Best Posts

Original content: A New Form Of Evil -- Looking At Algore: Iraq Edition -- Crichton's A Gas -- The Apocalypse Will Be Only Grapefruit-Sized? -- Afghanistan: The "Good" War? -- Understanding the Concept of "Button" -- VDH Reaches Into The Memory Hole Once More -- The Islamic Democracy Conundrum And Nightmare's Handmaiden -- Eurabia: Dependency and Hypocrisy -- Holocaust Denial: Where The Problem Lies

Environmentalism: Churchill's Battle Of Britain Hastings -- Of Swindles And Designated Hitters -- Eugenics Past ... And Present -- What Would Al Gore Be Like If He Were Real?
Humor: On The Necessity Of Banning Dihydrogen Monoxide -- Welcome To Jihad -- Nice Pigs, Sir
Music: You Do Understand ...
Pictures: America is at the mall
Politics: Evan Sayet: Below Above The Fold -- The Middle ... Is Missing -- Plus Ca Change
Psychology: Crichton On "Information Casualties"
Religion: Phase 1 Sacrifice
Terror / Islamism: Read. The. Whole. Thing. -- Mo's Turf -- I Did Mention Worms, Didn't I? -- The Secret 51st State -- Are You Asleep? (Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview) -- Vietnam The Paragon?

Innumeracy Update: Recalculating Behind The "Boo Frickin' Hoo"

Glenn and Charles link to this sob story about how burials are down at the (huge) Najaf cemetery so now we're supposed to feel sorry for the soon to be unemployed staff there! One the surface, Glenn's certainly right about what outrageous MSM spin-reverse-meistering this is.

But it's even worse than he suggests when you get out your spreadsheet and chart wizard.

Whenever I read an article where numbers are thrown around ranging from "soared" to 150 per day to 6500 per month -- hmm, it's kind of hard to quickly compare furlongs per fortnight to miles per hour, no? -- as casual evidence for the storyline, I get suspicious. Of a cover up, innumeracy or -- all too often lately -- both.

So let's take the key numeric assertions listed in article in varying units and out of order sequence and normalize and sequence them (see chart -- numbers from article highlighted in table above, my conversions in white cells).

Isn't THAT interesting!

No wonder they quoted the numbers in varying units -- when normalized they show a downtrend culminating in a most recent month's daily burial rate lower than that quoted for the (non war) 1990s under Saddam! Best to leave that storyline left untold by the MSM, no?

Obfuscating the unfavorable-to-MSM storyline? Innumeracy? Both?

Yes.

Nuttier Than...

"ZAWAHIRI: One percent of the way to his goal. Looking at Zawahiri's quota for American casualties in Iraq, Don Surber is not impressed: "At this rate, al-Qaeda will meet its goal . . . in about 2353. I’ll be 400 years old then."" [ ... a room full of Cuckoo Clocks. Of course, there could be more follow-ons to the chlorine bombs they've been using on the Iraqis lately. But it wouldn't change my verdict of course. Oh, and did I mention there is no Al Qaeda in Iraq? Sigh. -ed. ]

MI-5: There's Too Many Of Them...

"When people argue that the War on Terror "cannot be won by military, only by political means" they often exclude from consideration any political decisions which would deprive threats of their force-generation mechanisms or their means of command and control. Jihadi cells were allowed to flourish; operatives allowed to come and go; recruitment was permitted, sometimes openly in mosques because political considerations required that these activities not be impeded. Operational necessity often creates contradictions with the most cherished political institutions of a democracy that are very hard to reconcile. But that does not mean the contradictions are not real.

The "political" challenges facing the West are not only about setting up "democratic institutions" in the Middle East, or forcing Israel to accomodate Palestine. They also have to do with finding ways to shut down enemy force generation mechanisms without instituting an authoritarianism or creating a domestic tyranny. But the problem won't be solved until it is squarely recognized as needing a solution.

