Blame game?

http://geoimpulse.blogspot.com/2012/04/is-iraq-disintegrating.html?showComment=1334933795169#c7736188547415859602

I have an old high school acquaintance who I have relatively recently (via facebook) have renewed some of the debates with which we enlivened one of our classes our senior year. Debating with him was such fun, even if he had difficulty defending his progressive opinions back then. Come to think of it, he still does, in my humble opinion.

His current jag is that the war in Iraq was a failure and Bush was wrong and so it all was a waste … to the point that a) we should have left Saddam in power and b) the Iranians now are going to control Iraq (as well as Syria and Lebanon, I suppose). Well, with all due respect to the Don, once again I think he is wrong.

First, what were the reasons we and about 40 other nations went into Iraq in 2003 to enforce a host of U.N. resolutions?

Weapons of Mass Destruction? Partly … and yes, despite the conventional wisdom of today: a) the Iraqis did have some WMDs, did have the capability of producing more and did have plans to produce more, if and when the then-in-force sanctions regimen collapsed and was no longer in effect and b) that Saddam’s regime already had demonstrated against the Iranians in the 1980-1988 war that it was willing to use them against external enemies and against the Kurds and the Shi’a that it was willing to use such weapons against internal enemies as well.

The fact that he was a genocidal tyrant who was killing thousands of his people annually as well as torturing thousand upon thousands more.

The fact that he was blatant violation of something like 19 U.N. Security Council resolutions, many of which authorized the use of force to compel compliance.

The fact that he was fostering terrorist actions against not only Israel but other “enemies” (including the United States), including but not limited to training, financing and giving the families of anti-Semitic homicide bombers $25,000 USD if they bomber was successful.

It already was costing the US (and other countries involved, including the Brits), billions of bucks to maintain the U.N.-ordered “No Fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq to protect the indigenous people there (both basically unrepresented in Bathist regime) from military reprisals against them.

In addition, the Coalition had moved thousands of troops, billions of dollars worth of military supplies into the deserts of Kuwait and to a lesser extent eastern Turkey, in an effort to convince the Saddam regime that cooperating with the U.N. mandated inspections for weapons of mass destruction was in its best interest. An effort that was only marginally successful, as the U.N. inspectors complained that the Iraqis were not be cooperative, and were, in fact, being disingenuous.

All those are well documented reasons and really can’t be debated, unless you want just to deny reality.

Still, one has to be a realist and point out that however good the reasons 40-plus nations (for whatever reason you want to attribute) felt compelled to be involved, while the initial operation was a resounding success from a purely military point of view, its implementation and the subsequent efforts to help the Iraqis form a more perfect union definitely screwed the pooch as they say.

First, let me say that Gen. Shinseki was right … and Don Rumsfeld was wrong.  Let me say that the Bush Administration (including POTUS and VPOTUS) made a host of atrocious decisions and assumptions that merely illustrated the American propensity to be extremely ignorant of things non-American.

But let me point out that one cannot just use the American presence as a scapegoat for what has happened over the last 10 years in Iraq. It is not from lack of effort by the Americans that bombs still are going off in Iraq and that much of Iraq’s infrastructure remains damaged. No, most (a vast majority and now all) of that is the result of Iraqi v. Iraqi violence and depredations.

It is, as it always has, been the choice of the Iraqis themselves to choose violence over coexistence and compromise.

Now, as for the point that the U.S. has handed Iraq to the suzerainty of Tehran: Ain’t happening, and ain’t gonna happen.

Why do I say that? How about a little reality check here:

First, Iraq is Arab and Kurdish; Iran is Persian and Kurdish (but dominated by the Persians). There is a reason why that stretch of water between the Arabian peninsula and the coast of Southwest Asia has two names, depending on which side you are on – The Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf.

Simply put, Arabs and Persians do not get along and haven’t for about 3,000 years. There is a very, very long history of conflict and conquest here in cultures that have very long memories. So, to expect Baghdad just to march in step with Tehran is to ignore reality.

Secondly, not only is their the Shi’a-Sunni divide (which is another source of conflict that stretches back about 1,700 years) but there is a Shi’a-Shi’a divide between the ayatollahs in Qum and the ayatollahs in Karbala. Needless to say that does not bode all that well for Iranian dominance there.

What is happening in Iraq today is little different that what we saw happen in North Ireland for 20-plus years, Lebanon for at least as long, or Bosnia or Kosovo, or Somalia, or Sudan/Dafur, or Uganda, or Namibia, or host of other places that could be named. It is a civil war between two ethnic/religious groups vying for political power and to dominate the economic pie.

