Ralph Peters on Iraq, the Kurds and the State Department

July 6 - Ralph Peters on Rogue Diplomats:

July 6, 2005 -- CONDI Rice has an Iraq problem. Among her subordinates. A new generation of "Arabists" wants to write off our Kurdish allies for the pipedream of winning friends among our enemies.

Our impressive secretary of state is proud to stand up for freedom and human rights. But career elements in her department, serving in Washington and Iraq, have become a threat to the long-term success of American policy — and to our values.

Problems with the blinkered diplomats at State are not new and I know that an aircraft carrier can't change course on a dime. But does it take 3 years to effect a course change? I think not.

Maybe Condi should put on those fantabulous boots and do a bit of Nancy Sinatra-style walking.

(Via Newsbeat1)

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Bayonets!

Image from Laser-buzz

July 4 - The title refers to that unexpected order which Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain gave his troops after their ammuniton was exhausted while they were desperately trying to hold Little Round Top. I've always been in awe of Chamberlain and the men he commanded. Their defense of that position was pivotal in that which became known as the Battle of Gettysburg, and it is entirely appropriate that we celebrate the Fourth of July and commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg and the two milestones in our own history: the grand vision which established the union and the ultimate test to maintain that vision in the union. The fierce determination of those men who fought that battle, held their positions and stopped Lee's army bequeathed to us a new understanding, in Lincoln's words of what we owe them:

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

In today's cultural battles, maybe we need look no further than Lincoln to see one key difference: there are those who regard the losses of World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam and respond "Never again," and there are those who take Lincoln's admonition to heart and recognize that the fallen have left unfinished work for future hands to take up and respond "Count me in."

From Bill Whittle's immortal essay History:

... By the second day of July in 1863, the mighty armies of the Union had been beaten in every major battle except Antietam – and that had been not much better than a tie. And they had not just been defeated. They had been thrashed. Whipped. Sent reeling again and again and again by a half-starved collection of scarecrows in homemade uniforms.

None of this was lost on the Union men that morning, not the least on that Professor of Rhetoric from Bowdoin College. He had seen, first hand, the disasters at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. ..

Were the South to win that July day, the first northern state capitol – Harrisburg – would fall to the Confederates. Nothing would stop them from reaching Baltimore, and Washington. If the Army of the Potomac lost yet again on this field, the South would very likely take Washington, the British would enter the war on the side of the Confederacy and the mighty Royal Navy would break the Union blockade. In the words of Shelby Foote, the war would be over -- lost.

The Federal position was strong, but it had a fatal weakness. At the southern end of the Union line were two small hills. The smaller and nearer, called Little Round Top by the locals, overlooked the entire Union position. Artillery placed on that hill could fire down the entire Union line, wreaking carnage on the men below. The entire position would become untenable.

No one was on Little Round Top.

It isn't hard to imagine how very discouraged these men must have become during the course of the Civil War, knowing they had been repeatedly beaten, outmanuevered and even hoodwinked by Lee and his generals and, in what must have seemed to be the ultimate humiliation, now they were fighting on Northern soil. Let's not forget that Union soldiers had "skedaddled" from earlier battles, that the draft was extremely unpopular and that the press hated and ridiculed Lincoln. British cotton mills actutely felt the lack of Southern cotton and the danger that the incomparable British navy might intervene and break the Northern blockade was ever present. (I believe it due mostly to the vigorous agitation of anti-slavery organizations in England that this had not yet happened.) The South was encouraged by France's offer to mediate a truce and, to put it bluntly, Northern generals sucked and were capable mostly of failing to pursue the advantage to achieve victory.

Antietam, which was a "draw," had 13,724 Confederate casualties and 12,410 Union casualties. Chancellorsville had 12,764 Confederate to 16,792 Union casualties.

Gettysburg had 23,049 Union casualties and 28,063 Confederate casualties.

We can pull out worse casualties figures from World Wars I and II, but it misses the point: these Civil War figures represent Amercians killing Americans. A civil war is the darkest of the dark, and less a source of pride than of introspection.

So why does Rhetorics Professor Joshua L. Chamblerlain figure so prominently in our heritage? Professor Bainbridge quotes from Chamberlain in Today in History (posted July 2) from Chamberlain's personal recollections on the exultant response to his order:

I stepped to the colors. The men turned towards me. One word was enough- 'BAYONETS!' It caught like fire and swept along the ranks. The men took it up with a shout, one could not say whether from the pit or the song of the morning sat, it was vain to order 'Forward!'. No mortal could have heard it in the mighty hosanna that was winging the sky.

I can feel that moment; I can see the men, knowing they were out of ammunition, who turned expectantly to a commander they respected and trusted - awaiting their orders and hoping against hope that he would pull a miracle out of the fire and achieve victory. And I can hear their roar because I responded in just that manner on September 20, 2001 when my hope that my government would take the war to our attackers was proven justified.

