Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

If Cringely had been asserting that they are different from us, that would have been an effective rebuttal. But since he was asserting that people can react like that, your material only serves to reinforce his point.

Another point to remember, that "Americans don't get" if I may adapt the Cringely terminology, is that all this violence doesn't mean that they hate us. Reacting by asking "why do they hate us?", and then offering possible motives, is a self inflicted red herring. People are quite capable of reacting with violence to quite separate motives. If anything, they start to hate because they wish to rationalise their violence after the fact. That only happens to those who aren't comfortable with the violence. Do you for one moment suppose that US troops started out by hating Iraqis?

Do you for one moment suppose that US troops started out by hating Iraqis?

After being encouraged to believe that Iraqis pulled off 9.11, I'd be surprised if they didn't start out hating Iraqis.

The army general on Lehrer's Newshour tonight was on about teaching them the meaning of American "resolve." Accept our vision of your future or die! That will have to do, instead of morality. For where do our Religious Values Voters stand? Let's see, they all acquiesced as Bush traduced his opponent's courage and wisdom, so bringing upon them a dishonor that will not be cleaned, but spreads like infection to other parts of their ministry, and opens another vast estrangement from their own God.

Anyway why shouldn't all peoples be compelled to decide upon their leaders by the same horseshit? At least it's not violent! Or wait a minute

He doesn't get it and he'll proudly NEVER get it.

He gets it all right. What he gets is that if he nukes Tehran - just to promote liberty and democracy in the Middle East - there isn't anyone to take him to account.

Davis X Machina -

I thought I was being careful to rule out what US soldiers came to be like after indoctrination when I put "started out". That starting out is before the indoctrination.

Lee A. at November 5, 2004 10:03 PM:

If Kerry had evinced the "courage and wisdom" to make Bush's unwise, unnecessary and illegal invasion/occupation of Iraq an 'issue' in recent campaign, by forthrightly declaring that it was his intention to decline the opportunity to 'ask' anybody to be the last one to die for that 'mistake', FUNDAMENTALLY
'religious values voters' MIGHT have taken the opportunity to treat the 'infection' you so facetiously refer to.

And the rest of us 'ordinary' voters would have been presented with a REAL choice US/Iraq 'futures' too. That's the 'strategy' that 'worked' for Eisenhower in '52...

Of course, the strategic situation was different then. I mean, your '52 Japan and your '04 Israel aren't even in the same 'class'. Are they?

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Speaking of religion and war:

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Killing is Unnatural

"...when humans fight each other, there is a lot of posturing. Adversaries make loud noises and puff themselves up, trying to daunt the enemy. There is a lot of fleeing and submission. Ancient battles were nothing more than great shoving matches. It was not until one side turned and ran that most of the killing happened, and most of that was stabbing people in the back. All of the ancient military historians report that the vast majority of killing happened in pursuit when one side was fleeing.

In more modern times, the average firing rate was incredibly low in Civil War battles. Paddy Griffith demonstrates that the killing potential of the average Civil War regiment was anywhere from five hundred to a thousand men per minute. The actual killing rate was only one or two men per minute per regiment (The Battle Tactics of the American Civil War). At the Battle of Gettysburg, of the 27,000 muskets picked up from the dead and dying after the battle, 90 percent were loaded. This is an anomaly, because it took 95 percent of their time to load muskets and only 5 percent to fire. But even more amazing, of the thousands of loaded muskets, over half had multiple loads in the barrel--one with 23 loads in the barrel. In reality, the average man would load his musket and bring it to his shoulder, but he could not bring himself to kill. He would be brave, he would stand shoulder to shoulder, he would do what he was trained to do; but at the moment of truth, he could not bring himself to pull the trigger. So, he lowered the weapon and loaded it again. Of those who did fire, only a tiny percentage fired to hit. The vast majority fired over the enemy's head.

During World War II, US Army Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall had a team of researchers study what soldiers did in battle. For the first time in history, they asked individual soldiers what they did in battle. They discovered that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen could bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier.

That is the reality of the battlefield. Only a small percentage of soldiers are able and willing to participate. Men are willing to die; they are willing to sacrifice themselves for their nation, but they are not willing to kill. It is a phenomenal insight into human nature, but when the military became aware of that, they systematically went about the process of trying to fix this "problem." From the military perspective, a 15 percent firing rate among riflemen is like a 15 percent literacy rate among librarians. And fix it the military did. By the Korean War, around 55 percent of the soldiers were willing to fire to kill. And by Vietnam, the rate rose to over 90 percent..."

http://www.killology.net/art_trained_killing.htm

---------------------

From:

Trained to Kill: Are We Conditioning Our Children to Commit Murder?

By Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

http://www.killology.net/article_trainedtokill.htm

"What effective limit is there to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow themselves to bits? There is no limit, which means that a Bush Doctrine can't really stand in that part of the world."

This is total rubbish. If it were true, the British and the French never would have been able to control the fates of the entire Middle East for decades. Perhaps Cringely should read about the Battle of Omdurman before pontificating further.

"Killing is Unnatural"

So is using toothpaste, or microwaving your food, or flying in aluminium cans across the Atlantic ocean. One would think liberals would know better than to fall for the old naturalistic fallacy.

(Woof! Woof, woof <}:!)

----------

"....Killing requires training because there is a built-in aversion to killing one's own kind. I can best illustrate this from drawing on my own work in studying killing in the military.

We all know that you can't have an argument or a discussion with a frightened or angry human being. Vasoconstriction, the narrowing of the blood vessels, has literally closed down the forebrain--that great gob of gray matter that makes you a human being and distinguishes you from a dog. When those neurons close down, the midbrain takes over and your thought processes and reflexes are indistinguishable from your dog's. If you've worked with animals, you have some understanding in the realm of midbrain responses.

Within the midbrain there is a powerful, God-given resistance to killing your own kind. Every species, with a few exceptions, has a hardwired resistance to killing its own kind in territorial and mating battles. When animals with antlers and horns fight one another, they head butt in a harmless fashion. But when they fight any other species, they go to the side to gut and gore. Piranhas will turn their fangs on anything, but they fight one another with flicks of the tail. Rattlesnakes will bite anything, but they wrestle one another. Almost every species has this hardwired resistance to killing its own kind.

When we human beings are overwhelmed with anger and fear, we slam head-on into that midbrain resistance that generally prevents us from killing. Only sociopaths--who by definition don't have that resistance--lack this innate violence immune system....

---------------------

Paragraphs 3-7 "Killing is Unnatural"

By Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

http://www.killology.net/art_trained_killing.htm

Before considering whether Iranians or Iraqis are willing to die in droves, it may be better to ask whether Americans are willing to persist with the idea of building a Middle Eastern empire. The tendency at present is to deny that they are building anything of the sort.

Abiola, if you are trying to sell the idea, it might be better to ignore the history of British and French involvement. I have never met anyone from either country who thought they did a good job there.

Two things on 'Middle Eastern empire' Kevin Donoghue at November 6, 2004 02:37 AM:

---------------------

A Jewish Voice Left Silent: Trying to Articulate "The Levantine Option"

David Shasha

January-February 2003

http://www.asfonline.org/portal/SpeakersGrid.asp?article_id=9&

-----------

Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine

By NOEL IGNATIEV

June 17, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/ignatiev06172004.html

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Make that THREE things:

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Just War - or a Just War?

by Jimmy Carter

9 Mar 2003

Profound changes have been taking place in American foreign policy, reversing consistent bipartisan commitments that for more than two centuries have earned our nation greatness. These commitments have been predicated on basic religious principles, respect for international law, and alliances that resulted in wise decisions and mutual restraint. Our apparent determination to launch a war against Iraq, without international support, is a violation of these premises.

As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders, with the most notable exception of a few spokesmen of the Southern Baptist Convention who are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological, or final days, theology...

http://www.cartercenter.org/doc1249.htm

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Cringeley: "What effective limit is there to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow themselves to bits? There is no limit, which means that a Bush Doctrine can't really stand in that part of the world."

Abiola Lapite: "This is total rubbish. If it were true, the British and the French never would have been able to control the fates of the entire Middle East for decades. Perhaps Cringely should read about the Battle of Omdurman before pontificating further."

Er, Abiola. Use your head. The British and French ruled the Middle East as long-time imperialist dictators -- and they did so at a time when there was (A) no world TV coverage of the savage military force they utilized to do this were doing (compare this to al-Jazeerah, or for that matter to our own media); (B) no jetliners for disgruntled Moslems to fly into the House of Parliament or the Eiffel Tower; and (C) no Moslem state with the atomic bomb.

By contrast, the US has explicitly sworn off trying to rule any part of the Mideast -- let along most of the Ottoman Empire -- because our necessary moderate-range goal is actually trying to make most of the world's Moslems like us. We canot occupy and rule the entire Moslem world by force; and if we try to rule any particular part of it using brutal force as the British and French did during those decades you talk about, we will end up infuriating a larger part of it. The real analogy is France's attempt to hold onto Algeria -- but for the US to try to dictatorially control the Moslem world is even more futile that that.

Even the Bush Neocons are well aware of this little fact -- but once their initial obsessive wishful fantasy of Iraqis throwing flowers at us collapsed, they had no backup plan to deal with the situation. And we still have none. We might conceivably be able to get the situation under control now by tremendously enlarging our troop strength and spending levels in Iraq (which was the only way we could ever have won the war) -- but at this point the resentment of us among many Iraqis who were formerly willing to wait and see how we workd out is probably so intense that anything we do to try to militarily pacify Iraq will just end up making its inhabitants hate us still more. And even if a massively strengthened US occupation of Iraq did pacify the place (in the short run), the use of most of our strength there would leave us without the power to deal militarily with certain more urgent issues, such as the little matter of Iran's imminent acquisition of the Bomb or the possible military crises resulting from the fact that North Korea and Pakistan already have it. (The Bomb, like the Colt .45, is the Great Equalizer; the fact that Pakistan already has it tremendously limits by itself our ability to control the Moslem world.)

The children were not fighting. They knew they were not going to fight. They did not care about their own lives enough to refuse. Does anyone think you could get any crowd of 12 year old American kids to do this? That is Cringely's point.

Let's remember the reason we did not go to Baghdad in the first Gulf War. The Iraqis were fleeing down a highway in their own country. We flew missions over the highway, killing them like those children were killed. We did not have the stomach to shoot fleeing men in the back.

Now we would?

http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/pres-etab/callot/ljc/galerie_guerre_jcallot.htm

once upon a time there were excellent images of this suite on the WWW. Now there are not.

What I find utterly fascinating in all this discussion is the fact that killing and fighting wars is unchristian. Somehow this is never brought up. A just war (one of defense of the helpless) is the closest to what a Christian can justify. Everything else is the most elaborate lying to themselves that I have ever seen. The Crusades were about a bunch of self-justifying liars, and so are our current Crusades.

Cringely has it wrong.

Of there he's right when he says no limit to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow themselves up. This point was made frequently in Tel Aviv a couple of years ago when arguing against fighting Hamas and Al-Aqsa brigades and instead immediately withdrawing to the green line.