One of the most worrisome effects of the political decisions that the Counterterrorism Blog regrets is that it may have allowed terror groups to obtain "authority supremacy" within the Muslim communities in Britain, which occurs when a group of citizens fears and respects a shadow government more than it does the legitimately constituted and elected authorities." [ Bingo. -ed. ]

The "Plan" Of The "Tiny Lights"

"This is just stunning. Neither of these tiny lights of American politics (nor their colleagues) seem to recognize that just as it takes two sides to wage war, it takes two sides to end it. The Democrats think they can end the war simply by packing the troops up and bringing them home.

Is it possible for two such prominent politicians to be that stupid?

1. The war will not end in Iraq just because US troops evacuate. The insurgencies will continue more intensely. The power vacuum created by American departure will have to be filled by someone. Iran is already operating inside Iraq; we can expect their presence there to climb dramatically if the US packs up and leaves. Many knowledgeable observers say there is a real risk that Saudi Arabia will send troops into Iraq to protect Iraqi Sunnis from the Shias and their Iranian sponsors. This is a recipe for a regional war that no one wants, even Iran.

2. The enemy of the United States in Iraq is not really either Shia or Sunni militias. It is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will not agree that the war is "ended" just because Pelosi and Reid say so. They will absolutely see the Democrat-envisioned withdrawal of US troops as a stunning victory on their part. But, in al Qaeda's mind, it will not be a fin de la guerre victory. It will be a victory that will embolden them to intensify their offensive operations against the West.

The Democrats' plan to "end the war" is really a plan to prolong it, increase its violence and bloodshed and raise the probability that the war will be brought to our shores in ways and lethality we cannot yet foresee."

On (Ethnocentrically) Availing Ourselves Nought

"Do you remember that little difficulty a few months back over the Pope’s indelicate quotation of Manuel II? Many Muslims were very upset about his speech (or his speech as reported on the BBC et al), so they protested outside Westminster Cathedral in London demanding “capital punishment” for the Pope, and they issued a fatwa in Pakistan calling on Muslims to kill His Holiness, and they firebombed a Greek Orthodox Church and an Anglican Church in Nablus, and they murdered a nun in Somalia and a couple of Christians in Iraq. As Tasnim Aslam of the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad helpfully clarified, “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.” So don’t say we’re violent or we’ll kill you. As I wrote in National Review at the time, quod erat demonstrandum.

But that’s a debating society line. Islam isn’t interested in winning the debate, it’s interested in winning the real fight – the clash of civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla. That’s why it doesn’t care about the inherent contradictions of the argument: in the Middle East early in 2002, I lost count of the number of Muslims I met who believed simultaneously (a) that 9/11 was pulled off by the Mossad and (b) that it was a great victory for Islam. Likewise, it’s no stretch to feel affronted at the implication that you’re violently irrational and to threaten to murder anyone who says so. Western societies value logic because we value talk, and talks, and talking, on and on and on: that’s pretty much all we do, to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just something else to talk about interminably. But, if you don’t prize debate and you merely want to win, getting hung up on logic is only going to get in your way. Take the most devastating rapier wit you know – Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward – and put him on a late-night subway train up against a psycho with a baseball bat. The withering putdown, the devastating aphorism will avail him nought."

About That War For Oil

"Iraq is currently the central battlefield in a complex struggle to over ideology, geopolitics and energy. It is a test of strength between radical Islamic ideology and the West. It is about sectarian conflict within the Muslim world. But it is also about Russia's place in the Middle East and Europe's energy future. Those issues are not bound up by anything local to Baghdad. Blocked or diverted from one place, it is like a current that will move somewhere else." [ Like I just said, just go camp at Wretchards. No war for oil? How about war for survival then? And you were so certain the Cold War ended weren't you? Fred gets it too. -ed. ]

Stopped Clock At The BBC!

"Showing Islam the benefits of democracy, eh? That will go down well with Democrats in Congress. Maybe the idea will fare better in Europe. After all they have already retreated to their home ground and find they don't have enough "boots on the ground" even there. BBC Newsnight reports on how Islamic attacks on the United States and Europe originated in large part in London itself. (Hat tip: LGF)"



[ Watch the whole thing. This is a jaw-dropper even if it didn't come from the BEEB. Wretchard is rocking this week. -ed. ]

Fred Gets It

"It bothers Americans when we’re told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up — and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we’d rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again.

