The Strident Centrist Blog

Richard Sale:

Instead of demonizing him, why not first of all mention that he didn’t die a coward. He looks perfectly composed as he eyes the rope that is about to break his neck. And you have to admire the fact he didn’t repent of his megalomania, saying to the hangman, “Iraq is nothing without me.” . . Few have mentioned the sheer discourtesy or insensitivity of hanging him on the Muslim Sabbath.

Pat Lang:

2- We made him a figure for legend and he took advantage of it. “God is Great! Long live Iraq! Palestine is Arab.” That is what he uttered on the gallows with the rope around his neck. You damned [neocon] fools! What do you think will be the war cry with which millions of Muslims will confront us and our “regional allies?”

3-The, oh so clever Iranian political warfare machine (and friends) have tried for many years to denigrate the Iraqi army that fought Iran and defeated it. The men who served in that army know how well they fought. For good or ill he was their commander in chief. Do you think that deliberately humiliating him in the manner of his death will serve the cause of reconciliation in Iraq?

Helena Cobban reads Joe Lieberman’s Op Ed piece in the Washington Post, so you don’t have to.

I know, I know. There’s been a bit of a posting hiatus around here. It’s more than just the Christmas holidays, however. The better half had had hernia repair surgery back in November, but a wound infection revealed itself about a month later. When antibiotics didn’t clear it up, more surgery was indicated, and that took place on the 26th. We sprang her from the hospital late this afternoon, and so far her recovery is on track. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Needless to say, between this an Christmas there hasn’t been much time for blogging.

If you’ve received your news only from the Main Stream Media these past few days the name Flynt Leverett may not mean much to you. If not, you may recall that he is the former National Security Council staffer whom the Bush administration tried to muzzle when he submitted an Op Ed piece he’d written for security approval. The CIA cleared it, since there was nothing in it that wasn’t already in the public domaine, however the administration political types insisted on numerous redactions of elements that didn’t show them in a very good light. The New York Times went ahead and published it, redactions and all, as well as a reference alongside listing the publications in which the redacted portions had been covered. They also published a brief explanatory statement by Leverett and his wife, Hilary Mann (she also co-authored the Op Ed piece) about the situation.

Brad DeLong has taken the time to attempt to reconstruct what the pre-redacted piece probably looked like. What I suggest you do is bring up the Leverett/Mann piece, as redacted, and DLong’s reconstruction in side-by-side browser windows and read them together. This will make starkly clear the administration’s bad faith not only in its post-9/11 dealings with Iran, but with the American people, then and now, as well. This is where the need to take a cooling-down walk comes in. Leverett’s and Mann’s explanatory piece is here. The Arms Control Wonk has also been covering this affair in considerable detail.

Writing in Tom Paine, Pat Lang and Ray McGovern, demonstrate that at least retired intelligence officers from the DIA and CIA, respectively, can cooperate in the nation’s best interest. In this case they point out the minimal upside and appalling downside risks inherrent in the Decider’s forthcoming policy of “surging” and additional 20K or 30K additional combat troops and Marines in Iraq:

Judging from President Bush’s behavior in recent weeks, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he may be no more stable than Nicholas II. And if retired Col. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s top aide at the State Department, is right in saying that Bush still has the “vice president whispering in his ear every moment,” we have an unhappy but apt historical analogy.

But, you protest, the generals most intimately involved in Iraq, John Abizaid and George Casey, and Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker have made no secret of their strong reservations about sending large numbers of additional troops. That is correct, but also irrelevant. Because, as was the case in the Vietnam War, our top generals have long since morphed into careerists and politicians. They have become accustomed to looking up for the next reward—and not down at the troops who bear the brunt of their acquiescence in political/military decisions that make no sense.

. . .

What Gates may not realize, but the generals should, is that once an “all or nothing” offensive like the “surge” contemplated has begun, there is no turning back. It will be “victory” over the insurgents and the Shia militias or palpable defeat, recognizable by all in Iraq and across the world.
Stalingrad on the Tigris

A “surge” of the size possible under current constraints on U.S. forces will not turn the tide in the guerrilla war. Reinforcement of Bagdad several thousand U.S. troops last summer simply brought on more violence. Those who believe still more troops will bring “victory” are living in a dangerous dream world and need to wake up.

Moreover, major reinforcement would commit the US Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there are no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to a hope of “victory,” and few measures will be shrunk from.

Analogies come to mind: the Bulge, Stalingrad, the Battle of Algiers. It will be total war with all the likelihood of excesses and mass casualties that come with total war.

. . .

Yesterday, when George Stephanopoulos asked [Oregon Senator Gordon] Smith what he meant by “criminal,” he replied:

“I said it. You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed in a military context, when you do the same thing over and over again, without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral.”

If adopted, the “surge” strategy will be even worse than that. It will be something we will spend a generation living down.

