MEATY FLY

Illegal Immigration

2005-04-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

Neo-Libertarian expresses disappointment over the recent federal crack down on Wal-Mart for employing illegal aliens. He (or she) realizes that "immigration is still often a crime," but thinks that it "shouldn't be so heavily punished."

Implicit in NL's discussion is a dichotomy between the law as stated and the law as applied. As stated, illegal immigration is most certainly "still" a crime. As applied, its criminal status is more questionable. That's why NL points out the hypocrisy of cracking down on Wal-Mart for hiring illegal immigrants when the US government won't stop them from coming into the country in the first place. The porous borders, driver's licenses, and other benefits illegal aliens get seems to suggest that illegal entry is not in fact illegal.

What bothers me about NL's post is that it seems to advocate a further separation between law as stated and applied. Immigration is "still often a crime," but it should be punished even less than it is now. The result would be an even wider gap between what the law says and what law enforcement officials do.

Granted, a gap often exists in various areas of the law. But is that a good thing? And do we want to advocate such a thing? I don't think so. I think it does harm to the integrity of the legal system to have major laws that are virtually un-enforced. This is especially true when the majority of citizens favor vigorous enforcement (as I believe they do here).

As long as immigration laws are enacted on the basis of legitimate constitutional powers, and as long as the majority truly wants them enforced, it strikes me as a bad idea to advocate virtual non-enforcement. And I would say that equally with respect to laws I hate and those I like. If the law is constitutional and the people want it, the government should enforce it.

Japan Poll

2005-02-23T00:23:00.000-08:00

No mention of Iraq, but support for Prime Minister Koizumi is rising, and 67 percent of respondents said Japan needs the U.S.-proposed missile defense system.

Japanese Film Festival in Afghanistan

2005-02-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

Belmont Club might want to add the following to its list of positive signals.

The Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun (Japanese only) reports that the Japanese Embassy in Kabul has organized the first Japanese film festival since the fall of the Taliban. It will run for 5 days, and a number of films will be shown.

Apparently, Oshidari Akiko, a deaf Japanese actress, is starring in a movie ("I Love Peace") dealing with NGOs in Afghanistan. She went to Kabul for the opening and spoke (through sign language) to a gathering of about 200 people prior to the start of the movie.

Japan to Designate China as Military Threat

2004-09-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

As discussed in previous posts, Japan's recovery has been driven largely by exports to China. At the same time, Japan's exports are helping to fuel China's rising military and economic strength. This, in turn, is feeding China's aggressive appetite for oil and other strategic resources to which Japan feels it has a claim. Thus, the same exports driving Japan's recovery in the short term may, through a circuitous route, be helping to create its next major threat. Now, in a highly significant move, an advisory panel to Japan's prime minister is going to recommend that China be viewed as a potential military threat for the first time. This is just the kind of symbolic gesture that is sure to piss the Chinese off.

Gandhi's Flawed Worldview

2004-08-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

Gandhi did not believe Hitler posed much of a threat. In May 1940, he said, "I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed." As this essay notes, the quote belongs to the same month in which Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and Hitler launched his attacks on Belgium, Holland, and France. Within a month of the statement, Hitler controlled virtually all of Western Europe. Even more shocking, at least to me, is the nature of Gandhi's advice: in 1938 he advised the Jews of Europe to use only nonviolent resistance to Hitler and counseled the U.S., Britain, and France not to declare war on Germany.

Ironically, a Gandhi descendant is giving similar advice to the Jews today.

China's Historical Revisionism

2004-08-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

The U.S. depends on South Korea and Japan to help contain China. The problem is that both Japan and South Korea are growing ever-more dependant on China for their economic health.

China has become South Korea's largest export destination, and while the two economies will be locked in competition for foreign markets in the near future, today it is China and its demand for exports that are keeping the South Korean economy from slipping into recession.

One fear is that South Korea's increasing dependence will pull it into the Chinese orbit, where it resided for hundreds of years prior to Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula:

Prior to Japan's colonization of Korea at the beginning of the 20th century, Korea was a vassal state of China for much of the previous 400 years. This client-patron relationship that endured for centuries, coupled with the deep cultural, ideological ties, has left an enduring legacy of respect for China within Korean culture and has strongly affected the Korean psyche.

Korea has been criticized for being quick to react to even the slightest transgression by either the United States or Japan, while China often gets a pass, even when the transgressions are great.

But China's increasingly aggressive actions may help drive public opinion back into America's favor. First, mirroring recent events in Japan, a wave of hackers has attacked South Korean websites related to national security:

Three weeks ago, Seoul's National Intelligence Agency discovered that a group of Chinese hackers, at least one from a government-run institute in China, had hacked into sensitive computer networks at 10 South Korean government institutes related to national security. The breach, characterized by officials as severe, lasted at least a month.

More significant, perhaps, is a growing dispute over historical interpretation of the Koguryo kingdom.

China has again come under attack for escalating its drive to distort Koguryo history and claim the ancient Korean kingdom belonged to Chinese dynasties.

The fear is that China's historical claims may form the basis of a future occupation of North Korea. North Korea's only surviving treaty is the 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, under which China guarantees North Korea's territorial integrity. Changes in the North Korean situation could lead to a destabilizing power vacuum that would serve as an invitation for Chinese occupation in the name of "mutual assistance." Then, based on historical revisionism, it could justify staying. Such fears are prompting some Koreans to change their attitudes toward China.

Many South Koreans are slowly awakening to China's unique approach to political archeology. Perhaps a good thing, some analysts conclude, for at least now South Koreans will begin to realize that China is not the all-benevolent fraternal ally many naively believed it to be.

Burning the Japanese Flag

2004-08-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Chinese authorities mobilized more than 10,000 police officers to prevent anti-Japanese hostility from spilling over into violence at the finals of the Asian Cup, which Japan won 3-1. While Japanese fans were confined to a separate 5,000-seat area, Chinese fans discharged pent up anger in the form of jeering, throwing garbage, burning the Japanese flag, and smashing the window of a car transporting a Japanese diplomat:

Outside the stadium, Chinese fans burned the Japanese flag.When a car transporting a Japanese diplomat was leaving the venue, Chinese fans smashed one of its windows, prompting the Japanese Embassy in Beijing to lodge a protest.

This anger was mirrored in cyberspace, where Chinese hackers

launched organized cyber-attacks on dozens of official Web sites in Japan and Taiwan in response to a Japanese attack on a Chinese site last month, the Hong Kong edition of China's official newspaper reported Friday. The newspaper Wen Wei Po said groups organized 1,900 hackers to launch a massive attack on more than 200 official Web sites in Japan and Taiwan on Monday.

The attack was in retaliation for Japan-based attacks on the Website of the China Federation of Defending Diaoyu Islands, "in which a hacker wrote 'the Uotsuri Island belongs to Japan' on the site." Uotsuri is the largest of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, which are at the center of a dispute between Japan and China.

Soccer, Vivisection, and Japan-China Relations

2004-08-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Japanese soccer players and fans have not enjoyed being jeered and pelted with garbage by Chinese spectators at the Asian Cup, held in China. As noted here, hostility has been intense. Expect to see anger and animosity rise to a new level when Japan faces China at the Asian Cup finals.

The behavior of Chinese fans has sparked a debate among Japan's politicians, with some wanting to lodge an official complaint with the Chinese government and others seeking to avoid mixing politics with sports.

``The final will pit Japan against China,'' Abe told He. ``I hope the government will maintain a situation in which Japanese players can play comfortably and Japanese fans can cheer them on. I want a total separation of sports and politics.''

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Wednesday the government had already made three separate requests to Beijing to improve the environment for the soccer team and fans.

Meanwhile, Xinhuanet has an article complaining about Japan flexing its military muscle. The article points out that Japan has redefined the scope of self defense to include conflicts in Taiwan:

In August 1999 the Diet rammed through the Law Concerning Measures to Ensure the Peace and Security of Japan in Situations in Areas Surrounding Japan, under which Taiwan was included as part of "situations in areas surrounding Japan."

Against this background, Japanese activists are demanding government action with respect to mystery bones, believed to be from human experiments conducted by the Japanese in WWII.

Fifteen years have passed since human bones were dug up at a construction site in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, linked to the infamous wartime Unit 731, and they remain a mystery that authorities still appear reluctant to resolve.

Keiichi Tsuneishi, a professor of science history at Kanagawa University, addresses a gathering in Tokyo last month to mark the 15th anniversary of the excavation of human bones in Shinjuku Ward in 1989.

The Group to Investigate the Bones Issue, made up of local residents and scholars, suspects many of the deceased were victims of wartime experiments carried out on prisoners by the notorious Imperial army unit and is calling on the government to use DNA and superimposing technology to examine the remains to verify their origins.

The bones were dug up in July 1989 adjacent to Toyama Park at a site near dozens of low-cost public housing units.

From the 1920s through 1945, the army operated a medical school and an epidemic prevention institute at the site. The facilities had connections with Unit 731, which is believed to have waged germ warfare activities in Manchuria during the war as well as carried out experiments on humans, including live vivisections.

As some of the victims were most likely Chinese, the DNA tests may add fuel to fire of Chinese hostility.

Finally, echoes of Japan's occupation of China continue to reverberate:

Japan said Tuesday it was "quite regrettable" that two children were injured by a leaking chemical weapon dumped in northeastern China by the departing Imperial Japanese Army at the close of World War II.