But we cool off. We’re big boys and girls, after all, and we don’t really bruise that easily. We’re also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there’s a world war going on out there and they need to pick a side — the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.

In the meantime, let’s be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about U.S. immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.

Russia, though, takes the cake. Here is a government apparently run by ex-KGB agents who have no problem blackmailing whole countries by turning the crank on their oil pipelines. They’re not doing anything shady, they say. They can’t help it if their opponents are so notoriously accident-prone. Criticize these guys and you might accidentally drink a cup of tea laced with a few million dollars worth of deadly, and extremely rare, radioactive poison. Oppose the Russian leadership, and you could trip and fall off a tall building or stumble into the path of a bullet." [ Wow. RTWT. This is not only clear but seems to have set a topics/labels per paragraph record. I was impressed with his stint on Paul Harvey and it's looking like it wasn't a fluke. -ed. ]

"No Kuffar Is Innocent"

But don't worry, MPAC ends the piece by pointing out that "he isn't really an extremist". It's fascinating to speculate on what it would take to make him one, isn't it?

I See Nothing!

The Dems would have you believe that this video doesn't exist. Or that they were so stupid as to be brainwashed by W. Including back in '98. Sigh.

Al Qaeda Mind Control Beams Silence Democrats

"Awareness of al Qaeda is slowly growing in the minds of mainstream media reporters who have been hamstrung by the civil war schema that they simply cannot get out of their heads. Even so, there is not the slightest mention of the fact that al Qaeda was probably behind yesterday's bombing. Millions upon millions of readers of countless stories like this all over the world will read about that bombing and then shake their heads at the escalating "civil war" in Iraq. And then they will rage at George Bush for what he has done. Here is CNN's coverage of that event, and, again, not the slightest hint that this was an attack by al Qaeda (because, I assume, the reporter thinks this was part of the civil war). The CNN story even notes that this was a suicide bomber. Many stories fail to mention that key detail. It is important because virtually all suicide bombers are members of al Qaeda, as I detailed here. As such, this bombing was not part of that civil war. It was another atrocity designed to provoke a civil war that has largely abated since the troop surge began. That's the key distinction, and it cannot be emphasized often enough. People just don't get it, so it needs to be explained repeatedly until they do. In fact, what's missing from discussions by Bush and McCain and others who have the details right is the emphatic statement that these attacks are not part of the civil war; they are attempts by al Qaeda to provoke a civil war. Just stating that these attacks were perpetrated by al Qaeda does not go far enough to change the thinking of those whose minds are ensnared by an obsolete civil war schema. You have to specifically tell them that they are wrong to think like that. That gets their attention (because they are under the comfortable impression that the civil war debate was settled long ago), and it momentarily arouses disbelief (trust me -- I've been down this path with people many times). When they are presented with incontrovertible facts regarding the role of al Qaeda in Iraq in a moment of disbelief, it has been my experience that minds change (including liberal minds). But you have to directly assert that these attacks are not examples of the civil war in action, nor do they represent sectarian violence. If you don't, people have great difficulty assimilating the idea that attacks by Sunni al Qaeda against Shiite civilians do not constitute examples of sectarian violence/civil war. ***

Al Qaeda's strategy is simple, but it is also amazingly effective. It has even magically caused Democratic leaders to adopt an eerie code of silence on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq. Using some sort of secret mind-control ray beam (I guess), al Qaeda directs Democrats to robotically talk about going to Afghanistan to fight terrorists. Meanwhile, al Qaeda slaughters hundreds of innocent Shiites every month Iraq -- right before your very eyes -- which mainstream media reporters then obediently mischaracterize as "sectarian violence." It's creepy. I feel like I've just slipped into the Twilight Zone..." [ And lucky for us the Iranians would never ever cooperate with Al Qaeda. Never. Really? -ed. ]

COIN Down The Gravity Well

"The measure of an insurgency's gravity well is its drawing power: its gravity. This takes two forms. It's the form of the people under the threat of insurgents at the end of the day, as Kilcullen noted when he said that insurgents won when, "the Sun goes down and the insurgents show up saying, 'If you’re not on our side, we’re going to kill you.'"

