, died when a group of people watching the opening of a new Baghdad sewage facility were hit by three car bombs. Reuters reports:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children, and wounding scores. In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a U.S. checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a U.S. soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq town of Tal Afar. The Baghdad blasts coincided with crowds gathering to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. 

But Reuters couldn't resist adding, "It was not clear if the event or a U.S. convoy passing nearby was the target." to remind the readers that the 'resistance' may have meant well. In the very next line Reuters continues, "The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to the aid of the initial victims." It was a crowd that predominantly consisted of children. An amazing performance of journalistic even-handedness from an organization whose web page declares:

As part of a long-standing policy to avoid the use of emotive words, we do not use terms like 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' unless they are in a direct quote or are otherwise attributable to a third party. We do not characterize the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions, identity and background so that readers can make their own decisions based on the facts. 

Critics have long criticized the American 'failure' to upgrade sewage facilities in the capital as one of the root causes of discontent. Guilty of neglect by Roto-rooter. And Americans were guilty of the crime of handing out candy to kids at the opening ceremony. The Associated Press headline is Rebel bombing kills 35 Iraqi kids; attracted by U.S. troops handing out candy

"The Americans called us, they told us, 'Come here, come here,' asking us if we wanted sweets," said 12-year-old Abdel Rahman Dawoud, lying naked in a hospital bed with shrapnel embedded all over his body. "We went beside them, then a car exploded."

Hence the casual reader may be forgiven for subconsciously assuming that Americans were substantively guilty for the carnage itself. After all, if Americans weren't in Iraq, if they weren't on the planet, none of this would have happened. But there is another possibility. A New York Times article quoting a private security group's data shows that 41% of all terror attacks in Iraq take place in 0.17% of the country -- a thousand attacks concentrated in 734 square kilometers of Baghdad -- attacks which have almost no military value -- only a propaganda one. It is imperative from the terrorist point of view that their depredations take place, not in the unwitnessed wastes of the Western desert, but before a global audience. The Associated Press may have been right about the candy and wrong about the candyman.

Police Action

The Strategy Page describes an alien culture familiar to aliens. What may be war to Americans in Anbar may be normal from another point of view.

Kidnapping has been a major problem in Iraq for decades. Saddam Hussein and his thugs used it as a way to control the population. ... In addition, there were dozens of criminal gangs that were allowed, within limits, to operate as long as they did Saddam’s dirty work. ... These criminal organizations are found all over Iraq. ... In most of Iraq, the gangs are restrained by tribal militias or local police forces that can match them in firepower and violence. But in some Sunni Arab areas, the gangs rule. The Sunni Arab city of Fallujah is the most extreme example of this, a place without police or strong local tribal authority, which allows al Qaeda (a terrorist gang) to operate freely.

In a way, the Iraqi situation should have been anticipated by any diplomat who spent time dealing with the Palestinian Authority. Daniel Pipes quotes a now-dead Reuters link to a story which describes the normal processes of  "Palestinian government" in Nablus.

Some of the dead fell in feuds over flourishing rackets in stolen cars, drugs and extortion. Some were "collaborators" said to have steered Israeli forces toward wanted militants in the city of 150,000, the historical hub of Palestinian nationalism.  … Distinctions between nationalist militant and criminal gang activities have blurred as Fatah has splintered into armed groups, many spun off from Palestinian security services disabled by Israeli offensives in the West Bank. A regional Fatah official who asked not to be named said 90 percent of gang lawlessness could be traced to people still on a Palestinian Authority payroll.

But the working National Public Radio link on the Pipes site showed that if the West Bank was bad, the Gaza Strip was no better.

National security does not really exist in [Gaza], because the authority is not really in charge of the order of the law here. There is a big increase in the level of the crimes like killing and stealing and raping and kidnapping. I would say that the Palestinian Authority is also in trouble with the Palestinian people because of such incidents, because many people are being killed or kidnapped or robbed, you know, and we all are asking for security.

The Washington Post delivers this judgment on the state of the Palestinian Authority everywhere.

Three years and five months after Palestinians began their second uprising against Israel, the Palestinian Authority is broke, politically fractured, riddled with corruption, unable to provide security for its own people and seemingly unwilling to crack down on terrorist attacks against Israel, according to Palestinian, Israeli and international officials. The turmoil within the Palestinian Authority is fueling concern that the agency -- created almost 10 years ago to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- is disintegrating and could collapse, leaving a political and security vacuum in one of the Middle East's most volatile regions, many of those officials said.

The relationship of Islamic terrorism to criminal activity goes beyond Iraq and the Palestinian areas. Recently the Washington Times featured a story entitled Al Qaeda seeks ties to local gangs which described its efforts to team up with Central American people-smuggling syndicates. No form of illegal activity, however heinous is haram to those with a mission. Take drugs. The Front Page Magazine alleges that Al Qaeda principally funded its terrorist activity from the Afghan opium trade, something which its fraternal groups in Europe have emulated with great success.

Al-Qaeda works closely with these Afghan drug smugglers to secure safe routes for their shipments through neighboring Pakistan and Iran. But Al-Qaeda’s assistance comes with a price: the group places heavy taxes on the shipments, and often takes some of the drugs as payment, using them later to buy weapons. Tactics similar to these were employed by the Madrid bombers, who, Spanish authorities believe, used 30 kilos of hashish to buy explosives that were used in that attack (which killed 200 people and wounded over a thousand more).  The men were also suspected of having links to Morocco’s thriving hashish trade, which serves as a source of revenue for Islamic terrorists in North Africa and Europe.

The Asia Times has an extensive piece on the hostage taking business in Iraq, with emphasis on the business. Sudha Ramachandran exhaustively argues that kidnappings are less about making political statements than making money.

It appears that local criminal gangs do the actual kidnapping. The hostages are then sold up the chain to larger militant outfits, which use the hostages as pawns and bargaining chips. Foreign hostages apparently carry a higher price tag. Many of the abductions in Iraq have been attributed to al-Zarqawi or to "groups with links to al-Zarqawi". This could be because a large number of gangs might be supplying his group with hostages - hence the many groups with "links to al-Zarqawi".

But a more plausible explanation lies in the way Islamist militant groups are evolving post-September 11, 2001. Just as al-Qaeda has groups with links to it, so also al-Zarqawi's al-Tawhid wal-Jihad with outfits in Iraq. Terrorist cells and outfits with links to al-Qaeda have proliferated across the world. What links these groups is a similar outlook and ideology. The al-Qaeda-linked groups act under different names and carry out attacks on their own. Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on militant groups, likens this phenomenon to "McDonald's giving out franchises ... All they have to do is follow the company's manual. They don't consult with headquarters every time they want to produce a meal."

Even the hostage's final agonies are merchandised through tie-ins. Pravda reports a land office business in decapitation videos.

A new video product is currently available on Iraqi markets - DVDs of hostages' executions. They are sold next to porn movies. It was reported on Thursday that terrorists had executed two Italian hostages. The video of the execution is not available yet, although one may expect the video of the American civil engineer, Eugene Armstrong, the killing of whom was uploaded on one of Islamic websites, the Hindustan Times wrote.

There is a very big demand on such video recordings on the Bab-i-Sharji market in Iraq. Salesmen play them everywhere, even in their own DVD shops, to attract people's attention. They turn the volume on so that everyone could listen to a hostage screaming before masked men cut his head off. The footage of the execution then changes to an adult movie. The covers of such hideous DVDs depict local popular singers, although the disks contain an absolutely different kind of "songs," performed by the leader of the Tawhid and Jihad group, Abu Mussaba Al-Zarkawi. DVDs are hologrammed with Al-Assifa label.

The possibility that terrorists are just another form of criminal is not a very encouraging, given that America singularly failed to the win the War against Drugs. But a focus on its criminal characteristics goes far toward explaining many of Islamic terrorism's characteristics, like its penchant for recruitment in jails. Robert Kaplan was very near the mark when he drew the connection between Islamic terrorism and the coming of chaos. In his view, America is keeping back a dark tide while a slumbering civilization bestirs itself.

The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging global civilization that, the more it matures -- with its own mass media and governing structures -- the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it.

One of the sneering mass media agencies which US security protects is the Reuters wire service. It's editorial policy towards describing terrorism is a study in languid aloofness:

As part of a long-standing policy to avoid the use of emotive words, we do not use terms like 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' unless they are in a direct quote or are otherwise attributable to a third party. We do not characterize the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions, identity and background so that readers can make their own decisions based on the facts.

But then, Reuters were always too classy to be crime reporters.

The Fog of War

The New York Times reports that violence in Iraq is 'sprawling' and 'sweeping' and 'widespread' and has the statistics to back it up -- maybe. James Glanz and Thom Shanker report:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 - Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials.

The "Times" source is the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc, an outfit based in Las Vegas which MSNBC identifies as consisting largely of former Army Rangers.

"If you look at incident data and you put incident data on the map, it's not a few provinces, " said Adam Collins, a security expert and the chief intelligence official in Iraq for Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc., a private security company based in Las Vegas that compiles and analyzes the data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq.

Damning. Or is it? In the next paragraph Adam Collins is quoted as saying:

The number of attacks has risen and fallen over the months. Mr. Collins said the highest numbers were in April, when there was major fighting in Falluja, with attacks averaging 120 a day. The average is now about 80 a day, he said.

So what if the average number of attacks has fallen, part of the mixed signals which the "Times" argues constitutes the "fog of war"? Is it not undeniable that the insurgency was expanding and spreading as evidenced by the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc list of 2,300 attacks throughout Iraq this month, with 1,000 in Baghdad alone. And in other areas:

During the past 30 days those attacks totaled 283 in Nineveh, 325 in Salahuddin in the northwest and 332 in the desert badlands of Anbar Province in the west. In the center of Iraq, attacks numbered 123 in Diyala Province, 76 in Babylon and 13 in Wasit. There was not a single province without an attack in the 30-day period.

Against this, the "Times" quotes those who argue that the security situation is improving.

Pentagon officials and military officers like to point to a separate list of statistics to counter the tally of attacks, including the number of schools and clinics opened. They cite statistics indicating that a growing number of Iraqi security forces are trained and fully equipped, and they note that applicants continue to line up at recruiting stations despite bombings of them. But most of all, military officers argue that despite the rise in bloody attacks during the past 30 days, the insurgents have yet to win a single battle. ...

In a joint appearance last week in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Bush and Dr. Allawi painted an optimistic portrait of the security situation in Iraq. Dr. Allawi said that of Iraq's 18 provinces, "14 to 15 are completely safe." He added that the other provinces suffer "pockets of terrorists" who inflict damage in them and plot attacks carried out elsewhere in the country. In other appearances, Dr. Allawi asserted that elections could be held in 15 of the 18 provinces. Both Mr. Bush and Dr. Allawi insisted that Iraq would hold free elections as scheduled in January.

Critics might argue that evidence from the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc make it hard to take the claims of President Bush and Prime Minister Allawie seriously.  But are they lying? The following table was constructed entirely from data contained in the "Times" article, as modified by the graphic posted on their site. (Hat tip CJR) The population and area of Iraq's provinces are taken from the World Gazeteer and a map of the Iraqi provinces can found at Global Security Org.

The first thing to notice is that 2,139 of the 2,429 attacks took place in 6 of the 18 provinces. The numbers don't entirely add up in the "Times" graphic but the discrepancy is small and may be due to errors in assigning some incidents. The real hotbeds are Baghdad and areas to the northwest -- the Sunni triangle. By far the greatest density of violence is in Baghdad, where 1,000 attacks have taken place in an 732 kilometers square.

Province	2004 Population	Area Size sq km	Attacks as per NYT article	Attacks per 100,000	Attacks per 1000 sq km
al-Anbar	1,260,200	138,501	332	26.35	2.40
Babil	1,454,700	6,468	76	5.22	11.75
Baġdād	6,677,000	734	997	14.93	1358.31
al-Basrah	1,916,000	19,070	87	4.54	4.56
Dahuk	496,100	6,553	1	0.20	0.15
Di Qar	1,458,500	12,900	6	0.41	0.47
Diyalā	1,397,500	19,076	123	8.80	6.45
Irbil	1,349,200	14,471	4	0.30	0.28
Karbala	731,500	5,034	76	10.39	15.10
Maysan	784,300	16,072	12	1.53	0.75
al Mutanna	537,700	51,740	2	0.37	0.04
an Najaf	954,100	28,824	7	0.73	0.24
Ninawa (Niniveh)	2,514,800	35,899	283	11.25	7.88
al Qadisiyah	924,900	8,153	1	0.11	0.12
Salah-ah-Din	1,113,400	26,175	325	29.19	12.42
as-Sulaymaniyah	1,677,500	17,023	1	0.06	0.06
at Tamim	927,200	10,282	83	8.95	8.07
Wasit	964,600	17,153	13	1.35	0.76
Totals	27,139,200	434,128	2,429

So everything checks out just as the New York Times article reported it. All the facts are individually true, but Prime Minister Allawie's assertion that most provinces are "completely safe" and that security prospects are bright are also supported by those same facts. Such is the fog of war.

The Closing Door

Caroline Glick argues in the Sept 23 edition of the "Jerusalem Post" that the sole remaining hope of preventing the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is to put the ball in the air and hope for a miracle basket, an act of desperation that would rank with Jerry West's 60-foot buzzer beater in the 1970 NBA playoffs.

Iran this week summarily rejected the latest call by the International Atomic Energy Agency to cease all its uranium enrichment programs. Speaking at a military parade on Tuesday, where Iran's surface-to-surface Shihab-3 ballistic missiles earmarked "Jerusalem" were on prominent display, Iranian President Muhammad Khatami defied the IAEA, saying: "We will continue along our path [of uranium enrichment] even if it leads to an end to international supervision."

US and European sources involved in tracking the Iranian nuclear program have made clear in recent weeks that Iran is between four and six months away from nuclear "break-out" capacity. This means that in the next four to six months Iran will have the nuclear fuel cycle complete, and will be able to independently construct nuclear bombs whenever it wishes. More conservative estimates have spoken of 12-24 months.

Glick did not believe that any new diplomatic initiative would materially delay the breakout. In order to illustrate the futility of further diplomacy, she focuses upon the proposals of veteran arms control negotiator Henry Solkoski who argued that diplomacy was the only option left because the United States was too preoccupied in Iraq to take on Iran and because the Islamic Republic's 15 uranium enrichment facilities were too hardened and dispersed to be successfully attacked. With force ruled out diplomacy remained by exclusion. But the cards left in the hand are not necessarily winning ones, as Michael Ledeen points out. Diplomacy had repeatedly failed to stop or even slow Iran's nuclear program. There was no reason for it to succeed with Iraq so close to its ultimate goal.

"This is more of the same, however you want to define it. We're not making any progress. The UN and the Europeans keep saying the same thing every three months. You wait every three months and eventually Iran has an atomic bomb. Then you don't need to worry about this failed policy."

Ledeen also believes that even if the Iranian program were to be referred to the Security Council, it is unlikely that sanctions on oil or natural gas – the only ones that might have an impact on the regime in Teheran – would be imposed. And even if they were, he says, "oil is fungible. Saddam proved oil sanctions don't really work. So who are we kidding?"

By applying the same exclusionary logic as Solkoski Glick arrives at the diametrically opposite conclusion. She counsels: don't dribble out the clock three points down with five seconds to go. Go for the 60-foot jumpshot. From the "Jerusalem Post" archives:

Sokolski states at the outset that the option of a military strike against Iran must be dismissed because Iran's program is too far flung and its sites are too hardened. That is, since it may well be impossible to hit every nuclear target, it is not worth hitting any of them. As well, Iranian leaders daily threaten that any military action taken against Iran will be responded to in a devastating manner.

Yet, were an air strike on Iran to take out say, only 10 of 15 sites, it would still severely retard the Iranian nuclear effort, buying the West time to formulate and enact either a policy of engagement from a position of strength, or a policy of regime change with the requisite credibility among regime opponents that such a strike would inspire.

Heady stuff. But what Glick does not say -- though it would perforce follow -- is that any strike would make it logically necessary to subsequently topple the Teheran regime by any means necessary. A second Osirak would prove to the Mullahs that they would have to use any nuclear weapons that came to hand before they lost it, a danger avertable only by eliminating the Mullahs. Bombing sites in the hope of delay would be like swimming into an underwater tunnel on a lungful of air hoping for an exit on the far side. But the only man who could turn the card was maddeningly ambiguous. President Bush, in an interview on Fox News on Sept 27, reiterated his determination to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons in the most uninformative manner possible.

"My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically," Bush tells Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" in the first part of a three-part interview to begin airing tonight. "All options are on the table, of course, in any situation," Bush said. "But diplomacy is the first option."

What President Bush will do with the clock running out is anyone's guess. But it's three points down and five seconds to go.

Two Wars

Robert Kaplan summarizes the real task before America in the coming years. It is not to find "an exit strategy from Iraq", as if there were somewhere on the planet it could hide from terrorism; nor is it simply to find Osama Bin Laden as some, ever anxious to reduce the current conflict to a law enforcement problem, would claim as a goal. It's task is to hold back the dark until a new global civilization can find its footing.

The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging global civilization that, the more it matures -- with its own mass media and governing structures -- the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it.

And the dark is everywhere; in the vast, decayed structure of the Third World where the shambolic post-colonial architecture has rotted away, leaving areas of chaos the size of continents.