Anti-Japanese Sentiments in China

2004-08-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

Japan now finds its economic health tied to the rise of a potentially dangerous Chinese adversary. The Japanese economy is recovering, thanks in large part to Chinese markets.

A half-decade ago few understood how much Japan would gain from China's boom. Chinese manufacturers and consumers have been eager buyers of the machine tools, chipmaking equipment, cars, and consumer products that Japan excels at making. Last year two-way trade with China shot up 30.4%, to $132.4 billion, for the first time eclipsing import and export volumes with the U.S. (Link from June 2004)

But even as Japan’s recovery is mounted on the back of a growing China, the political relationship between the two countries continues to decline. Chinese leaders have called off visits to Japan to protest the Japanese Prime Minister’s continued visits to Yasukuni Shrine, repository of a number of Japanese war criminals. Japan and China are locked in conflict over islands and offshore natural gas resources. Chemical weapons left in China by the Japanese army continue to damage Japan-China relations. All of these issues are reflected in rising anti-Japanese sentiments among the general Chinese public:

All through the three group matches of the Asian Cup and the quarterfinal played Saturday against Jordan, the [Japanese] team was booed while Japanese fans were jeered and pelted with garbage. The hostility reflects growing anti-Japanese sentiment spurred by, among other things, repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Internet sites in China that target Japan for any number of injustices-past and present.

. . .Chongqing's history aside, a number of recent events have led to huge anti-Japan protests around China. These include the leaking of mustard gas abandoned by Japanese Imperial Army solders in Qiqihar, northern Heilongjiang province, in August 2003, causing one fatality.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Chinese nationalism is on the rise, and major Japanese companies doing business in China feel that sour relations with China are hurting business:

According to a survey of major Japanese companies doing business with China conducted by the French bank Credit Lyonnais in December, 80 percent of the 200 respondents said strained political relations are negatively affecting business.

Thus, while China’s growing strength is benefiting Japan in the short-term through new markets, there are troubling signs that these benefits may give way to future conflict.

Asia's rise is just beginning, and if the big regional powers can remain stable while improving their policies, rapid growth could continue for decades. Robust success, however, is inevitably accompanied by various stresses. The first and foremost of these will be relations among the region's major players. For example, China and Japan have never been powerful at the same time: for centuries, China was strong while Japan was impoverished, whereas for most of the last 200 years, Japan has been powerful and China weak. Having both powerful in the same era will be an unprecedented challenge.

The rise of China may one day produce more than mutual animosity and intensified competition over vital energy sources. As one Japanese commentator puts it:

I am deeply concerned that support at the grass-roots level for the current U.S.-Japan alliance has weakened conspicuously while the two countries have lost sight of their shared strategic goals. If the credibility of our alliance is undermined, more and more Japanese, including left wingers and liberals as well as young Japanese, will advocate Japan's cutting the alliance with the United States and taking its own approach in international politics. Once that happens, Japan's possession of nuclear weapons would be in sight.

I am strongly opposed to that idea because it alters the balance of power, raises tensions in East Asia and facilitates arms races. The alliance between the two countries is necessary for the stability of this region at a time when China has been aggressively building up its own military power.

China-US Competition in Uzbekistan

2004-07-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

Uzbekistan provides a clear example of why the U.S. promotion of human rights is bound to be erratic at best.

America needs allies in Central Asia. Uzbekistan eagerly offered the use of its territory as a base against the Taliban. The U.S. rewarded Uzbekistan with US$86 million in assistance, but the money is tied to the condition of improved human rights within the country.

The U.S. has already gained its key objective, which is a base in Central Asia. There are now 1,000 U.S. troops based in Uzbekistan, which, some have implied, serves the additional role of helping to contain China.

Militarily, the United States is hedging its bets with the most extensive realignment of U.S. power in half a century. Part of this realignment is the opening of a second front in Asia. No longer is the United States poised with several large, toehold bases on the Pacific rim of the Asian continent; today, it has made significant moves into the heart of Asia itself, building a network of smaller, jumping-off bases in Central Asia. The ostensible rationale for these bases is the war on terrorism. But Chinese analysts suspect that the unannounced intention behind these new U.S. positions, particularly when coupled with Washington's newly intensified military cooperation with India, is the soft containment of China.

But now China has tightened its strategic relationship with Uzbekistan, offering $US900 million in credits and an additional $US2.5 million in humanitarian aid. In exchange, China wants Uzbekistan to crack down on its Uighur minority, which is tied to Uighur separatists in China.

So the U.S. offers aid conditioned on better human rights, while China offers aid conditioned on worse human rights. Given the nature of Uzbekistan’s regime, China’s offerings may be more enticing. America, annoyed with the lack of progress in the human rights arena, just slapped Uzbekistan on the wrist by chiseling away 18 of the $US86 million. China has more than made up for the loss.

Meanwhile, Sankei Shimbun is reporting (Japanese link) that a series of bombs exploded outside the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan on July 30.

Japan-China Tensions over Energy

2004-07-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

In the previous two posts, I discussed how the U.S. is encouraging Japan to amend its pacifist constitution to enable a more active military role in the world. Japan is thinking about developing missiles with offensive strike capabilities, and the U.S. is consolidating bases in Japan and even talking about closing some of them.

These developments do not mean that the U.S. is thinking of withdrawing its entire military presence from Japan. On the contrary,

[t]he U.S. air base at Misawa in Aomori Prefecture has taken over command functions from Hawaii for naval patrol and reconnaissance for Asia as part of the U.S. military's global repositioning, The Asahi Shimbun has learned. The northern Japan U.S. facility is now in charge of reconnaissance command for a region extending from the western Pacific to the Indian Ocean, including the Persian Gulf. Naval patrol command functions for Hawaii, meanwhile, have been reduced to cover only waters surrounding the Aloha state. The shift apparently represents the Pentagon's new strategy of putting greater command functions in the hands of U.S. forces stationed in Japan.

Thus, Japan's importance as a strategic base seems to be growing. Meanwhile, Japan seems to have outdone China in vying for a new oil pipeline from Russia.

Tokyo has been lobbying hard for an oil-pipeline route to the Pacific and has promised it would invest in developing untapped oilfields. To back up its lobbying, Japan reportedly promised up to $14 billion to fund the pipeline, as well as $8 billion in investments in the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 oil and gas projects, according to Russian media reports. Japan has also said it will give Russia 8.4 billion yen ($77.6 million) to fund a feasibility study of the Nakhodka route. (Transneft is to complete a final study by next March.)

The United States is the world's biggest oil consumer; China is in second place and rising. Japan depends on the Middle East for 90% of its oil. Thus, the stakes are high in all directions. The pipeline to Japan may also serve U.S. interests, because it "would also be a strategic asset for Russia, allowing it to export to other Asian countries and perhaps the US west coast."

Tensions between China and Japan over energy don't stop there. Japan is embroiled in a dispute with China over offshore natural gas fields:

Current explorations of an offshore gas field in the East China Sea by both China and Japan have recently strained relations between the two powerful nations. The tension over sovereignty of this disputed gas field appears to be on the rise, exacerbating mutual mistrust dating back to the Sino-Japanese War and World War II - and not allayed by China's meteoric economic rise and voracious appetite for oil and gas. While Japan is concerned that Chinese drilling could siphon off natural gas from Japan's territorial seabed, Beijing considers Tokyo's claim as infringing on its interests and sovereignty.

In its quest to get to the reserves, China has hired a number of Western oil companies, including U.S.-based Unocal. This creates an interesting dynamic. Japan depends on the Middle East for 90% of its oil. Thus, helping out in Iraq is clearly in Japan's national interest. At the same time, the U.S. is eager to contain China and North Korea. For this reason, it is reshaping its military presence in Asia and encouraging Japan to take a more active military role. But even as these two countries conspire to contain China, Unocal is caught in the middle, a U.S. corporate interest siding with China's claims against Japan.

Militarizing Japan

2004-07-26T01:09:00.000-07:00

As noted yesterday, Richard Armitage recently told the Japanese that Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has become a hinderance to the Japanese-American alliance:

Armitage added that while the United States supported Japan's moves to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, any nation with that status has to be prepared to deploy military force in the interests of the international community.

These remarks have generated some surprise and irritation among Japan's governing elite, with some people expressing indignation at the U.S. attempt to influence the Constitutional debate.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told reporters Friday at the American Embassy in Tokyo: ``There's no question that the subject of amending the Japanese Constitution is a pragmatic example of the exercise of national sovereignty, and that is a matter entirely for the people of Japan. ... I can safely say that a decision by Japan to modify the Constitution would be welcomed and accepted by the United States.''

Article 9 was imposed by the United States to put a lid on Japanese military pretensions. Now the U.S. wants to pull Japan out of its box. It is ironic that resistance to U.S. wishes now takes the form of compliance with former U.S. commands.

Asahi: While the dispatch to Iraq of the SDF may have solidified Tokyo's alliance with Washington, an overwhelming majority of the international community looks upon Japan as nothing more than a ``loyal servant to the United States.'' Is that what Koizumi had in mind for Japan's national interest?

The irony is that being a "loyal servant" means stepping out of the U.S.-imposed confines of Article 9. Meanwhile, the Japanese military continues to upgrade its technological capabilities.

