The State Department is teeming with Finns!

While writing one of those you-know-it’ll-never-get-read-but-you-feel-obligated-anyway letters to the State Department (attached below), I noticed something funny in the address bar:

A Linux penguin! Finnish interests have penetrated the State Department!

A simple check confirms:

$ telnet contact-us.state.gov 80
Trying 131.193.154.145...
Connected to contact-us.state.gov.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 02:19:39 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Linux/SuSE)    <--- !!!!
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

Connection closed by foreign host.

Letter, for those still tuning in. (See also this related post )

Subject: Constitutional negotiations in Iraq

21 August 2005

Dear Madam Secretary,

As a U.S. citizen, I would like to register my concern with recent
news regarding constitutional negotiations in Iraq. An A.P. wire story
yesterday indicated that U.S. diplomats had "conceded ground to
Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq." I hope that the United
States continues to push for a constitution enshrining democratic
values, with legislation subject to the will of the people, not to "a
religious test," as the A.P. indicated.

Cordially,

Joseph Barillari
Boston, MA

23:11 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Quite possibly the best name for a blog, ever

This post at attracted my attention because it was linked from Instapundit. I subscribed to the blog’s RSS feed on the spot, just so I could have the “Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion” in my subscription list.

21:42 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Special Jurisprudential Corps

Has there been an occupying force in human history that sent in a battalion of lawyers to handle complaints after pacifying a city?

[On the pending incursion into Fallujah.] Marine lawyers will be ready to handle compensation claims for battle damage and to help verify any violations of the laws of warfare. —The New York Times

This really is a new kind of war.

20:27 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Redlining the postmodernism meter

Militants in Fallujah burn their own flag. I guess they ran out of American flags:

(I’m aware that the new Iraqi flag looks entirely too much like the Israeli flag to satisfy the hardline types, but it’s still ridiculous.)

Image swiped from Yahoo! News/Reuters.

20:12 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Still have doubts about the war?

Then read this excellent encapsulation of Tony Blair’s rationale. (via Andrew Sullivan)

02:11 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Mission really accomplished

Nix the ace of spades.

10:57 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

The Iraq numbers

I highly recommend Bill Whittle’s blog. Here’s a delightful MTV-style factoid from his Friday post:

Here’s a math quiz for you:

During the 30-odd years he was in power, Saddam Hussein murdered at least 300,000 of his own people. These are the ones we are finding in mass graves in Iraq. Another 300,000 — at least — were killed in his war with Iran and his two conflicts with the US. Those are bare-bones, undeniable, non-speculative, minimums.

That darling arithmetic works out to no less than 20,000 people a year killed by that lunatic, or about 1,700 people a month.

So how many innocent people have not died as a result of the Iraq war?

I get about 13,000 so far.

Thirteen thousand is about the size of a good basketball game. Perhaps we can convince the Lakers to play a charity game against the Spurs, say. Then we can put 13,000 Iraqi men, women and children into the Staples Center, and make Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, George Clooney, The Dixie Chicks, Janeane Garofalo, end every single person who signed the Not in Our Name petition kill those people in cold blood — electrodes, acid baths or shredders, to get the full effect, although the weak-stomached should be allowed to merely shoot them in the back of the head.

Because that is exactly what would have happened if these people had gotten their way.

01:09 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

When the horse is dead, stop beating it

The New York Times’s online editorial page now has a section of links to “Editorials from Abroad.”

Today’s best is undoubtedly the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly’s editorial on the war:

Neither the US nor any other world power can by sheer military force impose its idea of peace. Not only is it clear that the peace America wants is a cover for the second phase of its war – the reign of US imperialism and the grabbing of oil and influence – but the very logic of its war is flawed; built on outdated doctrine. Terrorists do not have regular armed forces, nor armoured divisions, and cannot be fought as such.

I never cease to be amazed that this canard isn’t dead yet.

I suspect that a good deal of the world just doesn’t get it: they can’t get their heads around the idea that a powerful nation would invade a weaker nation not to slaughter its people and steal its resources, but to set up a better, more democratic government there. They can’t get it because their non-free, repressive governments would never, ever do such a thing.

Is the U.S., despite our eloquent protestations to the contrary really just after oil and regional positioning? If we are, the Al-Ahram will be hard pressed to explain this:

A U.S. army colonel who allegedly frightened an Iraqi into disclosing details of an impending attack by firing a pistol near his head, faces up to eight years in prison on assault charges.

If we were really just in it for the oil, why on earth would we court-martial this colonel? We should be giving him a medal — but instead, he’s being charged with assault. For foiling a terrorist attack, mind you.