Avoiding a national security disaster may well depend on whether Senator Smith’s sentiments begin to seriously penetrate the skulls of a couple of dozen of his party colleagues in the Upper House, that is enough to make an impeachment conviction vote possible. I can always hope, but I’m not optimistic.

I’m about that close to ripping every vestige of Yahoo! out of my computer. All that has held me back from doing it already is the fact that my kids and I keep in close touch with Yahoo Instant Messenger.

When I fired up this morning I was prompted to download and install the latest version of YIM, which I did. This evening when I clicked on the “Send Link” function in my Firefox browser, instead of a new message form on my old familiar Thunderbird email client with the URL already on the page, up popped another tab in the browser prompting me to sign in to Yahoo! I killed it and tried again; same thing. The only thing different from the last time I sent a link, which was probably yesterday, is the Yahoo update. I clicked on the browser “Options” tab to change the default, but so far have not found how I can do it.

This really pissed me off. Yahoo had no damn right to make this kind of a change in my system without my consent! I sent their CS operation an email about it and it was with diffuculty that I restrained myself from exhibiting some of the more colorful elements of the vocabulary I learned in the Army. I am eagerly awaiting their response.

Helena Cobban is not Jimmy Carter:

If I were Jimmy Carter, which I’m not, I would have noted that there are indeed many many things that Israel’s projects in the occupied West Bank and Golan have in common with South African apartheid, and very few if any of them have to do with skin color. (US citizens have this hang-up about skin color issues, which goes back deep in their collective past, obviously. Their common understanding of the word ‘racism’, for example, completely limits it to discrimination based on skin color, unlike just about everywhere else in the world where ‘racism’ has a far broader meaning.)

If I were Jimmy Carter . . .

. . .

Just as in apartheid South Africa.

So I guess I wish Jimmy Carter had been a bit more forthright about some of these comparisons– in the text of his book. Which sadly, he wasn’t. The title of the book seems more like an afterthought, really.

Apart from that, it’s a sweet and haunting book, in which he gives an intimate portrait of how he came to learn about many aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli issue, and much well-presented information about the nitty-gritty of the Israeli-Palestinian encounter in the occupied territories. But really, I wish he’d done a bit more with that title of his.

William Lind weighs in on the Iraq Study Report:

If the Iraq Study Group Report is empty of content, the responses to it from the war hawks – more accurately at this point, the war vultures, because what they are feeding on is dead – were as clueless as a Marine at a meeting of Mensa. They denounced it as impracticable, which is true; as fanciful, in thinking Iran or Syria has any reason to help us in Iraq, which is also true; and, in the case of Senator John McCain, as a recipe for defeat.

Senator McCain almost got it right. The Iraq Study Group Report is not a recipe for defeat, but an acknowledgment of defeat. Therein lies its value, and its function. It offers the Bush administration the bi-partisan fig leaf it needs to cover its defeat in Iraq and our inevitable withdrawal.

Like all reports of Blue Ribbon Commissions, the Report of the Iraq Study Group is written so as to cover the backsides of its members. It does not come right out and say, “We’ve lost, and its time to get out.” The Letter from the Co-Chairs begins, “There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq. However, there are actions that can be taken to improve the situation and protect American interests.”

. . .

Again, what is key is not the details of the report or the viability of its recommendations, but the response to it. Had it the slightest understanding of which end is up, the Bush White House, while politely disagreeing with some details of the report, would have accepted it as “the only way forward.” The vultures, led by the neo-cons, would have “sadly concurred.” The Joint Chiefs’ strings would have been pulled so they saluted and “got on board” the last train out of Baghdad.

. . .

Instead, as we know, the Bush administration and the vultures have rejected the fig leaf the Iraq Study Group Report offers. Determined to achieve “victory in Iraq,” they guarantee that America’s defeat will be naked before all the world.

One member of the study group, former Democratic Congressman Leon Panetta, was quoted in the Sunday, December 10 Washington Post as saying, “I think the feeling was, how do you rescue this administration from the grip of ideology and force it to face the real world?”

This morning the Washington Post reported that the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, has unexpectedly resigned after only 15 months in the assignment. Steve Clemons suggests that this almost certainly not good news, although it’s not at all clear (and may never be to outsiders) what went on below the surface in Riyadh that led to this. In the comment thread to Steve’s post, however, there are some provocative speculations about it anyway.  We shall see.

As reported in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, two online political activist groups are demanding that Walmart take the game Left Behind: Eternal Forces off their shelves.

Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

. . .

The series [of books on which the game is based] by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is based on their interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Revelation and takes place after the Rapture, when Jesus has taken his people to heaven and left nonbelievers behind to face the Antichrist.

Left Behind Games’ president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose “spirit points” every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

. . .

Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a “thumbs-up.” The reviewer called it “the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior — and use to raise some interesting questions along the way.”

Frichner said that is precisely his company’s ultimate goal in offering the game: to bring parents and kids together to talk about the Bible. He said most teens are playing video games, so it was natural to turn the books into one.

Ah, the spirit of Christmas!