Indian Country has been expanding in recent years because of the security vacuum created by the collapse of traditional dictatorships and the emergence of new democracies -- whose short-term institutional weaknesses provide whole new oxygen systems for terrorists. Iraq is but a microcosm of the earth in this regard. To wit, the upsurge of terrorism in the vast archipelago of Indonesia, the southern Philippines and parts of Malaysia is a direct result of the anarchy unleashed by the passing of military regimes. Likewise, though many do not realize it, a more liberalized Middle East will initially see greater rather than lesser opportunities for terrorists. As the British diplomatist Harold Nicolson understood, public opinion is not necessarily enlightened merely because it has been suppressed.

Kaplan, who is writing a series of books on the US military experience in different parts of the world, realized that Iraq was only a part, and not even the best part, of the global war on terror. In Mauretania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Columbia, Afghanistan and the Philippines, Kaplan found small bands of men who were remolding blank spaces on the map in ways unknown since the 18th century. What they valued most of all were not "more boots on the ground" but freedom of action. The freedom above all, to do the commonsense thing. "Who needs meetings in Washington," one Army major told me. "Guys in the field will figure out what to do."  Who needed meetings in Washington it turned out, were the vast retinue of camp followers, reporters and sutlers, who followed a great army to battle. Kaplan writes:

In months of travels with the American military, I have learned that the smaller the American footprint and the less notice it draws from the international media, the more effective is the operation. One good soldier-diplomat in a place like Mongolia can accomplish miracles. A few hundred Green Berets in Colombia and the Philippines can be adequate force multipliers. Ten thousand troops, as in Afghanistan, can tread water. And 130,000, as in Iraq, constitutes a mess that nobody wants to repeat -- regardless of one's position on the war.

What of that extreme pole on the cursed end of Kaplan's Law: Iraq? Writing in the Weekly Standard, Lt. Col. Powl Smith, the former chief of counterterrorism plans at U.S. European Command and currently in Baghdad sees that campaign not as a screen before the advancing vanguard of global civilization but as a battlefield where the main force of the enemy has been brought to battle. Powl compares Iraq to Guadalcanal, which depending on one's point of view is either exceedingly ominous or optimistic.

In one of our first counteroffensives against the Japanese, U.S. troops landed on the island of Guadalcanal in order to capture a key airfield. We surprised the Japanese with our speed and audacity, and with very little fighting seized the airfield. But the Japanese recovered from our initial success, and began a long, brutal campaign to force us off Guadalcanal and recapture it. The Japanese were very clever and absolutely committed to sacrificing everything for their beliefs. (Only three Japanese surrendered after six months of combat--a statistic that should put today's Islamic radicals to shame.) The United States suffered 6,000 casualties during the six-month Guadalcanal campaign; Japan, 24,000. It was a very expensive airfield.

While Midway is enshrined in popular glory, it was really Guadalcanal that  represented the graveyard of Japanese forces, the Island of Death upon which Japanese naval and military reinforcements were dashed heedless and seriatim, until there were no more left to send. But no one knew it at the time; and when US forces embarked on a final sweep of the island they discovered to their surprise that the remainder had been totally evacuated by Japanese forces. The most popular account at the time, Richard Tregaskis' nearly-forgotten Guadalcanal Diary is useless as a work of history, written too close to the events and burdened by the misconceptions of the time, though it faithfully preserves the atmosphere of the early 1940s. Officers rarely use historical comparisons without intending some point and Powl leaves us in no doubt that he means Iraq to be the graveyard of the global Jihad.

It is possible that both Kaplan and Powl are right, as were the Blind Men of India in their differing descriptions of the elephant. We are truly in the midst of a world war as far flung and various as any in history: one so large as to defy description even by so talented a writer as Robert Kaplan . No one suspected what lay beyond the door constituted by September 11. Not even the enemy.

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

The Road To Damascus

Just after Izz El-Deen Al-Sheikh Khalil climbed into his white Mitsubishi in Damascus a bomb planted in the vehicle exploded, ending his career. Khalil was member of the military wing of Hamas living in the Syrian capital. The Syrian government blamed Israel for the attack, characterizing it as "an Israeli act of state terrorism in the heart of Damascus". Israel responded coyly, neither confirming nor denying their involvement in Khalil's death. But the strangest reaction of all was from Hamas.

The Izz el-Deen al-Kassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, vowed to avenge Al-Sheikh Khalil by attacking Israeli targets overseas, the group said in a statement issued in the Gaza Strip. "We have allowed hundreds of thousands of Zionists to travel and move in capitals around the world in order not to be the party that shifts the struggle overseas. But the Zionist enemy has done so and should bear the consequences of its actions," said the statement, a copy of which was faxed to the pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera, which broadcast the message.

"We announce an escalation in the fight between us and the Zionist enemy," Hamas spokesman Sami Zuhari said speaking on Al-Jazeera.

But another Hamas spokesperson, Osama Hamdan, denied the al-Jazeera report, saying Hamas would not change its strategy of striking at Israeli targets only within Israel and the Palestinian territories. "Our policy was and remains to conduct our struggle inside the Zionist entity," Hamdan said, speaking from Beirut.

Experts believe the retraction came about because Hamas does not want to be seen as another al-Qaida.

Hamas' hesitation is evidence that the cellular structure of militant Islamism, meant to provide immunity against counterintelligence is also exacting a high strategic price. The decentralized command and control structure which freed cells to choose their own targets also allowed them to make their own enemies. And make enemies they did. Attacking the United States, seizing the Indian Parlaiment House, blowing up discos in Bali, smashing trains in Madrid and beheading people of every nationality has had the practical effect of multiplying the  foes of radical Islam and enabled President Bush to build a global coalition against it. While it has arrogated to itself the power to ignore every civilized limit, Islamic terrorism itself is ironically dependent on their maintenance. Assymetric warfare relies on being able to do what your enemy is forbidden. Terrorism, being militarily weak, relied upon legal restraints, inviolate borders and traditional respect for noncombatants and holy places to provide the shelter that concrete could not. Khalil lived in an unguarded compound in Damascus, in an ordinary residential neighborhood, free to plot the deaths of Jewish civilians. His armor was neither Kevlar nor steel but the certainty -- until now -- that Israel would not attack him across an "international" border. Hama's eagerness to limit the response to Israel proper betrays a growing fear that borders no longer provide sanctuaries. In the weeks following the masscre of schoolchildren in Beslan, the Russian strongman Vladmir Putin announced his intention to strike pre-emptively at terrorist targets all over the world.

17 Sept 2004 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning of preemptive strikes on terrorists. His announcement came shortly after prominent Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, claimed responsibility for the bloody school siege in Beslan two weeks ago. More than 320 hostages were killed in the siege. Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments are the highest-level warning that Russia might launch pre-emptive strikes on terrorists.

Speaking in Moscow on Friday, the Russian leader said serious preparation to act preventively against terrorists is under way. If taken, the measures would be in strict accordance with the law and norms of the constitution and rely on international law, he said. Mr. Putin didn't specify whether attacks would happen at home or abroad.

The reader may judge for himself how respectful Russia might be of "international law". But both Putin's warning and the Israeli carbomb attack in Damascus are a warning that Golda Meir may have been wrong. She once said, "there will be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jews". She forgot the alternative which Putin may even now be thinking of. 'that there will be peace in the Middle East when every Arab school is as secure as Belslan; and the Kaaba as inviolate as any synagogue in Jersualem.' America must win this war before it is too late -- for Islam.

Who Goes There?

Most visitors to the US know that not even a valid visa can guaranty entry into the United States. Nor is America alone in this. Generally speaking, no foreign national can enter another country as a matter of right.  Louis Farrakahan found that holding an American passport did not entitle him to enter Britain in 2002. Nor is politics always a factor: bureaucrats can act in arbitrary ways.

One of Laura Bush's favourite British authors has been refused entry to the US, a day before he was due to lecture to an audience of 2,500 people. Ian McEwan was stopped by immigration officials as he left Vancouver airport, in Canada, for an engagement in Seattle. The man who was last year invited to Downing Street by Cherie Blair to meet American's first lady - who said she keeps a McEwan novel by her bedside - found himself detained for four hours before being turned back. McEwan, who recently won America's National Book Award for his novel Atonement, was travelling to the US as a guest of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Officials there told him he did not need a visa. But the immigration officer felt differently.

So when Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, declared he was going to take legal action to "undo the very serious, and wholly unfounded, injustice which I have suffered" as a result of his spectacular deportation from the United States, he appeared to be trying to refute the accusation that he was a Hamas supporter, rather than to directly compel the US government to admit him, though the second would would probably follow if the first could be achieved. "I am a man of peace and denounce all forms of terrorism ... it is simply outrageous for the US authorities to suggest otherwise." Islam has denied being a Hamas supporter, saying that his donations have always been for humanitarian causes like orphanages in Hebron. Islam's had similarly been refused him entry to Israel in 2000, before September 11. The accusations against him then and Islam's rebuttal are eerily similar to the most recent incident.

Islam, 51, who changed his name after becoming a Muslim in the late 1970s, was refused entry into Israel hours after arriving Wednesday. The former singer said he was told only that he was a "threat to national security.''

Israeli Defense Ministry officials refused to comment on Islam's case other than to say that the Shin Bet, Israel's internal intelligence agency, had ordered him barred from the country. The Maariv Daily in Israel reported that the government claimed Islam had delivered tens of thousands of dollars to Hamas, a militant Islamic group, during his last visit in 1988.

"Upon my return to London, reports were already circulating that the Israeli authorities were trying to excuse their actions by linking me to terrorist groups,'' Islam said in a statement. "I want to make sure that people are aware that I've never knowingly supported any terrorist groups -- past, present or future. It's simply an attempt to cast doubt again on my character and good intentions.''

Islam has contributed sums of money to orphanages in Kosovo and Bosnia too. The US position is that while it can't prove anything in court -- it doesn't need to prove anything to deny an alien entry into the America. Colin Powell responded to accusation that Islam had been unfairly treated by saying:

"We have no charges against him," Mr Powell told reporters at the foreign press centre. "We have nothing that would be actionable in our courts, or in the courts in the United Kingdom, I'm sure. "But it is the procedure that we have been using to know who is coming into our country, know their backgrounds and interests and see whether we believe it is appropriate for them to come in," he said.

"With respect to Cat Stevens ... our Homeland Security Department and intelligence agencies found some information concerning his activities that they felt under our law required him to be placed on a watch list and therefore deny him entry into the United States," Mr Powell said. "In this instance, information was obtained that suggested he should be placed on the watch list and that's why he was denied entry into the country," he said.

The shock power in the Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) affair lies precisely in Colin Powell's tone: the cold determination to deny even the most prominent persons entry into the US if suspected of terrorist links. For decades being turned back at the US border was an indignity reserved for poor Mexicans, Filipinos and such. Visitors from Europe and especially the Transatlantic commuter set were spared these inconveniences, as were millionaires from Third World hell-holes, who had the telephone number of a high-priced immigration lawyer at their fingertips as insurance against such misunderstandings. Even the Saudis could expect to be waved past immigration in the pre-911 age, courtesy of the Visa Express program.  Joel Mowbray wrote in 2002.

Three Saudis who were among the last of the Sept. 11 homicide hijackers to enter this country didn't visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to get their visas; they went to a travel agent, where they only submitted a short, two-page form and a photo. The program that made this possible, Visa Express, is still using travel agents in Saudi Arabia to fill this vital role in United States border security.

But now men traveling first-class in bespoke business suits know that neither wealth nor fame nor that immigration lawyer's telephone number can keep F-16s from popping out of the dark and escorting their flight to Bangor, Maine, from where the Mexicans might be allowed to continue, but not them. While Mr. Islam is certainly entitled to pursue legal action and may in the end be vindicated, the incident shows more clearly than any other that it's not September 10 any more. America is at war in a way that it never was in Vietnam. This one is for keeps.

Dark Networks

Vladis Krebs has a case study page examining how mapping social networks and understanding their properties can be used to take down of terrorist networks. Network analysis was used to take down Saddam Hussein. The Washington Post has some of the details.

The Army general whose forces captured Saddam Hussein said yesterday that he realized as far back as July that the key lay in figuring out the former Iraqi president's clan and family support structures in and around Hussein's home city of Tikrit.

Following a strategy similar to that pioneered by New York City police in the 1990s, who cracked down on "squeegee men" only to discover they knew about far more serious criminals, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said his analysts and commanders spent the summer building "link diagrams," graphics showing everyone related to Hussein by blood or tribe.

While U.S. forces up to then had been preoccupied with finding "high value targets" from the Bush administration's list of the top 55 most-wanted Iraqis, Odierno said those family diagrams led his forces to lower-level, but nonetheless highly trusted, relatives and clan members harboring Hussein and helping him move around the countryside.

And the rest as they say, is history. John Robb took at look at the September 11 network and analyzed its characteristics. The Mohammed Atta network had evolved under Darwinian pressure until it reached the form best suited for its purpose: to conduct strategic attacks against the United States of America. Robb concludes that a cell of 70 persons will answer to the purpose, yet be sparse enough to allow its members to remain in relative isolation. For example, no one member of Atta's cell knew more than five others. Moreover, the average distance between any two members was more than four persons. Crucially, but not surprisingly, this disconnected network of plotters maintained coherence by relying on a support infrastructure -- probably communications posts, safe houses, couriers -- to keep themselves from unraveling.  Because security comes at a price in performance and flexibility, Robb arrives at an astounding conjecture: you can have small, operationally secure terrorist groups, but you can't have large, operationally secure cells without a state sponsor.

Distributed, dynamic terrorist networks cannot scale like hierarchical networks. The same network design that makes them resiliant against attack puts absolute limits on their size. If so, what are those limits?

A good starting point is to look at limits to group size within peaceful online communities on which we have extensive data -- terrorist networks are essentially geographically dispersed online communities. Chris Allen does a good job analyzing optimal group size with his critique of the Dunbar number.

His analysis (replete with examples) shows that there is a gradual fall-off in effectiveness at 80 members, with an absolute fall-off at 150 members. The initial fall-off occurs, according to Chris, due to an increasing amount of effort spent on "grooming" the group to maintain cohesion. The absolute fall-off at 150 members occurs when grooming fails to stem dissatisfaction and dissension, which causes the group to cleave apart into smaller subgroups (that may remain affiliated).

Al Qaeda may have been able to grow much larger than this when it ran physical training camps in Afghanistan. Physical proximity allowed al Qaeda to operate as a hierarchy along military lines, complete with middle management (or at least a mix of a hierarchy in Afghanistan and a distributed network outside of Afghanistan). Once those camps were broken apart, the factors listed above were likely to have caused the fragmentation we see today (lots of references to this in the news).

His last paragraph is crucial to understanding why the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam Hussein may have cripped global terrorism so badly. Without the infrastrastructure of a state sponsor, terrorism is limited to cells of about 100 members in size in order to maintain security. In the context of the current campaign in Iraq, the strategic importance of places like Falluja or "holy places" is that their enclave nature allows terrorists to grow out their networks to a larger and more potent size. Without those sanctuaries, they would be small, clandestine hunted bands. The argument that dismantling terrorist enclaves makes "America less safe than it should be in a dangerous world" inverts the logic. It is allowing the growth of terrorist enclaves that puts everyone at risk in an otherwise safe world.

Update

Here's a link to a database of terrorist incidents called, MIPT Terrorism, via the Neophyte Pundit. I'll look into the site later today or this week, but it seems useful enough to put on my blogroll.

The Way to Dusty Death

Michael Totten examines the quagmire that never was. How did Israel achieve the task, regarded as impossible by media analysts and many diplomats, of defeating the Intifada? He quotes the "New Republic".

Israel's triumph over the Palestinian attempt to unravel its society is the result of a systematic assault on terrorism that emerged only fitfully over the past four years. The fence, initially opposed by the army and the government, has thwarted terrorist infiltration in those areas where it has been completed. Border towns like Hadera and Afula, which had experienced some of the worst attacks, have been terror-free since the fence was completed in their areas. Targeted assassinations and constant military forays into Palestinian neighborhoods have decimated the terrorists' leadership, and roadblocks have intercepted hundreds of bombs, some concealed in ambulances, children's backpacks, and, most recently, a baby carriage. At every phase of Israel's counteroffensive, skeptics have worried that attempts to suppress terrorism would only encourage more of it.

The most remarkable thing about Israel's campaign against the Intifada was not it's adoption of new warfighting concepts, like Europe's Human Security Doctrine, but its reversion to the oldest method of all: winning by fighting back. Social historians in the future, should we ever attain it, may endlessly wonder how it was possible for Western European and liberal American intellectuals to forget 5,000 years of military experience in favor of the slogans, some composed facetiously, of the Peace Movement of the 1960s. However that may be, Totten concludes that Israel is a test case, the pathfinder to America's future in the war on terror. "Israel's present may be our future. Best get used to it now."

The necessary corollary is if Israel's future is to America's then Palestine's is to the Islamic world's: a bleak landscape of impoverished, poorly educated people living on a diet of fantasy: the least necessary tragedy in history. The Jihad like the Intifada is the highroad to vacancy. But the Left encouraged Yasser Arafat to hold out for more at every turn; solemnly assuring him by whatever gods of historical determinism they worshipped that the Intifada was unstoppable; the wave of the future. What they forgot to tell him was that it was unstoppable only for so long as it wasn't stopped. To listen to the Left is to share it's epitaph. Time to stop listening.

a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Hello

Digital Bear Consulting has a very useful set of links to software tools in aid of social network analysis. It's an area I discovered by accident, having "rolled my own" link analysis software as a private utility. My motivation was to keep track of the burgeoning network of events, persons and other entities related to the Global War on Terror. The products listed out at Digital Bear are far removed from my own amateurish attempts. For one thing, they are founded on sound mathematical theory. I haven't had the time to look at each closely, but they range from Analyst's Notebook, a professional law enforcement and military package whose claim to fame was helping track down Saddam Hussein at the high end to Agna and NetVis Module, which are freeware. There are also libraries and toolkits which can be adapted to custom purposes. Other resources include INSNA and its directory of relevant software tools. Vladis Krebs describes the motivation behind social network analysis.

Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes. .. A method to understand networks and their participants is to evaluate the location of actors in the network. Measuring the network location is finding the centrality of a node. These measures help determine the importance, or prominence, of a node in the network.

While it sounds like something that would be extraordinarily useful in the war on terror, I suspect the actual utility of many models and the tools based on them will be quite limited by the quality of the data and its volatility. All the same, there was never a tool without a use and while I don't expect that these tools are used in the field to target Zarqawi's minions scuttling around in Iraq, the concepts of "social networks" are probably never far from mind.

The spiritual leader of a militant group that claimed to have beheaded two American hostages in Iraq has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, and his Jordanian family is preparing a wake, a newspaper and Islamic clerics said Wednesday. Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, 35, was killed when a missile hit the car he was traveling in on Friday in the west Baghdad suburb of Abu-Ghraib, said the clerics, who have close ties to the family. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

Al-Shami was a close aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the militant group Tawhid and Jihad. The al-Qaida-linked group is blamed for some of the biggest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters last year, and the beheadings of foreign hostages -- including two Americans this week.

The Sword is Mightier than the Pen

Glenn Reynolds links to Volokh who describes the intimidation that correspondents are filing their stories under in Iraq.

The New York Times reports that Reuters is upset that the CanWest newspaper chain changed a Reuters story to describe the Al Asqa Martyrs' brigade, a Palestinian terrorist group, as "a terrorist group":

"Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he said.

In other words, Reuters must amend its copy to suit or its reporters may be harmed. This is another aspect of asymmetrical warfare that goes unrecognized. Terrorists are essentially free to censor news coverage or even alter it by intimidation whereas Coalition Forces are strictly forbidden from even thinking about it. It's similar to when gangsters would trash 19th century newspaper offices to head off crusading editors except that today's gangsters can edit the copy to describe themselves as 'militants' or 'activists' or 'people' and editors have banished the words 'crusading' and especially 'crusade' from their lexicon altogether. John Burns of the New York Times described how he hid from Saddam's thugs in hotel stairwells during OIF while those who towed the line or paid them off received preferential treatment.

There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.

In comparison with this kind of tampering  the CBS 60 Minutes forgery scandal pales into insignificance. Terror, through intimidation, has to some extent been able to control what Americans and Europeans are allowed to read. Yet Reuters says, "My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity". Where have we heard that before?

The Tommy Franks Statement

Buried deep in a Boston Globe article mainly devoted to John Kerry's denunciation of President George Bush's handling of Iraq is a riposte by retired CENTCOM Commander Tommy Franks.

Kerry, who in October 2002 voted in favor of a congressional resolution authorizing the war, said Bush rushed into Iraq without the backing of allies, preparing a postwar plan, or properly equipping US forces -- ''None of which I would have done."

''Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," Kerry told a supportive audience assembled at New York University, downtown from where Bush is to address the United Nations General Assembly today. ''But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

He blamed Bush for ''colossal failures of judgment." ''This is stubborn incompetence," he said.

Then there's the rebuttal by Franks. The Globe quotes Franks as saying: "General Tommy Franks, who commanded the 2002 invasion of Iraq, criticiz(ed) Kerry directly. ''Senator Kerry's contradictions on Iraq are the wrong signal to send to our troops on the ground, to our coalition partners, to the Iraqi people, and to the terrorists seeking our destruction," Franks said." But the Globe omitted the more important part of Frank's statement, whose text can be found at FreeRepublic.

ARLINGTON, VA – Gen. Tommy Franks (Ret.) today issued the following statement on Senator Kerry's speech today on Iraq:

"Senator Kerry's contradictions on Iraq are the wrong signal to send to our troops on the ground, to our coalition partners, to the Iraqi people and to the terrorists seeking our destruction. On the eve of Prime Minister Allawi's visit to the United States, Senator Kerry today said that America and the world are 'less secure' now that Saddam Hussein is out of power.

"The American people disagree and last December, so did Senator Kerry. At the time he said that those who believe the world was safer with Saddam Hussein in power 'don't have the judgment to be president.' I agree."

The Globe casts Frank's disagreements with Kerry as procedural -- "sending the wrong message" But Frank's critique goes deeper: they are substantive disagreements with the assertion that the removal of Saddam Hussein did not make the America and the world safer. It is a strategic appreciation diametrically opposed to that of Senator Kerry's.

The problem with arguments from authority is that one can find citations to suit any book. This is often the last resort of those who argue that Iraq, in despite of statistical evidence to contrary, has trapped the US in a strategic cul-de-sac. In that respect Tommy Franks is to those unimpeachable sources as the critics of the 60 Minutes expose were to CBS's document experts. Not the last word, but planters of the first seed of doubt in the Anybody-But-Bush faith. In the end, the truth of a proposition comes not from assertions of authority, but the thing in itself. People will judge Iraq from its effect on their own lives and render their verdict accordingly.

Update: The Enemy in Iraq

Dan Darling has more detailed breakdown of the enemy order of battle in Iraq. A sample:

Zarqawi's coalition

In addition to his own al-Tawhid wal Jihad organization, Zarqawi has also formed an impressive coalition of Iraqi and foreign Islamist groups under his direction to challenge US control of Iraq. Ansar al-Islam is a nominal part of this coalition, but they are far more autonomous than these others that I'm about to list because they've been established in Iraq longer and have equal or greater clout with Zarqawi's erstwhile allies in the IRGC. Based on what I know, Zarqawi's coalition is made up of Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah, Jaish-e-Islami al-Iraqi, Jaish Mohammed, Harakat al-Salafiyyah al-Jihadiyyah, Takfir wal Hijra, Kateebat al-Jihad al-Islamiyyah, Islamic Resistance Front, Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, Kateebat al-Mujahideen, Kateebat al-Zilzal al-Mujahid, Kateebat Salah al-Din, and Jund al-Sham as well as the international brigades of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat ul-Jihad-e-Islam, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

It would be good to diagram.

The Narrow Way

Patrick Belton at Oxblog links to a European think tank study recommending what the continent's response should be to terrorism, genocide and weapons of mass destruction. The Human Security Doctrine for Europe seems consciously designed to be the not-American response to these threats. It begins with these stirring words:

Many people in the world lead intolerably insecure lives. In many cases, insecurity is the consequence of conflicts in which civilians are deliberately targeted with impunity. In an era of global interdependence, Europeans can no longer feel secure when large parts of the world are insecure.

Over the last few years, the European Union has been developing a common security policy. In December 2003, the European Council agreed a European Security Strategy (ESS), which advocates preventive engagement and effective multilateralism. This report is about implementation of the ESS. It argues that Europe needs the capability to make a more active contribution to global security. It needs military forces but military forces need to be configured and used in new ways. The report focuses on regional conflicts and failed states, which are the source of new global threats including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and organised crime.

Those threats are to be met by "A ‘Human Security Response Force’, composed of 15,000 men and women, of whom at least one third would be civilian (police, human rights monitors, development and humanitarian specialists, administrators, etc.). The Force would be drawn from dedicated troops and civilian capabilities already made available by member states as well as a proposed ‘Human Security Volunteer Service’." To keep this formidable force within civilized bounds and to prevent it from riding roughshod over the rights of terrorists, mass murderers and nuclear proliferators, they will adhere to the European version of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

1. Respect the primacy of Human Rights;
2. Act within a legal framework that is locally acceptable;
3. Act within the framework of multilateral treaties and obligation;
4. Adhere to the "Bottom-Up" approach, to "take account of the most basic needs identified by the people who are affected by violence and insecurity," preferably by working with non-government organizations.
5. To act within a regional political setting whenever possible;
6. To use law enforcement as the primary mode of fighting threats to global security. "The use of law, and particularly international law, as an instrument does not pertain just to diplomatic fora and decisions concerning whether to intervene: they are at the core of how operations should be conducted."
7. To use force as a last resort: to be "prepared to kill in extremis, as human security forces should be. Hence, in line with principle 1 (primacy of human rights) and principle 6 (legal instruments), minimum force is key. Minimum force suggests for instance that it would be an over-reaction to kill someone who threatens violence when an arrest can be made."

Come down to brass tacks, the study proposes a three-tier force structure consisting of a headquarters in Brussels, which would "be composed of strategic planners, with a capacity for analysis of intelligence and information, and a civil-military crisis management centre, with a capacity for assessing what military and civil capabilities, both European and local, are needed in a particular crisis situation.".

The second tier would consist of 5000 personnel at a high level of readiness able to deploy within days. They would include civil-military teams and a deployable command and control headquarters. They would be on permanent standby constantly training and exercising together and ‘breathing human security’. They would be able, at short notice, to deploy ‘Human Security Task Forces’. The third tier would consist of the remaining 10,000 personnel, who would be at a lower level of readiness but nevertheless could be called on for deployment and who would periodically train and exercise together.

In keeping with the overall professional tone of the report, it does not neglect to provide for Reserves. Far from it.

"NGOs could be registered as part of the Human Security Volunteer Service, along with individuals. The Service could provide a framework for contracts with NGOs that would involve vetting to ensure that they were reliable and effective These contracts would entitle them to participate in training and exercises, as well as being deployed as part of a wider force. For private corporations, there could be a registration procedure and tenders for certain non-military tasks such as logistics or communications, but they should not form an integral part of the force."

To make all these wonderful things possible requires material support. "A deployable headquarters, a command and control system, aircraft carriers and other transportation equipment should be dedicated to the EU force ... planes, trucks, jeeps and helicopters, as well as communications systems, for example mobile phones, should be usable in a range of tasks and have both civilian and military components. They need to be compatible and interoperable both among member states and between civilian and military." Which of course, means NATO standard.

This a serious (the report was presented to EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana) exposition of the kind of security policy some European political groups actually think will work. It is a refreshing departure from the purely reactive critique of the American approach to international security. It is entirely earnest and devoid of any irony, which from my own personal point of view, makes it very frightening indeed. This is what some people actually mean when they talk about a more "sensitive" approach to fighting terrorism, one that is multilateral and nuanced.

It would be a mistake, of course, to characterize every European critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy as an adherent of the Human Security Doctrine, but it is probably fair to say that its spirit finds wide currency among them. God help us all.

Postscript

The last few posts have not been written to provide an 'optimistic' view of Iraq nor to debunk the theories of anyone. They were written as an attempt to discover whether the charge that Iraq has become a disaster was true; and if so in what aspect and to what degree. It is a complex question which I have not answered to my own satisfaction. The possible extent of the problem can be bounded, or reduced to a certain order of magnitude, using casualty statistics, troop levels and even levels of civilian casualties. That way you can tell what it is not or at least, not yet.

But crucially, there is little information on the Delta:  the rate of change in certain indicators. One can say that US Forces are killing a lot of bad guys without being able to answer, at least with the data on hand, whether the enemy are regenerating faster than they are being destroyed. I cast about in vain for some way to estimate whether the level of corruption in the Iraqi government, which is a proxy for efficiency and just governance, was increasing or decreasing. It is the one area for which I truly fear, not in the least because few Americans have any idea what a distorting gravitational force normal levels of American prosperity and largesse have in a Third World country. The sheer capability of America can create a dependency even in richer societies. One wonders whether the new Iraqi Army will have any concept of operations constrained by their true resources, without implicitly assuming American support. Sixty years of America in NATO have arguably weakened indigenous military capability in a continent which once dominated the world. Sometimes a quagmire is when you are too damned good.

Yet if the road forward is dim, the line of retreat has long ago been cut off by Islamic fundamentalist terror itself. What can be the point of a return to America when they came to Manhattan? For good or ill, this thing will end with a defeat for one side and victory for the other. I did not say joy.

Keeping Score

Andrew Sullivan takes Mark Steyn to task for arguing that "In two-thirds of the country (Iraq), municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory" because that's indecent.

So what if Iraqis are dealing with two 9/11s a month? Our Blessed Leader, who is responsible for the security of Iraqis, never makes mistakes, does he? And the last thing pro-war journalists should ever do is raise questions.

The claim that Iraqis are suffering two 9/11s -- or 6,000 deaths -- per month is interesting compared to the claims made by other sources. The Associated Press has a good roundup of stats.

Source	Number of Iraqi Deaths
Iraq body count (since the war began)	12-14 K
Hazem al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization (no time frame)	30 K
Iraq Ministry of Health  (April 5 to Aug 31, 2004)	3 K
Sheik Omar Clinic (Baghdad and environs)	10 K
Amnesty International (April 2003 to April 2004)	10 K

The basis of on which these figures are compiled varies. For example, the Al-Radini and the Sheik Omar Clinic hold America responsible for violent deaths of all types, including victims of crime, people killed by insurgents and insurgents killed by American troops.

Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers but also civilian men, women and children caught in crossfire, blown apart by explosives or shot by mistake--both by fellow Iraqis or by American soldiers and their multinational allies. And they include the victims of crime that has surged in the instability that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.  ... even those killed by criminals could be considered indirect victims of a war that destroyed Iraq's security services and brought a spike in crime. ...

Al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization in Iraq agreed. "The main responsibility behind these Iraqi civilians deaths lies with the occupation because those victims would not have fallen had there not be an occupation," he said.

Even taking the Sheik Omar and al-Radini figures as a basis, the claim that Iraq is suffering "two 9/11s a month" seems a stretch. (See correction below) Clearly, "a lot" of Iraqis are dying, whatever the precise numbers, but lining up their coffins to point an accusing figure at the "Blessed Leader" is in its own way, the ultimate cheapening. Under this kind of arithmetic, US forces are 'responsible' for killing 300 enemy soldiers in Najaf and equally guilty when the enemy kills 23 Iraqi National Guardsmen in Kirkuk, of killing 10 "people" in a precision airstrike in Fallujah yet also guilty of not stopping those same people from attacking the Iraqi police. If US and Iraqi soldiers launch an offensive in Al-Anbar by year's end, as Dexter Filkins of the New York Times writes, they stand condemned, according to this curious logic, for each enemy soldier or terrorist they kill.

If war is to make any sense (a proposition that some conscientious objects will deny in principle); and to progress toward some notion of "victory", then all deaths cannot be equal. There is an inverse relationship between the number of enemy deaths and the number of allied and civilian deaths one has to endure. It is undeniable that a lot of people, guilty and innocent, are still dying in Iraq.  But it's the distribution that counts.

BTW, Mark Steyn's argument that "In two-thirds of the country (Iraq), municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory" is neither refuted nor asserted. However, the Guardian reports that British troop levels in some parts of Iraq are going to be reduced, so it is possible that Steyn's assertion may be true of some localities at least. Although the Guardian begins by prefacing its reportage with "despite the deteriorating security situation in much of the country" it goes on to say:

The main British combat force in Iraq, about 5,000-strong, will be reduced by around a third by the end of October during a routine rotation of units. ...  The reduction will take place when the First Mechanised Infantry Brigade is replaced by the Fourth Armoured Division, now based in Germany, in a routine rotation over the next few weeks. Troop numbers are being finalised, but, military sources in Iraq and in Whitehall say, they are likely to be 'substantially less' than the current total in Basra: the new combat brigade will have five or even four battle groups, against its current strength of six battle groups of around 800 men

Incidentally, the US troop rotation plan, OIF-3 will also reduce the number of US forces in Iraq but will increase the proportion of Army National Guard brigades.

Beginning in July 2004, the United States began implementing the OIF 3 troop rotation. OIF-3 plans call for troops numbers to be reduced from 140,000 to roughly 130,000. According to documents presented during a HASC hearing on July 7, 2004, US force disposition plans call for a Stryker Brigade to remain stationed in Northern Iraq. The 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, will replace in this role the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. In the North-central sector of Iraq, The 1st Infantry Division will be replaced by the 42nd Infantry Division of the NY National Guard, while II MEF will take over I MEF operations in Western Iraq. The Brigade of the 1st Armored Division attached to the Polish south-central sector, will be replaced by the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain. Finally, the 3rd Infantry Division will take over the 1st cavalry Divison in Baghdad. As part of the rotation, OIF units will be deploying 'heavy'.

The number of Army National Guard brigades in Iraq will increase during this rotation from three to five. The rotation will mark a first with a National Guard division headquarters (42nd Infantry Division) assuming, for the first time in Iraq, command active-duty brigades.

The danger with uncritically accepting claims like "the insurgency is spreading" or "Bush is so desperate he is calling up the National Guard" is that it is not obviously supported by the geographical distribution of casualty figures, the rising number of enemy deaths, the drawdown in deployed forces nor does it account for changes in the force mix.

---

Correction

Reader Kenny writes to say:

Even though i'm not one to defend Andrew Sullivan (i think he's gone off the deep end), I think you misunderstood his statement of "two 9/11's" a month. He doesn't mean that there are 6,000 people dying each month, he means that the proportion of people dieing each month, is proportional to the United States experiencing two 9'11's a month in term's of the different size populations between the US and Iraq.