The men holding Little Round Top were not fools nor were they cannon fodder; they were intelligent, reasoning men who knew precisely what was at stake at Gettysburg and they were determined to hold it because they knew the urgent strategic reasons that required Lee's Army be stopped there and then, and their rightful heirs are those who are capable of recognizing the same urgency in the current struggle.

Heh, Southern by Blog says that Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine DID NOT Save the Union By Their Selves and of course he is right, but the reason Chamberlain is lionized is precisely because of that audacious order "Bayonets!" and in no small part due to his loving exhortation:

“Stand firm,, ye boys of Maine, for not once in a century are men permitted to bear such responsibilities!"

He may be wrong on one point; it seems men have been permitted to bear such responsibilities more than once a century!

I look at us today and think - hope - we have emerged from nearly forty years of self-doubt and self-criticism with renewed confidence tempered by self-knowledge. As Leonard Bernstein wrote in Candide,

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.

Let history judge that we are mere mortals who lack divine wisdom yet do our best within our mortal means, but let it also record that we defiantly set our sights high:

We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Let freedom ring!

(Bainbridge and Southern Blog links via Mudville Gazette, and Civil War casualty figures are from American Civil War Battle Statistics.)

[I apologize if this seems excessively maudlin - I just get so damned sentimental on July 4th! Those who are offended by the reverence I hold for those past and present who doggedly pursue the ideals on which our union was founded can bite me.]

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For those who walk and hold the line, I thank you

July 4 - I tried to post this last night before I went to work, but Munu was kinda wonky and it wouldn't take.

Anyway, before I catch some sleep I want to be sure to thank the men and women in Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Guatamala and around the world who are defending those freedoms that we will be celebrating today.

Three years ago, when many of us were considering whether to encourage proposing action in Iraq, I thought about the stories I had been told about Vietnam, both the trivial and the grand, and fully understood that the risky enterprise of ending first Gulf War would lay a burden of responsibility on us all (as indeed do all weighty national decisions.)

The generals report that the troops ask if we still support them; the short answer is Yes! and a longer answer is abso-freaking-lutely!

I'm a blogger, not a reporter, and so I can elect not to post about our losses especially as I write from a foreign country, but I do grieve for the fine men and women we've lost in this operation even as I renew my resolve that their sacrifice not be in vain.

A little known character trait of many Americans is that we often don't talk about those things that lie deep within our core. We made the decision to go to Iraq, we made that decision with our eyes wide open, and nobody lied to us or misled us. We knew on September 11 that we would have to deal with Iraq sooner rather than later and, as the President laid out our goals in Afghanistan in his address to Congress, we understood that the promise he made to drive out the Taliban and bring consensual rule to Afghanistan was the opening shot in a battle that would save the people of the Mid-east as well as ourselves.

We understood these things as only a free people can understand them: instinctively, intuitively, and in every fibre of our being because Sept. 11 reconnected us with our national charcter as well as our values and love for freedom in ways that - and I say this with complete humility - transcended all other experiences in my lifetime.

The real question is not why millions of Americans recognize the connection between Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein but rather why others do not. Us ignorant folks seemingly have a better grasp of how lives that stagnate under repression and lack of meaningful ways to express the aspirations and ambitions of the individual person can spawn the desperation of terrorism than all the nuanced fools who proclaim themselves to be our intellectual betters.

So yes, we support America's sons and daughters in the military utterly, completely and with the full weight of our hopes for a free future and we ask your forgiveness for the sacrifices we have asked of you.

Yes, we support you; yes, we support your mission and, yes, we can hardly wait until you come home.

Godspeed, and Happy July 4th!

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Oh, Canada

July 2 - Excellent post by Flea - He's tipped - in which he links to a post which sadly observes the lack of coherent policies in matters other than gay marriage by the Conservative Party of Canada.

The post linked to this one from N=1 who wrote some follow-up posts here, here and here. I would strongly urge Americans to read these posts, as - and I honestly mean no disrespect by this - Canadian conservatives are to some extent freed from the personal concerns of war to examine and debate issues over which we are less focused but which we should not entirely ignore.

Although I have a great deal of admiration for Stephen Harper personally and although terming a union between gay couples "marriage" is not as important to me as to others, I was worried when opposition to gay marriage was the rallying point around which the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties merged yet, as I believed there were sound reasons around which to form a political party to oppose Liberal rule, I hoped they would be able to build the party on the basis of principled opposition to the imposition of nanny statism.

Regarding the issue of gay marriage in the U.S., I am opposed to a Constitutional amendment that defines marriage (I don't think it is properly a Constitutional issue) but must admit that it has at least initiated some serious discussion over the issue, something that was missing up here as it was imposed - rightly or wrongly - by judicial fiat.

I may have been unprepared to expand my definition of marriage beyond the traditional one of being a union between a man and a woman, but it is something I know I will come to accept especially now that it has become law in Canada. Legislating it as a right and then later removing it is not something I believe I can accept because I don't believe it would be just.

