24 Comments

1. Knucklehead:

I saw an article yesterday or the day before (sorry but any ability to retrieve the source and leave a link is long gone) that talked about a different action by the Iraqi police. In this case it was ordinary street merchants who were clogging thoroughfares and ignoring police orders to move. The IP apparently gave them fair warning which generated some threatening gestures from the street merchants, and then swooped down in a very impressive and controlled fashion and restored control and opened the thoroughfare. Allegedly the locals were enormously impressed and quite suprised, and proud, to see the IP behave so professionally and cleverly (I believe there were comments (positive) like, “Look at that – they are behaving just like the Americans!”

But we’ll never hear any of this from the MSM. We’ll hear about kidnappings and the withdrawals of 50 or 300 troops by members of the False Coalition.

Jul 13, 2004 - 7:10 am 2. richard mcenroe:

Roger ó Ya still don’t get it, boy. There is no good news from Iraq. Never. There will never be any good news from Iraq, if CNN and tbe BBC have to erase every videotape in the country to prove it…

Now if the Iraqi government starts feeding the oppressed reporters trapped in their Baghdad hotels, we might hear about it…

Jul 13, 2004 - 7:51 am 3. George Jong:

To be fair, the Philippines withdrawal is a big story, with wider implications on the WoT. The Philippines is dealing with its own Islamist movement, and if this indicates a general shift from resitance to appeasement, then this is huge. What seems important are the lessons we draw from this.

I can’t be the only one to feel this way, but this news makes me even more of a unilateralist – if we can’t rely on anyone else, then our ‘allies’ become a strategic liability, and not an asset. I wonder how many people understand that impulse.

Jul 13, 2004 - 8:15 am 4. frml:

roger, let me say that i like your blog a lot not only because you’re very sensible in your comments but also because you don’t use any foul language, unlike, it seems, the majority of bloggers.

it is a big thing, the philippines’ pulling out its troops. it does not matter if there was only one filipino soldier in iraq. the point is that her decision to capitulate sent a message to the terrorists, that all they have to do to influence our foreign policy is to get one of us. and there are eight million of us abroad! this president has put us all in danger by this dishonorable action. needless to say, she has also handed the terrorists a victory. this is a very sad day for us, and should be a sad day for all freedom loving men.

frml

Jul 13, 2004 - 8:15 am 5. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

frml

Can you explain how the internal politics of the Phillipines play into this? Was the government under a lot of pressure due to its presence in Iraq?

While the impact of this acton in the war on terror is fairly obvious, the internal situation is not clear to those of us not familiar with filipino politics.

Jul 13, 2004 - 9:53 am 6. Old Dad:

George J:

I’m with you. The Filipino presence, while certainly welcome, was mostly symbolic anyway. Symbols can be powerful, but give me a division of well trained Marines any day.

Let’s just face facts. We’re the sole superpower and will be for the foreseeable future. Our “allies” are undependable and can’t contribute much anyway. If we have to win the WoT by ourselves, then so be it. That would seem to me to be the most prudent assumption, and one that should clearly shape our policies about military spending, the draft, preemption, and the like.

Jul 13, 2004 - 9:57 am 7. frml:

john moore, i obviously don’t know what the President was thinking, but there was a lot of emotion splashed on the tv screens every day: tearful wife, worried family, anxious village. in addition, there were the usual leftist columnists urging the troop pull-out. perhaps she was genuinely moved, or rattled. i can’t see how logic had anything to do with her decision. she cannot have imagined that this capitulation on her part would appease the communist new people’s army or the islamic terrorists in the south of the country; if anything, she must have known that her actions would encourage them to more mischief. she had already won the election and so did not have to court the masses (she cannot run for the presidency again). the only thing i can think of is that she does want to change the constitution to allow a parliamentary form of government; presumably, she can run for the post of prime minister then. perhaps she thought that her future voters would only remember a decapitated truck driver and would not see the wisdom the no-negotiating-with-terrorists policy. could this be the reason?

frml

Jul 13, 2004 - 10:16 am 8. Sandy P:

The Ozzies are increasing their contingent to protect their officials and ambassador.

Jul 13, 2004 - 10:17 am 9. TedM:

Some years ago, a nationally known columnist, in writing about suicide killers in Israel, wrote, that if the civilized world did not step up and condemn them, then they(the civilized world) would reap the reward and have suicide killers in their lands. And so it was.

Today, the world faces a similar catastrophe in political kidnapping accompanied by beheading. And the world is failing again. Where is the outrage.And where are the leaders. If nations lose their soveriegnty to these killers by acquescing to their demands, then this horror will spread around the world. Elections, courts, police power, foreign and domestic policies, will all be hostage to these animals. We must draw the line quickly. And, from the recent history of nation states we will not and we are doomed to more of this.