It certainly isn’t P.R. that moved the army to charge Col. West: the Al-Ahram and its ilk would hate us no matter what we did. No. He was charged because we actually do care about the rule of law. (However ludicrous the application of that law may be.)

If we were actually just in it for the oil, the insurgency would be a distant memory. We have the men and we certainly have the firepower — all we lack is the appropriate degree of moral bankruptcy. Is an interogee hiding information? Torture him with electrodes. (Saddam’s men would.) Kill his sister. (Saddam’s men would.) Tear out his child’s eye. (Saddam’s men would.)

Is Tikrit a hotbed of insurgency? Gas them all. (Saddam would.)

The insurgency is a problem because we refuse to adopt the third degree. Because we refuse do to to Saddam’s men what they did to the Iraqi people. Because we really do have the moral high ground in this conflict.

Much of the world doesn’t believe that. Part of it is just anti-Americanism, but I believe no small part of the disbelief is a genuine inability to understand what makes America tick. Invasion is in their minds invariably followed with imperial governance and exploitation. They can’t fathom our real reasons for invading.

15:17 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

A zinger for Tariq Ali

As long as Ali-the-anti-imperialist is on tap, I might as well reference an anecdote about Iraqi demonstrations that appeared in one of the new blogs-by-Iraqis that have sprung up of late:

First, I have to explain to some western idealists that public demonstrations is an alien idea to the majority of Iraqis. We have been forced to demonstrate in favour of Saddam, the Ba’ath, Palestine, and Arab nationalism for 3 decades. Just to give you an idea on how that was like for us; party members would surround colleges, schools, and govt. offices. They block all outlets and shove people into buses which head to wherever the demonstrations are to be held. You simply cannot refuse to demonstrate. I remember hiding in the toilet back in high school whenever the buses came into the park to herd us to the demos. It wasn’t a pleasant experience I can tell you. Once I got stuck and had to shout anti-imperialist slogans at one of these rallies just two years ago. You don’t have the slightest idea of what it is like to live your life daily in fear.

23:52 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Guardian forfeits any remaining claims to legitimacy

The Guardian (the anti-semitic paper of record) decided to burn its remaining shred of editorial legitimacy when it ran a delightful editorial by Tariq Ali early last week. Money quote:

Meanwhile, Iraqis have one thing of which they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an opposition.

Ali is casting his lot behind people who blow up Red Cross outposts and police stations. He’d have us believe that the Iraqi silent majority does, too. But like any good Guardian editorialist, he sees no reason to let the truth interfere with his argument:

Few are prepared to betray those who are fighting. This is crucially important, because without the tacit support of the population, a sustained resistance is virtually impossible.

I need not mention that the same population is putting their lives on the line to fight the resistance. Quoth the Times:

“We don’t have weapons,” said Muhammad Hashem Rahma, the lieutenant colonel at [a police] station here in the Khudra neighborhood in western Baghdad. “We don’t have flak jackets. We don’t have good cars. And we are face to face with death, because everybody thinks we are supporting the Americans.” He said he himself had received a death threat three days after the bombing.

I need not mention the Gallup poll which indicated that 71 percent of the Iraqis don’t want the U.S. to leave for the next few months. (The pollsters were escorted by M-16 toting U.S. soldiers, of course.)

And I need not mention that the same day, the Times ran an article about the lingering love for Saddam Hussein among for the Iraqi people. Says Sadri Adab Diwan, whose sister was murdered by the dictator:

“If I catch Saddam, I won’t kill him. That won’t be enough. I’ll suck his blood. And if he escapes, I’ll follow him to the ends of the earth.”

(Note that the “Times” was the New York Times in both cases above. Surprised? I was.)

No, there’s no need to mention any of that. Facts? The Guardian needs not those things. They’re now in good company, for they’ve finally gone completely off the deep end.

23:49 EST | permalink | /world/iraq

Looking Backward

Via Instapundit: Lileks.com features the most forceful editorial on the Iraq War I’ve yet seen. It’s on this page. Scroll down a bit to the section beginning “The Strib had a massive editorial…”. For the impatient, the gist is:

In short: the same people who chide America for its short-attention span think we should have stopped military operations after the Taliban was routed. (And they quite probably opposed that, for the usual reasons.) The people who think it’s all about oil like to snark that we should go after Saudi Arabia. The people who complain that the current administration is unable to act with nuance and diplomacy cannot admit that we have completely different approaches for Iraq, for Iran, for North Korea. The same people who insist we need the UN deride the Administration when it gives the UN a chance to do something other than throw rotten fruit.

The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.