The reason Cringely is wrong is that the Israeli offensive against Hamas and Al-Aksa which killed the leadership and disrupted the supply lines has had success in slowing the rate of suicide bombers. Now all but the most die-hard ideologues on the left agree that killing Sheik Yassin, arresting Marwan Barghouti, and many more, was good policy.

There are lots of peripheral points to be made: such as how can one respond to a dirty nuclear weapon, under what circumstances is a withdrawal to the green line advisable, etc. However, it is possible to fight suicide terror by aggressively disrupting the command and control structure. A 16 year old without explosives generally can't explode.

I believe the Americans will rediscover this in Iraq and will manage to subdue Falluja and the rebellion successfully. The question is, of course, how does America respond to a dirty nuclear weapon attack in one of the "red states"?

Tel Aviv

What the hell are you talking about?

Mike, I'm not sure I understand what you mean, unless it's that "Christians" might have voted for Kerry if he more soundly opposed the present conduct of foreign policy--but I thought he did! I believe their infection of mind, and estrangement from God, are real and growing and very dangerous, nor was I being facetious. In fact, I believe that all the real Christians voted for Kerry.

"Er, Abiola. Use your head."

My, what a profound statement. Perhaps you might start by using yours?

"The British and French ruled the Middle East as long-time imperialist dictators -- and they did so at a time when there was (A) no world TV coverage of the savage military force they utilized to do this were doing (compare this to al-Jazeerah, or for that matter to our own media);"

But there were highly developed presses with access to telegrams - Winston Churchill doubled as a journalist at Omdurman. In any case, all you're doing here is making a case for military censorship of the likes of Al Jazeera, easily enough done using electronic jamming and restrictions on free movement.

"(B) no jetliners for disgruntled Moslems to fly into the House of Parliament or the Eiffel Tower;"

Are you implicitly saying that Moslems amongst us are a potential threat? I'm sure the LGF crowd will be in full agreement with you on this point. Perhaps we ought to start rounding them all up then, or simply bar them all from flying on aircraft ... If you think such veiled threats by Muslims can do anything other than backfire, you have no grasp of how far many in America are willing to go.

In any case, you hardly seem to be aware that relatively free movement of peoples was commonplace in the old European empires, and that Arabs and Muslims were to be found walking the streets of London and Paris 100 years ago. This sort of threat is nothing new.

"(C) no Moslem state with the atomic bomb."

And what is Pakistan in any position to do about things? Launch a nuclear attack on American troops? Or perhaps you mean there's some other Muslim nuclear power out there, in which case, how can you dispute that Bush and the evil Neocons have the right priorities?

Cringely was speaking rubbish. The only thing holding US forces back from crushing Iraqi resistance into the dust is American self-restraint and humanity, not some indefatigable will to win on the part of Arabs fired up by Islam, which is the point at issue. 200 million hate-filled Arabs can't dislodge Israel, yet the United States is supposed to cower before their wrath? Ridiculous.

I might not be as clever as you, Lee A. at November 6, 2004 07:28 AM.

But I'm pretty sure 'I understand what you mean.'

But just in case I don't, expain these words from your previous message to me, please:

------------------------------------

"...For where do our Religious Values Voters stand? Let's see, they all acquiesced as Bush traduced his opponent's courage and wisdom, so bringing upon them a dishonor that will not be cleaned, but spreads like infection to other parts of their ministry, and opens another vast estrangement from their own God.

Anyway why shouldn't all peoples be compelled to decide upon their leaders by the same horseshit?.."

------------------------------------

As for the part of your response concerning Kerry's 'opposition' "to the present conduct of foreign policy" (and NOT to be overly nuanced about the matter):

What ever happened to the good old-fashioned, middle-American practice of calling spades spades and war criminals war criminals?

That sort of thing might not be popular where you come from Lee, but it still works for me.

Speaking of nuclear powers and Israel, would somebody please tell me:

Why isn't this information 'common knowledge' AND an integral part of the public so-called debate about Iran AND nuclear non-proliferation?

------------------------------------

THE THIRD TEMPLE'S HOLY OF HOLIES:
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army

The Counterproliferation Papers

Future Warfare Series No. 2

USAF Counterproliferation Center

Air War College

Air University

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

September 1999

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm

------------------------------------

This is a very interesting discussion. I only have one observation about killing. Admittedly, I have an incomplete comprehension of history, but it seems to me that human beings have been quite efficient in killing one another over time. And, even more efficient in killing non-human life.

And, I find it even more disturbing that it is difficult to understand why problems still exists today in the human experience that requires killing as part of the solutions to those problems. What is the explanation?

"The explanation", bncthor at November 6, 2004 08:32 AM ?

Whew! That's a TOUGH one....

'They' SAY Sam Rayburn said once:

Any jackass can kick a barn down but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Mike, get thee to a psych-trauma ward! What I meant by my first post was, we are going to "kill" lots more "people" to give them a "democracy" of the sort that was just won by "lying hypocrites" here at "home." --I put quotes around the spadier spades, but the ironies are obvious... What I meant by my second post was, you appear to be blaming Kerry for not being more strident, and I disagree that THAT is the main problem. What I mean by THIS post is, calm down, because we need you!!... As for Abiola Lapite, since the British and French experiences were preludes to the present bloodletting, I don't know what lesson this holds, except that We now command the slaughter-machine. Is that your point?

"During World War II, US Army Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall had a team of researchers study what soldiers did in battle. For the first time in history, they asked individual soldiers what they did in battle. They discovered that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen could bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier."

Marshall has been credibly accused of fabricating the data underlying these conclusions . . .

“What effective limit is there to the number of Islamic kids willing to blow themselves to bits? There is no limit, which means that a Bush Doctrine can't really stand in that part of the world.”

Cringely is making a false inference from the particular to the general. Having seen some young Iranians join a suicidal wave, he assumes all young Iranians would do so. Moreover, he really doesn’t know if those kids did for Allah, or did it under coercion. Then he falsely assumes that human waves would neutralize US military force. I fail to see how a bunch of unarmed twelve-year-olds are going to do anything but get captured and eventually sent home to their mothers. If on the other hand, these kids are little kamikazes being wired to blow up, then they will get shot down like any one else.

Lee A. at November 6, 2004 10:10 AM:

"Appearances" of "blame" aside, what I ACTUALLY wrote was:

------------------------------------

1

...If Kerry had evinced the "courage and wisdom" to make Bush's unwise, unnecessary and illegal invasion/occupation of Iraq an 'issue' in recent campaign, by forthrightly declaring that it was his intention to decline the opportunity to 'ask' anybody to be the last one to die for that 'mistake', FUNDAMENTALLY
'religious values voters' MIGHT have taken the opportunity to treat the 'infection' you so facetiously refer to.

And the rest of us 'ordinary' voters would have been presented with a REAL choice [of alternative] US/Iraq 'futures' too. That's the 'strategy' that 'worked' for Eisenhower in '52...

------------------------------------

2.

...As for the part of your response concerning Kerry's 'opposition' "to the present conduct of foreign policy" (and NOT to be overly nuanced about the matter):

What ever happened to the good old-fashioned, middle-American practice of calling spades spades and war criminals war criminals?

That sort of thing might not be popular where you come from Lee, but it still works for me.

------------------------------------

And BTW Lee, you can stuff YOUR arrogant, 'ironic' "horseshit" and "psych-trauma ward" stuff up your 'calm' rhetorical ass--as far as I'M concerned.

I think Tel Aviv Reader has it almost right, with the proviso, as Senator Kerry signalled several times, that the elimination of terror networks should be done secretly by Special Forces, and the Daylight war should be diplomatic, multilateral, slow, and cautious, in order to give moderate Muslims a cover to join the free world in peace. Bush & Company, psychologically inept, thought an incursion into Iraq would be a quick two-for-one, i.e. a democracy to woo the Muslim leaners, + cheaper oil! But now we're a hundred thousand dead, maybe a hundred thousand more to go, and it is just as likely that the U.S., like Israel, will be Unforgiven.

I'm all eyes:

------------------------------------

"...Marshall has been credibly accused of fabricating the data underlying these conclusions . . ."

Posted by: rea at November 6, 2004 10:16 AM

------------------------------------

By whom? Where? Besides yourself, I mean. Here.

So, YOU think Kerry thinks secret, 'black helicoptered', Pentagon directed, global death squads are the way to deal with disaffected Muslims, Lee A. at November 6, 2004 10:28 AM?

Is that really what you (and Tel Aviv) think America (and Kerry's) "real Christians" (the only kind you say voted for him) OUGHT to be about in the world?

Or are you just 'posing', ironically, again?

Mike, you still don't make sense. Your number (1) says to me that if Kerry had said that the soldiers were dying for a mistake, Karl Rove's "evangelical Christians" would have deserted Bush to vote Democratic. Unlikely. Number (2) says that if Kerry had called the soldiers "war criminals," that would have been even more effective! Maybe you just didn't hear Kerry's Vietnam War testimony that the swiftboaters banged everybody over the head with! Or maybe you are confusing the evangelical "Christians" with the smaller number of real Christians who can actually think. People who would vote against Kerry believing what Bush said about him, have an disease they cannot cure.

Are we also thinking about and planning for the return to America of troops who have seen the real thing, who have questioned it, who've watched the kids die, who've talked with and sympathetized with Iraqis, who have grave doubts about the wisdom of the invasion -- are we wondering about how they will feel, behave, and relate to the rest of us when they come home to a country which increasingly shuns dissent and which requires "patriotism" and "love of country" to take specific political forms?

The REAL war criminials Lee, are the lying SOB's In the VP's office & upper echelons of the Pentagon who stirred up this war.

EVERYBODY knows (or ought to know) THAT.

AND, as I wrote, If Kerry had made a campaign pledge (as Eisenhower did in '52) to "end the war", period, the rest of the stuff you talk about would have "effectively" followed 'naturally'.

P.S.

"People who would vote against Kerry believing what Bush said about him," WOULDN'T vote for him ANYWAY (unless Kerry convinced them he had a better plan and/or that Bush was lying). So, as a purely pragmatic political matter, why should Kerry have even bothered trying to 'appeal' to them on BUSH'S (political) terms?

It just doesn't "make sense," Lee.

And, nowadays, the ready-to-die-for-a-cause groups can get their hands on weapons much more terrible than the garden implements their forebears brought to the rumble.

The Marines are going into Fallujah this weekend. Did you see the pictures of the Marines. Their eight wheeled light armored vehicles were piled high with improvise blast deflective material like sandbags and extra tires. Anything to stop incoming HEAT rpg rounds. They will face scores of suicide bombers with vests of plastic explosive having been learning how to take out the Bradleys and the M1 tanks.

This is idiotcy. We gave the enemy 6 months to prepare Fallujah as a killing ground with bunkers and tunnels. Even after we take the city there is no guarrantee that the majority of the insurgents will not be able to escape. We do not enough troops to insure proper encirclement. Meanwhile we will be bogged down in urban warfare while our supply lines and rear areas are exposed to attack.