The USA has slightly more than ten times the population of Iraq (290 M vs 26 M). Taking the high end Iraq Body Count numbers, we have 14K/19x10=7,400 per month American casualties equivalent, which is indeed 2 x 9/11s. On that basis, Andrew Sullivan's claim is justified and I do apologize for misunderstanding his comparison. But Sullivan's comparison is apt in more ways than one. Most of Iraqi casualties will have been caused by terrorist action, such as car bombs going off in market places, police stations, hotels etc just as 9/11 was caused by Al Qaeda operatives crashing into three buildings and these deaths are the "Blessed Leader's" fault in the same sense that 9/11 was his fault, which is an argument that some in the 9/11 Commission tried to make.

This goes to the strategic heart of the problem. The War on Terror is a politico-military struggle. The United States has always had the military means to obliterate Ramadi, Fallujah etc. or for that matter, every Islamic nation in the world. Do you "hurry up" or pick your way through? The seige of Fallujah was a distillation of this debate in miniature. Many commentators, including Ralph Peters, have argued that that Fallujah should have been taken at whatever cost. Many feel the siege of the Imam Ali Mosque should have been pursued without limits. In this context, what does the claim that Iraq is suffering the proportional loss of 2x9/11s mean?

The War In The West

Claudia Rossett has a long article on Fox News (hat tip reader K) describing the possible link between Al-Qaeda and the UN's Oil for Food Program. She focuses on the unusual role of the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber (MIGA) in receiving millions of dollars in overpayments from Saddam Hussein in conjunction with the circumstance that its principal corporate officers are on a variety of Al-Qaeda watchlists.

As the Oil-for-Food program actually worked, however, the United Nations let Saddam choose his own business partners. The world body also kept secret the details of those contracts and the identities of the contractors, and it let Saddam graft at least $4.4 billion out of the program through manipulated contract prices, by estimates of the U.S. General Accountability Office.

Saddam's standard scam was to underprice oil sales and overpay for relief supplies, thus generating fat profits for his business partners. Many of those contractors would kick back part of the take to Saddam's regime — or divert it to whatever uses Saddam might fancy. By various accounts, those uses ranged from building palaces to buying arms to supplying Saddam's sadistic son Uday with equipment for torturing Iraqi athletes.

One of the big questions is whether any of the money skimmed from Oil-for-Food also slopped into terrorist-financing ventures such as MIGA.

The circumstantial evidence is pretty damning. Rossett describes MIGA as a "terrorist chamber of commerce". Its founder and president, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin was on a watchlist of suspected Al-Qaeda financiers, as was his business partner Youssef Nada. Another MIGA founder, who remains unindicted still runs the far-flung Hayel Saeed Anam Group of Companies (HSA) which continues to operate worldwide. The HSA was also a large player in the Oil for Food Program and handled at least $400 million in transactions for the former dictator.

The trail peters out behind the wall of confidentiality the United Nations has flung over the Oil for Food documents. But one of Rosett's resource links is to the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the Department of the Treasury.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. OFAC acts under Presidential wartime and national emergency powers, as well as authority granted by specific legislation, to impose controls on transactions and freeze foreign assets under US jurisdiction. Many of the sanctions are based on United Nations and other international mandates, are multilateral in scope, and involve close cooperation with allied governments.

Although there is little new detail to be found there, OFAC provides a list of Specially Designated Nationals (a watchlist) available as delimited text files. There are three tables. The parent table, SDN, contains a list of blacklisted organizations, individuals and ships. There is a detail address table called ADD and a table of aliases called ALT which I whacked into SQL Server. These seem to be in the public domain and if anyone is willing to host a download site, I can email him the .BAK files. (Approximately 3 MB in size).

If we breakout the distribution of countries of blacklisted individuals (businessmen) who are on the terrorism watchlist (there are other types of watchlists) we get this (I've ommitted the those with counts smaller than 2).

Country	Number in watchlist
Italy	56
Germany	12
Afghanistan	6
Switzerland	6
Pakistan	5
England	4
Belgium	3
Lebanon	3
Somalia	3
Morocco	2
Syria	2
Gaza (Palestinian Authority)	2

However, if we look at the distribution of countries of blacklisted terrorist-affiliated funding organizations we get a different, but not altogether surprising list:

Country	Number in watchlist		Country	Number in watchlist
Somalia	22		Iraq	2
U.A.E.	19		Lebanon	2
Pakistan	14		Spain	2
U.S.A.	9		Turkey	2
Afghanistan	9		Belgium	2
Bosnia-Herzegovina	6		Azerbaijan	2
Liechtenstein	6		Albania	2
Italy	6		Algeria	2
United Kingdom	6		Austria	2
Yemen	5		Ethiopia	2
Sweden	4		France	2
Switzerland	4		Gaza Strip	2
Bahamas	4		Georgia	2
Bangladesh	3		Germany	2
Canada	3
Netherlands	3
West Bank	3

Though this tells us nothing about MIGA or HSA specifically it provides a suggestive statistical picture of the way in which terrorist funding (at the least the part we know about) may operate. The real surprise for me is how many of the individual terrorist moneymen are associated with Italy, Germany and Switzerland, and I wonder if there is any connection between the frequency distribution and adjacency to the Swiss border. MIGA for example, was according to the Rossett's report headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland. The second list is more suggestive of places that are either world financial centers or places where shell companies can be established without too many questions asked. Because OFAC releases a new list for each year it will be fascinating to do a time-series to see how the shape of the terrorist money funding machine has changed over the last year. Maybe not by much. The topography of the financial system does not change overnight any more than that of the hills.

Armies unconsciously return to same battlefields over the course of centuries because topography compels them to same patch of disputed ground. (Al-Anbar contains not only the Sunni towns but the smuggling routes to Syria. Falluja was a smuggling center. There's a reason people fight in particular places.) For like reason the battle over terrorist finances will probably return to the financial centers, laundering sites and multilateral organizations which are their commanding heights. Like the Ides of March in Julius Caesar, the United Nations Oil For Food Program may have come, but they are not yet gone.

Iraq, Part 2

While there may be wide disagreement over whether the Iraqi security situation is improving or deteriorating, it is indisputable that the order of battle or military landscape in that country has changed dramatically in the past two years. In January, 2003 Iraq was governed by a powerful state with a ruthless secret service, backed by one of the region's most powerful conventional forces.

January, 2003

Group or Unit	Estimated Number	Description
Republican Guard, Regular Army, Special Forces	350K	powerful, possibly dominant regional armed force
Source: CDI

The Saddam Hussein regime was shattered in the three-week long Operation Iraqi Freedom. The remnants of that regime were ruthlessly hunted down until Hussein and his two sons were either killed or taken into custody. Not only was a great Arab state completely destroyed, the prevailing ethnic balance was also altered when US authorities envisioned a framework that would give the majority Shi'ites probable preponderance in any future unitary state. Political demands to de-Ba'athize Iraq led to the dissolution of the Iraqi Armed Forces and initially, many of the police forces as well.

In the year following OIF, there was no effective Iraqi civil or military authority. Various armed groups, many of them fueled by links to terrorist organizations and Arab Secret Services, sprang up in the vacuum. Nowhere was the vacuum more complete than in the Sunni triangle whose former leaders were the targets of the post OIF dragnet. The success of United States forces in exterminating the former power structure was so complete that provided a clean field for new armed groups to spring up.

By April, 2004 a number of  new armed groups had filled the niches left vacant by the defeated Ba'ath state. Not coincidentally, many of them were in the sprawling northwestern Al-Anbar province which abutted the Syrian and Jordanian borders. They made themselves felt as a separate force in a simultaneous uprisings in Sadr City, Fallujah, Ramadi and Najaf. The Hussein era had passed into history and the new claimants to the vacant throne had arisen.

September, 2004

Group or Unit	Estimated Number	Description
Madhi Army	6-10 K	Shi'ite, Moqtada Al Sadr
Ansar Al Islam	?	Sunni Islamic fundamentalist Kurds
Various small groups, including Al Faruk, Black Banner, Harvest of the Iraqi Resistance, etc.		Baghdad, Sunni triangle
Islamic Armed Group of al-Qaida, Fallujah branch	?	International connections
Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad / Unity and Jihad Group	?	led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with links to Al Qaeda
Former Regime Loyalists, including General Command of the Armed Forces, Resistance and Liberation in Iraq, Feyadeen	?	Ex-Baath
	5-35K	Source: CSIS report page 40
Source of Groups: Global Security Org

Although US Forces could prevail in any particular tactical situation, what they could not do in April 2004 was fill the vacuum they had created by their own success. This became apparent when Marine Forces gearing up to retake Fallujah could find no reliable Iraq units to complement them. And little wonder: the Iraqi police and military forces in April, 2004 were a mere shadow of the Hussein-era colossus. Excluding the pathetic Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and police, the planned Iraqi state  in April 2004 had fewer than 5,000 "trained" men to set against an insurgent strength of from 5 to 35 thousand, many of whom were highly trained ex-Iraqi Army Special Forces or international terrorists.

	Trained	Untrained	Total
Iraqi police	16151	56448	72599
Border guards	9456	9957	19413
Iraqi Army	3930	0	3930
Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (OJT)	32458	0	32458
Security guards	73992	0	73992
			202392

Some areas in the Sunni triangle which were not under the direct control of US forces were taken over by the new armed groups, who drove the small Iraqi "government" forces before them. The situation had improved somewhat half a year later by August, 2004 . In operations against Moqtada Al-Sadr in Najaf a new Iraqi Army declared itself ready to assault the Imam Ali Mosque, though in the event, their mettle was not tested, perhaps because Prime Minister Iyad Allawi did not yet have full confidence they would perform as required. By August 2004, US forces had improved their operational capability to the point where they were killing hundreds of enemy per week. Behind this shield a new Iraqi Army was supposed to take shape. But even the revamped order of battle for the interim Iraqi Government was of doubtful adequacy, totaling only 77,000 lightly armed troops, structurally incapable of making headway against armed gangs and terrorist bands unless complemented by the force multipliers and support weapons of the United States.

	Numbers
Army	27,000
National Guard	41,000
Intervention force	6,581
Special Forces	1,692

America's historical enemies have been well established states. The Global War on Terror is the first time America has pitted itself against a largely dysfunctional and chaotic society held together by what it considered an illegitimate basis. The strategic goal of "bringing freedom to the Middle East" had a deconstructive aspect to which the Armed Forces were well suited, but it also had a constructive dimension with which America had no extensive historical experience. After the encrustations of the Saddam regime had been sanded down to the bare metal of tribal and religious groupings it still remained to create a new Iraqi State to fill the void. But a strong Iraqi state has few apparent friends at court, no particular constituency to support it. Belated Administration requests to divert reconstruction money into security, whose necessity is argued by a glance at the figures above,  received a lukewarm reception in the US Senate. The Associated Press reports:

Senate Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday denounced the Bush administration's slow progress in rebuilding Iraq, saying the risks of failure are great if it doesn't act with greater urgency. ''It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous,'' said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to figures showing only about 6 percent of the reconstruction money approved by Congress last year has been spent. ... Hagel, Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and other committee members have long argued even before the war that administration plans for rebuilding Iraq were inadequate and based on overly optimistic assumptions that Americans would be greeted as liberators.

Nowhere was the determination to pull levers connected to nothing greater than in the aftermath of OIF. Proposals to provide more American "boots on the ground", guards for the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities, resolutions from the United Nations, an "exit strategy" or more reconstruction money were essentially disconnected from the problem of filling the vacuum created by the fall of Saddam Hussein. The irrelevant United Nations was lavishly installed in the Canal Hotel in the same time frame that CERP efforts by units like the 101st Airborne to fill local gaps in power in early 2003 were de-funded. Even after the UN was blown up and the need for Iraqi security organs reasserted  itself, the "insurgency is spreading" meme was still being wired to dummy buttons like "Bush lied" or "no WMDs found" or "war without the United Nations is illegal" while basic questions about the architecture of the new Iraqi state went undebated. 

If the pattern of American casualties shows that most fighting is happening in Al-Anbar it is not because Administration officials are manufacturing the results to camouflage a "widening insurgency". It is because there is no power vacuum among Kurds and Shi'ias as complete as that in the Sunni triangle. Civil war, if it eventuates, will not be result of military failure but from a lack of commitment to create a replacement Iraqi State. If we build it, it will come.

Iraq, Part 1.1

Just a quick response to Andrew Sullivan's hypothesis that the reason the geographical pattern of US deaths has remained static could be because the Administration refuses to risk American troops in areas where the insurgency is 'spreading'. He observes:

But it also seems to me that military deaths may not be the best way to analyze this. After all, the White House may well have been withdrawing troops from sensitive areas in order to minimize casualties in the run-up to elections (perhaps prior to an attack on Fallujah in November?).

How to square this with observed events? The best way to minimize American casualties in the short term would have been to withdraw them from high-combat areas like Al-Anbar Province and Sadr City and fall back onto solid perimeters or bases in the open desert. That would cut US casualties by a dramatic percentage. The empirical problem with Sullivan's hypothesis is that of the 52 Americans who have died in September the vast majority were killed in patrols, "stabilization operations" or convoys in Al-Anbar which are offensive operations (although any good defense has active patrolling). For example last 12 Americans to die (40-52) were killed in patrols on while conducting "security and stability operations in Al-Anbar province". The last three American casualties (50, 51 and 52 of September 16, 2004) may have been the three who perished in Operation Hurricane or events associated with it.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2004 – A precision strike on a compound near Fallujah has killed approximately 60 terrorists, Multinational Force Iraq officials said today.

The strike destroyed three buildings in which members of Abu Musab Zarqawi terrorist group were meeting. The strike hit the compound near the village of Qaryat ar Rufish. The village is southeast of Fallujah and southwest of Baghdad, officials in Baghdad said. According to a release, sources said about 90 foreign fighters were meeting when the strike hit.

Those who escaped the initial strike escaped to a nearby village. Multinational forces discontinued the engagement when there was a danger of killing civilians. The multinational force also took out a terrorist target in Fallujah earlier in the day. Officials said the air strike destroyed a home used by the Zarqawi network to store ammunition and the plan attacks against Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces and multinational forces.

Details are sketchy about Operation Hurricane launched by soldiers and Marines in Ramadi. The operation, according to a release, is to find and remove illegal weapons and to disrupt the Daham terrorist network. Officials said the Daham network is affiliated with Zarqawi and is responsible for attacks against Iraqis and member of the multinational force in Anbar province. Officials with the 1st Marine Division said the operation is under the laws of the Iraqi interim government.

Near Karbala, Iraqi police, Iraqi National Guardsmen and members of the Polish- led Multinational Division Central- South conducted searches that netted nine suspects wanted by the Iraqi Police and a number of weapons and attendant ammunition. Three Marines were killed in Anbar province today. One was killed in action and two died of wounds. There are no other details on the action.

The entire sequence of actions described above is agressive in character. It does not look like gun-shy behavior. More on this later, but I think the more natural conclusion (here's Occam's Razor again) is that troops die where the fighting is. You could make the contrary argument, but it's hard.

Iraq, Part 1

The number, nature and geographical distribution of US combat deaths in Iraq provide a statistical indicator of its character. It provides a clue into the nature of the fighting and helps us answer the questions that are being raised in the press: 'is Iraq descending into civil war?'; 'is unrest spreading?' Using March, 2004 as a starting point, the overall trend of US deaths is: 

2004	Death	Notable Events
March	52
April	147	Fallujah and Al Sadr uprising
May	88
June	44	Transitional Government
July	61
August	71	Operations against Sadr in Najaf
Sept (est)	90

If one considers three months of casualties in detail, April, June and September 2004 from the table in Global Security Org listing the circumstances under which individual American soldiers died, clearly the overwhelming percentage of men perished fighting in the same places, namely the Sunni triangle, notably near Fallujah and in certain neighborhoods of Baghdad. Even operations against Moqtada al Sadr did not change the pattern. Let's look at the August figures.