22:19 EST | permalink | /world/iraq/war

I have the perfect plan for the aftermath in Iraq.

War is inevitable. Not because President Bush and his entourage are doggedly pushing for war against the collective weight of Western European and Northern Californian opinion, nor because Iraq presents an immediate threat to global security. It’s inevitable because after months of saber-rattling, the world has been stimulated to the point that anything less than a climax in war would leave the international community, hawk and dove alike, with the biggest case of vasocongestion since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The war can’t be stopped. We need a plan for the aftermath.

In spite of my left-wing sensibilities, war blogs sold me on the invasion of Iraq. With war, we could liberate the Iraqi people. We could prevent Saddam Hussein from selling WMDs to the terrorists-of-the-week. We could establish a model democratic Arab state in the Middle East. And it would be simple. Straightforward. Deadly, but not very. The hostilities would cease as soon as the Iraqi troops came within surrendering range. There would be no retaliatory terrorism — if our “punishment” for routing the Taliban was an attempted shoe-bombing, then crushing Saddam Hussein, whom even Osama bin Laden considers an “infidel,” will provoke little more than a Bronx cheer. And if we trust the inspectors, Iraq’s most nuclear weapon is no worse than a smoke detector strapped to a hand grenade. This war will be a quickie.

But I was unable to muzzle my inner pinko. Whenever I imagined Iraq in 2010 – an enclave of liberal democracy, gradually transforming its neighbors into liberal democracies, and welcoming their political refugees in the interim – its voice piped up. “Will we really have the wherewithal to stick it out and rebuild? Didn’t we very nearly leave Afghan reconstruction out of the federal budget? Will we really be in for the long haul – or will we ditch the Iraqis to gird up for America vs. Axis of Evil, round two?”

It was during this ideological crisis that an old idea struck me anew. Western Europe has recast itself after World War II as a haven of culture for American (and more recently, Japanese) tourists. Its institutions (the British monarchy, for instance) are preserved, not because they have any real importance, but because they attract families with children, Kodak cameras, and hard currency. Why could we not do the same with Iraq? In other words, why not turn Iraq into a theme park for vacationing Americans, Japanese, and the odd European?

Modern European policies are explicable only if you think of the EU as something of a continent-sized Disneyland. The reactionary edicts of the Académie Française are perfectly understandable if we think of France as a giant theme park — if the language gets diluted by American words or the culture with American ideas, the novelty dies and the tourists will stay home. Think of the Académie bureaucrats, custodian’s of the French image, as men in mouse suits picking up trash at the Magic Kingdom (get it! pick it up before it ruins the experience!), and they no longer defy rational explanation.

My leftist fear is that Americans may be unwilling to commit to a lengthy, expensive occupation. We can sidestep the “expensive” part by outsourcing the occupation to private businesses. It’s a Reagonomist’s dream: in exchange for a cut of ticket sales and all the light sweet crude they can drink, Corporate America does the dirty work (what’s new?), and Uncle Sam sends the troops off to do something more interesting than guarding crosswalks. My first pick for the job would be the Disney Company.

Baghdad will be covered in Lucite and made into an open-air museum. Outside, animatronic Republican Guards will bow and cheer as a robotic Saddam Hussein burns the American flag every afternoon at one and three p.m. Hundred-square-mile stretches of desert can be given to the suburban parents who will pay handsomely to reenact their favorite battles with real ordinance: the Gulf War. The Iraq War of 2003. The Crusades. Hotels would mirror the residencies of contemporary Iraq: for the jet set, Saddam’s presidential palaces. For the economy-class crowd, refugee camps. The kids could get camel rides, the adults, Scud-shaped highball glasses.

The 24 million war-weary Iraqis could take jobs as park personnel: tour guides, artists, managers. If they find the idea of their countrymen prancing about in mouse suits abhorrent, we can offer them U.S. citizenship in a state desperately in need of a new image (and new residents) — North Dakota comes to mind. Those who stuck it out would get profit-sharing plans, and, when Disney’s contract expired and the country was turned back over to the Iraqi people, lucrative stock options.

The crowned heads of Old Europe, especially the French, probably suspect that we’re up to something like this. It would explain their opposition to the war — it’s not because the French oil megacorp TotalFinaElf has Iraqi holdings; it’s because the French can’t abide competition for tourists! Stop thinking in terms of petrodollars, start thinking in terms of Midwesterners in fanny packs, and the Eurostalwart position suddenly makes sense.

As a good Capitalist, I welcome compeition. On to Iraq! The sooner we invade, the sooner we’ll see reduced ticket prices at the Louvre.

14:39 EST | permalink | /world/iraq