Rather than share either, both sides continue to use whatever means possible to advance their own agenda.

Question: Is that that fault of the Americans? Hell, no. Do the Americans necessarily a responsibility to try to intervene? Well, we tried that with mixed results in various places, but in the end, the responsibility for whatever violence and chaos an area maybe enduring, whether it Afghanistan or Iraq or the Philippines or Sri Lanka or Nigeria or Norway, really is the responsibility of the people who live there. They have to make the decision whether it is better to live under a rule of law where they are essentially equal before the law or to live under some other system.

So, to fault the Americans for failing to create more perfect unions in Iraq and Afghanistan is to ignore reality. The Iraqis and the Afghans are choosing their own fates.

Random Thoughts

The news is making me just shake my head so much these days.

1. The Marine sergeant is discharged for putting on Facebook that he would not obey an order from President Obama. Sorry, son, but that is not any option when you are in uniform.  Yes, you have an obligation to protest and if possible not enforce an order that tells you to do something that is patently illegal … but you really can’t pick and choose. If you are in the military, you salute and ask How High? when the president orders you to jump. Sorry, but there really are no First Amendment rights to criticize your boss when you put on the uniform. You may not like your bosses, but you are obligated to follow their orders. You say you won’t and, if y0u are an officer, you resign; if you are enlisted, they give you an “other than honorable” discharge … but the choice is yours.

2. The Labor Department has proposed new rules that will prohibit persons under the age of 18 from performing “farm chores”. Good grief, where are people getting these ideas? It blows me away. This is stretching the commerce clause of the constitution and the general welfare statement in the preamble to the breaking point I am afraid. The federal government has absolutely no freaking business telling a family what its family members can or can not do on a family farm … sorry that is so blatantly unconstitutional it will be amazing if the courts don’t dump this new regulation at the first challenge.  Whatever happened to the 9th and 10th Amendments … I guess with our current federal governors, that like other restraints on federal government actions like the War Powers Act, are no longer operative and the Executive Branch can just do what it wants.

3. The Supreme Court of the US heard arguments on that Arizona law that essentially, from my understanding, made what was already federal law now a violation of state law as well. I am sorry, but I don’t have a problem with that. If it is against federal law, and federal agents can do it, I can’t see why a state can’t pass a law that makes the state law conform with federal law and then enforce the same thing. Sorry, the logic there somehow eludes me.

If the federal government can prosecute someone for not carrying their immigration documents (which it can, and it can demand those documents be presented at any time … and I can attest to personally because my wife is a Canadian citizen and we went the two and a half years and a chunk of moolah to get her legally able to stay in the US as well as work.

So, I am sorry about those who claim racial profiling and discrimination against immigrants, but tough bananas.

Please define “Special Interest” group

I find it interesting when various and sundry groups start attacking “special interest” groups. Please tell me what a special interest group is - other than a group of people who don’t look like you, talk like you, or they do things differently than you do, believe in things that you don’t … in other words, people who are different than you. Since we all are individuals, it would logically follow that we all qualify as special interests.

If a group of people with similar interests/complaints/situations have talking points, or hire someone to advocate for their position, is that wrong? When did that happen?

For the record: We all are members of  special interest groups, just different ones.

I used to say that I belonged to the one special interest group you could attack with just about impunity and my group could do nothing about it: WASPCEVMAMP  (you figure it out)

Random observations

I have been halfway following the brouhaha over the Secret Service guys and their illicit late night activities.

Hey, since when is that news? Heck, for all those with delicate sensibilities, understand this, that has been going on since Methuselah was a child and his palace guard was involved.

I for one, probably have to thank at least one bunch of  Secret Service types for having a 3 a.m. party. You see, back in those dark years of 1970 when Mr. Nixon was president and had his compound at the South edge of San Clemente, California, I spent much of the summer working at the gas station just up the road than had the contract to provide the gas for the tanks of its thirsty Broncos and sedans.  I worked the graveyard shift, which had its moments, but was mostly pretty boring.

However, I had one solace: It at least was fairly well patrolled by law enforcement … and the Secret Service detail was billeted in the motel right behind it … which turned out to be my benefit. In a given night I would have at least two or three San Clemente city police cars roll by, one or two Orange County sheriff’s deputies, several California state park rangers and an occasional California Highway Patrol cruise by.

Well, this one night about 3am a band of bikers tootled in to get a little gas, between the six bikes it was like about $2 worth (at .30 a gallon) , and then basically camped out for the next hour. I wasn’t going to tell them to leave, California bikers having the reputations they did, so I just sat in my chair in front of the open service bay and read a book, as customers would come off the freeway, take one look and whip right back on the freeway.