	Circumstances and Place
1	Killed when his patrol was struck by a remotely detonated improvised explosive device near Samarra around 12:30 p.m. Aug. 1.
2	Died in Samarra, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device exploded near his guard post
3	Died due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
4	IED detonated near the vehicle he was traveling in while on patrol
5	Died from injuries suffered when an IED detonated near the vehicle he was traveling in while on patrol
6	Died due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
7	Died of wounds received in action in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations
8	Died of wounds received in action Aug. 2 in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations
9	Died as a result of a non-hostile gunshot wound
10	Died in a vehicle accident / He was caught between two motor pool vehicles
11	Died from injuries received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
12	Died due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
13	Killed when their convoy was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire near Najaf
14	Killed as a result of enemy action in the An Najaf province
15	Killed as a result of enemy action in the An Najaf province
16	Died August 5, in Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his patrol on August 4 in Balad, Iraq
17	Killed as a result of enemy action in the An Najaf province
18	Killed as a result of enemy action in the An Najaf province
19	Died in Baghdad, Iraq, when individuals using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades attacked his vehicle
20	Killed when his unit came under attack from anti-Iraqi forces in a western portion of the Baghdad. An insurgent rocket-propelled grenade attack killed the trooper during a mounted patrol
21	Died in a non-combat related incident
22	Killed in action Sunday in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations
23	Died at Kirkuk Air Base, Iraq, from wounds received during a mortar attack
24	Died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., of injuries sustained on July 10 in Ad Dhuha, Iraq, when a rocket propelled grenade detonated near his vehicle
25	Killed when a CH-53 helicopter crashed in the Al Anbar Province about 10:15 p.m. while flying in support of security and stabilization operations
26	Killed when a CH-53 helicopter crashed in the Al Anbar Province about 10:15 p.m. while flying in support of security and stabilization operations
27	Died in Najaf, Iraq, when his unit came under small arms fire and grenade attack
28	Killed when a CH-53 helicopter crashed in the Al Anbar Province about 10:15 p.m. while flying in support of security and stabilization operations
29	Died of wounds received in action in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his mounted reconnaissance patrol vehicle.
30	Died due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
31	Killed in an improvised explosive attack in the northern part of Baghdad
32	Died as a result of hostile fire in Najaf, Iraq
33	Died as a result of hostile fire in Najaf, Iraq
34	Died in Najaf, Iraq, when his M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit an improvised explosive device
35	Died in Ar Ramabi, Iraq, when his M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit an improvised explosive device
36	Died from injuries received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
37	Died ifrom injuries received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
38	Killed by a series of anti-Iraqi force attacks in eastern Baghdad when his patrol came under small arms and rocket-propelled grenade attack.
39	Killed in action in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations
40	Died in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his checkpoint
41	Killed in Sadr City, Iraq, when his patrol came under enemy small arms fire
42	Killed by small arms fire in eastern Baghdad
43	Killed in a non-combat related vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
44	Killed in action in Al Najaf while conducting security and stability operations and another died after a vehicle accident in the Al Anbar Province
45	Died from injuries received due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
Polish	Al Hillah (near Karbalah)
	Al Hillah (near Karbalah)
46	Killed in action while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar Province
47	Unspecified location
48	Killed by an improvised explosive device near Samarra
49	Killed by an improvised explosive device near Samarra
50	Killed by RPG in Baghdad
51	Killed in action Anbar Province
52	Died of wounds received in action while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar Province
53	Died of wounds received in action while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar Province
54	Died of wounds received in action while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar Province
55	Killed in a vehicle accident when the humvee he was in hit an M1A1 tank, causing the vehicle to flip Saturday in the Al Anbar Province
56	Died due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
57	Killed around 4:45 p.m. when their convoy was attacked by a roadside bomb in west Mosul
58	Died of wounds suffered when a rocket-propelled grenade hit a patrol in an unspecified place
59	Died as the result of a vehicle accident near Fallujah when an M915A tractor and an M106A2 tanker trailer rolled over an embankment
60	Died as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
61	Died in Tikrit, Iraq, when his tractor-trailer rolled over as he attempted to access a pontoon bridge
62	Killed in a mortar attack in Baghdad
63	Died as result of enemy action in An Najaf, Iraq
64	Died from injuries received due to enemy action in Babil Province, Iraq
65	Died from injuries received due to enemy action in An Najaf, Iraq
66	Killed after the truck he was driving in rolled off an embankment about 4:45 a.m. near Fallujah
67	Died in Habbaniyah, Iraq, of non-combat related injuries
68	Died in a non-hostile vehicle accident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq
69	Died due to enemy action in Babil Province, Iraq
70	Died as result of enemy action near Mosul, Iraq
71	Died in Khutayiah, Iraq, when his military vehicle hit an improvised explosive device (near the Syrian border?)

The reader is invited to examine the listed casualty details of every month for himself. But like the listing above, they will confirm that the American casualties have occurred in a limited number of places. Journalist and blogger Jason van Steenwyk, who served in Iraq, says in his post, Hardly Tet, that we should recognize combat operations in Iraq for what they objectively are, neither minimizing nor inflating the estimate.

So six Americans are wounded in Baghdad and the New York Times thinks the sky is falling. ... I hate to break it to Andrew Sullivan, who seems to be losing heart. But this looks like a status quo to me. ...

Not very effective stuff. Here's what "increasing sophistication" would look like:

American armored vehicles are being damaged or destroyed not with suicide bombers--which are by definition a "fire and forget" weapon system--but with volley-fired RPG-18s supported by skillfully employed automatic weapons covering their flanks and withdrawal routes.

American convoys running into modern anti-tank mines on a regular basis (as opposed to mortar shells set up as IEDs.) These mines are made more effective by an obstacle plan, and the IED ambushes are supported by automatic weapons and Dragonov sniper fire. Reinforcement units are hit.

Mortar fire is not random, but somehow manages to consistently land close to US mortar and artillery positions, headquarters buildings, and fuel and ammo storage areas. When an American convoy is attacked, insurgents manage to drop a curtain of mortar rounds along the withdrawal routes between the Americans and the insurgents. The enemy begins to seek direct fire engagements with Americans from positions of advantage, finds them, and sustains them for more than 15 minutes. American tanks are destroyed by Milan, Dragon, Sagger, or similar 2nd generation anti-tank missiles, from the flanks or rear.

While these figures do not address all of its dimensions, I hope they provide some objective basis for bounding claims that are made. Based on the pattern of casualties, it is hard to reach the conclusion that Iraq is descending into anarchy or that the resistance is spreading uncontrollably. If that were true we would be seeing a different distribution of casualties. Combat in Iraq is complex politico-military phenomenon. Some aspects of the psychology and politics are covered in the CSIS Report. I hope to move onto other aspects tomorrow.

The End

The Washington Post has run an article which practically humiliates CBS and Dan Rather. It begins with a repudiation of the Killian memos by the 60 Minutes chief document expert, Marcel Matley. The Post then pronounces on the documents themselves: they are fake.

A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.

The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word.

It continues unmercifully by citing the evidence of electronic typesetting expert Joseph M. Newcomer who declares "I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake". The Washington Post goes on to detail numerous factual and formatting errors in the CBS documents, mentioning among other things, word processing characteristics, wrong addresses, styles, inconsistencies in dates before introducing the additional repudiation of key 60 Minutes source Bobby Hodges. Deserted by its original document expert, CBS is then reported to rely on a new consultant called Bill Glennon who says 'IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents' before admitting that he was 'not a document expert, could not vouch for the memos' authenticity and only examined them online because CBS did not give him copies when asked to visit the network's offices.'  To set against poor Mr. Glennon, the Post enters the contradictory testimony of the Adobe Company into the lists.

Thomas Phinney, program manager for fonts for the Adobe company in Seattle, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font, disputed Glennon's statement to CBS. He said "fairly extensive testing" had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the CBS documents could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths.

It is an unmerciful public flogging; the kind one would not wish upon a donkey. Whether or not Stanley Kurtz's theory (see the previous post) is correct, it is hard to see how CBS can maintain their story a single day longer.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Stanley Kurtz at the National Review is attempting to understand why CBS will not admit using forgeries as the basis of a 60 Minutes story even when overwhelming evidence of their  fraudulence is staring them in the face. His theory is that a market segment of liberals now make up the bulk of CBS's audience and it must please them at any price.

The divisions in the country are too strong. What's more, the cycle of division is self-reinforcing. First came the of the movements of the 60s. Then the media was captured by the Left. Then the conservatives started to exit, building up alternative outlets as they went. As the fundamental cultural and political issues dividing the country sharpened, more and more people started flooding to the alternative media. This self-selection process began to turn the mainstream audience into a self-consciously liberal audience. So even as complaints about liberal media bias escalated, the mainstream media was bound to become more liberal, not less liberal -- because that's what was happening to its audience. What all this means is that, given its audience, CBS News is no longer concerned about preserving it reputation for fairness. On the contrary, CBS now wants and needs to preserve its reputation for liberalism.

If Kurtz's theory is correct, then outlets like CBS are in the process of offering liberalism a cup of poison. The function of news is to provide its readership with reliable information about their own society and the events that effect it. It gives readers a way of determining effects so they can alter causes. But any information system which throws data quality checks overboard or worse, inserts fraudulent data into its stores, is creating a catastrophe for its consumers. It is axiomatic in database applications that it is better to have no data than the wrong data. By insisting on the authenticity of fraudulent documents, CBS is asserting that it is better to have wrong data than no data.

The consequences of that policy -- if Kurtz is right -- will be soon in coming. No corporation or military force can long subsist on a diet of fraudulent data because information consumers will inevitably make wrong decisions. This is traditionally what happens to dictators surrounded by toadies and sycophants. When defeat comes, they are the last to know. This danger of refusing to face the inconvenient is an equal threat to conservatives and indeed, to groups of any ideology. But conservatives have been protected from self-deception, to a certain extent, by the monumentally lucky decision to exit the Mainstream Media and create alternative outlets based on the Internet. Glenn Reynolds provides the key insight.

The Internet, on the other hand, is a low-trust environment. Ironically, that probably makes it more trustworthy.

That's because, while arguments from authority are hard on the Internet, substantiating arguments is easy, thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks. And, where things aren't linkable, you can post actual images. You can spell out your thinking, and you can back it up with lots of facts, which people then (thanks to Google, et al.) find it easy to check. And the links mean that you can do that without cluttering up your narrative too much, usually, something that's impossible on TV and nearly so in a newspaper.

(This is actually a lot like the world lawyers live in -- nobody trusts us enough to take our word for, well, much of anything, so we back things up with lots of footnotes, citations, and exhibits. Legal citation systems are even like a primitive form of hypertext, really, one that's been around for six or eight hundred years. But I digress -- except that this perhaps explains why so many lawyers take naturally to blogging).

You can also refine your arguments, updating -- and even abandoning them -- in realtime as new facts or arguments appear. It's part of the deal.

This also means admitting when you're wrong. And that's another difference. When you're a blogger, you present ideas and arguments, and see how they do. You have a reputation, and it matters, but the reputation is for playing it straight with the facts you present, not necessarily the conclusions you reach. And a big part of the reputation's component involves being willing to admit you're wrong when you present wrong facts, and to make a quick and prominent correction.

Viewed from this angle, it is easy to see the role the alternative media has played in the conservative movement. As a "mouthpiece" or "propaganda organ" the Internet is, as Stanely Kurtz points out, still largely inferior to the Mainstream Media. But as an organ of accurately understanding the world, it is vastly superior. This has allowed conservatives to outmaneuver liberals time and again, to understand, for example, that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq were Vietnam; to see that the United Nations was a sham, among other things. In many ways the Mainstream Media is a liability to the liberal cause, a profoundly effective way of deceiving themselves. The Killian memos are fakes. "And that's part of our world."

Modern Times

With the New York Times reporting that a key 60 Minutes source has turned on CBS, their earlier decision to "stand by their story" has doubled a bet on a losing hand. Retired General Bobby Hodges of the Texas Air National Guard repudiated the documents which CBS said he would corroborate.

Sept. 11 - A former National Guard commander who CBS News said had helped convince it of the authenticity of documents raising new questions about President Bush's military service said on Saturday that he did not believe they were genuine. The commander, Bobby Hodges, said in a telephone interview that network producers had never showed him the documents but had only read them to him over the phone days before they were featured Wednesday in a "60 Minutes" broadcast. After seeing the documents on Friday, Mr. Hodges said, he concluded that they were falsified.

Worse, Hodges virtually accused the network of deceptive journalism. Commenting on the process through which he was interviewed, "Mr. Hodges, 74, who was group commander of Mr. Bush's squadron in the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Field in Houston in the early 1970's, said that when someone from CBS called him on Monday night and read him documents, 'I thought they were handwritten notes.'" They were not; they were supposedly typewritten notes which may now turn out to be forgeries prepared on Word for Windows.

CBS's last hope had been to show that Colonel Killian -- whose wife maintains did not type -- prepared the documents on an IBM Selectric or Composer. Those probabilities took a dive now that experimental attempts to reproduce the document on such equipment have failed. Worse, Computer Science Professor Robert Cartwright of Rice University (hat tip: Hugh Hewitt) shows that the variable letter spacing based on the adjacency of letters found in CBS's documents was computationally impossible on any mechanical device available in 1973. Modern word processing processing programs, like Microsoft Word, contain information in the font definition which, for example, tuck a small "i" under the overhang of a capital "T". No mechanical typewriter then available could do this.

... in 1971, even the most powerful available computer systems were not equipped to produce documents like the Killian documents. In Fall 1971, I entered graduate school in Computer Science at Stanford. I soon gravitated to the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which had the most powerful time-sharing system (a PDP-10) on campus. In either 1972 or 1973, Xerox gave the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory a prototype xerographic printer called a "Xerox Graphics Printer (XGP)". Two similar prototypes were given to the MIT Computer Science Department and the Carnegie-Mellon Computer Science Department. The programming staff at the Stanford AI Laboratory was thrilled with the gift because it was the first opportunity that computer science research community had to develop software to support printer quality type-setting. The three Computer Science Departments cooperated in developing the word processing programs to support the XGP. I wrote my first published research paper and my doctoral disseration using the XGP in Spring 1976. It would take another decade before comparable word processing systems were available to most computer science researchers on minicomputers running Unix. It would take nearly another decade before they were widely used on personal computers.

The typed text in the "Killian memos" is kerned (check out letter combinations like "fo" and "fe"), but the (IBM) Composer text is clearly not. Kerning is a computationally complex task beyond the capacity of any mechanical typewriter--even one as expensive and elaborate as the IBM Selectric Composer.

The CBS attempt to escape the kill zone and regain the offensive on the Bush National Guard story appears to have failed. By clutching the faked documents closer to the center of their story they may have effectively destroyed their own expose. But the true magnitude of the catastrophe is hinted at by the Los Angeles Times. In an article entitled No Disputing It: Blogs Are Major Players, Peter Wallsten says:

These days, CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his colleagues at the network's magazine program "60 Minutes II" are enduring an unusual wave of second-guessing by some of the public and fellow journalists. For that, they can thank "Buckhead." It was a late-night blog posting by this mystery Net-izen that first questioned the validity of documents Rather cited Wednesday as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago.

Although the article half-humorously suggests "Buckhead" is actually Karl Rove, "Buckhead" maintains he acted alone. "But once I posted the comment to Free Republic I was no longer working alone, and that is the real point of the story about the story about the story." The real catastrophe for CBS is that Killian incident is probably not an isolated setback so much as proof that maneuvers which worked in the past can no longer be attempted with impunity. The equivalent of the longbow had arrived on the media scene. When the longbow was first deployed on the European battlefield, it was obviously a formidable weapon.

Such was the power of the Longbow, that contemporary accounts claim that at short range, an arrow fired from it could penetrate 4 inches of seasoned oak. The armored knight, considered at one time to be the leviathan of the battlefield, could now be felled at ranges up to 200 yards by a single arrow. One account recalls a knight being pinned to his horse by an arrow that passed through both armored thighs, with the horse and saddle between!

But it was long years before it was taken seriously. After all, mounted cavalry was the aristocratic weapon and the longbow that of the despised yeomen, the medieval equivalent of bloggers in their pajamas. It took Crecy, Poitiers and finally Agincourt to bring home the fact that the longbow threat was real. As the Christian Science Monitor remarked:

The English longbow plied by yeomen ended the military power and social reign of knights. "Shining" armor fell to a taut string, a cured piece of wood, and a tipped arrow. The military dynamic of the Middle Ages - knight, squire, and armorer - ceased.

It did not bring an end to history: a new dynamic replaced the old, but an era had passed.

---

Update via Roger Simon. Joseph Newcomer, one of the pioneers of desktop publishing, analyzes the Killian memos and pronounces them fake. He does not outright deny the computational possibility of producing the Killian memos, given then-prototype equipment and esoteric skills, but merely invokes Occam's Razor to pronounce them utterly improbable. Newcomer's conclusion is:

So we have the following two hypotheses contending for describing the memos

• Attempts to recreate the memos using Microsoft Word and Times New Roman produce images so close that even taking into account the fact that the image we were able to download from the CBS site has been copied, scanned, downloaded, and reprinted, the errors between the "authentic" document and a file created by anyone using Microsoft word are virtually indistinguishable.
• The font existed in 1972; there were technologies in 1972 that could, with elaborate effort, reproduce these memos, and these technologies and the skills to use them were used by someone who, by testimony of his own family, never typed anything, in an office that for all its other documents appears to have used ordinary monospaced typewriters, and therefore this unlikely juxtaposition of technologies and location coincided just long enough to produce these four memos on 04-May-1972, 18-May-1972, 01-August-1972, and 18-August-1973.

Which one do you think is true? Which one would a 13th-century philosopher think made sense? How many totally unlikely other juxtapositions are expected to be true? How could anyone believe these memos are other than incompetent forgeries?

BTW, I think the phrase "computational possibility" in this context means being able to produce the Killian document from an initial state (typewriter, fonts, hammers, tweezers, etc) given a set of instructions, however long but finite, using the standard operations available on the equipment. The idea is that the the computation "stops" at some point and spits out the Killian document with1973-available operations. Newcomer is saying that a suitable set of such instructions exists but is surpassingly unlikely to have occured to Colonel Killian or anyone in his circumstances.

Escaping the Kill Zone

Dan Rather's defense (courtesy of Glenn Reynolds) of his 60 Minutes accusations against the Bush National Guard record, coupled with this CBS Press Release (hat tip: Roger Simon) may indicate the direction in which story is developing. When caught in an ambush the first two rules are to exit the kill zone and lay down a curtain of return fire so you can make your getaway. Both the Rather interview and the CBS Press Release suggest that the network is trying to move the controversy onto broader grounds. They will refocus the question onto George Bush's National Guard record and will support it with evidence -- interviews, collateral research etc -- that their opponents have had little access to -- and therefore be unable to criticize. In particular, Dan Rather listed out four questions which are probably going to be the strongpoints of the new redoubt: the most important are whether GWB disobeyed a direct order, whether he performed to standard, whether he made his physical.