All the Iraqis have to do is capture a platoon or company of US soldiers. Then we have a hostage crisis.

The Marines are going into Fallujah this weekend. Did you see the pictures of the Marines. Their eight wheeled light armored vehicles were piled high with improvise blast deflective material like sandbags and extra tires. Anything to stop incoming HEAT rpg rounds. They will face scores of suicide bombers with vests of plastic explosive having been learning how to take out the Bradleys and the M1 tanks.

This is idiotcy. We gave the enemy 6 months to prepare Fallujah as a killing ground with bunkers and tunnels. Even after we take the city there is no guarrantee that the majority of the insurgents will not be able to escape. We do not enough troops to insure proper encirclement. Meanwhile we will be bogged down in urban warfare while our supply lines and rear areas are exposed to attack.

All the Iraqis have to do is capture a platoon or company of US soldiers. Then we have a hostage crisis.

The Marines are going into Fallujah this weekend. Did you see the pictures of the Marines. Their eight wheeled light armored vehicles were piled high with improvise blast deflective material like sandbags and extra tires. Anything to stop incoming HEAT rpg rounds. They will face scores of suicide bombers with vests of plastic explosive having been learning how to take out the Bradleys and the M1 tanks.

This is idiotcy. We gave the enemy 6 months to prepare Fallujah as a killing ground with bunkers and tunnels. Even after we take the city there is no guarrantee that the majority of the insurgents will not be able to escape. We do not enough troops to insure proper encirclement. Meanwhile we will be bogged down in urban warfare while our supply lines and rear areas are exposed to attack.

All the Iraqis have to do is capture a platoon or company of US soldiers. Then we have a hostage crisis.

The Marines are going into Fallujah this weekend. Did you see the pictures of the Marines. Their eight wheeled light armored vehicles were piled high with improvise blast deflective material like sandbags and extra tires. Anything to stop incoming HEAT rpg rounds. They will face scores of suicide bombers with vests of plastic explosive having been learning how to take out the Bradleys and the M1 tanks.

This is idiotcy. We gave the enemy 6 months to prepare Fallujah as a killing ground with bunkers and tunnels. Even after we take the city there is no guarrantee that the majority of the insurgents will not be able to escape. We do not enough troops to insure proper encirclement. Meanwhile we will be bogged down in urban warfare while our supply lines and rear areas are exposed to attack.

All the Iraqis have to do is capture a platoon or company of US soldiers. Then we have a hostage crisis.

The Marines are going into Fallujah this weekend. Did you see the pictures of the Marines. Their eight wheeled light armored vehicles were piled high with improvise blast deflective material like sandbags and extra tires. Anything to stop incoming HEAT rpg rounds. They will face scores of suicide bombers with vests of plastic explosive having been learning how to take out the Bradleys and the M1 tanks.

This is idiotcy. We gave the enemy 6 months to prepare Fallujah as a killing ground with bunkers and tunnels. Even after we take the city there is no guarrantee that the majority of the insurgents will not be able to escape. We do not enough troops to insure proper encirclement. Meanwhile we will be bogged down in urban warfare while our supply lines and rear areas are exposed to attack.

All the Iraqis have to do is capture a platoon or company of US soldiers. Then we have a hostage crisis.

bncthor wrote, "Admittedly, I have an incomplete comprehension of history, but it seems to me that human beings have been quite efficient in killing one another over time. And, even more efficient in killing non-human life."

Yep. IIRC the popular books of Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker point out quite well that the "noble savage" is a myth. Genocide appears to be as old as the human race. And weaker evidence indicates that we're pretty good at wiping out large mammals.

Really interesting argument. Here is something else to ponder. A recent poll showed that 50% of Canadians under the age of 35 regard the U.S. as an evil nation. And close to a majority of Canadians regard the U.S. as a rogue nation. Do Canadians or Americans have a problem here?

I'd say that both will. The Canadians because they are smaller (in population) than the US, weaker than the US (economically and militarily), and close to the US. The US because this attitude will not be confined to Canada.

One of my ancestors, Pettit, was in Brussels on business that horrible day. He lost his entire family.

He couldn't go home so he used his ship to become a pirate.

The children of the Pettit family came to America and you can see where they settled because all the towns they started are named either Lima or Peru in honor of the gold dubloons they won at sea.

As for the fighting: the Muslims know this is about oil and the Christian crusade. They are very motivated to fight us off. Note that Lebanon was part Christian since the Mediaval crusades and this community was wiped out after Israel and America decided to back them to put down the Muslims.

Bin Laden is Mohammed reborn and we have turned him into a vast hero and he will win in the end unless we commit Nazi level war crimes such as murdering all the Muslims.

Ahem.

"Saddam killed his own people".....how often did Bush say this?????

Some other comments- Abiola, back in the colonial days, the colonial powers used local powers as much as possible, especially against their local rivals. This administration seems more likely to unite local rivals against the US. In terms of information, the telegraph doesn't compare well to video. Censorship is limited, except for small areas. Video cameras can get pictures out of public events, probably within a few days, at most. This adminstration has limited powers of censorship in the Arab and Muslim world (they're probably much more effective at keeping things off of the US mass media).

Lebanon was part Christian after the Crusades, but it was mostly Christian before the Jihad.

Abiola Lapite is still, I see, stubbornly refusing to use his head:

(1) His recommendation to deal with the fact that really violent actions against Moslem civilians will turn the Moslem world as a whole gainst us is that we electronically jam al-Jazeerah. Why, of course. That will make us even more popular in the region. Perhaps he'll also recommend shutting out the US press entirely from Iraq so we can massacre the population on a wholesale basis (or, as he picturesquely puts it, "crush Iraq into the dust"? After all, no word of that will ever get out either. And after we finally leave, there will of course be no bitterness at all against us from the locals (including far more countries than Iraq)-- especially since Moslem hatred of the US is bsed not on allegaince to a single destructible government (as with ocupied Germany and Japan) but on allegiance to a worldwide religion (rather more difficult for us to successfully control).

Unless, of course, he's proposing that we never leave Iraq for decades, and indeed that we occupy every other rebellious Moslem state in the world for a comparable period, which doesn't quite seem to be what the Bushites have in mind. Even they aren't that insane.

(2) He informs us, with a straight face, that we need not worry about Pakistan's possession of the Bomb because the only danger is that the Pakistani government might use it to bomb American troops. A few words for an infinitely more likely sequence of events: Governmental breakdown. Religious nuts. Packing crate. Manhattan. What, exactly, is likely to happen when the first smuggled A-bomb goes off in an American city (or, for that matter, a city anywhere else on the planet) and the perpetrators announce that they have several more planted and ready to go off in US cities -- but won't tell us which ones? Now add Iran to Pakistan and North Korea as the next likely source of such a danger.

Israel is, of course, looking nervously over its shoulder at precisely the same imminent threat, which is why they're already talking about bombing Iran as they bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor. It will, however, be much harder to restrain Iran's Bomb production that way. But the US may be up to it, once we disentangle ourselves from the useless red herring of Iraq. And since Pakistan and North Korea already have it, any preemptive attack on them will literally blow up in our faces -- our only hope is to find ways to discourage them from either using the Bomb or giving it away to untraceable terrorists (either before or after the collapse of their current governments), all of which Iraq is further distracting us from.

(3) For the record, Abiola, saying that we have a crucial imperative to try to deal with nuclear terrorism -- which, of course, we do -- is not quite the same thing as saying that the Bush Administration dealt with it properly by invading the wrong country. That's what the entire argument over Iraq is about -- remember? There are those little matters of Iran's undoubted imminent acquisition of the Bomb, and the likely consequences of the fact that Pakistan and North Korea already have it -- all of which we are in tremendously worse shape to deal with because most of our military is stuck in Iraq. Given the fact that the greatest threat by far to America and to human civilization now comes from nuclear proliferation and resulting nuclear terrorism, doesn't it make a wee bit more sense to militarily attack or restrain those nations that actually HAVE the Bomb or are close to getting it? That, lest we forget, was our official reason for invading Iraq, even if it did turn out to be based on fake intelligence.

So let me once again repeat my advice, Abiola: try using your head -- a considerably more profound piece of advice than any of your responses to it. You might start by considering that in a war, it always helps to attack the right country, and for the right reason. See George Will on this subject ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40277-2004Aug27.html ).

A final comment from me on this thread - Cringely was pointing out that we will not out-macho these people, so thinking along those lines is foolish. We don't want to take that level of casualties, unless we really, really, really have to. A 10:1 kill ratio (military; we're probably kiling a few civilians for every guerrilla) in our favor in Iraq is a recipe for US defeat. Now, in Afghanistan, it might be different, because of 9/11 (the difference in Iraq is that 9/11 was a BS excuse, and not a reason). Those who don't recognize that fact - most GOP voters, and pretty much the entire Bush administration - are taking us straight into disaster.

Even in Fallujah, our chances of successfully retaking and pacifying the city would be tremendously greater if we had nearly enough ground troops -- doing so by instead bombing a large part of it into rubble and thus mass-murdering civilians is likely to make us rather, er, unpopular. The same thing is true of Iraq as a whole. But then, if the Bushites had recognized the need to use several times more troops and money to occupy Iraq -- instead of swallowing Ahmad Chalabi's fairy tales out of obsessive wishful thinking -- they would have been far more reluctant to invade Iraq in the first place, and to use exaggerated evidence of Iraqi WMDs in order to gain reluctant approval for it.

Personally,. I think it is an even-money bet that the first war-shot target of a Pakistani nuke will be other Pakistanis.

“A few words for an infinitely more likely sequence of events: Governmental breakdown. Religious nuts. Packing crate. Manhattan.”

Not impossible, but unlikely. For one thing you are assuming that nuclear weapons have no built-in safeguards. They do. Unless the current leaders of Pakistan are extremely foolish, their nuclear weapons have multi-layer protection schemes designed to prevent just such a scenario. For example, you build in an inertial guidance system that would prevent the device from detonating in most geographical regions. You make sure only very few people know the elaborate arming and firing sequences. You bobby trap the device so it self destructs (in a non-nuclear fashion) if some tampers with it, even a little bit. National states are extremely concerned about “loose nukes.” Even seemingly crazy states like North Korea and Iran know if one of their weapons gets loose it could be used on them—the problem of “blow-back.” Moreover every nuclear weapon has a radiochemical signature, so these things cannot go off anonymously. Any country that allows one of its nukes to somehow detonate in the US risks immediate and devastating retaliation.

The security systems you describe seem pretty damned elaborate for a nation like Pakistan. For that matter they were pretty damned elaborate for the USSR.

One of the Tragedies of the human race. Sane people build nuclear weapons, sane people design the safety systems and sane people have used them.

Apart from that, all nuclear powers have a "Romeo plan," please refer to "Dr Strangelove". The actual person with the weapon has an option of being able to use that weapon if the command and control systems for that weapon are destroyed.

A. Zarkov: "Any country that allows one of its nukes to somehow detonate in the US risks immediate and devastating retaliation."