Like many others, I take issue with the manner in which it came to become law but we've got out own Supreme Court issues and I am far more concerned over the recent U.S. Supreme Court Kelo decision which stripped personal property rights than the Canadian Supreme Court which awarded personal rights and am much more willing to fight the Kelo ruling than Bill C-38 (although Angry could be right, and this is will provoke contingent issues that will deepen Canadian polarization - although I fail to see how any potential challenge to monogamy can in truth be connected to recognition of gay marriage; the definition of marriage remains, in law, as being between two people.)

To put it more concisely, the decision in Kelo vs. New London has put things in perspective. Kelo clarifies that the true battleground is that of personal freedom and property rights vs. the encroachment of the state - which actually believes it has rights not accorded to it by the people - and not that of loving gay couples who want their committment to one another to be acknowledged by the state and, I suspect as importantly, by the people.

The failure of the CPC to assert itself confidently and aggressively in matters other than gay marriage at a period when Canadians are confronting increasingly higher taxes, the disaster of their health care system, the decay of their armed forces and the corruption not only of the ruling Liberal Party but of government itself has been disappointing. It is comparable to the Sept. 10 mentality of Democrats; if they truly believe that gay marriage is the most important issue facing Canadians then they are seriously out of touch with the fundamental issues facing people up here and almost as unfit to run the country as the Liberals.

The Conservative Party up here has behaved much like the Democrats in that both restrict themselves to opposing rather than proposing and thus have failed to electrify voters with vision and solutions. When will either of them grow up? The people of both countries deserve better.

July 3 - 17:20: Maybe I failed to make my one main point about gay marriage strongly enough:

To reiterate: the one prospect I find insupportable is that of allowing gays to marry yet a future Conservative Party government suddenly declaring those marriages null and void. Try to put yourselves in the position of marrying, making plans for a future together and even making joint financial investments and then imagine being told your marriage is no longer legitimate.

Forget the circusy atmosphere we see on television and some of the wilder "activists" showcased by a sensationalist media and focus on the human face of this issue. Gay couples love one another - in probably the same variables of intensity and committment as straight couples - and I believe their love is entitled to respect.

The damage to the institution of marriage was done long before gays emerged from the closet. We can blame easier divorces, the pill, Roe vs. Wade, or the sexual revolution and even the "disposable society" but we simply cannot with any honesty blame gays much less instituting gay marriage.

Continuing to oppose gay marriage now that it has passed in Parliament is much too much like the "selected not elected" crowd that has disrupted U.S. politics far too much in our recent past, and the CPC is likely to face the same kind of backlash that Democrats encountered in '04.

Lastly, a suspicious person (like me) might wonder if the focus on gay marriage as The Most Important Issue of the Day is intentionally diverting attention from other bread-and-butter issues.

There are serious challenges facing Canada and the CPC should endeavour to propose solutions to them. At the risk of getting cyber-slammed, I really think they need to "move on" and exhibit some freaking leadership.

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Gettysburg and Vicksburg

July 2 - Seven score and two years ago, a pivotal battle was waged in the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. A day after that battle ended, the port city of Vicksburg surrendered to Grant.

No, I'm not about to deliver a history lesson but merely noting another conflict that tested and formed our national character -- and did so despite the opposition of much of the intelligentsia and mainstream media to that war and their contempt for the president who waged it.

There was, of course, continued "insurgency" after the formal surrender at Appomattox but I've never read any of today's self-appointed deep thinkers comparing them to the Minutemen.

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A pack, not a herd

July 2 - Missing Idaho Girl, 8, Found Alive and Well:

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — Shasta Groene, whose mother, oldest brother and mother's boyfriend were bludgeoned to death at their home outside this mountain town six weeks ago, was discovered alive early Saturday morning by a waitress at a local Denny's restaurant.

[...]

Local news reports said Duncan and Shasta Groene walked into the Denny's at about 2 a.m. PDT. A waitress noticed the girl and, after consulting photos in a recent newspaper, called 911. She then served the girl a milkshake and stalled the pair's service until police arrived. (Emphasis added)

I'm groping for words to express my awe at this waitress: she kept her cool, stalled the monster, and later comforted Shasta after her abductor had been taken into custody.

This is one damned appropriate story as we celebrate July 4th. The strength of our country depends not on whatever politicians and bureaucrats are in charge but in the willingness of each and every citizen to stand up and take action when required by chance and circumstance.

I humbly retract a comment I made here on the coverage of the missing girl in Aruba [I know her name, but don't want googlers to land here thinking I'm covering the story] because the waitress consulted a recent newspaper to confirm her suspicion that the young girl was Shasta. There is indeed value in maintaining hope even when it seems to be in vain.

19:36: It (stupidly) hadn't occurred to me that people might not understand the meaning of the title. This explains it.

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