By leaving the kill zone of fonts, kerning and proportional spacing and rallying on their new position CBS achieves two things. The near effective fire raining down on them will be transformed into far ineffective fire, simply because its Internet critics will need a whole 12 hours to start raising new questions about the additional CBS allegations. By covering their repositioning with intensified attacks on GWB they will with any luck, restart a stalled story and reclaim the offensive.

There are two dangers, both to the attacker and the defender, arising from this situation. The first is that CBS' Internet critics will run into a kill zone of their own. CBS is likely to present its bastions hoping for their opponents to expend themselves on its strongest points. It's important to realize as a tactical matter, that some aspects of the CBS story might be true. It's unlikely to be entirely false. No fraud, however egregious, is ever without some modicum of credibility, although the importance of the subject matter is questionable. But the danger to the defender is even more grievous. I suspect that the bastions that CBS will shelter behind will have chinks whose existence they never even suspected. They are, after all, being forced into a relatively hasty displacement. Something will be forgotten. The pursuit is close on their heels and they may not shut the door behind them. The closest devil behind them is the charge that CBS obtained the documents from the DNC. Any CBS-nik caught outside the defensive perimeter will be raked over the coals on this, therefore they are likely to restrict authorized comment on this matter to make sure the action is kept in-perimeter.

The one factor remaining outside CBS's control is the asymmetrical configuration of its opponents. Baldly put, any Internet source can afford to be discredited by CBS but not vice versa. One leaker and 60 Minutes is in the kill zone all over again. Interesting times.

The Shot Heard Round the World

The echoes of the big Internet bang which annihilated a 60 Minutes story in under 12 hours are still resounding. The key riffs apparently started at the FreeRepublic and Powerline and as Samizdata notes, the distributed intelligence of the Internet took over. Under the scrutiny of thousands of analysts, the CBS story began to melt down. The idea that the intellectual resources of a major news agency are always superior to the blogosphere is given by lie by citing these two separate lines of analysis which, though proceeding from different starting points, both led to the conclusion that the documents which Dan Rather relied on to question the Bush National Guard record were faked. Donald Sensing's analysis was grounded in a familiarity with military documents.

The two memos refer to a flight physical and a flight review board, both IAW ("in accordance with") AFM 35-13. But that would stand for "Air Force Manual" 35-13, and manuals are guidelines only. They have no regulatory authority. No one takes a physical exam, flight or not, IAW a manual. ...

So I went there and discovered, sure enough, that there was an Air Force Regulation 35-13, but no AF Manual 35-13 is listed. AFR 35-13 was superceded in 1990 by AFI36-2605 (Air Force Instruction, i.e., the same as a regulation). So I Googled AFI36-2605 and voilá! Here it is. This instruction implements Air Force Policy Directive 36-26, Military Force Management, and Department of Defense Instruction (DODI) 7280.3, Special Pay for Foreign Language Proficiency. It prescribes all procedures for administering the Air Force Military Personnel Testing System and Foreign Language Proficiency Pay (FLPP) program. Which is to say, this publication has nothing to do with flight physicals.

From all this I conclude that the Killian-signed documents are forgeries, forged by someone without a very good knowledge of military correspondence or Air Force publications or procedures. Based on the Air Force's own online library of current and obsolete publications, I conclude that there never was an Air Force Manual 35-13, although there was an AF Regulation by that number. But a lieutenant colonel would never have made such a fundamental error as using "AFM" twice when he meant AFR.

As TV lawyers would say, the documents were fake because there was no Air Force Manual 35-13 and it had nothing to do with physical examinations. The analysis of Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, on the other hand, was based on the technical characteristics of the 60 Minutes documents themselves. He convincingly showed that the 1973 document was produced on Word for Windows by the simple expedient of "proof by construction" -- by exactly duplicating the document in Winword and superimposing both using Photoshop. Poor Kevin Drum dismissed these demonstrations by arguing from authority. "Powerline appears to be the central clearinghouse for amateur discussion of typefaces, terminology, signatures, etc. For what it's worth, I spoke to someone a few minutes ago who's familiar with how the documents were vetted, and the bottom line is that CBS is very, very confident that the memos are genuine."

Here was the dismissal of amateurs in favor of the genuine CBS branded product. But in fact it was doubtful that the "experts" at CBS stood a ghost of a chance against the "amateurs" who ripping their story apart. Here's was Charles Johnson's matter of fact reply.

I actually received two emails from people questioning my expertise to examine and criticize the documents shown in the entries immediately below. Can you believe it? So here’s the skinny.

I’ve been involved with desktop publishing software and scalable software fonts (as opposed to hot lead type) almost since their inception. I’m a former West Coast editor of a popular computer magazine for a now-orphaned computer, the Atari ST/TT. I also co-owned a software publishing firm, CodeHead Technologies, for whom I designed and laid out packaging and manuals for more than a dozen products (in addition to developing most of those products, using 680x0 assembly language). We used a combination of DTP and traditional typesetting techniques for these jobs, and I cut my teeth on some of the first serious DTP software ever created for personal computers—including Aldus Pagemaker and Aldus Freehand on the Mac, and less recognizable titles available for Atari computers (anyone still using Calamus or Pagestream out there?).

My software company also marketed a word processing program (Calligrapher, written by a developer in Britain) that had the ability to import and use Postscript Type 1 fonts. And I had early experience with some of the dinosaur-like dedicated word processors that were available in the 70s/80s. I’m not boasting like this just to pump up my lizardoid ego; it’s to let you know that I have an extensive background in these subjects—and when I tell you that there’s no way the CBS News documents were created on any machine available in 1972/1973, I ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.

While there is no doubt that there are competent professionals at CBS News, how many of them have extensive experience in the arcana of military forms or writing DTP software in assembler? None of this is to argue that the mainstream media is always wrong or that the blogosphere will always be right. Blogs, including this one, are often wrong. But there is no reason why bloggers should ipso facto be dismissed as amateur analysts when compared to the Mainstream Media (MSM). The traditional news model is collapsing. It suffers from two defects. The "news object" can no longer be given sealed attributes in newspaper backrooms. The days when the press was the news object foundry are dying. Second, the news industry is suffering from its lack of analytic cells, which are standard equipment in intellgence shops. Editors do some analysis but their focus is diluted by their attention to style and the craft of writing. The blogosphere and other actors, now connected over the Internet, are filling in for the missing analytic function. And although the news networks still generate, via their reporters, the bulk of primary news, they generate a pitiful amount of competent analysis. Put another way, the classic media outlet generates data and entertainment but they don't generate much information. Because of this, the MSM will stumble into these pitfalls time and again. The Andrew Gilligan and Jayson Blair fiascos were indicators that something was really wrong, but no one was listening then. Maybe there is no point to listening now.

Updates and Corrections

Donald Sensing writes to say there really was an AFM 35-13, whose existence he previously doubted. However, he stands by his stylistic criticisms of the 60 Minutes text.

Update, 9-10: It seems there really was an AFM 35-13 after all. Scott Forbes comment-linked to a page that reproduces orders from 1970 that cite AFM 35-13. Also, Cecil Turner comments about how a manual could be relevant to this matter.

---

I've altered the post to give due credit to the Freepers. I was behind the curve and actually didn't know about Powerline's role and if you look at my previous post, Signatures, the FreeRepublic is credited with no mention of Powerline. When I found most sources crediting Powerline with starting the meme I figured I had shafted those folks. Now it turns out that the FreeRepublic has a timestamp edge on Powerline (see the comments section of this post). But there is honor enough to go around. Special mention must go, in their own ways, to people like Charles Johnson, Donald Sensing, Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds who by all accounts rose from the dentist's chair, and Roger Simon and many more that I don't know. Posters and commentators on the blogs kept the meme going. I slept through most of it.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks 
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

My manhood is cheap anyway, but still I am glad to have witnessed how well the Everyman fought upon this Crispin Crispian's day.

Signatures

The buzz currently ripping through the blogosphere is over the authenticity of the documents used by CBS' 60 Minutes to question George Bush's National Guard service. The principal charge is that the documents, which date from the 1970s, are in New Times Roman using the default kerning and spacing of Microsoft Word. The problem is that Microsoft Word would not have existed at the time the disputed documents would have been prepared. Roger Simon, Little Greenfootballs, Hugh Hewitt and the FreeRepublic have been all over this story. Indeed, they may have been responsible for it. Crucially, ABC News (the mainstream media) has published a story questioning the veracity of the 60 Minutes documents. However, they do not base their doubts on the physical characteristics of the disputed documents.

DALLAS Sept. 9, 2004 — The authenticity of newly unearthed memos stating that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote the memos. "I am upset because I think it is a mixture of truth and fiction here," said Gary Killian, son of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

News reports have said the memos, first obtained by CBS's "60 Minutes II," were found in Jerry Killian's personal records. Gary Killian said his father wasn't in the habit of bringing his work home with him, and that the documents didn't come from the family.

CBS stood by its reporting. "As a standard practice at CBS, each of the documents broadcast on "60 Minutes" was thoroughly investigated by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity," CBS News said in a statement.

The velocity with which the doubts of a few bloggers have turned into a breaking story (ABC News) provides the drama. But far more dangerous to CBS are the forensics experts, such as those being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, who are raising technical questions about the journalistic facts outside the traditional media's gatekeeper function. Whether the CBS documents are authentic or not, it is doubtful whether they can loftily ignore these critcisms, any more than they could Swiftvets. They have to meet these technical questions head-on. May the truth win out.

Delete from TbPerps  Where ...  

Here's a snippet from the Strategy Page with a buried nugget: a battlefield account of terrorists fighting a virtual enemy. In describing the never-ending strikes against targets in Fallujah, it describes the ongoing operation in a curious way:

U.S. troops maintain databases of who they are fighting, the better to pick targets for raids or surveillance. ... Daily, the smart bombs blow apart houses used by the gangs for housing, headquarters or ammo dumps. The gangs have become very paranoid, believing there are spies everywhere. They are correct, but some of the most revealing spies are unreachable. Above Fallujah, U.S. warplanes and UAVs circle constantly, able to clearly view what is below, day or night. The telescopic bomb sights allow pilots to see what kind of weapon people are carrying, or whether women and children are in a crowd. The gangs have learned to never gather in large groups, at least not without plenty of women and children nearby for protection. But that doesn’t always work, for the AC-130 gunships can kill a man without harming someone ten feet away. The gangs fear that the American troops are coming back to Fallujah, and they are right. The not-so-secret plan is to go back in before the end of the year, kill all gang members that can be found, and then turn the city over to Iraqi troops, composed mostly of Shia and Kurds.

For the insurgents, the real enemy, the brain that pulls the trigger, is an abstract structure called a database. It tracks links between individuals, noting not only who knows who, but who is subordinate to whom. For example, A may have two subordinates, B and C. E and F may report to B and so on. Theoretically, you can store all this in a single narrow, but long table that looks like this:

Self-join

Some sample data would look like this. When you unrolled it, you'd have a network of nodes which indicated the relationship between operatives that you are fighting. There would be multiple paths to most nodes, though the highly protected masterminds would have only a few, for security reasons.

PerpID	Name	Reports To
1	Big Cheese	1
2	IED Setter	1
3	Runner	1
4	IED Detonator	2

This simple structure conceals a number of difficulties. The principal one is that the data in the foreign key column (Reports To) is changing all the time. People move within an organization and report to different people over time. They are tasked differently from one day to the next. A terrorists "boss" and "subordinates" will change, just our work relationships change. Since the relationship, or association determines where the JDAM falls, choosing your friends in Fallujah is an important task. From the enemy's point of view every connection is fraught with danger. Hook up your network to the wrong guy and you sleep with the fishes. But the worst aspect of it is that killing individual US soldiers doesn't really solve anything unless you can take apart the system that is feeding information into the databases.

In this circumstance, many of the traditional military metrics are totally upset. Weight of firepower, that is the amount of tonnage your attack aircraft can carry, becomes an irrelevant factor. The hard constraint is information. You are limited by your database. After reading the Strategy Page, I'll never look at a DB engine as an innocent object ever again.

The CSIS Report

Andrew Sullivan links to a Center for Strategic and International Studies report on reconstruction in Iraq, which he characterizes as follows:

Going backward in Iraq? That's part of the extremely depressing message from the latest CSIS report on the liberation. Reconstruction is pitiful; the Shi'a and Sunni insurgencies remain intact; there is growing restlessness in the north. I don't think CSIS has an ax to grind; and their report is chock-full of data and interviews and on-the-ground reporting. It seems to me that the question of how we turn things around should be the most important question of the campaign. And yet it's barely mentioned.

The first thing to realize about the report is that it is an attempt to capture a state of mind. It does not attempt to measure things like GNP, hospital beds available or miles of concreted roads. Toward this end, the authors of the study attempted to measure Iraqi attitudes in five areas which they deemed essential to "jumpstarting" a successful democratic nation: security, governance, economic opportunity, services and social-well being. "Our focus on trends rather than particular events or inputs was deliberate: we wanted to move away from the idea of nation building, in favor of nation jumpstarting. Reconstruction efforts should be a catalytic process, centered on developing institutions and programs that move a country in the right direction." (page 22). "We developed the rating scale discussed above to measure Iraqis’ perceptions and satisfaction in these five areas, based on an adaptation of Dr. Abraham Maslow’s humanistic psychological theory of a hierarchy of human needs." (page 24)

Based on this measured state of mind, the report's authors hoped to say something meaningful about a "tipping point" which is notionally where the Iraqis can take over for themselves. "The tipping point is often viewed as a take-off point, ... a break-even point, at which a struggling nation can take over running things itself and be reasonably successful." To avoid cherry-picking paragraphs to support a conclusion, the best summary of the report would be a verbatim recital from its own findings (page 32). Here they are:

"I take it that rebuilding Iraq faces two stages: a terrible stage and eventually a very successful one." In many ways, this quote is reflective of the current state of play in Iraq, at least as Iraqis seem to see it. Iraqis are enormously frustrated with the pace of reconstruction and the state of affairs across most of the five sectors we examined, with social wellbeing a possible exception. Yet, they are not willing to write off the possibility that things will turn around. With the exception of Kirkuk residents, most do not take seriously the possibility that Iraq could descend into civil war, pointing out that there has never been one in the past.

Although Iraqis we interviewed as part of this project express optimism in virtually every area of the reconstruction, the quotes taken from interviews are often critical or negative. One explanation for this, according to our researchers, is that Iraqis actually expect less out of the reconstruction process than is generally assumed. They have lived through a terrible government, and they did not expect much better from the CPA. Because their expectations are low, they are more optimistic about meeting them.

The area by area assessment of each area is given below, again verbatim (pages 12-13).

Security continues to be the predominant issue, hampering reconstruction efforts on all other fronts. Crime is rampant, and, along with fears of bombings, militias’ roadblocks, banditry on the highways, and regular kidnappings, continues to impact Iraqis’ ability to go about their daily lives with any semblance of normalcy. Iraqis are well disposed toward their own security forces and clearly want them to play the leading role in bringing stability to the country, but those forces are still not up to the task. Iraqis have little confidence in U.S. and other international forces.

Governance and Participation is a largely negative picture, despite a slight boost in optimism related to the June 28 transfer of sovereignty. Iraqis are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the January elections but otherwise remain starkly pessimistic about governance and participation issues. Most are willing to give their government a chance, although they continue to question its credibility. Corruption is rampant, and there are worrisome trends in terms of protection of women’s and minority rights and religious freedom. Kurds showed surprisingly negative results on governance; they are frustrated with their own political parties and wary about protection of Kurdish interests by a new Iraqi government. U.S. efforts have been overly focused on national level politics and central government institutions. Efforts to develop local and regional political bodies have not been adequately backed up by the resources and technical assistance that would meaningfully empower decentralized governance institutions.

The continuing lack of Economic Opportunity and high levels of unemployment impact reconstruction in other sectors, fueling security problems and leading to entrenched frustration and anger at the occupying forces. Iraq’s perceived wealth sustains Iraqis’ positive view of the future, but security problems continue to undermine oil production and export. Unemployment continues to overshadow the U.S.-driven macroeconomic reform efforts and salary increases for Iraq’s civil servants. Iraqis currently have a negative view of job availability, and those who choose to work for foreign companies or in Iraq’s security forces face serious security risks.

Iraqis remain unhappy with the level of Services they are receiving. The lack of sufficient electricity in major cities continues to undermine public confidence, fueling worrisome discontent in cities like Falluja and Mosul, which were favored under Saddam and now receive considerably less power than in prewar days. Sewage systems are worse than they were under Saddam, causing spillover health and environmental problems. There is a wide gap between the level of services actually being provided (at least, according to U.S. government sources) and Iraqis’ perception that services are inadequate.

Social Well-Being has seen significant improvement in terms of access to education and health care, although there has been a downward trend in recent months. There was an initial boost in the education sector with thousands of schools rebuilt and children returning to school, but this has been countered in recent months by Iraqi frustration at the lack of longer-term, sustainable efforts in the education sector. There are signs that Iraqi children continue to drop out of school at high rates in order to work and help supplement the family income. The health care sector has suffered due to Iraq’s security problems and inadequate basic services. Militias’ roadblocks and highway banditry hinder access to and supplies for medical care, and the lack of a functioning sewage system has led to an increase in water-borne diseases.