Of course -- which, obviously, will make no difference at all if the weapons have been stolen during the chaos accompanying the collapse of a weak or dictatorial government; or if the weapons have been seized by government military officials who also happen to be irrational religious nuts (which is why Pakistan actually scares me more than North Korea -- lest we forget, they came within a hair of a nuclear religious war with India in 1998, which may have been prevented only because one clerk in their military found out their plans for a surprise attack and spilled them to the press); or if a dictatorship which lives in terror of losing power and being massacred by its own people decides that the risk of using nukes to stick up a neighbor for cash or selling them on the black market is, on balance, worthwhile after all (see North Korea).

Nor should we forget that these same nations also possess enriched uranium and/or plutonium, whose acquisition is by far the most difficult step in making a Bomb. Once again, see George Will's column on Graham Allison's terrifying book ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40277-2004Aug27.html ).

These precautions might seem elaborate, but they are absolutely necessary when you enter the high stakes business of nuclear weapons. The name of the game is to maintain very tight control. This is why national states use missiles, because with a missile you can keep control until delivery to the target. The electronics needed to provide these kinds of precautions is available in modular form, which greatly reduces the development effort. Even a third –world state can figure this stuff out. Besides they send their students American universities, and then they work for our companies on H1-b visas. After the 911 attack, I called the MathWorks Company (MATLAB) and told them they should not sell their software to Afghanistan, and they seemed to agree.

> This is total rubbish. If it were true, the
> British and the French never would have been
> able to control the fates of the entire Middle
> East for decades. Perhaps Cringely should read
> about the Battle of Omdurman before
> pontificating further.

British and French control of the Middle East was always extremely fragile. The British never really succeeded in ruling Iraq and Iran. And they failed totally and horrificly in Afghanistan.

The British propped up the failing Ottoman Empire for decades because they didn't think they could succeed in filling the power vacuum opened by the fall of the Ottomans. The British always used the Ottomans as a buffer to avoid direct conflict with the Russians in the Great Game. And they held back from ever declaring Egypt or any other part of the Middle East a British colony, for fear of the reaction.

The British never had as firm a grasp on the Middle East as they did on India. Although the British did enjoy some military successes, they succeeded as well as they did in the Middle East by avoiding conflict, not seeking it.

One would do well to read about the annihilation of 16,000 British citizens during the British retreat from Afghanistan before pontificating further.

Moomaw: George Will doesn’t know very much a about nuclear physics, or inhalation toxicology, otherwise he wouldn’t make statements like: “A dirty bomb -- conventional explosives dispersing radioactive materials that are widely used in industry and medicine -- exploded in midtown Manhattan could make much of the island uninhabitable for years.” The so-called dirty bomb threat is a great exaggeration. Uranium and Plutonium are virtually useless for dirty bombs because they are not very radioactive. Remember radioactive aerosols must penetrate the respiratory tree to the alveolar level. This means they must be in the 1-10 micron size range. Larger particles stick to the wall of the respiratory tree and get washed out. Smaller particles get exhaled. A conventional explosion would not generate enough aerosols in that size range. Terrorists would need to get something like a 1000-Curie industrial source to menace a large population. But a source that strong would kill them quickly. A dirty bomb might create a local mess, but one that could be readily cleaned up. The dirty bomb scenario is mostly a scare story to get funding.

I have not read Allison’s book, but I am familiar with its contents as I listened to about a 90-minute lecture he gave. His recommendations are sensible, but he too uses scare tactics. For example all his circles of destruction are based on an air burst detonation, not the much more likely ground burst. It’s not likely that a terrorist group could design, build and weaponize a small implosion device without a sanctuary to do the necessary testing. The threat from terrorists is mostly from conventional explosions, which are quite effective at terrorizing populations. They are simple to design and deploy compared to nuclear weapons.

Anthrax is the thing that really scares me because I am studying this problem right now. I would worry more about Anthrax than nuclear weapons.

These precautions might seem elaborate, but they are absolutely necessary when you enter the high stakes business of nuclear weapons. - A. Zarkov.

Of course they are necessary precautionss to the Wester powers. But the fact remains that NATO was gravely concerned by the fact that the USSR's Permissive Action Links were not up to Western standards. If the Russkies could not meet your acceptable standards of security back in the Cold War can Pakistan do it today? Do they even bother to try?

Rogers: We are dealing with a highly classified area of nuclear weapons. I don’t know what either Russia or Pakistan actually does to prevent unauthorized use of their weapons. But it’s a good bet that they do something for the reasons previously discussed. Moreover it’s much easier today to build in these protections than it was back in the old cold war days. We know the Russians relied on physical security, so it’s possible their old weapons lacked these elaborate protection schemes. But those old weapons are most likely not operable today.

Say, Tel Aviv Writer, you might have notice this wall that's getting put up in the West Bank. It may have something to to with the success of suicide bombing.

Unfortunately, you can't put a wall around Iraq that will stop them from bombing us. The Green Zone worked for a while, but even now, it's not longer safe. The only solution is to get the hell out. Unfortunately, in an Iraq will huge amounts of loose munitions, explosives and terrorists, thanks to our bungling the occupation, the raw material for terrorism is present in abundance.

What Pakistan considers reasonable protection of its nukes may not be what we would consider reaonable protection. It's also entirely possible that the precautions Pakistan has taken are not effective.

The fact that they were able to make a nuke doesn't mean that they were able to do it right. We certainly shouldn't assume that they did.

Tel Aviv wrote, "The reason Cringely is wrong is that the Israeli offensive against Hamas and Al-Aksa which killed the leadership and disrupted the supply lines has had success in slowing the rate of suicide bombers. Now all but the most die-hard ideologues on the left agree that killing Sheik Yassin, arresting Marwan Barghouti, and many more, was good policy."

This is a fascinating argument. Of course, it's also true that you guys can't negotiate a settlement because there aren't any leaders on the palestinian side adequate for you to negotiate with.

Think about it.

I'm quite willing to believe that the threat of dirty bombs is exaggerated -- certainly as compared to the danger from effective biological weapons. But one enormous source of danger from nuclear weapons proper is, as I say, that a government -- or key people in that government -- might actually be willing to hand over weapons to terrorists, or use them in a frantic attempt at blackmail, in a chaotic situation where a government was actually in the process of collapsing. Once again, consider Pakistan and Dr. A.Q. Khan, that Johnny Atomseed who handed over nuclear technology and knowledge to other anti-American governments both for cash and to satisfy his religiously motivated hatred of the West -- and who had major assistance from other Pakistani officials in that effort.

Incidentally, why is an airburst all that unlikely if a terrorist group actually manages to get hold of a Bomb? There is still virtually no regulation of small planes -- or even of big cargo planes -- to prevent them from being used as terrorist weapons (a fact that Aviation Week has been bitching about for years).

J Thomas,

I'm optimistic that Arafat's replacement(s) should be willing to negotiate. The terror strategy really hasn't panned out for the Palestinians, although this wasn't clear until the Passover 2002 massacre, and the subsequent reoccupation of the West Bank. In fact, the Jenin operation of March 2002 is most similar to what the Marines are about to try in Falluja. The hard part of such an operation is that the Marines will have to take significant casualties, especially if they want to show sensitivity to civilian life.

I truly hope that with Abu Mazen opposite Sharon, an agreement will be reached on the West Bank which looks very similar to Clinton-Barak-Arafat 2000, before all hell broke loose.

"One would do well to read about the annihilation of 16,000 British citizens during the British retreat from Afghanistan before pontificating further."

Maybe you need to do your own homework before doling out advice. Afghanistan isn't Iraq, and in any case, you *do* know how the British responded to the incident you mention, don't you? Your argument has about as much force as saying Isandhlwana showed British control of Southern Africa was an impossibility.

"Abiola: try using your head "

Why don't you pull your brain out of your sphincter instead of rambling on and on about your supposed "profundity"? You're a pompous moron, that's all, and frankly, you aren't worth my time.

"Abiola: try using your head "

"Bruce Moomaw" or whatever the hell your real name is,

Why don't *you* pull *your* brain (if you have one) out of that crap-filled sphincter of yours, instead of rambling on and on and congratulating yourself on your supposed "profundity"? You're a pompous moron, that's all, and frankly, you aren't worth my time.

Tel Aviv, why would you think Arafat's successors have any legitimacy to negotiate anything with anybody?

I've seen no indication that in a fair election anybody but Hamas leaders could win. But of course your lot is trying to kill them off.

J Thomas,
Well. Arafat did win a fair election. I hope the Palestinians will have another fair election soon.

Perhaps you are right that Hamas will win the next election. Although, I doubt it. I believe the Palestinians are tired of Hamas and it's Saudi-Irani (and previously Iraqi) funded terror agenda. It has cost them dearly in their daily lives.

Frankly, I can't imagine Israel negotiating with any faction that endorses blowing up buses in Tel Aviv. The only thing to do with such people is kill them as quickly as possible.

I have seen the light! Now is the time for more and more and greater and greater tax cuts. We now have a real beast to starve.
Have Fun

"After the 911 attack, I called the MathWorks Company (MATLAB) and told them they should not sell their software to Afghanistan, and they seemed to agree."

Sadly, there's Octave. But we could try outlawing public key encryption, maybe that would work. Or even mathematics. If we export control math texts, those terrists would never figure anything out. And they really really need to shutdown Wolfram's operation, so that he stops publishing those fancy fat books. What if Osama reads 'em.

"'...Marshall has been credibly accused of fabricating the data underlying these conclusions . . .'
------------------

"By whom? Where? Besides yourself, I mean. Here."
------------------

It's not all that obscure. Here's the No. 1 google result for S L A Marshall data

http://www.warchronicle.com/us/combat_historians_wwii/marshallfire.htm

Moomaw: If a whole government cooperates in handing over nuclear weapons to a terrorist group including all the arming and firing procedures, and shows them how to reprogram the targeting protections then everyone has a big problem. For example, I suspect (but don’t know) that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons target India and without modification wouldn’t work anywhere else. But Pakistan would have to be foolish to the point of insanity to allow any of their weapons out of their control for the reasons previously discussed. Remember South Africa dismantled their entire nuclear weapons stockpile before handing over control of the government to the terrorist Mandela. Again we have to differentiate between the possible and the probable.

Terrorists would have a very hard time fielding an air burst. If they could get the HEU then they might be able to put together a gun design without testing it. But gun-type devices are very large and would require a large airplane to transport. That leaves the smaller implosion device, which could be built with either Pu or HEU. However this design requires a testing program. The program would require a series of HE tests to get the shapes right, but only a few tests (even one) with nuclear yield at the end of the series. Those final nuclear tests would set off our seismic monitoring network giving us advance warning that something is up. Even assuming the terrorists could somehow get a small operable weapon that they could smuggle into the US, they still have to fly it over a major city. In today’s environment any unauthorized flight on a trajectory to a major city is going to get shot down. This means they have to get their small implosion device aboard an authorized cargo or passenger flight flying over a city. But a small light device radiates gamma rays, and unlike the cargo container problem you have a lot of time to count photons because the weapon has to sit in the cargo bay for a while. Moreover not too many air flights pass right over population centers. In conclusion an air burst while not impossible is very unlikely.