The Defense Agency plans to send several unmanned surveillance helicopters to Iraq as early as next month to help protect Japanese ground troops now virtually helpless against mortar attacks. Sources said nighttime aerial surveillance is vital in protecting Ground Self-Defense Force personnel stationed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah to rebuild the war-torn country.

Beyond this, there is a debate underway about whether to start producing missiles for offensive purposes.

In a radical change in policy, the Defense Agency is considering giving the Self-Defense Forces capability to attack enemy bases. Specifically, the envisaged policy change would be translated into introducing missiles and acquiring light aircraft carriers, sources said. That move would take Japan into an uncharted theater of defense. The nation's current policy based on the principle of an exclusively ``defensive defense posture'' means Japan cannot own munitions for use outside of this country. Rather than deploy its own cruise missiles, for example, Japan's policy has been to leave to the U.S. military to attack theoretical enemies outside Japanese territory in line with Japan-U.S. defense guidelines. Although the government maintains the right to launch an attack on its own, as long as it is within the justification of self-defense, Tokyo has not possessed weapons to implement such action.

Many commentators have pointed out that one way the U.S. could pressure China to do some arm twisting on North Korea is to allow Japan to militarize. Neither China nor North Korea wants that. I've been reading a lot of news (Japanese link) about how the U.S. is considering consolidating its bases in Japan, and possibly even closing some of them. These are signs of major changes.

Japanese Constitution and Identity

2004-07-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

In 1990, the Japanese scholar Aoki Tatsumoto reflected on the "transfiguration" of Japan's identity since WWII: In the approximately 45 years since WWII, we have gradually moved from scarcity to sufficiency. Strong feelings remain from the confusion of the post-war years, when the occupying troops handed out chocolate and chewing gum amid calls for “Americanization.” While these memories and experiences remain, Japan has also undergone economic growth and felt gratitude for its prosperous society. Having slowly reentered the world, participated in international society, and taken a look at Japan from an outside perspective, it is impossible not to question what it means to be Japanese in today's world. [My translation from 日本文化論の変容]
Recently, this question has centered on Japan's status as a pacifist nation. The United States shaped Japan's post-war identity by making pacifism into a cornerstone of the Japanese Constitution. Apparently, the U.S. has changed its mind: WASHINGTON-Pacifist Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is an impediment to the alliance between Japan and the United States, according to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

. . .Armitage added that while the United States supported Japan's moves to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, any nation with that status has to be prepared to deploy military force in the interests of the international community. He said unless Japan was prepared to do that, it would be difficult to become a permanent member. (English here).
A change in the Constitution reflects both a change in intention and capabilities. On the one hand, it would signal an intent to use force in at least some situations. On the other, it would remove a Constitutional obstacle to the employment of force. The U.S. assumption is that this would enable Japan to play a larger and more productive role on the world stage (presumably a role that would include balancing France, Russia, and China on the Security Council). But some people see a more insidious movement at work: "Japan," Professor Suh declared, "is really an abnormal country." It has, he argued, refused to apologize for the crimes its government and military committed in the Pacific War and it has refused to pay compensation to its victims. Indeed, the trend in politics in Japan is, in this respect, not promising. "Since the end of the Cold War," Professor Suh observed, "Japanese politics has been swinging to the right and militarizing. . . . Now the Liberal Democratic Party plans to amend the Peace Constitution. The revised constitution will encompass the emperor as not the symbol of the state, but the chief of state; abolishment of Article 9 [which renounced the right to wage war]; homage to the hinomaru [the Japanese flag] and Kimigayo [the Japanese national anthem]. Also, the tide of grassroots rightism or neo-nationalism is rising, especially using the excuse of North Korea." (link)
Japan has the second largest economy in the world. It may soon have a military to match. For better or worse, we may be about to witness a substantial change in the Japanese identity.

The Legality of War

2004-07-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

Until recently, it had never occurred to me that some people actually believe that war is now illegal. If you read deeper, it seems that most of these individuals will allow for self-defense, strictly defined. Thus, while it may be permissible to launch a counter attack, the initial attack will invariably be illegal, making the overall war a violation of international law.

In International Society and the System of International Law, law professor Masaji Ie writes, Contemporary international law is distinguished by the illegalization of war. Until WWI, it was not prohibited to resolve international disputes via the medium of war. ...However, after WWI, the formation of the League of Nations made war illegal in certain situations and then outlawed it generally under the 1928 anti-war pact [see here]. Furthermore, after WWII, the United Nations Charter solidified the illegalization of war. [My translation from the Japanese original]
In a similar vein, the Japan Forum on International Relations has issued a report stating (English here), The modern sovereign nation-state system, after experiencing the twin catastrophes of World Wars, changed its course to illegalization of war by forming the League of Nations and the United Nations. Furthermore, these organizations have attempted to build a “collective security system” to enforce the illegalization of war.
Apparently, this view was shared by some of the U.N.'s founders:

Certainly some of the UN's "founders" wished to "outlaw" war, and even to require countries to absorb an aggressor's first strike. (This appears to have been, for example, the position of former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, a member of the American delegation to the San Francisco conference. Stassen insisted that the Charter's acknowledgement of the "inherent right of individual or collective self-defense" also include the language "if an armed attack occurs.") The Charter as written, however, did not reflect this purpose. (See Leashing the Dogs of War)

Masaji Ie does not agree:

To prevent the abuse of the right of self-defense, the United Nations Charter allows a nation to exercise the right of self-defense only “if an armed attack occurs,” which means that the term is narrower than under conventional international law. (Article 51)

Even assuming that this was the original intent, very few countries have ever abided by it.

The Charter's use-of-force rules have been widely and regularly disregarded. Since 1945, two-thirds of the members of the United Nations--126 states out of 189—have fought 291 interstate conflicts in which over 22 million people have been killed. (Leashing Dogs of War)

It is interesting to look at the records of each permanent member of the Security Council. Using the armed conflict database, I see 29 armed conflicts for Russia/Soviet Union, 37 for the U.S., 13 for China, 29 for Great Britain, and 19 for France. These numbers are most likely incomplete, given that France has unilaterally intervened in Africa 35 times since its assault on Gabon in 1964. During this same period, the Soviet Union seized and controlled countless countries in the Eastern Block and China occupied Tibet.

It is also worth noting that the United Nations Security Council has only authorized 3 wars in its entire history: the Korean War, the First Gulf War, and the recent Afghanistan War. Thus, even if we are kind enough to take Masaji Ie’s interpretation of the U.N. Charter at face value, it is clear that actual practice has rarely coincided with the Charter’s language.

This practice cannot be ignored, whether it is interpreted as being consistent with the correct meaning of the original UN Charter or as declaratory of new (or established) international law norms. It is state practice that "makes" international law, either through the development of customary norms or the interpretation and application of treaties. Because states that signed and ratified the UN Charter, particularly those substantially capable of using military force, have continued to consider themselves free to defend their interests by force of arms with or without Security Council approval, the Charter must be interpreted as consistent with that right. (See Leashing the Dogs of War)

Masaji Ie describes America as the greatest threat to world peace and international law. He almost seems sad that the Soviet Union withered away, leaving America free to go on a ramage in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Yet he mentions absolutely nothing about the fact that wars are raging day and night across the globe and they always have been. Borrowing from Alan Dershowitz's description of anti-Semitism, "a good working definition of [anti-Americanism] is taking a trait or action that is widespread, if not universal, and blaming only [the United States] for it."

Yomiuri Editorial on War

2004-07-18T19:50:00.000-07:00

If only our big media were as reasonable as this:

Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese only): The Iraq War could have been avoided if Saddam Hussein had complied with the Security Council Resolutions. Saddam did use chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War and against the Kurds. After the First Gulf War, U.N. inspections revealed that Hussein was secretly producing nuclear and biological weapons. Attempts to verify the disposal of those weapons were repeatedly thwarted. Saddam’s regime bears responsibility for the war. That is why Japan supported Britain and America. [My translation]
The editorial is, of course, critical of British-American intelligence (for good reason). The political factions that supported the U.S. effort in Japan must be frustrated by the lack of WMD. After all, their credibility is on the line too.

Proper Perspective

2004-07-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

Asahi.com provides a proper juxtaposition of sentences:

Asahi (Japanese only): Militants kidnapped expatriate workers from the Philippines and threatened to behead them unless all Philippine forces were withdrawn by the end of July. The Philippine’s 51-man force was scheduled to remain in Iraq until August 20th to rebuild schools and other infrastructure and provide medical services. [My translation]

I don't know how this is affecting perception in Iraq. I doubt that forcing humanitarian aid out of the country is good for terrorist PR.

Update: on the other hand, it appears the terrorists are receiving substantial ransom payments:

Belmont Club: However that may be, the scale of the ransom reported by the Philippines Daily Tribune can be gauged by comparison to the World Trade Center attacks which cost Osama Bin Laden half a million dollars. The "ransom" paid by the Philippine Government is twelve times that amount and will kill dozens of Americans and Iraqis before it is expended.

Thanks for the help.