Jul 13, 2004 - 10:18 am 10. Tom Grey:

It’s mostly symbolic, but sybolically important, it’s sad — it’s part of the growing “free rider” problem.

The US is the only superpower, so it can do ALL the world’s policeman job. And get all the criticism.

The Philipines should be encouraged to send its troops on other UN efforts, and not be punished, but not rewarded, for their cowardice.

Bush should go on a PR offensive against Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, calling Sudan genocide, and counting, with a weekly estimate of how many DIED because France opposes a “genocide” resolution in the UN. And so does China.

Sudan needs regime change. The UN is failing. Kerry’s “ally” strategy fails in Afghanistan 3 000 troops? ha. Why not those plus all those from Spain that left Iraq? WHAT is an alliance? The US needs a new alliance — a “copy” of NATO, but one where its expected to be alliances of the willing, and no country has a veto on another country’s troops, only on their own troops.

If it looks like the US offering to pay equiment and training to Central Euro (Polish) troop “mercenaries”, well, that’s OK.

Jul 13, 2004 - 10:56 am 11. wxjames:

Two things: First, Roger has posted two stories, one good and one bad. Here we are focusing on the bad news. Second, since the airing of beheadings and kidnappings and threats to the kidnapped do no good for anyone but the hooded terrorists, then couldn’t a case be made to forbid such airing for the good of the general public. I can’t help but wonder how few beheadings there would be if none of us saw them, or were even made aware of them. Isn’t it like yelling FIRE in a crowded theater ?

Jul 13, 2004 - 10:58 am 12. Gerard Van der Leun:

Or that they *were* guilty but just didn’t get caught gunning people down by anyone that lived to tell the tale.

Jul 13, 2004 - 12:24 pm 13. Knucklehead:

wxjames,

I don’t know that forbidding the MSM from putting up stories and pictures of beheadings and the like would be either possible or a good idea.

I would find it VERY amusing, however, if somebody ever filed suit against the major broadcast networks to take away their license for use of the public airwaves based upon failure to live up to whatever the public service portion of the license is. We tend to forget that “we the people” own a portion of the broadcast spectrum and, therefore, have every right to make and enforce whatever license terms we see fit. There is plenty of public spectrum and transmission capablility out there and if they won’t serve us, then let them use that.

I get a big kick out of the recent catfight regarding, among others, Howard Stern and The Seven Forbidden Words. I don’t care for Howard’s schtick but that’s just because I don’t find it particularly humorous. I don’t personally care one way or another whether we censor him or anyone else. All that said, it is, at least under current law, OUR spectrum and if “we” want to slam any broadcaster upside the noggin’ and tell them to behave themselves, we have the legal right to do so. I laugh every time I hear Howard crying about this. Grow up, go to satellite if you don’t like what “the people” have to say about your program

Jul 13, 2004 - 12:25 pm 14. wxjames:

Knuckle, It’s neither possible nor a good idea ?

What’s not a good idea about it. It serves no useful purpose except terrorist propaganda. Surely beheadings have to be as out of taste as fornication and sodomy. We should be protected from anything this far over the top. In fact, how often have you seen bodies falling to the sidewalk outside the burning Twin Trade Towers ? We are being ‘protected’ from that view, and against our wishes, I might add. Also, we could inforce any such rule on practically any media outlet with a little persuading. Would you have an objection ?

Jul 13, 2004 - 1:03 pm 15. Syl:

Don’t forget that the Bulgarian was beheaded today. Bulgarians are staying put as did the Koreans. The majority of the Coalition of the Willing is still holding. But the point is it IS a coalation of the willing..those who understand and agree with what Bush is doing.

I wouldn’t WANT French troops anywhere near our operations because the only way they would be there is through bribery (I’m sure Kerry has some carrots he thinks will work) and bribed friends are no friends at all.

Jul 13, 2004 - 2:24 pm 16. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Knucklehead

I would be more amused by the Howard Stern debacle if he wasn’t busily using the public airways to attempt to destroy Bush, whom he imagines did this too him (the fact that a Democrat commissioner appointed by Clinton started the action seems to be ignored. It’s Bush. Obviously. Somehow.) He’s convinced three of my friends that Bush did a great big bad thing somehow with this (and one of the friends was the host of the syndicated talk show I cohosted on).

I don’t get it. I don’t understand how the FCC let things get so out of hand for so long. When I worked as a broadcast engineer, our standards were such that Howard Stern would have been on a tape delay and half of it would have been bleeped. I’ve turned off the transmitter on a 100kW station before when the DJ left his mic on accidently while saying the wrong things.