Carter: Just because we can’t do everything we should do nothing. Perhaps I shouldn’t lock my car because if someone really wants to get in they will. Why not make things just a little bit harder for our adversaries? Why do we need to sell MATLAB to Afghanistan?

Zarkov, Mandela was never a terrorist. In the worse case he fought a racist state that was not better than your King George whom your founding fathers betrayed.

Incidentally, I doubt very much that Afghanistan paid for their copies of MATLAB if they had any.
DSW

> Afghanistan isn't Iraq, and in any case, you
> *do* know how the British responded to the
> incident you mention, don't you?

As a matter of fact, I do know how the British responded. Ineffectually. They managed to retake Kabul -- briefly -- under Major-General George Pollock, and engaged in some pointless burning and razing to show who is boss. But they didn't even try to hold Kabul for long. Their installed figurehead, Shah Shuja, was murdered, and the man they deposed, Dost Mohammed, was soon back in power.

http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/pages/afghan.html

"Pollock’s troops then linked up with the Kandahar garrison and marched back to India via Kabul where they rescued some British hostages and, in a pointless act of revenge, blew up the bazaar. This did not hide the fact that the war had been a complete failure. Shah Shuja was murdered and Dost Mohammed returned to the throne."

By 1855, 12 years later, the British came hat in hand to re-open diplomatic negotiations with Dost Mohammed, the man they failed to depose.

The British did have better success in the Second Afghan War of 1878-1880. But that was 40 years later! And the British did suffer a humiliating defeat near the end of that war at Maiwand.

The result of the Second Afghan War was mostly a stand-off. Britain got to run Afghanistan's foreign policy (insofar as Afghanistan has ever had a foreign policy), but internally Afghanistan was self-ruling.

Of course Iraq is not Afghanistan. Hell, modern Afghanistan is not 19th century Afghanistan. But the British repeatedly learned in Afghanistan that occupying a country was a lot more difficult than invading it, and that emotionally satisfying military punishments rarely lead to a stable occupation.

Brad DeLong—

For my own reasons I wish you hadn't brought up the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. It was different in kind from what happened in the Iran/Iraq war, or in the trenches of WWI, or the bombing campaigns of WWII or Vietnam or present–day Iraq, or for that matter what we may presume will happen in the nearing Battle of Fallujah.

Not that the slaughter, which began around the Saint's day in August and spread from Paris to all the urban centers of France in time, and reached a level of effectiveness comparable to, say, Hiroshima, wasn't as comprehensive in its own way as those outstanding examples of human murderousness.

Different mode, different means, different opportunity, however.

I worked with Linpack, the Fortran routines underlying Mathworks, back in graduate school in the early 1980s. Even at that time, the Linpack Fortran code and the related code, Eispack (the eigenvalue code), were freely available to anyone who wanted it. I'll bet that India, Pakistan, Israel, and Russia were all using Linpack and Eispack from the late 70s onward.

Matlab is a very general tool that is widely sold throughout the world. Preventing Mathworks from directly selling Matlab to various hostile regimes is a comforting gesture, but totally ineffective. You may as well try to prevent Baywatch reruns from reaching Tehran.

Jaume: The government of South Africa certainly considered Mandela a terrorist—that’s why they put him in jail. Before handing over the government to a person they considered a terrorist, South Africa wisely dismantled their entire nuclear weapons capability. As to whether Mandela was actually a true “terrorist” as opposed to some kind of “freedom fighter” is another matter, and one that is pointless to argue about. Based on his recent statements, I personally find him a bit of a nut case, but if you want to invite him over for dinner, that’s your business.

A. Zarkov wrote, "The government of South Africa certainly considered Mandela a terrorist—that’s why they put him in jail."

Don't forget---with the help of the CIA.

> Perhaps Cringely should read about the Battle of
> Omdurman before pontificating further.

I finally got around to re-reading some history of Kitchner's suppression of the Mahdist rebellion in Sudan, 1898. In part it confirms Abiola Lapite's criticism of Cringely. But even that requires a variation on Abiola Lapite's point that Afghanistan in 1842 is not Iraq in 2004: Sudan in 1898 is also not Iraq in 2004.

But the Battle of Omdurman also tends to confirm Cringely's large point, which he did not spell out very clearly.

Kitchner faced the Mahdists at Omdurman with overwhelmingly superior technology:

http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/pages/sudan.html

"Though they attacked with fanatical bravery, the Mahdists were no match for the rifles and Maxim machine guns of Kitchener’s army. By the end of the day, they had suffered approximately 27,000 casualties. The Anglo-Egyptians lost 43 dead. Omdurman broke the power of the Mahdists and although the Khalifa remained at large until the following November, the Sudan was quickly pacified."

The Mahdists threw suicidal waves of men with only medieval arms against the British machine guns. Even so, the Mahdist strategy was not completely suicidal. They attempted to lure the British into a disadvantageous position, and some historians say that with better organization, the Mahdists still might well have carried the day.

In fact, battles have been won by the side that suffers a massacre. Such an example is the Russian victory over the Mongols at Voronezh in 1380. The Russians sacrificed thousands of men in their center, but closed in on the Mongols on both sides and from the rear with fresh troops to crush their enemy.

Even with superior technology, Kitchner might have suffered the fate of the Mongols at Voronezh had the Mahdists been better organized and luckier.

I also found it fascinating that Kitchner was careful to keep his army well supplied by building a railroad as he advanced into Sudan. He certainly learned from Napoleon's example in Russia. But I wonder: why didn't the Mahdists concentrate on severing Kitchner's railroad lifeline? It couldn't have been that hard to do. I wonder whether they were simply not familiar enough with railroads and modern firearms to know what they were up against.

Which brings us back to Cringley's point. The Mahdists in 1898, like the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war, did not lack for fanatical commitment. But they made extremely poor use of that commitment by throwing suicide waves against a conventional army that was doing what it did best, fighting a conventional war.

A much smarter approach is to channel that fanatical commitment into the kind of unconventional warfare at which rich, technologically advanced Western powers do very poorly. Guerrilla insurgencies, such as in Algeria against the French or in Vietnam against the French and then the Americans, tend to lose a lot in the short run, but do well in the long run, because they have the staying power that comes from fanatical commitment.

Neither al Qaeda nor the insurgents in Iraq are making the mistakes of the Mahdists at Omdurman or of the Iranian children's crusade that Cringely witnessed.

While we're on the subject of whether Mandela was a "terrorist", the story I heard from "Nature" at the time is that the "terrorist" Mandela not only made no attempt to restart South Africa's nuclear weapons program, but enthusiastically coooperated with the UN inspection program to finish wiping out all trace of it. He also did the same thing for the Botha government's very active germ weapons program -- which included wholesale genetic experimentation to try to design diseases that would attack only blacks, and DID succeed in creating E. coli that manufacture botulism toxin. That last charming idea is one which has terrified scientists for at least 20 years -- I remember a letter in "Science" on the subject going back that far -- and thank God Botha's little horrors never got loose into the general ecosystem.

As for Abiola Lapite: if I'm really a "pompous moron", then why not show your other readers (and me) WHY I'm a pompous moron? In the same connection, why not try replying to any of their other frequent arguments against you whatsoever? Much more effective than purple-faced name-screaming and obscenities, you know -- unless you're really not CAPABLE of using your head.

But then, anyone who thinks that it's a workable military strategy in the current situation for the US to "crush the Moslem world into the dust" (A-bombs and all) certainly isn't capable of doing so. As I say, even the most extreme Bushites aren't remotely that stupid.

And, yes, Abiola, that's my real name, unfortunately. If I had another, would I use this one?

P.S.: It was the records released by the Mandela government -- not de Klerk's government -- which confirmed that South Africa had indeed tested an A-bomb in the South Atlantic back in 1979 (explaining that mysterious flash detected by satellites at the time), and that the country had two finished A-bombs currently in its arsenal, which Mandela's government dismantled under UN supervision. Some terrorist, regardless of what you think of some of this other policy pronouncements. (And, regarding his public statements during and immediately after his struggle in praise of Castro and Khaddafi: one picks one's strategic allies in an emergency situation where one can find them. The US was enthusiastically allying itself with Guatamela, Mobutu -- and Saddam -- during the same period.)

“ ... which included wholesale genetic experimentation to try to design diseases that would attack only blacks ... “

It was the US that was first accused of trying to create a disease that attacked only Blacks way back in the 1960’s by using a mutated form of the Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis virus. I first heard it (circa 1968) from a chemist who worked at Fort Detrick. Israel has also been accused of trying to create a disease that attacks only Arabs. I am inclined to disregard these stories as urban myths. But kudos to Mandela for cooperating with the UN, although I don’t see how he could have restarted the program or what good it would have done.

“And, yes, Abiola, that's my real name, unfortunately. If I had another, would I use this one?”

Reminds of the story about Lincoln, when he was accused of being “two faced.” Lincoln responded by saying: “If I had another face, do you think I would use this one?”

I think that the particular danger most people see in Pakistan's nukes is that since the times of Zia-ul-Haq, a considerable part of the ISI and the military have had strong sympathies with the fundamentalists. There are good reasons to worry that an Islamist takeover against the Musharraf regime wouldn't be entirely hostile.

"Why do we need to sell MATLAB to Afghanistan?"

If you had googled "Octave Matlab" you would have discovered that Octave is a terrific OS clone of Matlab. Do I need to connect the great big ol' shiny black dots?

Stuff like this really makes me doubt much of the other stuff you say, even though I know that, for instance, what you say about the radioactive particle size requirements for inhalation initiated damage is entirely correct, at least for alpha particles.

It would be fun to do a M. Yglesias style exercise comparing the conservative inability to distinguish between state vs. trans-state terrorism, and its inability to distinguish ideas without borders from commercial offerings based on same.

Bah -- Zarkov has revealed me as a plagiarist. That Lincoln story is where I got the idea for mine. (In particular, consider the horror of my initials.)

Unfortunately, my file of home photocopies on this subject doesn't include, right now, Aviation Week's story detailing Mandela's coperation with the UN in dismantling Botha's nuclear program -- nor do I have on hand at the moment "Nature's" review, a couple of years back, of an entire book on Botha's germ warfare program, or the New Yorker's lengthy profile of the creep biologist who ran it (and who later went into free-lance narcotics smuggling, a far less destructive occupation). I may try to dig up the dates on these three articles.

As for Lapite: if he HAD bothered to use his head at all (sorry, Abiola), he would have realized that "crushing Moslem countries into the dust" is not very likely to cut down on the world supply of infuriated Moslem terrorists or their access to cheap chemical explosives -- in which case we'd have to intern and radically restrict the movements of all Moslems in this country anyway. Unless, of course, he's proposing exterminating every Moslem in the world. The one thing that might strategically (and morally) justify such obliteration of a country would be if it's on the verge of acquring nuclear, or very dangerous biological, weapons. But, of course, the whole reason why our attack on Iraq was unjustified is that Iraq was NOT anywhere near acquriring such weapons -- whereas Iran, which we've left totally untouched, is.