Having laid out what the report objectively says by quoting it, I will lay out my subjective analysis of the report in three sentences. If anyone is hoping Iraq will become an infamous, unmitigated catastrophe, don't hold your breath. This report does not predict it. If anyone is hoping that America will be able to leave Iraq in a couple of years to the tune of brass bands marching over a carpet of strewn flowers, don't hold your breath either.

In the key area of security, the authors state that everyone says it's getting better, but that's not what they mean. On page 35 the report says.

Iraq has not reached the tipping point in this sector, meaning the average Iraqi cannot yet say “I travel throughout my community, avoiding only areas that are known to be dangerous.” The data collected in this sector is largely negative, with a lower percentage of positive data points than in the other four sectors we reviewed. Unlike most of the other sectors, which have at least shown some initial progress since the fall of Saddam, security has been static, not showing a clear trend-line in any direction (see Graph 2). Moreover, there is little variance among sources in this sector, with the exception of the interviews, which reflected more positive results than any of the other sources (see Graph 3). At the same time, the more positive interview results appear to be an initial reaction to recent events such as the formal end of the occupation and the pullout of U.S. forces from Falluja in the late spring.

Well here are Graphs 2 and 3. Graph 2 measures indicators which are judged to have a static trend. Graph 3 shows Iraqis polling that security is improving but this conclusion is discounted as an initial euphoria over the transfer of power.

Graph 2	Static trends
Graph 3	Positive perception trends in security ... but discounted

Let's examine the report's look into security in a little bit more detail. "Iraqi Security Force Capacity Iraqis throughout the country have reacted positively to the heightened presence of Iraqi police officers and the ICDC, optimistic that they will ultimately gain the upper hand in dealing with crime and the public safety situation generally." (page 37).  "Although they tend to express optimism in their security forces, Iraqis’ daily lives are profoundly affected by the security environment, both by high crime and the ongoing insurgency." (page 38) But this is discounted because "the data we collected suggests that Iraqis have had to alter their daily activities because of security concerns. Thus, shop owners have started to close their businesses earlier and girls’ school attendance is down because parents do not want their daughters to go outside the home. The dire security situation seems to be impacting women and girls disproportionately, with girls largely confined to their homes with the exception of going to school." (page 38) However "Iraqi men will still leave their homes, even in the midst of a live battle, in order to get to work or attend to the family’s needs." (page 38). On the all-important matter of the insurgency, the report reaches no hard conclusions. One interesting tidbit is the wide variance, by a factor of 3 to 7 between "official" insurgent casualties and "unofficial" tolls. (pages 39-40)

The three-week relative calm in Iraq after the United States transferred power to Iraq’s interim government on June 28, 2004 provided a fleeting moment of hope that perhaps the insurgency would die down with the formal end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. A resurgence of violence quickly belied this hope. Active fighting, bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings continue to dominate the daily news coverage of Iraq and show no signs of abating. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the data collected on the insurgency is its constancy. U.S. government and military sources tend to focus on how many Iraqi insurgents have been killed by U.S. forces, estimates of numbers of insurgents, or numbers of attacks on U.S. forces. This input driven data almost seems to exist in a vacuum, unrelated to the persistence of the insurgency and its continued effect on daily life in Iraq, in particular on the high numbers of Iraqi civilians who have been killed in its wake. Senior U.S. officials continue to estimate the number of insurgents at around 5,000, although these are far off from the 15,000-35,000 totals quoted by Iraqi and U.S. intelligence officials. It is still unknown exactly how much of the insurgency represents terrorists who have flooded across Iraq’s open borders, and how directly those terrorists are working with the Iraqi insurgency.

Although in the immediate aftermath of the war, the insurgency focused on attacking U.S. forces and Iraqi infrastructure, massive bombing attacks that have disproportionately impacted Iraqi civilians began late last summer and have continued since then. The insurgency’s focus also shifted early on to targeting Iraqis seen as collaborating with the U.S.-led occupying authority, including Iraqi police officers and government officials. Those attacks have continued since the transfer of power, and the insurgency now seems to be aimed at anyone, Iraqi or foreigner, who is linked to Iraq’s interim government or efforts to support that government. Moreover, sabotage of Iraq’s key infrastructure, particularly oil pipelines and the power grid, has continued in force, undermining economic reconstruction efforts.

The insurgency will continue to be the dominant security issue for Iraqis and the United States in Iraq, and it shows no signs of easing in the near-term. Iraq’s interim government seems to have a two-pronged strategy for dealing with the insurgency— approving the U.S. use of heavy force to go after insurgents while also trying to entice or co-opt the insurgents to join the political mainstream—but it is too early to determine the plan’s effectiveness.

Personally, I think the CSIS report is putting the most conservative possible face on the data, "talking it down" so to speak, which might be justified because it is better to err on the side of caution than over-optimism, to prepare for the worst instead of hoping for the best. But I don't think that any reasonable reading of the data will support a conclusion that there any Groupement Mobile 100s or Dien Bien Phus in the offing.

Whether the glass half-empty or half-full depends on one's perspective of the Iraqi campaign. If it is regarded as a battlezone, a "flypaper" trap for terrorists, in the words of David Warren, then it is a remarkably hospitable battle zone, as these things go. Baghdad is not Grozny. But if it is regarded as a preview of the difficulties that will be encountered in extending the campaign to other terrorist strongholds, it leaves much to be desired. One of the principal conclusions of the CSIS report, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is the pivotal role that Iraqi institutions themselves must play in reaching the "tipping zone". It is not American boots on the ground that constitute the long-term critical resource, but Iraqi ones.

None So Blind

There's a nightmare that recurs to some people where you fall into a dark pond where a ravenous beast is lurking; but friends are at hand. You call out for help and they turn, but with blank faces, and walk away. Roger Simon describes that feeling.

When I first "came out" on this blog as an apostate from the liberal church, I heard a number of old friends and acquaintances whispering, sometimes in front of me and sometimes behind my back, "Poor Roger, he's scared. He got mugged by 9/11." Well, no. I don't scare that easily. I have my share of problems, but unbridled fear isn't one of them. I was angry.

But now I am scared. 9/11 didn't scare me. The Atocha railroad station didn't scare me. The horrors of the Russian schoolhouse didn't even scare me. It was the reaction by many in Europe and in our media to what happened in that school that has me terrified. Sure the Russians have historically brutalized and mistreated the Chechens, but this barbarism was far beyond a reaction to that. It goes to the core of our common humanity. It was a gauntlet thrown down at Western civilization and yet some still choose to look the other way. But if the sight of children being stripped and shot in the back after having had their gymnasium pre-wired with explosives doesn't wake them up, I don't know what will.

The first task in a nightmare is to discover which parts are wholly imaginary and which have real counterparts. In this scenario Roger Simon is real but the "liberal church" from which he expects outrage has now become entirely fictive. Or rather it has faded into non-existence in a positive sense and come into its own in the negative. The only literary character that ever frightened me was Edward Rolles Weston in C.S. Lewis' science-fiction classic Perelandra. Nothing before or since has ever been so horrible as the description of the brilliant Weston being taken over by the evil whose existence he denied. In the story, Weston decides to corrupt an Edenic planet purely as demonstration of intellectual power; an ultimate exercise in vanity. But on the way Weston discovers he cannot hold evil at arm's length, that is become him. The protagonist of Perelandra, Professor Ransom, describes his confrontation with a Weston who has now turned into the Un-Man. Effects are magnified on that alien planet and evil has eaten him out.

'But this is very foolish,' said the Un-Man. 'Do you not know who I am?'

'I know what you are,' said Ransom. 'Which of them doesn't matter.'

'And you think, little one,' it answered, that you can fight with me? You think He will help you, perhaps? Many thought that. I've known Him longer than you, little one. They all think He's going to help them -- till they come to their senses screaming recantations too late in the middle of the fire, moldering in concentration camps, writhing under saws, jibbering in mad-houses, or nailed on to crosses. Could He help Himself?' -- and the creature suddenly threw back its head and cried in a voice so loud that it seemed the golden sky-roof must break, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.'

And the moment it had done so, Ransom felt certain that the sounds it had made were perfect Aramaic of the first century. The Un-Man was not quoting; it was remembering. These were the very words spoken from the Cross, treasured through all those years in the burning memory of the outcast creature which had heard them, and now brought forward in hideous parody; the horror made him momentarily sick.

The Left, having declared itself above the pettiness of all moral belief now finds its emptiness filled by the ugliest and darkest blood-cult on the planet. It was a proud Tower, but its windows are now dark and its rooms filled with old and withered things. Laugh at it. There is nothing left to fear.

The Ring Goes South

The turmoil in the Caucasus may indirectly affect US efforts to contain the imminent Iranian nuclear capability. AFP reports that the United States is studying the deployment of boost phase interceptors (BPI) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia to guard against any potential threat from Teheran.

Sep 05, 2004 -- A key component of national missile defense, whose development is receiving priority this year, is likely to strategically tie the United States to Iraq, Afghanistan and some of the authoritarian former Soviet republics, requiring permanent US military bases there, according to officials and scientists involved in the project. "It raises issues of basing it in places like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or the Caspian Sea," the Rhode Island senator (Jack Reed) told AFP. "And that introduces geopolitical considerations."

While key variables remain unknown, experts agree that if Iran, as expected, produces an intercontinental ballistic missile sometime within the next decade, the United States will not be able to counter it just from ships patrolling the Gulf. "Discussions are underway with international partners on ways in which they may be able to cooperate," replied a defense official when asked whether the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan had already been approached.

Through much of the Cold War the expected missile trajectory would have followed the Polar Route, arcing over Canada into Continental United States. This is no different. What has changed is that Iranian missiles start out a little further south than their Cold War Soviet counterparts. A published analysis of BPI systems by the Congressional Budget Office concludes that an effective intercept would have to take place about 1,500 km (1,000 miles) from the launch point, in the first 320 seconds from firing. The physics requires that BPI engagements occur over Central Asia.

The recent flurry of Islamic terrorist attacks against Russia, notable the Beslan massacre, necessarily means that WMDs in the hands of Jihadis, whether purposely donated or acquired through misadventure, pose as serious a threat to Moscow as anyone else. Nuclear armed Iranian missiles, although controlled by the Mullah's state, would still constitute a potential threat to Russia, if only in the same sense as American weapons during the Cold War, and be met by deterrent measures in the absence of any Russian SDI capability. The irony is that Russia, largely for commercial reasons, has been one of the principal suppliers of nuclear technology to Iran. Since the terrorists who massacred Ossetian schoolchildren may have bribed their way past checkpoints, Putin may wish to reconsider whether it is wise, or even survivable, to do business with the devil.

Ilusha's Stone

This is a holy memory from childhood. It is Dosoevsky's answer to "Pro and Contra", where Ivan argues that the cruelty of the universe disproves the existence of God. In this last chapter from Brothers Karamazov, his brother Alyosha argues that cruelty never prevails and that love never dies. Here is a shortened excerpt from the book which I personally regard as the greatest novel ever written, the only comfort I have in the shadow of Beslan.

---

He really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him. It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilusha's schoolfellows. They had all been impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve of them, they all had their school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. "Father will cry, be with father," Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them.

Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked particularly beautiful, as though chiselled in marble. There were flowers in his hands and the coffin, with flowers, which had been sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and he would not look at anyone, even at his crazy weeping wife, "mamma," who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it and she too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov's face looked eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about his gestures and the words that broke from him. "Old man, dear old man!" he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to call Ilusha "old man," as a term of affection when he was alive.

"Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and give it me," the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the little white rose in Ilusha's hand had caught her fancy or that she wanted one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved restlessly, stretching out her hands for the flower.

"I won't give it to anyone, I won't give you anything," Snegiryov cried callously. "They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his, nothing is yours!"

"Father, give mother a flower!" said Nina, lifting her face wet with tears.

"I won't give away anything and to her less than anyone! She didn't love Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her," the captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given up his cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in noiseless tears, hiding her face in her hands.

The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to lift it up.

"I don't want him to be buried in the churchyard," Snegiryov wailed suddenly; "I'll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to. I won't let him be carried out!" He had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by the stone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all the boys interfered.

At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, "Take him where you will." The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say good-bye to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for the last three days she had only looked at from a distance, she trembled all over and her grey head began twitching spasmodically over the coffin.

"Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing, kiss him," Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she began, without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother's for the last time as they bore the coffin by her. As Alyosha went out of the house he begged the landlady to look after those who were left behind, but she interrupted him before he had finished. ...

"There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him."

They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried, "Father, father, how he insulted you," rose at once before his imagination. A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces of Ilusha's schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:

"Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place."

The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes upon him.

"Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another.

And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kindhearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honour and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune -- still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. My little doves let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember all the same and will agree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men's tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, 'I want to suffer for all men,' and may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become -- which God forbid -- yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruellest and most mocking of us -- if we do become so will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! What's more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, 'Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!' Let him laugh to himself, that's no matter, a man often laughs at what's good and kind. That's only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, 'No, I do wrong to laugh, for that's not a thing to laugh at.'

"We will remember, we will remember," cried the boys. "He was brave, he was good!"

"Ah, how I loved him!" exclaimed Kolya.

"Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!"

The Crossroads

Little public analysis has been devoted to options realistically available to Vladimir Putin in response to the massacre of schoolchildren in Ossetia. The fact is that the world has been spoiled by looking at the world through the prism of the American media. When President Bush stopped to consider his response to September 11, he had a range of options available only to a nation as unimaginably powerful as the United States of America. Japanese newspapers reported that President Bush was offered the nuclear option immediately after the attack, probably as an extreme in a range that included filing a diplomatic protest on the opposite end of the spectrum, which he rejected, choosing instead to do what no other country could do: take down the state sponsors of terrorism and pursue the terrorists to the four corners of the earth. America's unmatched power allowed President Bush to select the most humane course of war available. No European power, nor all of them put together, could have embarked on such a precise campaign for lack of means. It was a rich man's strategy, a guerre de luxe.

But no one who has seen the rags and hodgepodge of equipment issued to the Russian Special Forces can entertain any illusion that Vladimir Putin can go around launching raids with hi-tech helicopters, or follow around perps with robotic drones before firing, or use satellite-guided bombs to wipe out enemy safe houses that have been seeded with RFID chips. Nor will those detained by Russia gain weight the way detainees have done at the "inhuman" Gitmo prison. That's an American way of war which even Europeans can only regard with envy. The poor must respond with less. When the Nepalese saw the video of their 12 compatriots executed by terrorists in Iraq, they did what you could do with a box of matches: they burned the mosque in Kathmandu. To paraphrase Crosby, Stills and Nash, 'if you can't hit the one you should then hit the one you're with'.

While Russia can do better than a box of matches, the reality is that its poverty and low-tech force structure will make any response that Putin may choose a brutal and largely indiscriminate affair unless it is subsumed into the larger American-led Global War on Terror. The real price of the European vacation from history is its abandonment of the first principle of civilization. Unless there is common justice, there will be vigilante justice.

Maintenance Notice

I'll be doing some site maintenance on the Belmont Club. If it looks a little weird for a while, you know why. Phase 1 will be to put all the site links, including the site feed, into a dropdown list. This will free up space to permit me to host reciprocal links, which has been proposed by several sites and which until now was an impossibility due to lack of space.

Among the Tombs

This Associated Press story from Russia contains many details of the recent seizure of schoolchildren by Chechen Islamic terrorists in Russia. It includes a slideshow which doesn't tell you anything you don't know already and nothing you are likely to ever forget. Gore in abundance, but the heart-stopper is a woman in a black dress stooped over the body of her child, rearranging his hair to make him look like the day she saw him last. And then there is this window into the terrorist soul:

Alla Gadieyeva, 24, who was taken captive with her 7-year-old son and mother, said the militants displayed terrifying brutality from the start. One gunman, whose pockets were stuffed with grenades, held up the corpse of a man just shot in front of hundreds of hostages and warned: "If a child utters even a sound, we'll kill another one."

When children fainted from lack of sleep, food and water, their masked and camouflaged captors simply sneered, she said, adding that adults implored children to drink their own urine in the intolerable heat of the gym.

There are reports, like this one from the International Herald Tribune, that some of the terrorists were from Arab countries. "The Federal Security Service chief in North Ossetia, Valery Andreyev, said in the evening that 10 militants killed in gunfights with security forces were from Arab countries, and President Vladimir Putin’s adviser on Chechnya, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, said nine were 'Arab mercenaries.'" It provides us with the kind specificity that is so comforting, as if knowing brought us closer to understanding. Yet for some understanding has been too near at hand, something to evade at any price. It has beckoned to us from the eaves of the dark wood, haunted us in our dreams as a familiar. But we awake determined never to let it see the light of day, lest it shatter our world. We know you, shadow, but dare not speak your name. Dateline Europe: the EU seeks Russian explanation for school siege toll:

Valkenburg, Netherlands, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The European Union asked Russia to explain the bloody end to the siege of a school by Chechen gunmen on Friday with huge loss of life. In a statement in the name of the presidency of the 25-nation EU, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said all countries should work together to prevent such tragedies. "But we also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened," he added.

EU ministers avoided direct criticism of Moscow's handling of the hostage crisis and expressed sympathy with the Russian people and government. ... British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said "terrorists" were to blame for the death toll and declined to comment when asked whether Russian authorities had bungled the chaotic rescue bid.