War is not the primary killer

2004-07-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

The primary cause of death in the last century was not war. All told, 20th Century wars claimed an estimated 35,654,000 lives. That’s a large number. In contrast, governments, particularly Communist ones, slaughtered approximately 119,394,000 individuals apart from war during the same period. Rummel notes,

To view this double standard from another perspective, both World Wars cost twenty-four million battle deaths. But from 1918 to 1953, the Soviet government executed, slaughtered, starved, beat or tortured to death, or otherwise killed 39,500,000 of its own people (my best estimate among figures ranging from a minimum of twenty million killed by Stalin to a total over the whole communist period of eighty-three million). For China under Mao Tse-tung, the communist government eliminated, as an average figure between estimates, 45,000,000 Chinese. The number killed for just these two nations is about 84,500,000 human beings, or a lethality of 252 percent more than both World Wars together. Yet, have the world community and intellectuals generally shown anything like the same horror, the same outrage, the same out pouring of anti-killing literature, over these Soviet and Chinese megakillings as has been directed at the much less deadly World Wars?

The United States has blood (indirectly) on its hands as well. After WWII, the U.S. and Britain handed over to the Soviet Union approximately 2,250,000 citizens and prisoners of war, an estimated 795,000 of which were executed or died in slave-labor camps. Rummel complains,

. . . it is sad that hundreds of thousands of people can be killed by governments with hardly an international murmur, while a war killing several thousand people can cause an immediate world outcry and global reaction.

It was fine when Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his own people. It was not okay when the United States killed a few thousand to knock him from power.

Michael Moore is Good for Something

2004-07-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

America is so powerful that it even dominants in the sphere of America bashing. It is ironic that the most influential basher of all is none other than a loud-mouthed, obnoxiously obese American who is a walking, talking embodiment of the worst excesses of American culture. Sadly, his exterior is not his most disgusting part. His ideas manifest a rotten interior, a fatly pampered juvenile core.

I really don’t like dwelling on the man any more than I like thinking about tumors, cancers, or yeast infections. They exist. I know they do. I try to forget.

That said, I am rather pleased to see that Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man is number nine on the New York Times bestseller list.

Oh, and Floyd the Chimp has kindly done some intellectual digging, saving me much time and frustration, to come up with at least one thing that Michael Moore is good for:

I was coming up empty for a while, but after listening to people in the dining room extol the man and movie's virtues, I figured out something the fat tub of mendacity is good for: he's the ultimate idiot barometer.

All those people calling the movie "awesome"... well, I always suspected they were idiots not worthy of paying attention to, but I didn't want to absolutely conclude as much without more conclusive evidence, and finding out that kind of stuff on my own would've been a bigass hassle. Now I know for sure.

It's like I have a little clipboard with two boxes: "Idiot" and "Not an Idiot." Anyone who thinks Michael Moore is the bees knees of political discourse, or that F-9/11 is a devastating takedown of Bush or the war just proudly made their mark in the idiot box, and I can proceed to completely disregard their opinion on anything even remotely related to politics.

So thank you, Michael Moore, diviner of morons, revealer of dumbasses, all-powerful labeler of shit-for-brainers, you've done your country a great service.

Values More Important than Brilliance

2004-07-10T22:26:00.000-07:00

Miniluv: The problem here is one that I find myself in on a much smaller scale. I see people constantly bashing Bush on stupid things. He lied. He's dumb. He's evil. He's this. He's that. It doesn't convince me. In fact, it pushes me into a corner and makes me want to support him even more. Sometimes it makes it hard for me criticize him on things he does that are wrong even when I disagree with him.

One of the reasons this happens is because, for the most part, people don’t choose candidates based on intelligence, honesty, or ethical behavior. The more important consideration, I think, is shared goals and values.

As a voter, I want to know that the representative of my choice wants to bring about a world that is more in line with my desires than the world that will exist under the guidance of the opposing candidate.

I don’t give a shit if a brilliant or ethical pilot is flying to Death Valley when I want to go to Hawaii. For the same reason, I don’t want a brilliant pacifist president when my goal is to play hardball with terrorists and their sponsors. If anything, that brilliance is just going to be put to use opposing the very things I want.

Jefferson's Undeclared War

2004-07-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

In the Savage Wars of Peace, Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, Max Boot recounts how the U.S. Navy was created to "fight a small, undeclared war halfway around the world." That war was the First Barbary War of 1801 to 1805.

The Barbary states, which included modern-day Morocco, Algeria, and Libya, sponsored piracy and hostage-taking as a means of generating revenue.

To finance their governments they would routinely declare war on a European state and set either naval vessels or privateers to seize enemy shipping. This was a lucrative business: Captured cargoes and captives were auctioned off to the highest bidder, the latter being sent to flourishing slave markets unless they were wealthy enough to ransom their release.

Boot discusses a number of ways in which these slaves were treated, but one passage deserves special mention:

A slave who spoke disprespectfully to a Muslim could be roasted alive, crucified, or impaled (a stake was driven through the anus until it came out at the back of the neck). A special agony was reserved for a slave who killed a Muslim--he would be cast over the city walls and left to dangle on giant hooks for days before expiring of his wounds.

By the time Thomas Jefferson became president, he was determined to take action on his earlier proposal to "effect a peace through the medium of war." And that is precisely what he did--without an official declaration of war and without Congressional authorization.

America has always been a capitalist nation, so it is fitting that its first overseas war focused on free trade. The philosophical underpinnings of liberty are grounded on property rights, which include the freedom to trade what is rightfully yours. Thomas Jefferson vigorously defended this right, despite his reputation as an isolationist. A modern-day "liberal" he was not.

Psychological Effects of Transfer

2004-07-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

A School Yard Blog provides a useful summary of the accomplishments accompanying the transfer of power in Iraq. Plus, there's an interesting post in the comments section:

As far as I know, there has never been an instance where a coalition of nations fought to free another nation from a tyrant and handed back the land, authority and indeed the tyrant to a new government. This happened in about 16 months, while a tremendous amount of training, organizing and rebuilding was done. Further, an enormous point was made to limit civilian loss and damage as much as is humanly possible.

Of course, the war is not actually over. Large numbers of troops will remain. But, as VDH notes, the transfer will have immediate psychological effects:

Hanson: Psychologically, the climate will change almost immediately from "they" to "we" are responsible for policing the streets, keeping the power on, and hunting down the terrorists.
. . .
To a much greater degree, Iraqis' not a Paul Bremer in suit-and-tie or camouflaged General Kimmet will be holding press conferences, appearing ubiquitously on television, and issuing communiqués. In a cultural landscape that puts a high premium on pride and status, the emergence of visible and identifiable Iraqi leaders will be worth a division or two in the war against the terrorists.

Accounts of the Iraqi response on some Iraqi blogs seem to confirm this.

Iraq the Model: I was deeply moved by this great man's [Bremer's] words but I could't prevent myself from watching the effect of his words on my friends who some of them were anti-Americans and some were skeptic, although some of them have always shared my optimism. I found that they were touched even more deeply than I was. I turned to one friend who was a committed She'at and who distrusted America all the way. He looked as if he was bewitched, and I asked him, "So, what do you think of this man? Do you still consider him an invader?" My friend smiled, still touched and said, "Absolutely not! He brought tears to my eyes. God bless him."

Another friend approached me. This one was not religious but he was one of the conspiracy theory believers. He put his hands on my shoulders and said smiling, "I must admit that I'm beginning to believe in what you've been telling us for months and I'm beginning to have faith in America. I never thought that they will hand us sovereignty in time. These people have shown that they keep their promises."

There is no doubt that America will have a lot of influence in Iraq for some time, just as it did initially in Japan and Germany after WWII. But, it is also clear that, over time, Iraq will lose its American-held democratic training wheels (to borrow Den Beste's phrase). And, hopefully, America will have gained a valuable ally in the region.

Bush is not a War Criminal

2004-07-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

The opponents of the removal of Saddam and the war on terror work backwards from the conviction that Bush is a war criminal. That is the foundation. From there they search far and wide for legal scraps to frame Bush in the proper light.

One favorite tactic is to claim that Bush has violated the Geneva Convention. Damn! The Geneva Convention doesn't apply to terrorists? Shit.

Another tactic I've seen from time to time is the suggestion that Bush doesn't have the right to declare war on a non-governmental actor like Al Qaeda or an activity like terrorism.

Alas! That won't work either, because the Constitution does not require that an opposing nation be named.

Slate: Under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress is constitutionally empowered to declare war on terrorists and is not obligated to name a host country. Article I authorizes Congress to "define and punish Piracies, Felonies committed on the High Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations."

In fact, our first overseas war established an appropriate precedent. Slate continues,

There is also historical precedent for congressional action against terrorists. For instance, in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson was authorized by Congress to send the Navy to the Mediterranean to curb the depredations of the Barbary pirates operating along the coast of northern Africa. These Corsairs--in the manner of terrorists everywhere--persecuted innocents while working in league with existing nation-states. The lack of a Barbary national anthem or embassy was not an obstacle.

I can already sense the disappointment. Bush MUST be a war criminal. Too bad the facts don't fit the claim.

Iraqi Prime Minister Believes Saddam/Al Qaeda Connection

2004-06-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

MSNBC: Brokaw: Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.

Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September — atrocities or not, I can’t — vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.

Geneva Doesn't Apply to Terrorists Part III

2004-06-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

In my hungry search for a steaming pile of dung, Meaty Fly found its way to this site. And now, I see that I must defend myself against the ass whose shit brought me there in the first place. Proggressive at Cal says the attack on Yoo's brief is

not about liberals and conservatives. It's not about whether the Republican or the Democratic team gets more points. It's about good and evil, right and wrong, and how a professor allowed evil things to happen.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. "It" is about opponents of the removal of Saddam ("peace" activists) who are eager to create new rights for terrorists where none existed before.