And Konrad's remarks about the real nature of the threat from Pakistan are entirely correct. That nation's government and military were dotty enough, for religious reasons, to deliberately almost launch a nuclear war against India -- which means that a very large number of their officials are dotty enough to seriously consider nuclear terrorism against the West, if we provoke them enough (in their eyes).

I've done some poking around, rea at November 7, 2004 08:39 AM. What's "obscure", TO ME, is your point.

See, I (Mike at November 6, 2004 12:40 AM) cited GROSSMAN:

-----------

Trained to Kill: Are We Conditioning Our Children to Commit Murder?

http://www.killology.net/article_trainedtokill.htm

-----------

in a direct response to Brad's riff on "wars of religion". Grossman cited Marshall (and Griffith) on the way to a larger (quite germane) point about battlefield psychology. You wrote:

------------------------

"Marshall has been credibly accused of fabricating the data underlying these conclusions . . ."

Posted by: rea at November 6, 2004 10:16 AM

------------------------

1. It appears S.L.A. Marshall the (conveniently) dead man DOES have some very much alive critics. Not only was he slovenly, brash AND a journalist, he didn't leave them a lot of 'data' to mine.

2. Some of his critics go so far as to admit they don't much care for the man OR his method.

3. But whatever one might think of the man, the data or the method, as near as I can figure it, his conclusions WERE AND ARE sound. The quote below is directly from Roger J. Spiller, "S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire", YOUR reference on THIS subject:

------------------------

"...A reputation may be made or unmade when history seizes upon part of a life and reduces it to caricature. S.L.A. Marshall was one of the most important commentators on the soldier's world in this century. The axiom upon which so much of his reputation has been built overshadows his real contribution. Marshall's insistence that modern warfare is best understood through the medium of those who actually do the fighting stands as a challenge to the disembodied, mechanistic approaches that all too often are the mainstay of military theorists and historians alike."

------------------------

1. S. L. A. Marshall's Men Against Fire: new evidence regarding fire ratios

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBR/is_3_33/ai_109580229

2. Kelly C. Jordan, "Right for the Wrong Reasons: S. L. A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire in Korea," Journal of Military History 66/1: 135-62.

http://www.smh-hq.org/jmh/volumes/jmh661/abs661.html

3. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBR/is_3_33/ai_109580229

Russell L. Carter wrote, "Stuff like this really makes me doubt much of the other stuff you say, even though I know that, for instance, what you say about the radioactive particle size requirements for inhalation initiated damage is entirely correct, at least for alpha particles."

No kidding.

I just finished doing some work for the day with Matlab. YUCK!

If the terrorists are doing their work with Matlab, we're fine. It's not multithreaded, the front end of the version I'm using is buggy, ...

Bruce Moomaw wrote, "And, regarding his public statements during and immediately after his struggle in praise of Castro and Khaddafi: one picks one's strategic allies in an emergency situation where one can find them. The US was enthusiastically allying itself with Guatamela, Mobutu -- and Saddam -- during the same period."

I recall him praising some group or state that we (US) don't like too much, but he was very candid about the reason for his praise: that group had helped him in his struggle against the apartheid government. Seems pretty reasonable.

Bruce Moomaw wrote, "And, regarding his public statements during and immediately after his struggle in praise of Castro and Khaddafi: one picks one's strategic allies in an emergency situation where one can find them. The US was enthusiastically allying itself with Guatamela, Mobutu -- and Saddam -- during the same period."

I recall him praising some group or state that we (US) don't like too much, but he was very candid about the reason for his praise: that group had helped him in his struggle against the apartheid government. Seems pretty reasonable.

Tel Aviv wrote: Well. Arafat did win a fair election. I hope the Palestinians will have another fair election soon.

[smirk] You do irony a lot better than I do.

Perhaps you are right that Hamas will win the next election. Although, I doubt it. I believe the Palestinians are tired of Hamas and it's Saudi-Irani (and previously Iraqi) funded terror agenda. It has cost them dearly in their daily lives.

Hard to be sure whether they'd blame the destruction on Hamas or on israel. The trouble is, who else do they have? Hamas is as close to a government as they've got.

Frankly, I can't imagine Israel negotiating with any faction that endorses blowing up buses in Tel Aviv. The only thing to do with such people is kill them as quickly as possible.

I can sure understand that sentiment. But if you're going to negotiate you have to negotiate with somebody who actually has power and can speak for their people. Setting up a puppet to negotiate with can't work; they can't deliver on any promises. So what good is it? You could set up another Arafat and pretend you're negotiating with him, but why bother? Better to just get back to work repressing palestinians; maybe if you treat them bad enough they'll go away.

Abiola,

You wrote in response to, Bruce I think,
" "One would do well to read about the annihilation of 16,000 British citizens during the British retreat from Afghanistan before pontificating further."

Maybe you need to do your own homework before doling out advice. Afghanistan isn't Iraq, and in any case, you *do* know how the British responded to the incident you mention, don't you? Your argument has about as much force as saying Isandhlwana showed British control of Southern Africa was an impossibility."

I do know how the British responded to the massacre of their contingent during the withdrawl. They assembled a strong force, pushed to Kabul in good weather, freed their remaining prisoners, torched part of Kabul, and then bugged out for the next 35 years. Surely you're not suggesting the 1839-1842 British-Afghan war is an example of a favorable outcome!

Actyally, Lapite was responding to S. Anderson on that one. In any case, the whole damn issue is irrelevant -- the US isn't trying to dictatorially control the Mideaast (directly, anyway), and we don't dare engage in terrorist wholesale massacres of Moslem civilians in any individual country. Not with the whole world watching, whether we're stupid enough to try to "jam" al-Jazeerah or not. We're trying to make Moslems love us -- and I remain convinced that there is absolutely no way we can force them to give up their authoritarian unreformed religion. Absolutely the only way to make Moslems give up their starry-eyed view of theocracy as an alternative to their current secular (and US-supported) dictatorships is to let them find out the hard way that theocracy doesn't work any better -- as the people of Iran have already discovered it, and have gotten a bellyful of it.

The problem will be trying to keep nuclear and really powerful bioweapons out of the hands of those theocracies during the decades-long interim period before the second wave of popular revolutions finally brings them down and we get voluntary secular democracies in the region. This balancing act may well be impossible, in which case we're really in the soup; but I still think it may be our best strategy overall.

"Anthrax is the thing that really scares me because I am studying this problem right now. I would worry more about Anthrax than nuclear weapons."

The only scary thing about anthrax is that its possible to build up a lethal dose of the stuff in lymph nodes by the tme it is diagnosed. But the organism is sensitive to several cheap, safe antibiotics. Monitoring an environment for spores is feasible, and eqipment may already be in operation. A terrorist can't be sure we havent set up detectors already. As we hve seen, it is possible to infect a few people via mail. But a back of the envelope calculation suggests that outdoor dispersal over a suburb using a crop duster would require enormous amounts. So the way to cause the most damage would probly be to introduce it into a ventilation system of an important building. But this is the first place we would protect. And once the organism was detected or the first case diagnosed, everyone at risk would take Cypro or a tetracycline for a week or two.

Anthrax strikes me as the most effective organism for a terrorist to choose. All theothers have problems with blow-back, delivery or virulence.

As people pointed out during the propaganda campaign leading up to the war, it is mendacious to lump biological and chemicalvagents with nuclear weapons as "weapons of mass destruction". The resulting distrust of the government among those who figure out the truth may be more damaging to the social order than the effects of the weapons.

Octave is to MATLAB as R is to Splus (approximately). I think in both cases the free version has surpassed its commercial counterpart. I forgot about Octave because I’m not a regular user of MATLAB. Most of my work is done with Mathematica, Splus and R. But your point is well taken; any embargo of MATLAB would be largely useless. MathWorks seems good about fixing bugs. I found an error in their binomial random number generator, and they sent me a corrected toolbox in about a day. Of course the fix was trivial and I did it myself immediately. But free beats paying any day.

Anthrax is an extremely effective weapon of mass terror. A one-kilogram release (10^15 spores) at a height of 100 meters in a prevailing wind of 5 m/s would cause 1.49 million infected cases an urbanized region with 10^4 people per km^2. This calculation is based on a Gaussian puff model using an age dependent dose-response model. See the paper by Wein et al “Emergency Response to an Anthrax Attack,” proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences April 2003 (be sure to get the supplement). Wein is evaluating different response policies. In his base case, 123,000 people die. If only symptomatic people receive antibiotics then 660,000 people die. Remember this is with antibiotic intervention and hospital treatment. According to Wein, we haven’t gotten our act together on how to respond. He also discusses the deployment of biosensor sensors. I did a similar calculation back in 2001 right after the anthrax-by-mail attack. I tried to get a proposal going for emergency response, but our government works very slowly.

> I do know how the British responded to the
> massacre of their contingent during the
> withdrawl. They assembled a strong force,
> pushed to Kabul in good weather, freed their
> remaining prisoners, torched part of Kabul, and
> then bugged out for the next 35 years. Surely
> you're not suggesting the 1839-1842 British-
> Afghan war is an example of a favorable outcome!

I see that both tcs and I are serving up the same history lesson in response to Abiola Lapite. I still cannot figure out what he thought was admirable about the British response to the massascre during the British retreat from Kabul in 1842. Maybe we're seeing a historical rationalization for the Bush administration to cut and run from Iraq after punishing Falluja.

Mr. Lapite's military imagination seems to be fired up mainly by battles in which the West pounds the Moslems into submission. But the experience of the British in the Middle East during the 19th and early 20th centuries suggests that even a dedicated imperialist and colonial power like Britain enjoyed more success when it used a light touch instead of an iron hand.

Granted, the light touch worked because it was backed up by an iron hand. But when the British Empire needed to resort to military force, it was frequently because some ignorant British administrator had screwed up.

Case in point: the Arab revolt of 1920 in Iraq. Britain had to replace Wilson and a bunch of other administrators who didn't know squat about Mesopotamia with new administrators who did. America's goals in 2004 Iraq may be different than Britain's in 1920 Iraq, although that is debatable -- the British in 1920 also deployed a lot of rhetoric about making Iraq self-governing. But with the Bush administration we are still at the point of being stuck with the proudly ignorant running the show.

J Thomas,

Your points are well taken. Speaking as an Israeli, I don't think we are naive enough (anymore) to expect that we can "sponsor" a Palestinian faction which will negotiate with us.

The current popular sentiment is towards separation. We are building a wall, we are pulling out of Gaza (ascribe whatever motive you will, we are still pulling out), and we are going to pull out of as much as the West Bank as internal Israeli politics allows.

The thinking behind separation is straightforward.

1) Israeli responsibility for Gaza and the occupied parts of the West Bank is an impossible situation. Our kids are really tired of running around the West Bank. They are also getting sloppy and killing too easily.

2) Let the Palestinians organize however they wish...democracy, warlords, theocracy, whatever... If the de facto government in Gaza shoots rockets over the green line or sends suicide bombers into Tel Aviv, the response will be harsh, probably to basic infrastructure--i.e. electricity, water.