The other form is when people who are not under threat of the insurgents are drawn to them, because they think the insurgents are the wave of the future, or the forces of right. These people don't have to join the insurgency out of fear. They do it willingly, because they want to fight America.

The measure of the gravity of an insurgency is those two things added together. We want to reduce that gravity.

So, we want to do two things.

1) We want to lessen the mass of the yellow-red "star," and therefore decrease the size and power of its gravity well.

2) We want to pull the green and blue objects away from it.

How do you do it?

Goal One:

The first goal is the province of military and clandestine/covert intelligence operations. You have to build intelligence on where the insurgents are, who they're dealing with, and so forth. The clearest model here is how we captured Saddam. Our military engagement allowed us to start gathering intelligence. We put every scrap of intelligence into a database, not just on what we knew, but on how people we encountered were related to each other. We were building a map of the gravity well.

Once we had the map, we found Saddam. He was, you might say, right at the center of it.

Where we engage the enemy directly, whether with military or civilian intelligence forces, this is the method. You map the insurgency with databases of this kind. Once you begin to have a clear picture, you start breaking up the mass. Killing and capturing yellow/red nodes is part of this.

But it's not the only part. Yellow nodes are easily replaced with red ones; red ones can be replaced with blue ones. More important than killing the members is breaking its myths. Organizations like this are built on stories: powerful stories, that everyone around it believes. Stories like, "America is weak and decadent, and the faith of the pure will defeat her Marines." Break those stories, and you radically decrease the mass of the insurgent star.

Do that, and its pull becomes weaker. It gets smaller, it weakens, it starts to die away.

Goal Two:

If an object is in the gravity well of a star or a planet, you can pull it away. You just need an object with a much deeper gravity well. You need a competitor.

Imagine if we had a star a whole lot bigger than the sun, a lot denser. We can pick it up and move it around. Let's say we set it down on the mattress, right by our solar system, so that it sank in deep.

What would happen is that all the objects currently in orbit around the sun would begin to drift in its direction. They would start rolling that way. If our huge star was big enough, and close enough, it would even tear off the outer layers of the sun.

There are many places in the world where our enemies might go for shelter, and try to set up new networks. In those places, we need to build opposing, competing gravity wells.

What would these look like? Probably they would already exist, and therefore have an in-built legitimacy. They would be Muslim organizations for the most part, because the insurgency is so heavily committed to Islam. They would be able to reach out to the networks of young men who might otherwise be drawn into terrorism.

Maybe they would look like the Nahdlatul Ulama.

The NU is a gigantic Muslim organization in Indonesia. It has fully forty million members. While it is religiously conservative, and therefore able to speak to the deeply religious Muslims that might be drawn into al Qaeda or Jemmah Islamiyah, it is not hateful. It even has a paramilitary organization, the Banser, that defends Christian churches on Christmas Day, and at other times they seem in danger of attack by radicals." [ Blackfive just got added to the classics. RTWT. And where do you think the Dems come out re breaking Islamist myth building? I know what I think... -ed. ]

In Iraq Iran Vietnam With Petraeus

"There were some followups later on, in which Petraeus was pressed on the “how high up the Iranian line does this chain of command go? And he repeated that we know that some of the people we’re interrogating report to General Sulemaini, the head of the Qods Force, but beyond that we don’t know.

As I’ve said before, this is lawyer-talk, not intelligence talk. And of course the journalist’s question betrays the usual lack of knowlege of the Iranian chain of command. The Revolutionary Guards, of which Qods is the foreign arm, report to the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), NOT to the president. So the reference to Ahmadinejad shows the journalist’s ignorance. But to believe that a Qods campaign is being conducted without Khamenei’s approval is as silly as the belief that a Special Forces campaign could be conducted without White House approval. No way.

Finally, notice the data he provides on suicide attacks: eighty to ninety percent are carried out by foreigners via Syria. Put that together with the knowledge that the most dangerous explosives are coming from Iran. Then ask yourself why so many people keep talking about “insurgency,” which implies a domestic reaction to the presence of coalition forces on Iraqi soil.

And the answer is: because it’s all about Vietnam."

And the first commenter has it nailed: "This war began November 4, 1979 in Iran and that is exactly where it will end. The US and the West will come to that conclusion eventually but only after the stakes have been stacked catastrophically high."