Have a good weekend

The thing about horror movies is that everyone knows what's going to happen next except for the characters in the film. They go down to investigate strange noises in the basement, look out the door to answer a knock at midnight in their woodsy cabin and venture onto dinosaur-ridden islands without so much as a .22 caliber pistol. And they get chomped. But we in the audience know that real people are smarter than that. Take international diplomats in relation to Darfur. Genocide? No problem. Let's ask the Sudanese government to fix the problem and let the UN help. The Scotsman reports that Sudan has answered "no"; which in English means "nope" and whose alternative definition is "no way".

Sudan will not allow a peacekeeping force to patrol the troubled Darfur region, the country’s foreign minister says, although it might agree to additional peace monitors. ... The Janjaweed Arab militias are blamed for violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 1.2 million to flee their homes in Darfur, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The Sudanese government denies accusations that it backs the militias to put down black African rebel groups that have been fighting government forces since 2003.

Of course we all know, like the horror movie audience, what's going to happen next. The UN will bluster and the genocide will go on. Anyone who disagrees will be branded as a "village idiot", which means lacking in savoire faire. And so we will open the door to the basement. Large parts of Sudan will become chaotic, Mad Max kinds of places, where never is heard a discouraging word and the Al Qaeda are happy all day. It will become a regular factory for the sort of gentlemen who just finished turning a school in Russia into a meatgrinder. The nice thing about the world today is that people can save the money they used to spend for horror movies by watching the news or visiting any of the jihadi websites to see the beheading of the week or things I won't mention because publishing spoilers is a rotten thing to do. Coming soon to a theater near you.

Carnage in Russia

Blogging this as it happens. News breaking just now that terrorists have set off explosives in the gymnasium where from 400 to 1,000 people have been held hostage by Chechen Islamic terrorists. The roof has collapsed, from demolitions charges maybe, probably on the children. Casualties -- there's an antiseptic word -- will be heavy. The terrorists will all be killed, but who gives a damn, they've done their dirty work. The good news is that some children and other people have escaped. These are small mercies. The tactical situation seems confused. A goat rope. Survivors are being taken out on stretchers. Kids almost naked.

OK. Time to think about something I don't know already. I am looking at the future or maybe a future in the offing. But nothing is written. Nothing is written. Swear then by all the children you could not save that the next dead little one will not be yours. Wrong. Swear then that you will defeat them whatever it takes and into whatever hell you must go.

Russian troops in the building now. Cripes. There'll be blue on blue. OK. It'll be over in minutes. We're talking a platoon minus of Chechen terrorists. It can't last long. What did Dylan Thomas say?

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

They were just words.

---

10:44 Zulu

Preliminary is that no containing perimeter was set up, allowing the terrorists to rally in adjacent houses. Firefight still in progress. Maybe the Russians wanted to canalize an escape or give no warning of an impending assault. That's one interpretation. The other is that some incident, misunderstanding or plain accident sent the whole situation up in smoke with the Russians behind the curve. Russian newspapers have been very critical of security services in the past, calling them modern Keystone Cops. The dying isn't over yet, but it's all meaningless: the end is foregone. Till the next time.

---

11:30 Zulu

Interesting take by the NYT on the bloody end to the child hostage situation in Russia. The story concludes:

The violent end to the siege came only hours after Aleksandr S. Dzasokhov, the president of North Ossetia, told hundreds of relatives that the use force was not being considered but that patience was running out. He said that the authorities had turned to Chechnya's separatist leaders to help negotiate a peaceful end to a crisis that has stunned Russia.

Mr. Dzasokhov, meeting with relatives in a social center that would soon reverberated with nearby gunfire and explosions, said he had orders to open a channel to Alsan Maskhadov, the separatist leader who served as Chechnya's president until fleeing invading Russian forces in 1999. Mr. Dzasokhov and Ruslan Aushev, the regional political leader who negotiated the release of 26 women and children on Thursday, both called Mr. Maskhadov's chief representative abroad, Akhmed Zakayev on Thursday evening and again on Friday morning. That reversed the Kremlin's policy never to negotiate with men that President Vladimir V. Putin denounces as terrorists. Mr. Zakayev, who lives in exile in London and is wanted by the Russians on a series of criminal charges that he calls politically motivated, said in a telephone interview that he and Mr. Maskhadov were prepared to assist.

"I assured them that President Maskhadov was as distraught as they were," Mr. Zakayev said only minutes before chaos fell on this city.. "He is ready without any conditions to make all efforts to save these children and resolve this crisis." The contacts with Chechnya's separatist leaders - the first since a fleeting meeting between Mr. Zakayev and a Russian negotiator at a Moscow airport in Nov. 2001 - underscored the evident desperation facing Mr. Putin as heavily armed fighters threatened to kill their hostages, many of them schoolchildren. Even as the siege began on Wednesday morning, Mr. Putin reiterated his vow never to negotiate with terrorists or separatists from Chechnya.

The nascent entreaty, obviously, came too late.

This was written in the heat of the moment, about an hour and a half from the time the fighting broke out. The article looks to contain background material on the ongoing negotiations and reworked into the breaking story. I think it is fair to say the writers believed that if only a peaceful negotiation was allowed to take place then this violent event may never have taken place. We are presented with a laundry list of men of goodwill, never mind that they have records as long as your arm, who were perfectly willing to assist. But their nascent entreaties, alas, came too late.

It would be easy to take a cheap shot at this editorial attitude, but better I think, to let it stand on its own as an exemplar of the alternative view, which let's face it, is sincerely held by persons of a certain persuasion. And why should it not be true? Why can't we all get along? Those who have had some experience in jails or similar institutions know the temptation. Just give in so they'll leave you alone. But you'll find just as many graduates of the school of hard knocks who will swear the opposite: that if you give in, they'll never leave you alone. Most will never know how they will act until they've walked the mile in those shoes. Yet that encapsulates it all. To be or not to be.

Form Follows Function

Dick Morris describes the divisions in Democratic Party platforms over national security issues in an NY Post article. Using Ramussen data, he observes that "Bush voters are united on virtually all the questions that divide the Kerry vote. So Bush can advance his agenda with impunity while taking aim at Kerry voters who are antagonized by their candidate whenever he has to choose a position." Morris proceeds to cite several instances.

One example: Rasmussen asked if Iraq was a part of the War on Terror or a distraction from it. Republicans overwhelmingly said it was integral — by 79-14. But Democrats were divided. Half said it is a distraction — but 36 percent felt it was a key part of the war effort. So what is Kerry to say? Either way, he loses votes. And if he waffles, he strengthens his reputation for flip-flopping. ...

Who is winning the War on Terror? Republicans say we are, 77-10. Democrats divide almost equally, with 33 percent saying America is winning and 42 percent saying the terrorists are gaining the upper hand. So how is Kerry to characterize the war? Say it's a success — and alienate 42 percent of his vote — or call it a failure — and drive away 33 percent?

Morris examines the question from the vantage of a pollster and political adviser, which is his profession. But the more fascinating historical question is why the two parties should have evolved so differently. One possible reason is that the Democrats are more a coalition than a consistent point of view, the proverbial "Big Tent" defined by nonmembership in the the other party. At first glance, this would appear refute the conventional wisdom that the Democrats are the party of the Left but on closer examination better explains how the Left came to thrive in this ecology. The characteristic of coalitions, or "national united fronts" as they are known abroad, is that they can be more easily manipulated by a minority cadre of activists. That was historically true of Bolshevik-led movements and may be why the Islamic extremists can dominate the agenda of Islam, which unlike Roman Catholicism has no hierarchical clerical structure. If ideological extremism has a natural home, it will be in the midst of the lost.

The Republican mystery is deeper still because unlike the Democrats they were not (if one excludes neoconservatives) believed to have any articulated ideology. To some extent, one became a Republican before joining the party. But however that may be, as Dick Morris demonstrates, America has entered the 21st century with two parties: one with a remarkably united vision of what it wants and the other searching for an answer -- after it searches for the question.

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The Republican clarity of purpose may in fact be the reason why they have been able to use what Hugh Hewitt  calls swarm tactics so effectively.  He describes the Internet cloud of enemies which has descended on the John Kerry campaign in terms of John Arquilla's netcentric combat theories (Belmont Club has referred to Arquilla in previous posts): the hits keep coming faster than Kerry can coordinate a defense. Quoting Arquilla, Hewitt says:

"Swarming is a seemingly amorphous but carefully structured, coordinated way to strike from all directions at a particular point or points, by means of a sustainable 'pulsing' of force and/or fire, close-in as well as from stand-off positions. It will work best -- perhaps it will only work -- if it is designed mainly around the deployment of myriad small, dispersed, networked maneuver units. The aim is to coalesce rapidly and stealthily on a target, attack it, then dissever and redisperse, immediately ready to recombine for a new pulse. Unlike previous military practice, battle management is now mainly about 'command and decontrol,' as networked units all over the field of battle (or business, or activism, or terror and crime) coordinate and strike the adversary in fluid, flexible, nonlinear ways."

In an earlier, low tech era, this phenomenon was referred to in the German Army as "saddle orders". Because the general principles of the campaign were so well understood by lower-level commanders, Guderian and Rommel could redirect subordinates and trust them to do the "right thing", that is, act consistently within the agreed strategic framework. They could give orders from the "saddle". In contrast, the French High Command had to laboriously consider its reaction to each threat. It was this kind of confidence in the Age of Sail which enabled Nelson to break the French line at Trafalgar. Nelson's captains had served together so long they were like a basketball team that could blind-pass to each other, so that his pre-battle signal consisted simply of "England expects every man to do his duty". Both the German Army of 1940 and Nelson's fleet of 1805 were inferior to the enemy in materiel and numbers. But it did not matter. The surprise of 2004 may be that the Mainstream Media, like the Chars of the French Army or the sailing wonders of  Villeneuve, will not matter at all.

Update to the Child Hostage Crisis

The Glittering Eye has more on the children taken hostage by terrorists in Russia, including a diagram of the school premises. It draws on Russian sources which harshly criticize the terrorists and point out that chaos in the Caucasus has thrown up and will throw up more terror unless resolved.

In many ways, the Russian policy is exactly the reverse of the American. They are less squeamish about retaliating but lack the Bush doctrine of creating functioning democracies to replace the chaotic sinkholes of Islamism. To a certain extent, the Russian and French policies are identical. They draw a curtain over the putrefaction fermenting in certain societies, dismissing them as a natural state or in terms of cultural relativism, as situations in which civilization -- I use the word consciously -- would be ill advised to interfere. But it has become apparent that terrorism is an externality of rotting societies, an effluent, which if unchecked will poison the whole world. No cologne, not even French perfume, will long prevail against it. Civilization cannot hang back but must step forward, if not for love then for survival.

Liberals, Democrats and critical conservatives may question whether President Bush's "forward strategy for freedom" has been carried out well or botched; but its conceptual rightness is indisputable and its undertaking long overdue.

The French Hostage Crisis

Reuters highlights the agony of suspense over the fate of French hostages seized by terrorists. "France faces another day of hostage anguish today after a deadline to revoke a law banning Muslim headscarves in schools passed without news of the fate of two French reporters held by Islamic militants." If the sight of Third World diplomats pleading for the lives of their citizens is heart-rending, the sight of proud France -- for however one may regard that country the fact of its pride is not in dispute -- calling out into the dark for its lost sheep is pure pathos.

The most diabolical aspect of the terrorist's cruelty is that they have placed the symbolic dagger of execution into the hands of the French themselves. The French open their schoolday with the the subconcious understanding that upholding the headscarf ban may end the lives of two men. This tranferrence of guilt is terrorism's greatest lie: that the ultimate responsibility for a hostage's death lies in the failure of his loved ones to capitulate fully to their monstrous demands. It is a lie which the Left never tires of repeating but it is false all the same. Albert Camus once wryly wrote in the Rebel that "on the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence -- through a curious transposition peculiar to our times -- it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself." He was referring to Stalin, but alas, both for the world and for France, the evil the Left worshipped never died.

The Day

The seizure of 200 schoolchildren with their parents in Russia, for a total of perhaps 400, presumably by Chechen terrorists, caps a stemwinder of a newsday. The amazing thing is that the headlines were all of a piece: 12 Nepalis executed in Iraq; 2 French journalists held hostage in Iraq; 16 killed in twin bus bombing attacks in Israel; 10 dead in a bombing attack on a Moscow subway. So swiftly did they overtake yesterday's events, the two Russian jetliners downed by Chechen suicide bombers that they might have been one event. So it was no coincidence that the principal US domestic story was on the same subject matter too. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's declaration at the RNC convention should have been laughably trite: that the President understood that the these headlines were tied together by the common thread of terrorism.

He knows you don't reason with terrorists. You defeat them. He knows you can't reason with people blinded by hate. You see, they hate the power of the individual. They hate the progress of women. They hate the religious freedom of others. And they hate the liberating breeze of democracy.

But Schwarzenegger had to set out the Presidential proposition like an object of wonder, like an insight slow in coming, the way a man recovering from a stroke gradually remembers how to tie his shoelaces again, because until recently America could not think it; nor France to this day. You don't reason with terrorists. You defeat them. He said it well, slowly and loudly the way you address an audience in an unfamiliar language. But Arnold missed hitting the right note in one thing because his unquenchable optimism will never suit the irremediable sorrow of the price we have to pay. The Governor came near the mark when he related the story of a young wounded soldier.

Let me tell you about the sacrifice and the commitment that I have seen first-hand. In one of the military hospitals I visited, I met a young guy who was in bad shape. He'd lost a leg, he had a hole through his stomach, and his shoulder had been shot through. And the list goes on and on and on.

I could tell that there was no way he could ever return to combat. But when I asked him, "When do you think you'll get out of the hospital?" He said, "Sir, in three weeks." And do you know what he said to me then? He said he was going to get a new leg, and then he was going to get some therapy, and then he was going to go back to Iraq and fight alongside his buddies. And you know what he said to me then? You know what he said to me then?  He said, "Arnold, I'll be back."

But it was John McCain who found the phrase, knowing what freight the unsaid bore. "However just the cause, we should shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us." Those Russian parents are cradling the wages in their arms.

Dancing in the Dark

Secret negotiations are under way between French diplomats and parties unknown to secure the release of two journalists taken hostage by terrorists in Iraq. The curious thing about the French strategy so far is it is anchored on the explicit assertion that they are hors de combat, that is, not included in the struggle between "militants" and the United States. In order to bolster this claim, the French have obtained character references from Hamas, Yasser Arafat and Moqtada Al-Sadr. According to the Christian Science Monitor "Islamic militant group Hamas joined groups including French Muslims opposed to the headscarf ban, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and aides to anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in urging freedom for the journalists." Hamas spelled it out the rationale for releasing the Frenchmen:

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas in the Gaza Strip, said that France has adopted “a positive stand,” over Iraq because it opposed the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein. Paris has also shown an "understanding position" toward the Palestinian cause, he said. "Releasing the two French journalists would increase the isolation of hostile American and Israeli attitudes toward the Arab and Muslim nations, and would boost French support for our aspirations," Abu Zuhri added.

The Quai d'Orsay of course, would put it rather differently. Reacting to accusations from the Iraqi Prime Minister that France was learning that its policy of appeasement was untenable, the French Foreign Ministry responded loftily and with not a little touch of indignation.

"These declarations seem, in effect, to cast doubt on France's determination in the fight against terrorism," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that France had called for a political solution in Iraq since the start of the crisis. The French authorities have, for a long time, affirmed the necessity and urgency to mobilise against all forms of terrorism. France, which has itself been a victim of terrorist attacks, leads unrelentingly a determined action against this plague."

There's a reason the French are world leaders in the manufacture of perfume.

Addendum:

Here's an interesting game theoretic analysis of the terrorist hostage-taking tactic from Zak. The underscores are mine.

It is clear that the kidnappings in Iraq are what they call a “repeated (or iterated) game,” which means in game theory that the results from one round of the game influence the actions taken by both players in the next round. In the case of the kidnappings, the game is repeated because the kidnappers get good publicity and most likely money under the table each time they kidnap somebody. There doesn’t have to be a clear “win” every time like with the Filipinos (who withdrew their force when a truckdriver was kidnapped) to make the game worth playing for them. They still get something every time they play (if only publicity), so there is no reason for them to quit. Frankly, they’d be stupid to quit. Would you if you found a slot machine in Vegas that kept coming up 777?

The trick is to change the incentive structure of the game. I think this is easy: just have any country whose citizen has been kidnapped pledge to send a thousand (or other arbitrarily large number) more troops to Iraq for every individual kidnapped. As each kidnapping made things harder and harder for the kidnappers, and instead resulted in negative publicity for them (in the form of more foreign soldiers in the country because of their actions), I think the game would come to a conclusion really, really quickly.

Of course, this would require both cooperation and political will on the part of the participants, so don’t look for this obvious and most likely effective strategy to be taken any time soon.

It's an idea in the right direction, but I'm not sure it would be so easy. Basically, the idea is penalize the enemy for every turn he takes at the murder game till he gives up playing it. The problem is that most nations, and most certainly Nepal, lack the ability to penalize terrorists effectively by sending professional forces. Meting out a negative payment is hard for them to do. One way around this for poor victims is to inflict proxy punishment on an easy target. That's what collective retribution is about; and when Russians blow up Chechen towns or round up relatives of terrorists in retaliation they are essentially dealing out negative payouts. But in the end, terrorists who are hardened to killing are indifferent even to the fates of their relatives. In the last analysis the terrorists and their masterminds have to be killed individually. Just my two cents.