This threat has calmed the Lebanese border fairly well. I agree it's pretty ugly, but what else is there to do?

"... but what else is there to do?"

Tel Aviv Reader at November 7, 2004 11:09 PM

Ahem...

----------------------

"...I propose that there be established there a single state, in which every person who declares his intention to live there and adopt citizenship be recognized as a citizen and have one vote. I propose further that the special advantages given to Jews be terminated, that the Palestinians who were forced into exile after 1948, and their descendants, be granted the right to live there, and that the state undertake practical measures to make it possible for them to do so by building housing and extending to them to right to rent or buy, if necessary providing funds to help them. I propose further that both Hebrew and Arabic be declared official state languages to be taught in the schools, that all residents be granted the right to publish newspapers and maintain cultural institutions in any language they choose, that the special position of Orthodox Judaism be ended and that the state declare freedom of worship and make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

NOEL IGNATIEV: Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine--Toward a Single State Solution; Counterpunch, June 17, 2004

http://www.counterpunch.org/ignatiev06172004.html

----------------------

See Also:

-----------

"Remembering General George Marshall’s Clash With Clark Clifford Over Premature Recognition of Israel": Alfred M. Lilienthal; Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, June 1999

http://www.alfredlilienthal.com/marshallclifford.htm

-----------

"America Can Persuade Israel to Make a Just Peace": Jimmy Carter; New York Times, 21 Apr 2002

http://www.cartercenter.org/doc949.htm

-----------

"The Troubling New Face of America": Jimmy Carter; Washington Post, 5 Sep 2002

http://www.cartercenter.org/doc1061.htm

-----------

"A Jewish Voice Left Silent: Trying to Articulate 'The Levantine Option'": David Shasha; American Muslim, January-February 2003

http://www.asfonline.org/portal/SpeakersGrid.asp?article_id=9&

-----------

"Just War - or a Just War?": Jimmy Carter; New York Times, 9 Mar 2003

http://www.cartercenter.org/doc1249.htm

-----------

"Two Peoples, One State"; Michael Tarazi; New York Times, 4 Oct 2004

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/palestine/2539.html

"Anthrax is an extremely effective weapon of mass terror."

Concerning the epidemiological model, the papers have a lot of impressive equations concerning public health resources and response. This is fine, since one audience for the paper is planners for the response to an attack. But the whole edifice rests on the pathophysiology of the disease, for which the assumptions are very shaky. He mentions briefly that the one example we have is the Sverdlovsk event, and that this is very poorly documented. He makes the superficially plausible assumption that the antibiotic efficacy parameter is something like 0.8 or 0.9. My impression is that it is more like 1.0 for killing the organisms.

At the time when antibiotic kills the organisms, survival depends on how much toxin is present in mediastinal lymph nodes and how fast it leaks out, since the mechanism of death is the diffuse cell injury caused by the toxin. The phenomenological model based on incubation/prodrome/illness ignores this point, although there is little data to plug into the parameters of the better biological model.

If that is the correct view, speed of diagnosis is a very important variable, and if the alarm sounded within 48 hours, the number of deaths might be very low. In our only domestic outbreak, people scrambled for Cypro, and a great deal of it was stockpiled. If an epidemic had developed, the word would have gotten around that many antibiotics protect, and the spread would have been limited.

In looking over the Wein materials I find the following scholarly statement:

"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell recently presented evidence
at the United Nations Security Council (14) that Iraq has
produced vast quantities of anthrax, incorporated perfected
drying techniques into mobile biological weapons production
facilities, tested the jet spraying of 2,000 liters of simulated
anthrax, authorized the use of poison gas if the United States
attacks it, and is housing the base of an Al Qaeda terrorist cell.
These arguments suggest that the likelihood of an attack on the
scale of our base-case assumptions has increased to a nonneg-ligible
level."

If one were cynical, a comment might be in order about parallels with contamination of the scientific literature in regimes such as the former USSR.

Mike,
You are a dreamer. I thought we were past arguing about self determination. Are you suggesting that perhaps Jews should be able to live anywhere they want in Palestine. Perhaps the settlers have the right to live in Hebron and Gaza? Get a grip on yourself, man!

Psalm 118 is part of the Hallel, a grouping of psalms and other prayers recited (sung, actually) in the synagogue on various Jewish festival days as an expression of thanksgiving to G-d for all His gifts and blessings. To chant it preparatory to an attack intended to kill people is a disgusting perversion of what you're actually supposed to be giving thanks to G-d for. Typical of some Christians to completely misunderstand the Hebrew scripture.

I 'thought' it was pretty clear what I was 'suggesting', Tel Aviv Reader at November 8, 2004 04:59 AM.

Perhaps you should treat yourself to a cold shower (or a cafeinated beverage) and read my message again...

Tel Aviv said, "I agree it's pretty ugly, but what else is there to do?"

OK, let's consider that. I figure palestinians will not make any big change in course. Their only options are surrender (which means meekly accepting whatever israelis choose to dish out) or continue as they are. To surrender they would have to be organised enough to suppress all resistance among their own people, but they haven't been allowed to organise that much. Not only do they lack the resources but every time they've started to develop a government that strong, the israelis have distrusted it and smashed it.

So any alternative would have to come from israelis or from outside forces. There will be no outside intervention so long as the USA is ready to prevent it. There could be nuisances like a worldwide boycot of israeli products etc which would add smugglers' fees to the cost of doing business, but nothing that israel can't live with.

Could israelis change their minds? I can't say it's impossible, but what happened to Rabin implies it isn't likely. If Arafat had tried to arrange a surrender he wouldn't have lasted as long as Rabin, but it's the same kind of thing. Any israeli who actually made progress toward an alternative could expect to be murdered if he didn't stop after a warning.

So I guess there isn't anything else to do. Water runs downhill and the uphill battle of trying to get it to reverse course is unlikely to succeed.

What I personally want is for the USA to stop subsidising israel. Put those billions toward reducing our deficit and our current account balance. Stop paying for israel's oil, put those billions toward our deficit and current account balance. This thing looks like a slow-motion train wreck, the destruction is probably inevitable but it isn't inevitable that my nation has to be a full participant.

I have a proposal for the USA to resolve the problem, but so far I have had no support from americans for it. My proposal is that we give up one american state to be the new israel, and move all the israelis there. And we excavate Jerusalem to bedrock, number the stones, make copies, and ship half the originals and half the copies to the new location to reassemble into the New Jerusalem while we reassemble half the originals and half the copies into the Old Jerusalem.

The most common complaint I get from americans is that my plan cannot work because israelis would not permit it. May I ask your help? Would you refuse to accept any such approach? The more israelis who fail to oppose my plan, the more likely I can get a second american to support it. And then a third, and we'll take it from there.

J Thomas and others.

"OK, let's consider that. I figure palestinians will not make any big change in course. Their only options are surrender (which means meekly accepting whatever israelis choose to dish out) or continue as they are. "

Well, no. The Palestinians can find some kind of leadership that will run a government for the people, by the people, etc. in the West Bank and Gaza, which stops fighting the pre-67 Israel. This state would enjoy support from the entire world.

The Israelis would be very happy to be rid of the territories. Those who deny our right to exist as an independent Jewish majority state can't accept this because as a logical corollary it affirms the right of Israel to exist within the green line. You should really ask yourself what solution you imagine, and if it truly fits within the bounds of mutual self determination.

Tel Aviv, that's droll!

How can the palestinians possibly get a government that can suppress their people enough to stop attacks against israel? Any government strong enough to do that would be strong enough to stage terrorist attacks against israel itself.

Each time a palestinian government has failed to stop attacks against israel it has gotten bombed etc by israel, weakening both its physical and its organisational ability to stop terrorists.

Vichy france could round up jews and terrorists for the germans precisely because they already had a strong organisation and the germans let them keep it in return for collaboration. When israel doesn't allow a palestinian government to function, how can it possibly collaborate?

You can't expect a palestinian government to stop terrorists while you bomb palestinian police stations. Bricks without straw. They can't suppress their people without sufficient arms, buildings, transportation, and money. Israel has allowed them none of those.

Tel Aviv, would you reject my proposal of a jewish-majority state in north america, with a half-original Jerusalem rebuilt there?

If I can get an israeli or two to accept it, maybe I can start getting some americans to accept it.

My vision is a new israel where Alabama is now. You'd get a major port and a canal to the Mississippi river. A lot of green land. Productive plains, great for peanuts, cotton, wheat, etc. Forested mountains. Coal and iron and some other minerals. A little oil. A lot of rain. Close to the beaches of florida. There are a few choctaw indians in the west who refuse to give up their mounds, and a few creeks etc in the northeast, but it's mostly free of boundary disputes unless we have trouble moving the alabamians out.

Morally, if the USA has an obligation to a zionist state, then we have the obligation to provide the land ourselves. We don't have an obligation to an israel on somebody else's land. But there's no point doing it unless israelis would accept it.

Tel Aviv, would you reject my proposal of a jewish-majority state in north america, with a half-original Jerusalem rebuilt there?

If I can get an israeli or two to accept it, maybe I can start getting some americans to accept it.

My vision is a new israel where Alabama is now. You'd get a major port and a canal to the Mississippi river. A lot of green land. Productive plains, great for peanuts, cotton, wheat, etc. Forested mountains. Coal and iron and some other minerals. A little oil. A lot of rain. Close to the beaches of florida. There are a few choctaw indians in the west who refuse to give up their mounds, and a few creeks etc in the northeast, but it's mostly free of boundary disputes unless we have trouble moving the alabamians out.

Morally, if the USA has an obligation to a zionist state, then we have the obligation to provide the land ourselves. We don't have an obligation to an israel on somebody else's land. But there's no point doing it unless israelis would accept it.

Tel Aviv, would you reject my proposal of a jewish-majority state in north america, with a half-original Jerusalem rebuilt there?

If I can get an israeli or two to accept it, maybe I can start getting some americans to accept it.

My vision is a new israel where Alabama is now. You'd get a major port and a canal to the Mississippi river. A lot of green land. Productive plains, great for peanuts, cotton, wheat, etc. Forested mountains. Coal and iron and some other minerals. A little oil. A lot of rain. Close to the beaches of florida. There are a few choctaw indians in the west who refuse to give up their mounds, and a few creeks etc in the northeast, but it's mostly free of boundary disputes unless we have trouble moving the alabamians out.

Morally, if the USA has an obligation to a zionist state, then we have the obligation to provide the land ourselves. We don't have an obligation to an israel on somebody else's land. But there's no point doing it unless israelis would accept it.

J Thomas,

My family has been in Palestine/Israel for two hundred years and I really don't have any intention of relocating to Alabama.

Sorry.