Our Crappy MSMemory Hole Today

""All of these papers had hours after the Times of London report to get the London bombings into the story. The Times goes to bed at 7 pm ET and hits the feeds and wire services. None of the American media bothered to check on Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. Readers should ask themselves whether that comes from a lack of intellectual curiosity, or whether it comes from a bias that puts the circumstances of the detention of a terrorist at a higher priority than the terrorism itself."

Either way, they're doing a crappy job. But if he'd had a connection to Jack Abramoff, you can bet they'd have mentioned it!"

Who Said This?

"Do you think it’s possible to win the Iraq War?

Here’s what I think: this is a real war, extended beyond the borders of Iraq.

As in the more general war on terror?

The war on terror is real. People would have you believe it’s not real. This is not Vietnam. This particular situation is not the same wherein we can walk away and just leave destruction behind us. No, we can’t. Anyone who has paid attention to what [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad is saying, what all the mullahs are saying in this country and in England, and in all of the Arab world, this is serious—they’re calling for the destruction of America and all democracy and that’s what’s going on. We could lose this war." [ Would you believe Jon Voight? Cool. -ed. ]

Unless Harry Reid Does It For Them...

"It's possible that Reid imagined that his analytical problems are over simply because he has identified the war's loser. The truth is that his troubles are only beginning. He must tell Americans to whom they wish their army to surrender in Iraq.

That Reid is desperately trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory isn't surprising. His party requires an American defeat in Iraq in order to win the congressional and presidential elections next year.

What is generically known as "the war" is, in fact, three wars.

The first war was about changing the status quo in Iraq. ***

The second war was triggered by forces that wanted to prevent America from creating a new status quo that favored its interests along with the interests of a majority of Iraqis. ***

The third and current war started toward the end of last year when the disparate forces fighting against the democratic government found a new point of convergence in a quest for driving America out. The Bush administration understood this and responded with its "surge" policy by dispatching more troops to Baghdad.

Unlike the two previous wars in which anti-American forces pursued a variety of goals, their sole aim this time is to drive the Americans out. In that sense, al Qaeda and other Islamist agents in Iraq have forged an unofficial alliance with residual Saddamites, criminal gangs, pan-Shiite chauvinists and small groups of Iraqis who fight out of genuine nationalistic but misguided motives.

Despite continued violence, America and its Iraqi allies are winning this third war, too. Their enemies are like the man in a casino who wins a heap of tokens at the roulette table, but is told at the cashier that those cannot be exchanged for real money.

The terrorists, the insurgents, the criminal gangs and the chauvinists of all ilk are still killing many people. But they cannot translate those killings into political gains. Their constituencies are shrinking, and the pockets of territory where they hide are becoming increasingly exposed. They certainly cannot drive the Americans out. No power on earth can. Unless, of course, Harry Reid does it for them."

Worms Wiggling Again...

"It’s worse than too clever. It’s retreat and appeasement, and the Iranians know it. It flows from denial that the mullahs are at war with us, and lapses into the belief that this war can be resolved by the tried and failed methods of traditional diplomacy. It won’t work, as our soldiers know full well. Surge or no surge, Iraq cannot have decent security unless it is protected against the Iranians and their Syrian puppets bordering the other side of the country. The Irbil 5 know a whole lot about Iranian/Syrian activities, and hence about the terror network in Iraq — in fact, they ran it — and that knowledge can help us and the Iraqis. The very idea that those intelligence officers should be sprung is a slap in the face to every coalition soldier, and Gates and Cheney were quite right to fight it."

They Will Follow

(link) "“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”

I seriously doubt Iran would actually nuke Israel, as many fear, if the regime acquires nuclear weapons – although I’ll admit I’m a bit less certain of that than I am of, say, Britain and France not nuking Israel. The Iranian regime, most likely, wants an insurance policy against invasion and regime change. The ayatollahs will then be able to ramp up their imperial projects in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Gulf with impunity."

"Leadership"

"What does it say about Democratic leadership that they would prefer to break bread with a murderous dictator rather than meet with an American general reporting on developments in his command?"