It’s not like I can’t stand the language – I was in the Navy, where obscene and profane language is an art form (I’m convinced there is a secret test of that required to make the grade of Chief Petty Officer).

But as a former broadcaster and broadcast engineer (I still have the license to be the chief engineer of any radio or TV station in the nation), I don’t know how Howard Stern ever got anywhere. I don’t know how the engineers allowed it – in the old days it was their licenses at stake.

I heard that Howard filed a SLAP lawsuit against the guy while filed all the complaints. A real man of the people, that Howard. For those not familiiar, a SLAP lawsuit is one where someone with a lot of money harasses someone with little money.

It is possible for anyone to contest license renewal of radio stations, and to examine all of their records during some period (90 days?) before the renewal. Since without the licensee, a station owner has nothing but a pile of equipment (some of it programmed by me), challenging a license is a very powerful thing to do.

As to the beheadings… I think they should show them. If we are going to deal with violent people, we need to see what they really do. In the same way, I think we should have shown the video of the WTC jumpers hitting the ground.

As for sickos watching it – they’ll find it on the net anyway. But I think we could have a more serious discussion of this war that half of us know about if we show the actions of the enemy. We showed plenty of gore in World War II (see Victor at Sea). I think a lot of people who are viewing this war too abstractly might get a more accurate feeling about the reality of it if they saw the real action.

The Israelis, in frustration at the way the world ignored their suffering under suicide bomber attack, published raw video from a bus bombing. It is horrible – which is the whole point.

Jul 13, 2004 - 2:32 pm 17. Knucklehead:

wxjames,

I’m not quite sure where to go with this, but you strike me as a lot of fun I suspect we might need to settle on a common dictionary for some definitions.

“Knuckle, It’s neither possible nor a good idea ?”

I’m not sure it would be legally possible even if it were a good idea. I’m also not convinced it is a good idea primarily because I susbcribe to the “classical liberal” or “Jeffersonian” notions that:

“In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.” –Thomas Jefferson to David Harding, 1824. ME 16:30

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” –Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

Which, to a knucklehead, says “When in doubt, allow rather than ban.”

“What’s not a good idea about it. It serves no useful purpose except terrorist propaganda.”

I don’t know that I agree with that. I’ve heard plenty of “What a bunch of freakin’ savages!” type comments in response to these sorts of news items and pictues. I’d guess that it hardens the determination to defeat them for as many people as it makes somehow sympathetic to their cause.

“Surely beheadings have to be as out of taste as fornication and sodomy.”

Here’s where one of us is on some thin ice. It could just be me, but I find “fornication” a whole lot more “tasteful” than beheadings (not that I’ve ever attended a beheading or, for that matter, a fornication ;>) As for sodomy, I sure as hell don’t want any part of it, but I’ve heard tell that some people are right fond of it. Surely it can’t be as bad as beheading.

“We should be protected from anything this far over the top.”

I’ll have to go back to my original position. I’m not convinced the “public” needs “protecting” from this sort of “information”. Its over the top, no disagreement there, but I don’t see that the MSM or Uncle should just decide it can’t be aired.

“In fact, how often have you seen bodies falling to the sidewalk outside the burning Twin Trade Towers?”

Well, the towers were very close to home for me. I’ve seen the pictures and spoken with people who saw the actual bodies slamming into the sidewalk. The sound of it was apparently even more disturbing than the sight of it. I don’t need pictures to remind me of that day or that attack – it was close to home, it deeply effected people I know very closely. Wives, husbands, and children of people I was with that day were in the building or in transit to the building and it was many hours before their loved ones knew they were alive. I won’t forget, ever.

I watched the smoke drift down along the horizon. My wife and oldest daughter were placed “on call” to help deal with the thousands of injured that were expected (every local hospital was placed on “alert” to accept casualties) and anyone with emergency training and any affiliation with hospitals was requested to be ready to assist. The casualities never materialised because people either made it or didn’t.

I suspect some people would be well advised to track down those pictures and have a good look at them. It was an act of war, nothing else. Sorry to go on like that, but that’s how I feel about it. People shouldn’t be “protecting” from seeing what those animals did to their fellow citizens. But it wasn’t just the dead and the buildings. It was MUCH more profound than that – at least to me.

“We are being ‘protected’ from that view, and against our wishes, I might add. Also, we could inforce any such rule on practically any media outlet with a little persuading. Would you have an objection?”

Just the objections I’ve already outlined. I don’t think its legally possible (but I’m no lawyer nor do I play one on TV) and I don’t believe its the right thing for governnment to do.

The media themselves, however, are clearly engaged in “censorship” to suit their own purposes. I don’t know that the real reasons behind it are, I just speculate that they seem to believe we need to be “protected” from any images that might get us riled up and put us in our natural maddog bigots and murderers state, but that we need to see images of what we all have coming if we don’t stop harming the poor and oppressed exotics.