Well, it seems that they had been sitting there for about 45-50 minutes, when one of the Secret Service types left his room for a second trip to the motel ice machine and saw that the bikers were still lurking. He called the local police, who dispatched a patrol car, which showed up a few minutes later, much to my delight.

Anyway, the friendly police officer and I chatted a bit, and he just sat there until the bikers got the hint and rumbled back on to the southbound I-5.  Shortly later, two carloads of CHP were seen zipping south on the freeway in pursuit.

Anyway, call it what you will, but I was glad the Secret Service agents were having there little party.

BTW: Nixon wasn’t in residence at the time … but that is other stories.

Second thing, the dust up about the uniformed idiots who apparently let someone get ahold of their pictures of them posing with dead Taliban. Would people please get a grip. This is a warzone in Afghanistan and US soldiers are not saints. Granted, most of them are pretty good guys, but some are merely jerks and stupid at that. I could tell tales about that stupidity, but what would be the point. Armies are designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. It has been that way since time immemorial.

Oh, and you don’t think the other side does do similar things? Give me a flipping break! Why this one standard (a pretty impossible one at that) for one side and another for the other side. It just drives me up the wall that we have people back here who keep falling for this crap and get all upset.

Nuff said. 

Personal note

I would ask, of those so inclined, a few prayers be offered for my step-grandson Gage, who is to undergo heart surgery Tuesday, 10 April 2012 at Sick Kids Hospital (its real name) in Toronto, Ontarior, Canada. He is one frightened little boy and needs all the strength he can muster to get through the coming days. I an offering up what I can, meager as it is, for him (age 5), his mom and her mom. Thank you update: Master Gage got through the surgery very well ... and returned home to Windsor within a week ... for which we are extremely grateful.

All hands to battle stations!!!!

As this is being written, a US Coast Guard cutter is trying to sink a 150-foot derelict fishing boat off Alaska.

The rusting hulk is abandoned and was scheduled for scrap when it was washed away from its anchorage off Japan last year when the big tsunami hit. It has been making its lonely and unmanned voyage across the North Pacific ever since.

Boy are the gunners on the cutter going to have fun. I once was a gunner’s mate on U.S. Navy destroyer, but we had 5-inch cannons, while this little cutter has the equivalent of at 1-inch machinegun – a 25mm automatic cannon similar to the one carried in the turret of a Bradley armored fighting vehicle.

I actually feel a bit sorry for the Coasties. This is not going to be a cake walk. Granted the old fishing boat isn’t going anywhere fast, but if you have ever tried to hit anything from the rolling, yawing, pitching deck of a ship in open waters,  you have a idea how difficult the task really is.

When I was first introduced in the Guard to the artillery fire control problem … I realize how much easier it was – no pitch, yaw or roll to compensate for.

I remember the few times I got to aim Mount 52 on the Meredith (DD-890). It really is a matter of timing, as you tried to make sure the gun was on target.

Secondly, while at 25mm gun will do a lot of damage, since it fires exploding rounds rather than the solid shot of a .50-caliber bullet that used to be carried on the 110 foot cutter, you are talking about a pretty good sized vessel here. It probably going to take quite a few rounds downrange to put enough holes in the boat to cause it to sink.

I guess that just means more practice for the gunners … gee, I wonder if they will have to do an under way replenishment for ammunition … maybe, like us on the Merry-D, they will get to do it in the middle of the night, which was our usual time.

Oops

I commend the president and his staff for trying to walk back their rhetoric from his rather inane comments about the the propriety of judicial review.

Even though a judge on a panel of the 5th Circuit did chastised a federal attorney to seek clarification on the Department of Justice’s stance on the court’s prerogative to hold laws enacted by Congress, as well as any other political subdivision in the U.S., as being unconstitutional and therefore invalid.

However, it bothers me, that the goose is complaining about what the gander has been complaining about for many years … sorry, Charlie, but that sword cuts both ways, you know.

Yes, it distresses me that judges keep being identified as political as per the party of the president who appointed them, because as Chief Justice Earl Warren so aptly illustrated, just because a president appoints a person to the bench, that is no assurance that they toe a particular ideology or party line. Sorry, but federal judges, usually as a general rule, are more devoted to the law than to any particular stripe of political thought. Of course, then again, they are humans and do have their own principles to consider.

However, I would hope President Obama, his aides on his White House staff, as well as his supporters, would dial back their rhetoric attacking the legitimacy of the court and its rulings. It really is unhelpful to the state of political and civil dialogue in the United States.