Stretching the Geneva Convention blanket over the bodies of murderous terrorists is contrary to the spirit of the Geneva Convention, which is based on reciprocity of treatment:

Yoo: The reasons to deny Geneva status to terrorists extend beyond pure legal obligation. The primary enforcer of the laws of war has been reciprocal treatment: We obey the Geneva Conventions because our opponent does the same with American POWs. That is impossible with al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda's intent is to target civilians, decapitate prisoners, and violate all accepted rules of war. In return, "peace" activists would like to reward Al Qaeda with Geneva protection.

1. Geneva only applies to conflicts between signatory nations.
2. Al Qaeda is not a nation, nor has it signed the convention

End of argument.

Overstock.com largest private employer in Afghanistan

2004-06-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

The war and capitalism spreading benefits around the world:

Wired News: When Neelab Kanishka fled Afghanistan for Pakistan with her family in 1989 at the age of 11, the idea of ever returning to her war-torn native land seemed far-fetched.

She could not have conceived in her wildest imagination, Kanishka said, that 15 years later she'd not only be coming back, but also directing one of the nation's largest employers. Nor would she have envisioned her role as envoy of a discount Internet retailer located in, of all places, Salt Lake City.

Strife in Iraq

2004-06-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

From one end of the earth to the other, day in and day out, life is conflict:

S.F. Gate: Instead of gentle giants lolling in the sea, they came upon a life-or- death struggle as a pack of six killer whales attacked a gray whale calf while its mother valiantly fought to shield her 8-ton baby.

As whale watchers looked on with a mixture of awe and sadness, mother killer whales -- the most experienced hunters -- took turns ramming head- first, like 6-ton torpedoes, into the calf's soft underbelly, their force nearly knocking it out of the water, while others leapt atop the 20-foot baby, trying to drown it.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus got it right:

We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.

Recognizing this does not make me jaded. On the contrary, the peace loving opponents of the removal of Saddam are usually far more pessimistic and negative about life. They want to deny man's violent nature. A more realistic approach is to recognize that man has from time to time carved out transitory bubbles of peace and security from the midst of nature's eternal strife. Security must be won through military force. This is why Sun Tzu said,

The military is a great matter of the state.
It is the ground of death and life,
The Tao of survival and extinction.

Only a military can create and maintain the bubble of security. Recognizing how hard it is and how great the reward, I don't despair every time a bomb goes off. That's the norm. What is extraordinary is the goal: democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I feel positive about events in the world, while you are horrified and depressed. Who is the jaded one?

Catholicism and Dictators

2004-06-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn: [J]ust as the so-called “realists” insist today that Islam is incompatible with liberty, so three decades ago there were wise old birds who said the same thing about Catholicism. Easy to scoff now, but back then, remember, the dictators ruled not just Latin America but also Spain and Portugal. Cultures can change.

Violence is Nothing New

2004-06-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

Snoqualmie is down.

A five-minute perusal of CNN.com has just convinced me that the world is falling apart.

War is the normal state of affairs precisely because man is an extremely violent and aggressive animal. What is baffling is not that there is violence but that there are actually pockets of peace, occasional clear days in the midst of weeks of rain.

It is interesting to note that the Romans fought the Persians for 600 years in what is now Iraq. 600 years!
Military History Quarterly: Roman victories in Iraq were transitory and self-defeating. Moreover, they were part of a conflict that lasted not for months or years or even for decades but for more than six centuries.

Modern Iraq kicked off its independence in 1933 with a massacre of the Assyrians carried out by the Iraqi army. There has been violence and bloodshed ever since. So please, don't get down. What you are seeing is just the normal flow of human history.

Murdering the Muslim Way

2004-06-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

There is a proper and improper way to murder infidels:

Sam Hamod, former Islamic Center director: The killers didn't even do the job right, he said. "If they are going to have an execution, the [executioner] must say a prayer and ask for forgiveness from God for what he is doing and pray for the person's soul being killed," he said. "You can't do it like the idiots on TV. The right thing to do is slit the person's throat, not cut off the entire head."

At issue is book 47, verse four of the Koran, which says, "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight [or jihad], smite at their necks at length; when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them. "Thereafter is the time for either generosity or ransom until the war lays down its burdens." The "smite at their necks" wording "doesn't mean to kill somebody," Mr. Hamod said.

Israel's Wall

2004-06-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

Krauthammer: It is the height of absurdity to launch a terrorist war against Israel, then demand the right to determine the nature and route of the barrier built to prevent that very terrorism.

Student Expelled for Protesting Homosexuality

2004-06-20T16:36:00.000-07:00

Erin O'Conner: San Diego school administrators have engaged in viewpoint discrimination against a student, and now they are being sued for it.

Immigration and Minimum Wage

2004-06-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

The Corner: How about this instead: A tight immigration system, with muscular enforcement and low levels of legal admissions, that would allow the market to raise the de facto minimum wage.

Withdraw from Europe

2004-06-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

Withdraw the U.S. military:

Victor Davis Hanson: We seek not to punish Europe by our departure, but to save it from itself. The problem is not just that our troops are doing nothing in places like Germany, or merely that they are more needed elsewhere — they do real damage by their presence in enabling an increasingly strident and opportunistic pacifism and an anti-Americanism fueled by dependency and ignited by resentment.

The continent is now the repository of Western heritage — a beautiful museum or amusement park, if you will, of caretakers and custodians. Unless that changes, we should no more expect Europeans to participate in the slogging in Iraq or Afghanistan than we should count on Disneyland guides venturing into nearby South Central to adjudicate gang violence, or Smithsonian docents to keep the piece in D.C. neighborhoods.

By providing free defense, we are subsidizing the current European vacation from reality.

Congress and Declarations of War

2004-06-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to note that Bush I actually broke precedent by asking for a Congressional declaration of war. In the Korean War, Truman established a new (and dangerous) precedent by going to war without seeking Congressional approval. This precedent was followed by both Johnson and Nixon, who, claiming their war-making authority rested on their power as commanders in chief, refused to ask Congress for approval to wage war in Vietnam. So two major wars were fought without Congressional approval in the form of an official declaration.

However, in by-passing Congress, Truman used the United Nations as a military tool. He cited a U.N. Security Council resolution as his authority, which has turned out to be a tragic mistake. So far, only three wars have had Security Council approval: the Korean War, the First Iraq War, and the Afghanistan War. The Second Iraq War broke the nascent trend, hopefully for good.

Crowd Control

2004-06-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting new tool:

New Scientist: Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.

At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.

VDH: French Allies of Islamists?

2004-06-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Question: Do you consider it a possibility that the anti-Americanism of Western European governments will eventually morph with the anti-Americanism of the Islamists to the point where they are open allies against the U.S.?

VDH: Well, France is sort of there now, isn’t it? It sold weapons even in the 1990s to Saddam, built his reactor, and de facto stole his oil. It denied air rights during Reagan’s strike against Libya, and actively campaigned to strong-arm our friends and neutrals to embarrass us in the UN. If you read French commentary—from the nationalist right to the socialist left—it is not just anti-American, but hostilely so. A French legislator was on record in favor of granting nukes to the Arab world.

Videos of Saddam's Torture

2004-06-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

NY Post: They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises. Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader. But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.
------
Saddam's torture videos may be too awful to show, but it's hard to explain the low media interest in the story of seven Iraqi men who had their right hands chopped off by Saddam's thugs — and then got new prosthetic arms and new hope in America.

They're eloquent, they're available, they're grateful for the U.S. liberation of Iraq. No one can better talk about Saddam's tortures — and no one is more eager to do so. Yet, as of yesterday, the New York Times had written 177 stories on Abu Ghraib — with over 40 on the front page. The self-proclaimed "paper of record" hadn't written a single story about those seven Iraqi men.

More from Boalt Prof. John Yoo

2004-06-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

L.A. Times: This policy is more generous than required. The Geneva Convention does not apply to the war on terrorism. It applies only to conflicts between its signatory nations. Al Qaeda is not a nation; it has not signed the convention; it shows no desire to obey the rules. Its very purpose — inflicting civilian casualties through surprise attack — violates the core principle of laws of war to spare innocent civilians and limit fighting to armed forces. Although the convention applies to the Afghanistan conflict, the Taliban militia lost its right to prisoner-of-war status because it did not wear uniforms, did not operate under responsible commanders and systematically violated the laws of war.

Longer essay on Geneva Convention here

Democratization as Reason for War

2004-06-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Comments: We didn't go to war because of WMDs.. we went to war because of sanctions not being adhered to.

Doubtful. We went to war first and foremost to install a democracy in the heart of the Middle East. History conspired to align American self-interest with the interests of the oppressed masses of Iraqis. We did not go to war because we wanted to help them. We wanted to help them because, in doing so, we are helping ourselves. The war is grounded on the belief that only democratization will eradicate the root causes of terrorism.

Totalitarian regimes create an environment in which underground extremist groups are the only alternative to the status quo. With no democratic alternatives, the oppressed masses are more likely to turn to radical groups for hope. In this way, totalitarian repression functions as a warped version of a subsidy. While the repressive regimes are not directly subsidizing the underground political parties, they are actively suppressing the natural formation of opposition to those parties. In effect, authoritarian regimes erect barriers of entry to the political stage, and this works to the benefit of underground movements, which then become the only alternatives to the regime in power.