Jul 13, 2004 - 3:00 pm 18. Knucklehead:

John Moore,

“I would be more amused by the Howard Stern debacle if he wasn’t busily using the public airways to attempt to destroy Bush, whom he imagines did this too him (the fact that a Democrat commissioner appointed by Clinton started the action seems to be ignored. It’s Bush. Obviously. Somehow.) He’s convinced three of my friends that Bush did a great big bad thing somehow with this (and one of the friends was the host of the syndicated talk show I cohosted on).”

Valid points. Those who want to find some reason to be against Bush will find them. With everything going on in the country and world, I really don’t see how people expect, or suspect, that the president is worrying much one way or the other about dopey old Howard Stern. That’s one of those issues that gets delegated. Here, FCC, do your job, willya.

I had a former friend who became a berserko Bush Hater. Just foaming and unfathomable. Nothing happened in the entire world that wasn’t directly the fault of George W. Bush. NK got nukes – Bush did it. China dumping cheap lumber – Bush did it. Iranian mullahs rattling sabers – Bush’s fault. Some grocery store in Maine had to close – Bush’s fault. No kidding (every one of those are real examples from this one person, and I have more) – the wildfires in CA and CO last year, to his way of thinking, were Bush’s fault (I think that’s the point where I told him was a flaming lunatic and needed professional help). I just can’t relate to, or tolerate, that level of foaming insantity so, well, we’re no longer friends. Its a shame it sometimes has to come to that, but so be it.

Jul 13, 2004 - 3:19 pm 19. ricpic:

This is slightly off topic, but if you’ll indulge me: there seems to be so much ferocious brutality in the middle east, and such an appetite for it, that I’m not sure democracy has much of a chance of taking hold. After all, if you look at the Brits, it took them how many centuries? to tame themselves, domesticate themselves, before they could accept moderate governance.

I just don’t see it happening in Iraq, or anywhere else in that part of the world, soon.

Jul 14, 2004 - 7:53 am 20. Knucklehead:

ricpic,

Democracy has taken a long time to take hold and build. Even here we needed a decade and 3 or 4 presidents to arrive at the structure we want and that has evolved since then.

I would like to disagree that it can’t take hold in Iraq or any of the ME because it just won’t work for that culture and mindset. The best I can muster, however, is hope that it is otherwise rather than disagreement. The biggest contributing factor to my sense of hope is modern information flow. One of the things that kept democratic reform on such a slow fuse in the past (England’s transformation, after all, began in the 16th or 17th century or even much earlier depending on which part). It took forever for ideas to get distributed widely enough to gain traction and overcome autocratic ideas.

I’m hoping this can distribution of ideas can happen much more rapidly in the 21st century, even in Iraq and the ME. The first step is to permit distribution of ideas and counter-ideas regarding rights and forms of government and the relationship of religion (and tribes, I suppose) to government. If Iraqis (and others) are not allowed, and encouraged, to slug this out for themselves there is not much chance it will take root and flourish.

There is always great tension in thriving democracies until they head down the socialist highway where “unity of purpose” is valued over tensions. I think we make too much of the “devisiveness” here in the US. It is not the fact that we strongly disagree that is harming us, its the inability and/or unwillingness to disagree in a civil manner that is bringing us to grief. It is possible that this is a trend caused by an ideology (leftism) that has gotten badly wounded and is behaving like a wounded animal. Idunno.

Give the Iraqis and chance while keep muddling through (slapping the moonbats upside the head as we go).

Jul 14, 2004 - 8:31 am 21. Knucklehead:

I hate spurious “nots”. I meant to say:

If Iraqis (and others) are allowed, and encouraged, to slug this out for themselves there is not much chance it will take root and flourish.

Jul 14, 2004 - 8:33 am 22. Knucklehead:

Good golly they are sneaky things, those “nots”.

What I really meant to say (and it may have worked if I’d left it all notted up) was:

If Iraqis (and others) are allowed, and encouraged, to slug this out for themselves there is a chance it will take root and flourish.

I think I finally have that the way I intended.

Jul 14, 2004 - 8:36 am 23. ricpic:

Knucklehead,

Got it on the third go round.

Fingers crossed that you’re right.

But man! do they love violence (at least a sizeable fraction of ‘em).

Jul 14, 2004 - 9:16 am 24. Syl:

They love violence (or, rather, easily resort to it) because they know little else I would suspect.

One of the articles I read a while back on fostering debate and elections at the local level in Iraq mentioned it was difficult to convince them that they could disagree with one another without using fists.

But when the light finally went on in their heads, they embraced debate with enthusiasm.

Jul 14, 2004 - 9:31 am

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