Sugar? Toxic?

I, unfortunately, got to watch CBS’s 60 Minutes program April 1 …  and I really hope that it was an April Fool’s Joke.

One of the segments was about a pediatric nutritionist who is on a campaign to get sugar declared toxic in humans. Give me a break.

The segment was of the usual caliber for a 60 Minutes show, so I was not all that surprised when the only other voice (other than the experts lined up to say how bad sugar is for people) was a poor Louisiana sugar cane grower who obviously was not really prepared for the hammering he got.

OK. First let me point out that sugar is not the best stuff for you and Americans eat far to much of it. If you don’t know that already then you really are living in some strange alternate universe. But to declare sugar toxic has the implications of invoking the food police to take all sugars away from everybody for their own good … in addition to all the sugar substitutes because, as we all know, they too are bad for us. So, much for having a sweet tooth.

The problem I have will all this is that I am not impressed enough with the science here to say that sugar should be banned as toxic, or if government has the right or the jurisdiction to do so. But then, I don’t agree with a lot of things the U.S. government finds itself involved in … being a proponent of limited government and government at the levels at the closest to the people as possible. I.E. that means local governments get preferences over state governments which get preferences over the federal government. It is the old “government that governs least is best” argument.

It is not that there isn’t a role for government and government regulations; it is just that federal regulations are not the be all, end all to every problem that one finds in the U.S. Unfortunately, I am in a distinct minority in my opinion these days, but I try to accept that would good grace. I am trying to be agreeable about disagreeing … but in that too, I fear, I am also in a diminishing minority.

So, take a vote …. all in favor of the government coming in to  your house and checking your shelves for illicit sugar and policing the grocery aisles to make sure none is available for your satisfaction, please raise your hand.

Amazing

It seems that President Obama has called the U.S. Supreme Court a body of “unelected” officials who have no business saying whether a law passed by the elected Congress exceeds the powers granted the legislature by the Constitution or not.

Hello, Mister President, I understood that you were at one time a professor of constitutional law and that statement seems to be like ignoring more than 200 years of U.S. judicial history, law and tradition.

Things are getting really weird in the U.S. and this old journalist/soldier isn’t sure what to make of it all.

It has been accepted since about 1803, that one – and probably the most important – of the roles of U.S. Supreme Court is to decide whether or not specific laws and actions by the other two branches of the federal government meet the test of being within their constitutional powers. It is, to put it bluntly, part of the checks and balances designed into the U.S. Constitution in order to protect the people from government excesses.

In this case, the law being challenged is the president’s signature health care reform act, and – if indications from the questioning of several members (a majority) bear any validity – will be struck down by the court as exceeding the congressional powers as designated in the constitution.

What blows me away is not that President Obama hopes that the court will uphold the law, but his denigrating the court as unelected and therefore should not invalidate a law that has been passed by the majority in any of  our several political divisions and subdivisions.

Hello, were that the case then the “separate but equal doctrine” and all the “Jim Crow” laws that were passed to implement that doctrine would still be in effect and it is very unlikely that the president would even have  been allowed to serve or run.

Be that as it may, what is distressing me more than anything is the absolutely devolution of anything resembling respect for the law, the courts, the system and tradition. We seem to have decided that we would rather not be a nation governed by a set of laws that is – or at least should be and is the goal we strive for – applied equally to all comers, where people are judged not by their status, color of their skin, their sex, their religion, their ancestors or their ideology, but by the fact that they are individual humans, with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

Without respect, even for those viewpoints that disagree with our own, then how can we expect others to respect each of us as individuals.

It is with sadness and regret that I point 0ut that such rhetoric as President Obama’s does little to engender any respect for any decision coming from the U.S. Supreme Court whether it is 9-0 or 5-4 in either upholding or striking down any law or government action.

Without that respect, then there are no limits on what Congress and the Executive Branch are able to do. There will be no checks or balances against their excesses. We will, in reality, then be governed by the whims of men (and women) and not by law which really does so much to bind our society together.

Question: Is that truly the path we want to follow?

Hey, I know that unit

http://www.military.com/news/article/guardsman-killed-saving-afghan-girl-hailed-as-a-hero.html?comp=700001075741&rank=2

 

The linked story is about a Rhode Island National Guard member who was fatally injured when he put his body between a young Afghan girl and an Army MRAP (which weighs 16 tons).

Anyway, it shows how strange a world we live in:  I once was in the unit he was in, only it was part of the Texas National Guard at the time

C Company, 1st Battalion (Airborne) 143rd Infantry Regiment