The Cold War practice of propping up "friendly" tyrants has backfired. Those tyrants tend to strangle the rise of moderate opposition, thus depriving us of a useful counterweight to our extremist enemies. If we are going to extinguish terrorism in the Middle East, we should promote an environment in which moderate opposition can grow unchecked by authoritarian force.

Personally, I think that Iraq was the perfect starting point for a number of reasons. First, Saddam was already in violation of 17 resolutions. Second, he was "known" to have WMD. These were justifications in their own right, but I think they were not the primary ones. Another factor was oil. Saudi Arabia is a primary source of radical fundamentalism. But our hands were/are tied given our dependency on their oil. By establishing a democratic capitalist regime in Iraq, we would serve two goals at once. We would install a corrosive force in the center of the region (free speech and all the corrosive forces unleashed by the desire for capitalist goods). We would also reduce our dependency on Saudi oil, enabling us to put more pressure on them.

Mental Coffins

2004-06-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Assholes,

It's time to put the nail in your collective mental coffins. Let's just run through a few statistics to put things in perspective.

First, UNICEF estimated that 60,000 civilians (per year) were dying early deaths in the years before the war. I've read 37,000 per year elsewhere, but it probably depends on the period measured.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't even include the mass graves.

[Update: it doesn't]

Second, the peacenik www.iraqbodycount.net estimates the number of Iraqi civilian deaths as 9,000 to 11,000 since the start of the war. Given the nature of the counters, odds are this is an inflated number.

The Corner: Food in Iraq is everywhere available, clean water is flowing, electricity is being produced at levels higher than those before the war, hundreds of schools have been rebuilt and some 30,000 teachers trained—and whereas before the war Iraqi civilians were dying untimely deaths at the rate of 36,000 a year, now even an anti-war group estimates that in the last 14 months the number of Iraqi civilians to die unnatural deaths numbers at most about 11,000.

Now, if you and the other peace-loving opponents of Saddam's removal had their way (and if UNICEF can be believed), somewhere between 37,000 to 60,000 Iraqi civilians would have died in the past year. Instead, a mere 9,000 to 11,000 died. Hmmm. Yet you thinks things have gotten "worse."

As for American casualties, they have been among the lowest in history at 1.5 to 2.5% (total of 800). Compare these for fun:

Korean War: 7.8%
World War I: 6.8%
World War II: 6.6%
Vietnam War: 6.2%

Sorry, this war is not a disaster. It is one of the greatest successes in the history of warfare.

I'll be the first to admit that the prison scandal is bad news. I certainly don't support what happened there. But to suggest that such abuse in any way undermines the worthiness of removing Saddam is laughable.

Have you forgotten about the mass graves?

Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

"We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein's regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. "Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades," said the group in a statement in May. "Many of these 'disappeared' are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq."

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

If you can read that and honestly say that it would be better if Saddam were still in power, you're even further gone than I suspected.

EU vs. USA

2004-06-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

Swedish Think Tank: If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy.

EU versus USA is written by Dr Fredrik Bergström, President of the Swedish Research Institute of Trade, and Mr Robert Gidehag, until recently Chief Economist of the same institute and now President of the Swedish Taxpayer's Association.

Saddam Shipped WMD

2004-06-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

World Tribune: The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The only thing newsworthy about this is the fact that it is coming from the U.N.

Putin's Opinion

2004-06-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Funny how the peace-loving opponents of Saddam's removal thought Putin's opinion mattered when he opposed Iraqi liberation. I doubt his opinion matters now.

Putin: The Kremlin leader, answering a reporter's question in Sea Island, Georgia, suggested that the Democrats were two-faced in criticizing Bush on Iraq since it had been the Clinton administration that authorized the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by U.S. and NATO forces.

Thanks Kerry Haters

Iraq vs. Detroit

2004-06-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

Daily Blogster:

There were 39 combat related killings
in Iraq during the month of January.....
In the fair city of Detroit there were
35 murders in the month of January.

Iraqi Engines

2004-06-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. weapons experts have found 20 engines used in banned Iraqi missiles in a Jordan scrapyard along with other equipment which could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, an official said Wednesday.

Surprise from Le Mond

2004-06-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Le Mond (translation): Elsewhere, listen to the difference. Omertà rules. April 2004. The first video tape: systematic torture, eyes gouged out, limbs torn off suspected combatants, a pyramid of bodies. Second video tape: the cold-blooded execution of a mother and her five children (from 12 months to seven years old) in the outskirts of Shatoy (Chechnya). Two accounts filmed by Russian soldiers disgusted by the high deeds of their brothers in arms. A single Moscow newspaper, Novaya Gazeta publishes the photos. No waves. Radio silence. TV silence. Prosecutorial silence. Not a word from the military and political hierarchies. Global silence. Bush is greeted under protest. Putin as a brother.

_______

For better of for worse, the United States remains a democracy. The most exemplary of democracies, even. The only one to my knowledge that has not censored during war time the publication of the crimes committed by its soldiers. The only one in which the press and television revealed in the space of a few weeks the scale of the brutality and freely examined the ins and outs of the accomplished disaster. The only one in which the parliamentary fact-finding bodies require the testimony of a president, ministers, generals, heads of intelligence agencies, questioning them without exceptions or restrictions.

I recall that France, so generous in giving lessons, has never in forty years indicted, tried or sentenced a single soldier who practiced torture during the war of Algeria.

Bechtel: Self-Interested Altruism

2004-06-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

Iraq at a Glance: Bechtel Company made all these improvements, now the center is perfect, we are so pleased.. new clean institutes, new salaries and so NEW LIFE.. Of course you see the dentists and doctors are happy and smile, have you ever seen them happy under Saddam?!! they were bewildered all the time, thinking in how to make their living....

In pursuing its corporate interests, Bechtel is helping the Iraqi people.

U.N. Oil-For-Assassination Program?

2004-06-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

UN Watch: In a sinister oil-for-murder plot, Saddam Hussein used the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program to set up the assassination of a prominent Iraqi exile politician, the slain man's family has charged.

3rd U.N. Letter

2004-06-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

Wall Street Journal: So now there's a third "hush" letter from the United Nations demanding that an Oil for Food Program contractor cease cooperation with Congressional investigators. Dated April 27, the note--like earlier ones to inspection companies Saybolt and Cotecna--is signed by another U.N. official "for Benon V. Sevan," the outgoing Iraq Program chief.

Despite Election Results, Strong Prospect of Indian Alliance

2004-06-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

Walter Russell Mead: In this respect, the voting in India was the latest in a series of foreign elections -- starting with Gerhard Schroeder's 2002 victory in Germany, up through presidential races in Spain and South Korea -- in which voters supported the more anti-Bush choice.

Longer-term, however, the drift toward a closer relationship between the world's two largest democracies seems likely to continue. India and the United States share so many economic and strategic interests that New Delhi could one day replace the European Union as Washington's most important gobal partner.

Geopolitics is part of the story. India has two strategic nightmares. To the east is the threat that China could become the dominant power in Asia; to the west is the threat that radical terrorist movements in the Muslim world could destabilize the region and export terror and conflict to India. Since Middle Eastern Islamic radicalism and China most worry U.S. strategic planners, it is easy to see how India and the United States could build an important security partnership.

Positive and Negative Rights

2004-06-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

Jane Galt: I think, though, that it is possible to recognize that positive and negative rights are in some cases complementary, without claiming that they are therefore the same thing. I can't have night without day, but that doesn't mean the sun is shining at midnight.

CIA Did Not Fund Bin Laden

2004-06-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

Richard Miniter: Why is this myth of CIA support for bin Laden so persistent? Some find the myth persuasive because they do not know that America and Saudi Arabia funded two different sets of anti-Soviet fighters.

U.S. Gives Iraqis Full Control of Oil

2004-06-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yahoo: Iraqi officials declared Tuesday that the interim government has assumed full control of the country's oil industry ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation administration.

This does not, to me, prove that the war was not about oil, at least in some sense. A crucial step in fighting terrorism is minimizing the U.S. dependence on Saudi oil. The goal is not to steal or control Iraqi oil but to ensure its availability on the market.

Nuclear Monopoly and America's Niceness

2004-06-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Reagan/Kennedy Debate: One of my favorite bits in this exchange was the rhetorical question Reagan asked about America’s brief monopoly of nuclear weapons in the 1940s: “Can you honestly say that had the Soviet Union been in a comparable position with that bomb, or today’s Red Chinese, that the world would not today have been conquered with that force?”

Iraq Attack on Israel

2004-06-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia, History of Iraq: After the establishment of Israel a war with Israel followed in 1948, in which Iraqi forces were allied with those of Transjordan, in accordance with a treaty signed by the two countries during the previous year. Fighting continued until the signing of a cease-fire agreement in May 1949. The war also had a negative impact on the Iraqi economy. The government allocated 40 percent of available funds for the army and for Palestinian refugees. Oil royalties paid to Iraq were halved when the pipeline to Haifa was cut off in 1948. The war and the hanging of a Jewish businessman led to the departure of most of Iraq's prosperous Jewish community. Although emigration was prohibited, many Jews made their way to Israel during this period with the aid of an underground movement. In 1950 the Iraqi parliament finally legalised emigration to Israel, and between May 1950 and August 1951, the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government succeeded in airlifting approximately 110,000 Jews to Israel.

It is ironic that the Arab attack on Israel led to a massive emigration of Jews to Israel, which, in turn, made Israel stronger and more determined to survive as a haven for Jews.