J. Thomas:

Need I remind you that the Palestinians are an enemy of the US as they target and kill Americans, cheered in the streets after the 911 attacks, and supported Iraq in the first Gulf War? Why should we want to punish our ally Israel and reward our enemy? Besides the Palestinians are only one of many groups that suffered dislocation in the immediate years after World War II. For example why would the Palestinians have a right of return, but not the Sudeten Germans who were moved out of their ancestral homeland lock stock and barrel by force with the tacit cooperation of the US? Then there is the matter of some 600,000 Jews who were forced to leave Arab countries after the establishment of the state of Israel. How are they different and less deserving of compensation than the 600,000 Palestinians who left Israel at about the same time? You are also assuming the all of the 600,000 Palestinians who left Israel were forced to do so. To this day it’s an unsettled argument as to whether the bulk of the Palestinians didn’t really leave voluntarily hoping to return soon after the new state was crushed. After all the Arabs who remained are the only Arabs in the Middle East who live in a democratic country.

"Need I remind you that the Palestinians are an enemy of the US as they target and kill Americans, cheered in the streets after the 911 attacks, and supported Iraq in the first Gulf War?"

I'm not aware of a single US citizen killed by a Palestinian. Since the US is the source of the weapons that kill them, cheering in the streets is hardly surprising.

“You are also assuming the all of the 600,000 Palestinians who left Israel were forced to do so. To this day it’s an unsettled argument as to whether the bulk of the Palestinians didn’t really leave voluntarily hoping to return soon after the new state was crushed.“

Benny Morris would strongly disagree.

“After all the Arabs who remained are the only Arabs in the Middle East who live in a democratic country.“

By the same argument, slaves in the US South were better off than African natives at the time, as were their descendents under Jim Crow and the black South Africans under apartheid. The general opinion of the world is that these considations did not justify slavery, sevregation and apartheid.

Zarkov wrote, "Why should we want to punish our ally Israel and reward our enemy?"

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm talking about rewarding israel with a green and pleasant land, with natural resources that include abundant water, with far better neighbors. This is in no way punishment.

Punishment would be denying israelis dual citizenship and telling them they can't live here, they have to live in the middle east surrounded by justifiably hostile arabs.

Bigod:

“I'm not aware of a single US citizen killed by a Palestinian.”

As of 1989 the PLO murdered over 30 Americans. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r101:S09MR9-788:

The PLO murdered the wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer in the famous Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking. The family sued the PLO and prevailed.

“Benny Morris would strongly disagree.”

He would not disagree that 600,000 Jews were forced out of Arab countries. He would not disagree that the Arabs of Israel are the only Arabs in the Middle East that enjoy the fruits of democracy.
Benny Morris is one of a few revisionist historians who claim Israel forced the Palestinians to leave. Others disagree, and that’s why I said it was “an unsettled argument.” Morris is by no means the last word on this matter. Note that Morris is free to express his contrary opinion. If he were on the other side, the PLO would murder him.

“By the same argument, slaves in the US South were better off than African natives at the time, as were their descendents under Jim Crow and the black South Africans under apartheid. The general opinion of the world is that these considations (sic) did not justify slavery, sevregation (sic) and apartheid.”

The slaves of the South were not better off than free African natives.

The Palestinians are the victims of their fellow Arabs who have refused to resettle them in Arab countries and kept them locked up refugee camps. Compare and contrast to Israel’s acceptance of Jews forced out of Arab countries. Compare and contrast to Israel’s rescue and resettlement of black Ethiopian Jews. Compare and contrast to Germany’s resettlement of the Sudeten Germans. And so on. And who has murdered more Palestinians than anyone else? Jordan! Remember the Black September massacre.

J. Thomas:

How generous of you to give away other people’s property. Why not give them Virginia? Or better yet, northern California, which has a Mediterranean climate similar to Israel. Of course you want to punish Israel, because implicit in your offer is the idea that the state of Israel should not exist. Implicit in your offer is the idea that Jews can’t have even 1% of the land of the Middle East, and that their claims to an ancestral homeland are illegitimate.

A. Zarkov,

You haven't presented a shred of evidence that Palestinians have targeted US citiens in a way that makes them our "enemies". The url you posted is to testimony at a hearing where someone mentioned the number 30. As documentation, it's on the level or a comic strip. The PLO has committed some vile crimes, such as the murder of Klinghoffer, but that doesnt make me want to inflict collective punishment on the Palestinian people as a whole.

It looks like Morris has done the most thorough job of looking at the primary evidence. Its a logical fallacy to suggest that we should ignore him because the other side would repress his freedom of expression.

Slaves in the US South were certainly not fortunate by our standards. But slaveowners could make the argument that by several objective criteria they were better off than African natives of the time. The rest of the world didn't see this as justifying the denial of rights.

I had as a student someone whose family lived in Baghdad for 500 years. That they were forced to leave is wrong, and they should be compensated. But demolishing some houses on the West Bank isn't an appropriate response.

Zarkov, I would consider giving virginia to israel. It's a bit smaller than alabama with only 110 thousand square kilometers, but still roomy for israel at 20,000. Lots of water. Some shipping through the chesapeake bay etc. Fewer available resources than alabama, and a bigger problem relocating the existing population -- 7 million instead of 4.4 million. Virginia is both more urban and more forested -- about 2/3 forest. Less flat land, less great farmland. It could still be an adequate gift.

I have a concern though that it wouldn't be right to put israel adjacent to the US capital. Not that anybody would think israel would be sending their tanks across the potomac and occupying DC. Or even airstrikes. But it just doesn't seem right to put another country right at the capital, particularly since so much of the DC stuff has spilled over into virginia. I'm sure as a zionist you can understand, what with jerusalem and all.

I am certainly not suggesting that israel shouldn't exist -- I'm even looking at giving israel land taken from the USA. I am convinced that this is the best thing the USA can do for israel, far better than giving them 12 billion dollars a year and all their oil, to repress palestinians.

A few thoughts:

"Tel Avib Reader' has some troublesome unmerciful comments.

Did you know that it took many decades of bombings and terror to gain that insight. Basically, The American post 9-11 mind-set is at the early gestalt of 'Tel-Aviv's mindset.
The 'want my pound of flesh, new-American mind-set' is on its way, give it some time, some propganda.

also, why do all of you continue this mental masturbation about this and that...are you aware that Iraq is in a civil war now.
Pundits have forseen a civil war. It is here, the locals are fighting the US-backed goverment for months and it is peaking. Martial law.
Full-blown civil war commences day after the faulty elections take place. The recent 'taking' of Falluja by force has fragemented the country further into its spiral of 'world disorder'... Of course, the tooth fairy never told you this; or are you fellow Americans in denial?
The war was lost; now it is a civil war. Keep your horse blinders on and talk about Mandella and Arafat!

Need proof of total chaos!

The Premiere/ President of Iraq just had his direct family kidnapped in green zone?
A elderly uncle and a sister in-law snatched with threat od death in 48 hrs.

Does this mean we cannot even provide security for the President's family. Are we that stretched thin that we cannot guard the royal family. I guess this is...civil war

Dave S said, "also, why do all of you continue this mental masturbation about this and that..."

Because it hasn't sunk in yet that there's absolutely nothing we can do to influence it.

The election is over, we lost. No telling what Kerry would have done but there was a reasonable chance that he'd listen to multiple points of view. Not much chance of that now.

So it doesn't matter what we say, it doesn't matter what we do -- at least about the war. It could matter to our personal lives, we could protest the war or something and get ourselves arrested for no immediate gain.

For the next two years there's nothing we can do but stand aside and kibitz. We have no influence whatsoever. Actually, why not masturbate a bit? It's something to do while waiting for 2006, assuming the 2006 elections will happen on schedule.

Dave S wrote, "The Premiere/ President of Iraq just had his direct family kidnapped in green zone?
A elderly uncle and a sister in-law snatched with threat od death in 48 hrs.

"Does this mean we cannot even provide security for the President's family."

Not necessarily. The president had been protesting our bombing of Fallujah. That sort of thing would make him more popular when the elections come.

This will teach him to fully oppose the insurgents and terrorists. He was soft on them and this is how they repay him, right?

We might be a lot better at security for iraqi politicians who're on our side. If they get too much out of line then a little terrorist attack or two on their families might persuade them to be more cooperative. If you see the terrorists kidnap *Allawi's* family then things are clearly out of control. When it's Al-Yawer, it might be a sign that we're getting him more under control.

Bigod:

We have made a little progress, from “not a single US citizen” to at least Leon Klinghoffer. How about ambassador Cleo Noel and Charges d'affaires George Curtis? How about Jacob Mandell, the 13-year-old American boy killed in Israel by PLO terrorists. Then there is the murder of American Lee Akunis in Ramallah which Fatah proudly claims responsibility. And so on. But where did I say I want to inflict a collective punishment on all the Palestinians? I simply want to call a spade a spade. The PLO and a large fraction of the rank and file Palestinians are not friends of the US. You might think their hate is justified, but most Americans disagree for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure why you think Benny Morris is the last word. Why is he better than say Uri Milstein (“Israel's War of Independence” in four volumes), which is far more detailed, and unlike Morris has references to the IDF archives? See also a review of Morris’ book by Robert Satloff in the Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 31, Number 4, October 1995, p. 954. Also see http://www.meforum.org/article/302. Note that I never said that Morris is wrong, only that the matter is unsettled. Just because Morris cites a slew of references doesn’t mean he has not been selective.

“I had as a student someone whose family lived in Baghdad for 500 years. That they were forced to leave is wrong, and they should be compensated. But demolishing some houses on the West Bank isn't an appropriate response.”

Your student’s family will never be compensated. But that’s not why houses in the West Bank get demolished. They get demolished as punishment for horrendous acts committed today. I have also been told that the demolishing of homes is a traditional punishment practice in the Middle East, but I have not verified this statement.

David S wrote, "Dave S wrote, "The Premiere/ President of Iraq just had his direct family kidnapped in green zone?
A elderly uncle and a sister in-law snatched with threat od death in 48 hrs."

Hey, that wasn't the president. That was the prime minister, Allawi.

This is FUBAR.

Allawi and the other IG members need to get their families and extended families out of the country immediately.

“The PLO and a large fraction of the rank and file Palestinians are not friends of the US. You might think their hate is justified, but most Americans disagree for obvious reasons.“

Their hatred isnt directed at individual US citizens, its based on US policy in the ME. And there is a relevant distinction between the PLO and most of the Palestinian people. It look like the main purpose of erasing that distinction is to justify collective punishment.

“Note that I never said that Morris is wrong, only that the matter is unsettled.“

An argument in favor of Morris is that he didnt expect or want to find the evidence he presented. Testimony against a witness's interest is given stronger weight.

But the military details are irrelevant to the issue of whether the refugees gave up the right to their property when they fled. If I evacuate because a hurricane is coming, I m not abandoning my house. How is a war not like a hurricane?

“They get demolished as punishment for horrendous acts committed today.“

It is still collective punishment.

“I have also been told that the demolishing of homes is a traditional punishment practice in the Middle East...“

I've been told that mob execution is a traditional puhishment practice on the North American continent, but I don't think that justifies whites lynching blacks in the South early in last Century. I've been told that torture was carried out in Abu Ghraib prison, but I don't think that gives our government license to inflict torture.