Why Some Wars End in Unopposed Occupation

2004-06-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

John Keegan: History boys can explain easily - and convincingly - why some wars, as that against Germany in 1945, end in unopposed occupation of enemy territory and why others, as in Iraq in 1920 and 2004, do not. In the first case, the defeated nation has exhausted itself in the struggle and is dependent on the victor both for necessities and for protection against further disaster - social revolution or aggression by another enemy. In the second case, the war has not done much harm but has broken the power of the state and encouraged the dispossessed and the irresponsible to grab what they can before order is fully restored.

What monopolises the headlines and prime time television at the moment is news from Iraq on the activity of small, localised minorities struggling to entrench themselves before full peace is imposed and an effective state structure is restored. The news is, in fact, very repetitive: disorder in Najaf and Fallujah, misbehaviour by a tiny handful of US Army reservists - not properly trained regular soldiers - in one prison. There is nothing from Iraq's other 8,000 towns and villages, nothing from Kurdistan, where complete peace prevails, very little from Basra, where British forces are on good terms with the residents.

Containment Kills Too

2004-06-03T13:31:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn: One thing you notice from a casual glance around the world is that just as many people seem to be dying in those places where we’re pursuing containment as in those where we’re toppling dictators and holding loya jirgas. For example, some 30 people died in various attacks in Iraq on Monday. Bad news, but then what do you expect? It’s a notorious quagmire, on the TV round the clock. But then the same day in Karachi 16 people died in one bombing of a Shia mosque, apparently in retaliation for the assassination of a Sunni cleric on Sunday. Last week there were two car bombings in Karachi. Earlier in May, a suicide bomber killed 24 people and injured 125 at another Shia mosque in the city. The Sunni-Shia civil war that the media keep insisting is about to break out in Iraq is already breaking out — in Pakistan, a nuclear state filled with crazy graduates of Saudi madrasahs.

1971: Kerry and Communism

2004-06-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

John Kerry, 1971: Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in other it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.

The nuance of this was not lost on the Communists. Apparently (I say with a snicker), someone has discovered a picture of John Kerry in the Ho Chi Minh City museum.

The Vietnamese communists clearly recognize John Kerry's contributions to their victory," he said. "This find can be compared to the discovery of a painting of Neville Chamberlain hanging in a place of honor in Hitler's Eagle's Nest in 1945."

U.N. Sex, Drugs, and Corruption

2004-06-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

The U.N. scandals are simply crowing out for attention:

Irish Examiner (Atlantic Blog): THREE United Nations fieldworkers are publishing details of sex, drugs and corruption inside UN missions, despite a UN attempt to block their book.

'Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth' chronicles the experiences of a doctor, a human rights official and a secretary in UN operations in Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia.

Now I can add to my growing list.

Geneva Convention Doesn't Apply to Terrorists

2004-06-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

Boalt Professor, John Yoo: A response to criminal action by individual soldiers should begin with the military justice system, rather than efforts to impose a one-size-fits-all policy to cover both Iraqi saboteurs and al Qaeda operatives. That is because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, and its members--as they demonstrated so horrifically on Sept. 11, 2001--violate the very core principle of the laws of war by targeting innocent civilians for destruction. While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the Conventions (since Afghanistan signed the treaties), they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.

As a result, interrogations of detainees captured in the war on terrorism are not regulated under Geneva. This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law. Nonetheless, Congress's definition of torture in those laws--the infliction of severe mental or physical pain--leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation. Under the Geneva Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating.

The reasons to deny Geneva status to terrorists extend beyond pure legal obligation. The primary enforcer of the laws of war has been reciprocal treatment: We obey the Geneva Conventions because our opponent does the same with American POWs. That is impossible with al Qaeda. It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans. If anything, the murders of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl declare al Qaeda's intentions to kill even innocent civilian prisoners. Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs.

(Emphasis added).

Misplaced Restraint

2004-06-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

The problem = misplaced restraint:

Victor Davis Hanson: The misplaced restraint of the past year is not true morality, but a sort of weird immorality that seeks to avoid ethical censure in the short term--the ever-present, 24-hour pulpit of global television that inflates a half-dozen inadvertent civilian casualties into Dresden and Hiroshima. But, in the long term, such complacency has left more moderate Iraqis to be targeted by ever more emboldened murderers. For their part, American troops have discovered that they are safer on the assault when they can fire first and kill killers, rather than simply patrol and react, hoping their newly armored Humvees and fortified flak vests will deflect projectiles.

The solution = more force with an Iraqi face:

This formula does not require more American soldiers. It requires the increasing use of admittedly unreliable Iraqi troops made more reliable by the massive use of U.S. tanks, airpower, and artillery. The former will grow in confidence, as did the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, when they grasp that real force is on their side and that their enemies have no commensurate recourse to air strikes, armor, and heavy artillery--much less billions of dollars in aid. In other words, we can accomplish two seemingly mutually exclusive goals--more security and less of an American profile--but only by using the force we have to punish the enemy on every single occasion it attacks, starting immediately.

Humanitarian Terrorists

2004-06-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

World Net Daily: Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked "U.N." with the agency's blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene.

Update:

Powerline: There's also a scandal within the scandal -- according to AccessMiddleEast.org, not one U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing American viewers the footage of the U.N. ambulance being used as a terrorist getaway car. If the footage were shown, perhaps many more Americans would reach the same conclusion Malkin has -- "Not one more American dime should go to fund the bloody self-righteousness of the world's most generous terrorist relief organization."

Success in War

2004-06-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan: If someone had said in February 2003, that by June 2004, Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and captured; that a diverse new government, including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, would be installed; that elections would be scheduled for January 2005; and that the liberation of a devastated country of 25 million in which everyone owns an AK-47 had been accomplished with an army of around 140,000 with a total casualty rate (including accidents and friendly fire) of around 800; that no oil fields had been set aflame; no WMDs had been used; no mass refugee crises had emerged; and no civil war had broken out... well, I think you would come to the conclusion that the war had been an extraordinary success. And you'd be right. Yes, there are enormous challenges; and yes, so much more could have been achieved without incompetence, infighting and occasional inhumanity. But it's worth acknowledging that, with a little perspective, our current gloom is over-blown.

I agree with everything except the "incompetence" charge. This is the token attempt to sound moderate and reasonable, but it's just bullshit. The critics of the war effort remind me of someone who criticizes working out and sleeping well because, in the end, they end up getting wrinkles or some other health problem. Yes, working out results in wrinkles and health problems, but SO DOES NOT WORKING OUT! Wrinkles and aging are the price of living, the only question is how many, how fast.

The same can be said for the war. People were dying in Iraq while we sat on our asses strangling the country with sanctions. People are dying in Iraq because of the war. People were dying due to inaction; people are dying due to action. Dying is the constant state of affairs. The only question is how many deaths and to what end.

Fewer deaths have occurred because of the war than would have occurred without it. That is success. And I seriously doubt that alternative courses of action would have resulted in vastly better results. In any case, by historical standards, casualty rates are smile-inducingly low.

Self-Determination as Self-Enslavement

2004-05-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

Dinesh D'Souza: Did the West enrich itself at the expense of minorities and the Third World through its distinctive crimes of slavery and colonialism? This thesis is hard to sustain, because there is nothing distinctively Western about slavery or colonialism. The West had its empires, but so did the Persians, the Mongols, the Chinese, and the Turks. The British ruled my native country of India for a couple of hundred years. But before the British came, India was invaded and occupied by the Persians, the Mongols, the Turks, the Afghans, and the Arabs. England was the seventh or eighth colonial power to establish itself on Indian soil.

The Chatham House Version: “It is the common fashion today,” Kedourie observed,
to denounce the imperialism of western powers in Asia and Africa. Charges of economic exploitation are made and the tyranny and arrogance of the European are arraigned. Yet it is a simple and obvious fact that these areas which are said to suffer from imperialism today have known nothing but alien rule throughout most of their history and that, until the coming of the western powers, their experience of government was the insolence and greed of unchecked arbitrary power.
Alas, “the insolence and greed of unchecked arbitrary power” were again the fates of colonies who rejected the West. “Self-determination” was the slogan; “self-enslavement” or “self-extermination” was often the reality.

This is the balancing act now in Iraq. We want Iraqi self-determination, but, left to its own devices, such determination is likely to become some form of tyranny or "self-enslavement." We need democracy to work, but we are afraid to let it work on its own.

Arab Soldiers and Rape Camps

2004-05-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

Telegraph: It is also clear that rape by Janjaweed militias, the Arab soldiers intent on "ethnic cleansing" in the black African-dominated region of Darfur, is prevalent.

Asha describes the rape camp as a well organised operation. "There were 35 women taken and they split us up, one for each group of Janjaweed." She says that this is how it generally works. "If women are few, they divide us five or six Janjaweed per woman. If there are enough women after their daily collections then it's one to one."

Arab soldiers running "rape camps" and neither the Western nor the Arab media will care because (1) if it doesn't bloody the ankles of the Bush administration it is hardly newsworthy and (2) the peace-loving opponents of the removal of Saddam don't really believe that Arab soldiers should be held to any moral standards. Borrowing Gore's recent "logic," the policies of the Bush Administration have created the "moral cesspool" in which these poor Arab militants now find themselves.

Civil War Quagmire

2004-05-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn: Conquered and captured, an enemy shrivels, and you question what he ever had that necessitated such a sacrifice. The piercing clarity of war shades into the murky grays of postwar reconstruction. You think Iraq's a quagmire? Lincoln's ''new birth of freedom'' bogged down into a centurylong quagmire of segregation, denial of civil rights, lynchings. Does that mean the Civil War wasn't worth fighting? That, as Al Gore and other excitable types would say, Abe W. Lincoln lied to us?

Didn't you know that war never accomplishes anything? It certainly never freed the slaves.

Prisoner Abuse, 58; Mass Graves, 5

2004-05-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

Weekly Standard: The argument over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Does this affect coverage? Is there really liberal bias? The answers are, of course, yes and yes.

And, in the case of mass graves and prisoner abuse, the result is this:

Media Research Center: To illustrate a fraction of the bias problem, we counted the number of prisoner-abuse stories on NBC’s evening and morning news programs (NBC Nightly News and Today) from April 29, when the story emerged, through May 11. There were 58 morning and evening stories. Using the Nexis news-data retrieval system, we counted the number of stories on mass graves found in Iraq from the reign of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and 2004. The number of evening and morning news stories on those grim discoveries? Five.

This is a good site for pictures of the mass graves.

Middle East Chaos

2004-05-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

P.J. O'Rourke: A U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East will cause chaos, of course. Then again, a U.S. intervention in the Middle East has caused chaos already. And, during those periods of history when the U.S. was neither intervening in nor withdrawing from the Middle East, there was . . . chaos.

Chaos is the norm, especially in the Middle East. Peace will never be more than brief pauses in periods of war. As VDH put it, "wars are not as rare as lasting periods of peace."

Alas, they never will be.

Bush's Numbers

2004-05-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn: So I've moved on. I am already looking for new regimes to topple. And here's where the events of recent weeks may have done some damage. In my corner of northern New England, as in Highgate and Holland Park, it is also stressful being a Bush apologist. Most of the guys I hang out with demand to know why he's being such a wimp, why's he kissing up to King Abdullah about a few stray bananas in some jailhouse, why's he being such a pantywaist about not letting our boys fire on mosques, why hasn't he levelled Fallujah. In other words, don't make the mistake of assuming that Bush's poll numbers on Iraq have fallen because people want him to be more multilateralist and accommodating. On my anecdotal evidence, they want him to be more robust and incendiary.

Exactly my opinion. There can be more than one reason for the slide in Bush's approval rating. My disapproval stems from reasons very different from those of the "peace-loving" opponents of the removal of Saddam.

Self-Interested Altruism

2004-05-28T16:18:00.000-07:00

Here we go again:

"I'm sorry but history really does matter. You can't claim that your foreign policy is based on the most noble intentions (democratizing the Middle East) when the past has shown that it's only our own self-interest that matters. If we really care so much about removing dictators then why do we have such a long history of supporting them? Gen. Suharto, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and Gen. Noriega to name a few."

Your reasoning has so many flaws it's hard to know where to start. First, America is a collection of individual minds, and to imply that the minds controlling America during the Cold War couldn't have had different motives and perceptions from those governing now is absurd. The minds that supported slavery are dead, and it is a mistake to attribute their opinions and outlook to the current members of Congress. The same can be said for Cold War strategy to some extent. We were fighting a nuclear-armed foe during the Cold War. We simply did not have the options we have now. Right or wrong, we used evil as a pawn against greater evil.

I do not discount the value of history or the value of questioning whether these moves were, all things considered, positive or negative. But the conditions of the Cold War are gone, and with them the justification for propping up dictators (though our options are far more limited with North Korea).

America has a chance to do what it couldn't do then: spread democracy in the Middle East. I support that. You do not. Let us part ways.

Another point. Our perception of self-interest has changed. I support pursuing a foreign policy rooted firmly in the rich soil of self-interest. Where it may have required the propping of dictators in one era, it now requires the spreading of democracy. Self-interest and helping people are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Doctors want to help people. And doctors also see it as in their interest to help people because they are paid for doing so. They want to help people because (1) in doing so they help themsleves (personal gain) and (2) it makes them FEEL GOOD. They hit two birds with one stone! The same logic applies here, though you are too blinded by pacifist ideology to see.

And please, please don't come back with dreamy U.N. solutions. The U.N. is possibly the most corrupt organization in history. It does more to support dictators than to spread democracy. U.N. peacekeepers have been involved in numerous scandals and crimes of late.

Wars bring out some ugly things. But they can be used as a force for good.

You think war is inherently wrong. It was wrong to free the slaves, wrong to stop the NAZIS, and wrong to stop Saddam. According to your logic, it would have been doubly wrong to stop slavery because the North had a history of supporting slavery and had helped solidify it as an institution in law! Whatever.

I'll leave that warped logic for you guys to pat each other on the asses with.

Goldberg's Scissors Analogy

2004-05-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

Ahhh yes:

Under your logic, if you gave a kid a pair of scissors, and that kid started stabbing other kids at a party, it would be wrong to forcefully stop the kid because, after all, YOU gave the kid the scissors in the first place.

It was wrong to stop Saddam's murderous party because, hey, America helped give him the party supplies.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States was responsible for 1% of all arms imports to Iraq during the period from 1973 to 2002. So, yeah, we helped give Saddam the scissors. But during the same period, USSR/Russia supplied 57%, France gave 13%, and China gave 12%. Three Security Council nations gave 82% while the U.S. gave 1% of the scissors.

And while America wrongly took the scissors away, Russia, France, and China opposed the removal of the scissors. That ought to be deeply satisfying to the peace lovers. Those countries recognized the core principle that if you do something wrong, you can never do something right, especially if its for the wrong reasons.

*All together now*

It is good that Saddam is gone, and we wouldn't want him back, but we were wrong to remove him. America has no right to be in Iraq, but it must stay to finish the job, because America wrongly removed a mass-murdering dictator, which was a good thing, but for the wrong reasons.

Just keep opposing the removal of dictators in the name of peace, because, after all, America has done bad things in the past, and we wouldn't want to change that, even if it helps people.

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2004-05-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

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United Nations Fact Sheet

2004-05-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Articles

Johanneswburg - The defence ministry says it has no knowledge of a United Nations report detailing sexual attacks on minors by South African soldiers stationed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

There have been allegations of 50 cases of sexual attacks on minors carried out by Monuc, the United Nations mission to the DRC, in Bunia in the north-east of the country over the past year.

Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of sexual violence by UNAMSIL peacekeepers, including the rape of a twelve-year-old girl in Bo by a soldier of the Guinean peacekeeping contingent in March 2001 and the gang rape of a woman by two Ukrainian peacekeepers in April 2002 near Kenema (see below). There appears to be reluctance on the part of UNAMSIL to investigate and take disciplinary measures against the perpetrators.

Independent.co.uk.: Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.

Amnesty International slammed the United Nations and NATO for not doing more to punish its people for contributing to what has become a flourishing sex industry in the Balkan country.

BBC: The UN says its staff have been illegally detained, while Eritrea accuses the peacekeepers of serious crimes including paedophilia.

An Unmee report last June quoted Eritrean women as saying Irish peacekeepers on the mission had used prostitutes as young as 15.

TCM: A UN peacekeeping soldier has been accused of raping a 10-year-old girl in Congo.

The girl's family made the accusations against a Moroccan soldier serving in the mission in the eastern border town of Goma, UN spokeswoman Isabelle Broyer said.

The Independent: Nowhere is the problem uglier - or more embarrassing to the UN - than in Bosnia. The sex-slave industry scarcely existed here until the mid-Nineties.

"There is virtually no dispute any more that the issue of trafficking arose predominantly with the arrival of the peacekeeping troops in 1995," says Madeleine Rees, the head of the UN Office of the High Commission of Human Rights.

WEEKLY STANDARD: Two American women and an American man were slain in Kosovo, and eleven people were injured when they came under armed attack by a Palestinian from Jordan. The killer was a member of the same body in which they served: the United Nations police force in the territory.

[NY Times and The Australian]

World Net Daily: Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked "U.N." with the agency's blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene.

Other

Kampelman
1. In 1995, the U.N. assured the Bosnian Muslims that they could assemble in Srebrenica, a "safe area." Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were then massacred while U.N. forces only a few miles away ignored the tragedy.

2. North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong II, has inflicted a holocaust on his people. Defectors and observers have estimated that more than a million people have starved to death in brutal Gulag-type camps. This catastrophe has created a flood of refugees into nearby China where an estimated 360,000 refugees may now be hiding in an effort to escape the brutalities at home. A United Nations Refugee Commission exists which is fully aware of this human catastrophe. China, however, says that these tragic human beings are “economic migrants” and “not refugees." China is clearly in violation of United Nations conventions and protocols. Where is the U.N.? It is certainly not challenging China, a power in the U.N. A cynical China then embraces the refugee convention as the “Magna Carta of international refugee law” while U.N. officials applaud.

3. The U.N. has elected Syria, Libya, Vietnam, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Zimbabwe to serve on the UNHRC as guardians of human rights. The U.S. was kicked off and replaced by Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism.

Libya, responsible for the 1988 bombing of a U.S. civilian jet in Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, was elected to chair the commission.

Thirty three countries voted for Libya. Only Canada and Guatemala voted against it. The European "allies" abstained from voting. The U.N. has elected Syria, Libya, Vietnam, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Zimbabwe to serve on the UNHRC as guardians of human rights.